KerikBalm

Ok, cool, so a free energy device that can send messages back through time. Or is the EM radiation red shifted according to the relative velocities of the portals?

I don't know what you mean by pirtals if you are talking about energy beams, but I am a big proponent of beamed power propulsion, and I hope that it makes it into ksp2. If you mean some kind of ftl wormhole power/mass transfer, then you gain thhe ability to send messages back in time, and barring certain limitations on hoow it works, also a free energy machine.

Its no different than ignition of a fusion fuel pellet by laser fusion/inertial confinement fusion... just on a larger scale. You'd need a much larger ICF facility to make an explosion of a decent size, or a much much much more efficient system. Also, such a system is bound to be pretty expensive, more expensive than a fission primary, and would destroy itself in the exposion. You could fuse elements in dirt to get energy, yes. Dirt contains hydrogen, carbon, nitogen, oxygen. All of which are involved in fusion reactions in stars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycle Yes, that's how we get heavy elements, they are formed in super nova. No, you just need very high energy density, like in a super nova Fusing anything into an element larger than Iron will just suck up energy, not release it. That's why you get energy from splitting heavy elements, wheras you get energy from fusing lighter elements. If you find an chunk of iron and nickel on some asteroid, that material cannot be used to generate energy via fusion. If you have a bunch or energy available, and you need a heavier element to build something, you could start fusing that together to make heavier elements, but that's going to take a bunch of energy, not release it. Also, I think you are confusing propellent and fuel. If you have a bunch of iron, and a little He3, you can fuse the He3 to throw iron out the back for more thrust. Any mass can be used for propellent, without needing to be fused. I think you need a very powerful fusion reactor, but it would operate on the same principles as current ones. I also know that you will not be able to use any mass

Another good article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7703598/ We need to keep up the search, we would be remiss if we just said it was a natural spillover, case closed, and forget about further investigation. Even if it turns out to be a natural spillover, we still need to find out how it happened. Closing off further investigation is just negligent. *edit*, update, more suspicious activity: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349073738_An_investigation_into_the_WIV_databases_that_were_taken_offline They have shut off access to their database, which contained sequences of unpublished viruses. The existence of unpublished virus sequences pulls the rug out of the WHO assertion that there are no reports of viruses close to SARS-CoV-2, because they had a huge array of unpublished viruses at the lab. Publicly availanble information shows that they were characterizing "new" viruses in humanized mice, and in cell culture of various species.

That would normally be the case, except Wuhan isn't near any known animal reservoir for coronaviruses. That requires a rather complicated explanation as to how the spillover from the animal reservoir didn't cause a local outbreak first, before spreading to Wuhan, where it seems it was already well adapted to humans when spread began in Wuhan. The prior probability is in favor of a natural outbreak, because since the dawn of life on Earth, natural outbreaks have been happening, and since human experimentation with pathogens has begun, we have just 1 conclusive example of a large scale outbreak of H1N1 flu in 1977 (the rest were only small outbreaks that were quickly contained). I initially discounted the lab leak theory as crazy Trump linked propaganda, but there are various bits of information that shift the relative probabilities towards a lab leak Yes, I acknowledge that is a problem. Anytime one can't find evidence/evidence contradicts the hypothesis, its because "they" covered it up or something like that. But I also must point out a difference between concluding something happened, without sufficient evidence, and concluding that something is plausible. It is equally wrong to conclude that something did not happen without sufficient evidence. The correct answer is "I don't know" Well, for the part of evidence to disprove the currently entertained claim, I have looked for it. Evidence in favor of the natural spillover hypothesis would count as evidence against the lab leak hypothesis, yet the report failed to find any plausible animal source for this spillover. You can keep finding zero evidence in favor of natural spillover, because absensce of evidence is not evidence of absence. In this way, the natural spillover hypothesis is just about equally disprovable. This is the strange case where we cannot really imagine any evidence that disproves either theory, except for evidnce that proves the other theory, and that evidence is lacking both ways. I had hoped to find evidence proving the natural origin/disproving the lab leak origin in the WHO report that concluded that it was extremely unlikely. The 120 page report is remarkably short when dealing with this possibility, and cites no evidence. Quoted in its entirety here: Now the arguments against section contains extraneous irrelevant details, which when trimmed is simply this: None of which was actually investigated by the international team, and some of which is contradicted by reports of poor adherence to safety protocols, or a poor record of other chinese labs (3 independent escapes from chinese BSL-3 labs of the less infectious SARS-CoV-1). If they thought it was a waste of time and money trying to find out how it occurred naturally, the Wuhan Institute of Virology wouldn't be doing the research that it has been doing. Here is one such study that they have been doing since at least 2014: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9819304 Finding out how it happened can be very usefull to prevent similar things from happening again. They were already very interested in finding out how SARS-CoV-1 happened, now we are supposed to believe they have no interest in finding out how SARS-CoV-2 happened, despite it being much worse? They are interested in how it happened, but they are more interested in not being blamed for it. Back to that study, we know about it because they applied for (and received) grant money from the USA, which funded it because, again finding out how natural spillovers happen can be very usefull to prevent similar things from happening again. What does this mean? The first part I put in bold means that they will be doing spillover studies in vitro (cultured humna cells), and in vivo (likely humanized mice models). The second part in bold means that they will be producing infectious virus starting from nucleic acids (something I have done with adenovirus in a P2 lab) https://www.virology.ws/2009/02/12/infectious-dna-clones/ The third part implies that they will test the divergence limits, which could mean that they will see how far the sequence must diverge before they get efficient infections in humans ("spillover"). The description of this research is concerning. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7859469/ In bold is the conclusion we should all have in our minds.

