KerikBalm

If you think China has nothing to gain from burying the lab-leak hypothesis, I must ask: why you think that they are trying so hard to do just that? Clearly they consider that they have something to gain from that. If it wasn't a lab leak, then they would have something to gain from some level of transparency. I get it, there was military biodefense research going on there, they aren't going to allow a full audit. However, they haven't even made an attempt to be helpful. There are various levels of transparency, and it is the world's foremost coronavirus research institute, and the worst pandemic in a century or more... and the WIV is being about as unhelpful as it could possibly be. Allowing the international team to request samples from WIV researchers in order to perform their own serology test would not lead to vaccine research being called bioweapons research, and would strengthen China's claim that there were no infected WIV researchers. Access to their database of sequences of samples collected in the wild would be helpful, and would not lead to vaccine research being called bioweapons research. Publishing the SARS-CoV-2 sequence as soon as they knew it wouldn't have been a problem if they had nothing to hide. Acknowledging human to human spread as soon as there was evidence: ditto Not lying about RaTG13 would have turned out better for them, and I can't imagine any incentive they'd have to do so unless they had something to hide. Similar comments about not jailing the doctors that alerted the public Similar comments about allowing access to the bat caves where related viruses have been found... Even discounting China's suspicious behavior, there's no evidence for any proposed lab leak scenario, and a ton of evidence pointing to a lab leak. I will grant that the evidence is mostly circumstantial, but that kind of evidence can actually be quite good despite the popular perception and derogarotry comments towards it.

At the same time, one shouldn't shy away from a conclusion because you don't like the implications, or because of who else supported the idea. [snip] Racist [snip] may have been vocal proponents of this idea, with little evidence and incoherent arguments... but that doesn't mean that they are wrong. A broken clock is right twice per day... as the saying goes. I'm still not saying that this was engineered, or a bioweapon, just an accident and maybe a result of irresponsible but well intentioned research. I saw one proposal that SARS-CoV-2 was the result of an attempt to develop an attenuated vaccine against RaTG13 (or a similar virus isolated from the same cave, since we don't fully know what they found in that cave, they just published about another virus from there last month, collected back to 2015, called RaTG15), under the assumption that it may have been what killed that 3 out of 6 miners who were infected back in 2012. If that 2012 incident was caused by a SARS-like CoV, it had an apparent fatality rate of 50%, and SARS-CoV-2 is thus significantly milder... We can't call a lab nefarious for developing a vaccine for a disease that has a 50% fatality rate (even worse than the MERS coronavirus)... although that is pure speculation. Lab-leak does not mean they did anything nefarious like bioweapon research

Sorry, I was too concise, it was really 2 points. Point 1 is that the scientific consensus is shifting away from the conclusion that its a natural spillover, towards uncertainty or a lab leak. Point 2 is my own assessment of the data. Also I note that you misquoted me: I did not say "extremely unlikely", but rather "really implausible" - effectively the same, thing, I just expect quotes to be actual quotes and not paraphrasing. To those saying why does it matter, such as @mikegarrison and @SunlitZelkova , this is one reason why it matters: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08837-7 There is a difference between knowing something is a risk, and knowing how much of a risk it is. The determination here will affect all future risk assessments. Also I would like to point out that the absence of international law that could be enforced is not the same thing as an absence of reprecussions. The political implications are huge, which is why this is so contentious. @JoeSchmuckatelli Yes, if you hear hooves, think horses initially, but if you look around and realize that you are next to the Africa section of a zoo, that may change your assessment, no? I believe that is analagous ot what is happening here. Since the dawn of humanity, every new virus was essentially a spillover, until 1977 when an H1N1 flu strain escaped a lab that was using it to develop a vaccine. Natural spillover is the default assumption in the absence of further evidence. We saw what was clearly natural spillover in the first SARS outbreak at a wetmarket. Here we saw what seemed to be another SARS type virus outbreaking at a wetmarket. The natural spillover hypothesis seemed very likely, and the closeness to a coronavirus research center as just a coincidence. Further evidence has emerged that makes the probability of a natural spillover less likely, and a lab leak more likely (whether it can be properly said that the lab leak probability is now >50% is the subject of the current scientific debate). What is now clear is that a spillover did not occur at the Wuhan wet market. The WHO report agrees with this conclusion, the Chinese agree with this conclusion, basically all experts agree with this conclusion. The Wuhan wet market outbreak was just an early super-spreader event, the virus was circulating before reaching the wet market, and had already split into A and B lineages, with the B lineage being what super-spread in the wet market. Ok, so the spillover didn't happen at the wetmarket... well there are still other possibilites for natural spillover for what is clearly descended from a bat virus. What about Bats around Wuhan? Shi Zhengli, the lead researcher at the WIV herself, and the WHO report says that there was extensive sampling of the bats in the Hubei province where Wuhan is located, and there are no remotely similar viruses in bats. So it wasn't local bats, and it wasn't animals imported via the wetmarket. Rodents stowing away coming from another location? The early strains of SARS-CoV-2 didn't replicate in rodents (some of the variants now do), so it wasn't rodents. What about other farmed animals like Mink and such? well Shi and the WHO report both say that they sampled the farms in Hubei, and again found nothing. It wasn't farmed animals. What about people coming from other regions? The closest publicly disclosed bat virus comes from the Yunnan province, 1500 km away, and was collected (along with many other coronaviruses, and other viruses) following an incident in which 6 miners working in a bat cave fell ill, and 3 died. Their cause of death prior to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak was said to be a viral pneumonia with secondary fungal infection, possibly due to a coronavirus or henipa-like virus. After the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, Shi Zhengli said in an interview that it was just a fungal infection (that's a suspicious change in diagnosis with no reason given). She also said that they looked for evidence of past infection in the residents of that town and province, nobody had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. So it wasn't someone from where the closest known animal virus came from, that travelled to Wuhan. The fact is that there has been no evidence for any proposed natural spillover scenario . Every specific natural spillover route proposed thus far appears to have been ruled out. That doesn't mean that there wasn't a natural spillover route that we just haven't thought of yet... but at the moment, there is no viable hypothesis that isn't extremely vague, retaining viability only because it lacks testable specifics. In contrast, we have an outbreak in close vicinity to a lab that: * was conducting spillover studies with live viruses * has a publication history of constructing infectious chimeric viruses and engaging in other gain of function research * has the worlds largest collection of coronavirus samples * has not made its sequence database public, and continues to refuse to do so * had a sample of the closest publicly disclosed virus to SARS-CoV-2 (RaTG13) for about 7 years before the outbreak * held on to the partial sequence data of RaTG13 virus for 4 years, and the full sequence data for 2 years before disclosing it * renamed the virus and initially implied that they did nothing with the RaTG13 sample after collection and only sequenced it after the outbreak, before being forced to disclose/clarify that they worked with it earlier after people noticed the connection with partial sequence data from a 2016 publication that used the old name, and found time stamps in the data they uploaded * refused to disclose sufficient raw sequence data for RaTG13 for 2 months, and did so only after it was noticed that it was impossible to obtain the published RaTG13 genome from the raw sequence data that they made available. * has said that the RaTG13 sample is gone, and comes from a 2013 fecal/poophole swab, yet the raw data they uploaded has a short description of the methods, which describes a broncho-alvelar lavage specimen, and there are nearly no bacterial reads in the NGS sequence data (about 0.6-0.7%) , when other sequences of this sample type uploaded from the same lab typically have 50%-90% bacterial reads... suggesting that it was not a fecal/poophole sample, and the lab has lied about the provenance of the sequence. * has not allowed the WHO team to see data on suspected earlier cases hospitalized for viral pnuemonia. * was criticized in 2018 for poor safety protocols, and is in a country that allowed SARS-CoV-1 to escape from a lab multiple times (after studying it from a natural spillover) On top of this the virus when it appeared was already well adapted to humans, being significantly more transmissible than late outbreak SARS-CoV-1 Notably, late outbreak SARS-CoV-1 was itself significantly more transmissible than eary outbreak SARS-CoV-1, because it had recently crossed over and was under strong positive selection pressure to adapt to humans. In contrast even the earliest SARS-CoV-2 lineages were observed to have high negative selection pressure accross most of the genome, and only "relaxed" selection pressure in others (note the variants we see are mainly adapting to population level immunity to the old variants, not to transmission within humans, with the apparent exception of just 3 mutations: D614G, N501Y, and a mutation in the Furin cleavage site) Also worth noting, none of the related coronaviruses have furin cleavage sites, only distantly related coronaviruses have them, and they are not homologous to the site in SARS-CoV-2. It did not come from recombination with another coronavirus. It must have arisen de novo (which can happen), but that is more likely, and indeeed fairly common in serial passage experiments. Furthermore, we have numerous publications describing addition of de novo furin cleavage sites (including at least 1 from the WIV). While the furin cleavage site is not the smoking gun that some claim it is, this feature is more expected from a lab leak than from a natural spillover. Then there are suspicious actions of the Chinese government that: * used police to silence doctors trying to draw attention to the outbreak of a new virus * publicly denied that there was human to human transmission, when the data was clear that there was * withheld the sequence data for the new virus for weeks * has banned publishing any papers that suggest a lab leak is a possibility * tacitly admits the virus may be artificial, by promoting the idea that it came from a US lab * promotes a hypothesis utterly without evidence that it was imported from outside china in frozen goods, when no such transmission has ever been confirmed, and would require high environmental levels of the virus, indicating widespread circulation before shipment (ie, an utterly implausible theory) * censored rumors that arose IN CHINA that a WIV researcher was patient zero, (said WIV researcher can be documented to have worked there, but canot be reached: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Yanling ) If, on top of this, the intelligence service reports are correct that multiple WIV researchers had to be hospitalized shortly before the outbreak began... the evidence looks pretty damning. I hear hooves, and I see that I'm in a zoo's africa section. Maybe I'm hearing some nearby Przewalski's horses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski's_horse ), but I think its Zebras.