With zero evidence. Epidemiology, phylogenetics disprove this Utterly incompatible with the facts It does come off looking lik projection, increasing my suspicion.

Yes, as I said: My point is: 1) Lab leaks happen, and China has a history of lab leaks of coronaviruses (3 times with SARS). 2) The first SARS came from an area without a bunch of labs working on coronaviruses, near an area with closely related endemic coronavirus infections of wild animals. SARS-2 is the exact opposite of this: close ot labs working on coronavirus, far away from animal populations with endemic closely related coronaviruses 3) This Chinese admits that the Wuhan CDC lab (distinct from, but likely engages in substantial collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology) moved shortly before the first confirmed cases were detected (6 days, not much longer than the incubation period of the virus). The Chinese admit that samples of the closest known coronavirus were sent to Wuhan. 4) The Chinese don't even deny that they conduct gain of function experiments when asked about it. 5) The Chinese did not provide meaningful access to their records of their virus stocks or experiments. 6) The Chinese jailed the first guy to publicly raise an alarm about the virus. They promote crazy theories like that it started in the US at Fort Deitrich, or that it came into their country from frozen products from undetected outbreaks in other countries... What it comes down to is that there is a lot to suggest that a lab leak is at least plausible. To discount the hypothesis requires simply taking the Chinese at their word, as there has been no independent investigation to rule it out. Given the way they act towards their own doctors, and the outside world, I am not willing to do this. That leaves just a set of suspicious facts that are, admittedly, not conclusive.

They have already spouted that theory, saying that the US made it in Fort Deitrich, and that they should be given access to Fort Deitrich if other countries want to audit their lab. Then, as if they know its a ridiculous proposal, they mention how other countries wouldn't allow stuff liek that, so they shouldn't have to allow access to their lab... ignoring the fact that their labs are directly adjacent to the first know cases... Oh it most definitely came from the lab: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/02/content_344755.htm https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17319269/ April and May: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_2004 Note that the Chinese CDC in Beijing was conducting research on coronaviruses... they had samples in their labs. Now they are claiming that the CDC lab in Wuhan was not conducting coronavirus research and had no such samples. I find that hard to believe that there were no collaborations between them and the Wuhan Inst. of Vir (WIV). The WIV may be a P4 lab in name, but the Wuhan CDC was only a P2 lab... and moved. [speculation] SARS-CoV-2s immediate precursor may have only been classified as a P2 level pathogen before the outbreak[/speculation] SARS-CoV-2 is now classed as a P3 level pathogen. Even so, the original SARS leaked form P3 labs in China multiple times.