I must question if you read the whole thing [snip] Right before the part you quoted was: "Although there were no findings in clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident," and right after the part you quoted was: "Furthermore, the two theories were not given balanced consideration. Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the possibility of a laboratory accident (4). Notably, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report's consideration of evidence supporting a laboratory accident was insufficient and offered to provide additional resources to fully evaluate the possibility (5)" The point is that the WHO report's conclusions were not justified or based upon any actual evidence. Furthermore there is a more subtle jab near the end: "A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest." Because the WHO team had major conflicts of interest. Half the team was Chinese (it was a joint Chinese-WHO report, rather than a WHO only report), and on the WHO part of the team you had people who were collaborating with the Wuhan institute on coronavirus research, or obtaining funding from Chinese sources. The takeaway from that letter should be that the WHO report's conclusions are not fact and evidence based, the report is deeply compromised by conflicts of interest and bias. In short, the reports conclusion is only usefull if you print it out, because then you can use the paper to wipe your butt.

Nobody commented on this? https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 It is looking really implausible that a natural spillover happened, while a lab leak remains plausible

I'm sort of weird, in that I merrily and heavily mod the game's solar system, but I don't want to use part mods, which is why I dropped my personal mods after breaking ground allowed similar functionality. The weight belt for kerbals is very interesting though, and cannot be replaced with stock funtionality afaik.

Well, sometimes there is a fun challenge in trying to design a payload within the constraints of a launcher.

A while back I made similar engines to what I think you are doing, along with a part reskin to differentiate the part: Other ones I did: Green parts were atmospheric engines using electric charge (rescaled 0.5x to turn the goliath into a 1.25m engine) Blue were liquid engines, Tan/brownish engines were air-augmented rockets/ Jet engines that burned fuel and oxidizer along with intake atmosphere as reaction mass. I also made a modified ore tank to work as a ballast tank... but with breaking ground and robotics, I went full stock for my craft (even if I do not play stock scale and have modifed the stock system)

I mean... if you really have made the runways longer, then it shouldn't be an issue. Personally, I look at that hill in the distance and don't see a problem

I've tried 2 stage spaceplanes in stock (1x size), they don't work so well. Its more practical to just push to orbit. By the time you get your apoapsis high enough, you are so close to orbit, that the complexity of a 2nd stage (and having to land 2 things) isn't worth it. I have tried non-SSTOs where the plane just gets to space, and releases a "payload" on a suborbital trajectory, and the "payload" circularizes itself. 2 stage reusable rockets (no airbreathing engines) work ok in stock size to increase payload fraction over SSTO rockets, while staying fully recoverable... but I think they are impraticable too. Without wings, its hard to aim the trajectory back to KSC to get even 98% recovery. With wings, its easier to just do a winged SSTO rocket, and if doing that, its easier to add whiplash or rapiers to it, and you're back to SSTO air breathing spaceplanes. Scaling up to 3x, SSTOs are still possible, but payload fraction drops (I think I got over 17% though), but to get good fractions, long LV-N burns are required. Splitting into a 2 stage recoverable allows much faster time to orbit (at the cost of having to fly back 2 planes), and ditching LV-Ns (for role playing reasons). Its one reason I think 3x or 4x is more fun than 1x.

Payload on top, engine on bottom, fuel tanks in the middle? Then once I have rapiers unlocked, in stock, its payload in the middle, twin booms on the side, with wings. Then in 3x or 4x rescales, its a sub orbital rapier-powered spaceplane with an inverted gull wing, slinging a a 2nd spaceplane with the payload at the nose beneath it. The 2nd spaceplane is powered by a Rhino (sometimes vectors or a Mammoth). Rhino-spaceplane and payload are attached back or forth as needed to achieve a proper CG for the combination during the air breathing ascent to space. Examples: The key is to get the apoapsis up to >100km (preferably around 150km, it is a rescaled system after all, 3-4x rescale most of the time, but only 1.25x rescale for the atmosphere, and only 1.5-2x rescale for terrain height), and get the 2nd stage to orbit before the 1st stage spaceplane falls back down too much, allowing the 1st stage to be switched two, flown back to KSC, and recovered Works even in 6.4x I even have fully reusable variants of this concept (that is, no recovering and relaunching, no expendable items like payload fairings or decouplers, just redock, refuel, load a new payload via the cargo ramp, and go), for playing mods where the KSC is located somewhere else (such as Duna or Laythe) combined with a rescale: FYI, recovering at the dessert airstrip also gets 100% funds return... just in case you'd rather land there.

Heat shields with no ablator are not dead weight, they are just less effective. They are still blunt which helps with heating (remarkably, a boundary layer is simulted, with pointy objects heating worse than blunt ones). They also have a high heat tolerance, and thus are still useful. However, they will heat up more, and they will conduct more heat to the next item in the stack, but that doesn't make them useless. I've had some designs meant for reuse, where I simply started the shields with 0 ablator to save weight for the transfer. Solar panels (fixed or extendable) can be damaged without being "destroyed". Previously, although the part would remain, there was no way to fix it. It was useless, but still on your craft. Now (I have not tried this yet though), they can be repaired with repair kits. Extendable antennas can also be damaged without being destroyed (unsure if you can repair them with repair kits), and I think the same goes for the scanner arms.

Ok, I was just listing my favorite one to use. THe most useful acronym, and thus the best. I have a number of acronyms, many probably would violate the forum rules if I shared them. Lets have a go: MOO: Minmus Orbiting Observatory (or any body starting with M) MILK: Mun Intermediate Lifting Craft (or any body starting with M) - a cargo vessel EVIL: Eve Very Intricate Lifter *Censored*: Moho Independent Local Fueler: a local fuel producing craft *Censored*: Kerbin Rapid Ascent Plane DOODOO: Duna Orthagonal Orbit Direct Ore Observation: an ore scanner in a polar orbit ICK: Ike Cartographer Kraft DOODY: Dres Ore Observatory, Detection of Yield JOB: Jool Orbiting Bot FART: Foreign Anomaly Recon, Tylo (or Foreign Anomaly Response Team, for the craft used by kerbals investigating anomalies). POOP: Pol Orbiting Observation Probe *Censored*: Tylo Intermediates Telemetry Station (I consider a relay to be an intermediate telemetry station) LOSER: Laythe Observatory and Surface Exploration Rover VOMIT: Val Observation and Mining Installation Transport- for the craft that delivers a surface base to Val that conducts observations and mining *Censored*: Bop Orbiting Observation Bot. One should make 2 of these EEK: Eeloo Exploration Kraft

My landers tend to be cargo carrying dropships. When they aren't, they have wings if appropriate: And other aerodynamic surfaces when appropriate as well: An alternate Mun design, since Mun is airless, and there's no need for the cargo to be restricted to an enclosed mk3 bay: cargo goes underneath and is held by a robot arm. This monstrosity was meant for a 3x Rald: Other designs Different ships for sure. Different landers too. Although once the destination gets to be Mun sized or smaller, I tend to used the same lander, or highly similar