It would just be a matter of how long the experiment would have been ongoing, and how close the start was. The WHO team could not verify what they had in their labs. Its not like I think china would disclose that they had a virus stock that was a 99.5% match to SARS-COV-2 if they had it. Regarding early cases, based on data supplied by the chinese, the who team identified 79(?) probable earlier cases, and asked the chinese team for more info. The chinese team said that they reviewed them all, and they weren't COVID-19 cases, and didn't hand over any data, citing laws protecting patient information. 0/79 I find suspicious, especially from a government that jailed the first guy to raise an alert, and is promoting a BS "cold-chain" transmission origin of the wuhan outbteak. I have 0 trust in the Chinese government, but that is no reason to conclude that the virus came from their labs. We are left with just a number of coincidences, that may be just chance coincidences... but it is odd enough that there should be further investigation, but the chinese government won't allow that

Lack of information? It did escape from a lab in Beijing, twice: https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-spotlight-20040427-03 But that was after it had already been identified. 1) This only applies to a deliberate manufacturing scenario, which I am not supposing. 2) It supposes that they didn't have a natural precursor sequence (which everyone agrees does exist, somewhere). They have not been very open, and the WHO team wasn't able to audit the wuhan labs Often they happen because of people doing stupid stuff. The first two largish Sars-cov outbreaks came from chinese wet markets, they closed the wet markets, then reopened them each time... those things are virus breeding grounds that enable viruses from animals to adapt to humans. Lab leak or natural spillover, it is China's fault Gain of function experiments != engineered bioweapons. It could be simply taking an animal virus that doesn't replicate very well in human cells, putting it in a human cell culture for several passages, it naturally adapts to the human cells, then you sequence it and see how it changed. There are legitimate reasons to want to do this: you can learn what you need to look out for in the future/ focus your surveillance of wild viruses... but you need to contain the virus well, ideally, destroying it afterwards. Such an adaptation to human cell culture would be very hard to distinguish from a more natural animal-human spillover. There are a number of strange circumstances that distinguish this from the SARS-COV-1 outbreaks, and China has been acting very defensively, I find it highly suspicious, but maybe its just China being China, and they act more defensive because the scale of the outbreak is much worse... But that wasn't clear at the time that they jailed the first doctor to publicly raise the alarm. It all comes down to whether or not you trust the Chinese government, and I don't.

If antivaxxers think they have the right to not protect themselves, and allow themselves to be massively productive virus factories, I should have the right to uncover my face and take a small risk of producing a tiny amount of virus from a short lived asymptomatic infection. They can rebrand all they want, their vaccine is useless in South Africa. Their only hope is that the UK variant outcompetes the South African variant (and likely all the P.X variants, starting with the original P.1 or/B.1.1.28.1/B.1.1.248 coming from Brazil. On another note... I'm starting to think that the Lab Escape Hypothesis is the most plausible origin for the virus. The closest identified viruses come from areas of China far away from Wuhan (papers from chinese groups, WHO report) Samples of said viruses were sent to the wuhan lab )WHO report) The wuhan lab has been alleged to conduct gain of function experiments, and when directly asked about that, gave a deflecting non-answer (Feb 9th WHO press conference) Concerns about safety at the wuhan lab were raised in 2018 (news reports of leaked diplomatic cables) The estimated time that this virus started spreading is right when they were moving the lab to a new building. (WHO report) Moving hazardous material from one "secure" facility to another is an obvious security risk, with an obviously elevated risk of an accident. We still don't have anything approaching full disclosure of what they had there/what they were working on. To me the lab escape hypothesis seems like the best explanation of all the available ones. To say it is just a natural spillover from an animal reservoir raises the question: where is the natural reservoir, and how was it so well adapted to humans when it arrived in Wuhan, without also causing outbreaks in the area near the animal reservoir? The WHO report comes no closer to answering those questions.

Whut, its not? This one must have got me too.

I thought the focus of the game was around space exploration. The first game started without any actual kerbals (no eva mode). Kerbals are there to support the focus of space exploration, not be the focus themselves. This isn't the Sims with little green men. Different scales ties in to space exploration (and scaling it up makes it closer to reality), and is very easy to do. Its just a matter of applying a multiplier to a set of values. Dev resources are not infinite, I understand. Obviously any feature needs a cost/benefit analysis. I see a rescale feature as a very low cost feature, and judging by the popularity of rescale mods for KSP1, the benefit is significant. Of course, if they let modders do it, the cost to the devs is 0.