RUD, rapid unplanned disassembly

Just a nitpick, SSTOs are easy to create. You are probably referring to SSTO spaceplanes, or at least recoverable SSTOs. Disposable SSTO rockets are rather easy to create in the stock game. Yea, functional air breather SSTO spaceplanes are harder to create than disposable rockets. Sadly getting to orbit isn't the whole battle. You will also have to deal with getting down again. With a disposable lifter, any shift of CoM is irrelevant for reentry, and likely makes the rocket more stable on ascent (provided that you have the payload on top of the booster). With a SSTO spaceplane, just placing the engines and fuel tanks (and any payload) in such a way that it is aerodynamically stable when fully loaded and when empty is a chore. Furthermore, airbreathing engines act very differently from rocket engines, and need a very different ascent profile. Rocket engine's don't have their thrust vary depending upon their speed, and their thrust increases with altitude. Jets have a "power band", this is most noticable for the Whiplash and Rapier, but also the panther. Panther: However, thrust drops off as you get higher. You need to stay in thick enough air for the jets to work, and get going faster enough down low to hit the power band of the engine, or your spaceplane will just languish with insufficient thrust, and not really get the high speed and high altitude situation when you engage rocket engines that is so critical for a well functioning SSTO spaceplane,

I previously templated one of my mod planets on Laythe. I changed it to Kerbin, and I was able to remove the KSC and such, but I still get active comnet station lines showing up to my craft that should not have a com link. How can I remove them? Current start of my config:

Generally, yes, space planes do go to space... otherwise they are just planes. Well, you could use a rapier, and just change the engine mode... but yes, you would carry some sort of liquid fuel+oxygen burning engine to get to orbit. Although in stock KSP, you can also get to orbit with just jets and the LV-N (thus no oxidizer needed). The point is that they get you high and fast in the atmosphere for minimal fuel use. Using them, you can do single stage to a moon of Jool. Speaking of moons of Jool, jet engines work on Laythe, and its even easier to use jets to get to orbit from that moon. For myself, in stock KSP, I would make heavy cargo carrying SSTOs. Are you aware that SSTOs can have payload fractions over 50%?

To be fair, I can see a distinction between one's favorite celestial body, and the favorite place to go. Jool and laythe, for example, maybe one's favorite celestial body one their own... but maybe minmus/mun are the favorite places to go because the journey is quick, relatively easy, and you can depart at any time. For the record, in career, I have been to moho more than I have been to jool, probably Eve, and perhaps Duna... because the transfer windows come often, and the transfers are fast. In a long save with multiple missions going on, I may have a jool mission depart, but it nearly never arrives before a new version drops, or I try a new mod, and start over. So as far as actually completing a mission (there and back) in a persistent save (as opposed to a save that I make to conduct a single mission, such as a mission to Eeloo), I might say my favorite places to go are Mun, Minmus, and Moho, because they take such little game time. They are not my favorite bodies on their own though... and if I play Duna space program, they aren't so attractive

Build something to explore the bottom of the sea of laythe...

Well, the first game called it time warp, so you can't go wrong with sticking with that. However, similar features have been around a long time in other games, where it is also called time acceleration. I wouldn't fuss one bit if you start referring to it as time acceleration

It is, which immediately renders everystory utterly stupid/arbitrary/incoherent, "Oh no, the bad guy deployed his super weapon, we don't know how to defeat it, we are so screwed!!!" >"No we aren't, I just sent a message back in time, warning ourselves, we have 5 years to prepa-" 5 years ago "So um, we just got this message that says the bad guy is building a superweapon that will be ready in 5 years, lets take our fleet there and destroy it" Badguy: "Oh no, the Republic fleet found out about my superweapon before it was complete, I'll just send myself a message 10 years back in time with the plans for the super weapon" 15 years ago Badguy: "oh, these are some cool plans for a super weapon, I'll start building them right away, should be ready in 5 years" 10 years ago "Oh no, the bad guy deployed his super weapon, we don't know how to defeat it, we are so screwed!!!" >"No we aren't, I just sent a message back in time, warning ourselves, we have 5 years to prepa-" 15 years ago "So um, we just got this message that says the bad guy is building a superweapon that will be ready in 5 years, lets take our fleet there and destroy it" Badguy: "Oh no, the Republic fleet found out about my superweapon before it was complete, I'll just send myself a message 10 years back in time with the plans for the super weapon" 25 years ago ... Do you see the problem? Anytime there is an unexpected turn of events, they can just warn their past selves. Everything degenerates into a causiality paradox or infinite regress. Then you need to introduce a Temporal Prime Directive and Time Cops to try and salvage it. Now all your stories involve Time Cops... and thats... lame. While it may be way over most readers heads, you don't need extensive study of Einsteints relativity to understand it. If you are reasonably intelligent, you should be able to work it out yourself when using spacetime diagrams, and knowing that everyone observes the speed of light to be the same. Observer A on ship passing by at 0.99c (relative to observer B) shining a light forward will observe that light to be travelling at c relative to the ship, whereas observer B will observe the light to be travelling at c relative to him/herself, not 1.99c. Once you understand this, and construct your space time diagram accordingly, you can see how http://www.physicsmatt.com/blog/2016/8/25/why-ftl-implies-time-travel#:~:text=Because light travels at 45,away from the time axis.&text=Again%2C this is what a,like in a spacetime diagram. There is no specific "now". Observers in different reference frames have different nows. Observer A may say that events 1, 2, and 3 are happening "now", while Observer B may say that event 1 happened 1 year in the past, event 2 is happening now, and event 3 has not happened yet. If Observer A and B can communicate FTL, they can each send messages to each other about events that haven't happened yet from each of their reference frames. This compounds because then one observer can send a message to the other observer about the content of their message, before they sent the message, thus warning each observer about events that haven't happened yet in either of their "nows". Yes, they can do relativity calculations, and define an Earth Standard Reference frame ("Earth-now").... but with relativistic travel and FTL portals you will be receiving messages coming from different times. So when you are on Earth, and you receive a message coming from "Earth-now" + 5 years, do you just file it away and not read it for another 5 years? What happens when you receive a message "Earth-now" from Earth time - 5 years? Do you send a reprimand for improper scheduling, do you try to forward it to another reference frame that can rectify the situation so that you did receive it 5 years ago? What if you peek at that message from "Earth-now"+5 years, and its a report of an alien invasion of Earth, do you obey the temporal prime directive and only schedule it to be read by others in 5 years?? Yes, and its always different for different reference frames. Adding a schedule doesn't fix this issue

One, its not dirt, its gravel, rock, dust... etc. Dirt has a high content of biologically derived organics. Two, no, it would not work as a melted fluid passing through a hot reactor Three: What you can do is use a powerful laser to vaporize/ablate the materal, and produce thrust that way. This would work fairly well with beamed power propulsion. Your ship scoops up regolith, compresses it into a block, and ofcuses a laser beam on the block that procedes to vaporize the regolith of the block, producing an exhaust jet as it bores into the block. You don't even need a hole for a crude nozzle. A flat plane uniformly ablating will already produce highly directional thrust (with just inefficiencies along the edges). This would take a lot of power, so having beamed power would be great, as your ship doesn't need to supply the power. You could have an orbiting mothership, and your lander just uses regolith and the motherships laser to ascend and descend. Also, you could use it to augment thrust from a nuke. The orion drive envisions using shaped charge nuclear blasts, but if you are low on nukes, you could pakc in some regolith to increase the propellent mass at the expense of reduced Isp. Within certain bounds, this can dramatically increase youd remaining dV.

How much procedural generation is used for the fine details when on the surface? Can such generation be used to maintain detail when scalping up the system to 3 or 4x? A major problem I have with ksp 1, is that pretty much all the features that you can make out from the surface, you can make out from orbit, the planets just seem small. Even using real data for mars for example... Reducing a whole planets surface to 2048x1024 or even 4096x2048 heightmap and texture means that you can pretty much see all the features of the planet at a glance. On my modded mars, I also added a noise layer, but more advanced fine scale detail procedural generation would be awesome

Whose present? We are throwing relativity out of the window then? Can we then have slow and fast light? Is FTL meaningless then? How does EM even work then? The clocks on each side run at different rates, affecting frequency of light passing through, they will observe different lengths, you can also blue shift the light coming through like crazy... Turn low energy photons into high energy ones. Free energy device that can send messages back in time... Not cheaty at all... Nope