I seem to recal that they said this sort of change would be easier to do, so no need to kopernicus... it may not be an in game menu option though. Also, a planet like Ovin, that requires interstellar travel to reach, is not going ot be the same challenge as starting on a 3 or 4x kerbin, for instance. By the time you get to ovin, you'll have purple-space magic drives, orion drives, fusion drives, etc. That will be completely different from getting off 4x kerbin with SRBs and methalox engines.

@Nate Simpson and @KSPStar So I guess this means that the Convert-o-tron ISRU system is out? I had been wondering if it would stay in to add flexibility to lower tech chemical engines, with the higher tech engines requiring a developed colony to support fueling operations alone (not to mention construction of craft using the engine). I guess we won't have any relatively compact"go-anywhere" (within a system) ships that can make ISRU pit stops to fuel up from asteroids/moons/planets? Any such ships would need to be massive enough to carry colony modules to set up and then repack?

You are probably already aware of this, but you can change to a polar orbit much cheaper than that (and much much cheaper with aerobraking) if you don't try to do it all at the same altitude and in 1 burn. 900 m/s to boost apoapsis. Maybe... 100m/s to change inclination 90 degrees at the target orbit, 900 m/s to lower apoapsis again. 1900 m/s total. If you aerobrake, this can come down to about 1000, m/s. Use Mun for a gravity assist too, and you can get it done in under 900 m/s... it takes a lot longer though

I am all fir QoL features, I just don't think that this would work the way you think it will, as linuxguru says: That said, there can definitely be improvements made to the maneuver node system. Porkchop plots would be nice, perhaps a system like some of the online maneuver node planners, pick a set of parameters, pick a point ob the porkchop plot, and then the game can plop down the maneuver nodes for you if you want. Just spitballing here for alternatives

I really want that to be the case. Its also very useful when you want to scale up the system (because, mods are going to be a big thing in KSP2, or its going to fail) and want to go reusable. Turbofan powered air launch to orbit designs simply don't work even at stock scale: well, they work, but the carrier craft is always lost. The only way to make them owrk is to use at least whiplashes, preferably rapiers, and get into a mach 4+ zoom climb.... and really, you want rapiers so that you can add some LF+Ox to the carrier craft, and push it into closed cycle to boost the Apopasis even higher before release.

I don't think this can work the way you want it to. To drag something into place, you are essentially saying that you want a trajectory to intersect a given point... starting from a given point I assume. The problem is that there are potentially an infinite number of solutions to that intersect, all with varying dV requirements. Indeed, sometimes, there's simply no single maneuver that can give you the intersect. You have to choose a different start of the maneuver, or do 2 burn, etc. I don't see how this can work. Learn how to plan maneuvers, its the basis of the game

You would need to trap a lot of monatomic H in there, considering the molecular weight of the fullerene. I guess the energy output should be enough to crack open the bucky balls though.

Without going into detail, by adding a lot of energy to H2, and causing it to split. Heating H2 to 10,000K will do it. Cooling it down without it recombining is difficult though Sure, but you'd need to get the energy to do it first Definitely, keep in mind, you get energy out of monatomic H by having it recombine, both ways, you spit heated H2 out of the back. How can you do anything but lose efficiency by adding steps? Although you may be able to get a higher Isp, since stored monatomic H would be mixed with inert frozen H2 to keep it reacting, thus lowering Isp from 1500s or so down to the high 700s. A hot enough NTR can split the H2 and gain Isp simply by having a lower MW exhaust.

He said "any" There were no qualifiers or limiters for that. That implies that, for a given society (with no tech level specified), a sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. The key term here is sufficiently advanced. I would argue for a sufficiently advanced society, no technology is indistinguishable from magic. Thus in that case, we'd have to conclude that sufficiently advanced technology is impossible, and hence something indistinguishable from magic is impossible. If we just assume that a sufficiently advanced technology is possible, then the statement is a global statement of the sort I made. If we don't, then the statement is functionally identical to saying magic may or may not exist*, which is an asinine statement. * Well, really the conclusion is that something "indistinguishable from magic" may or may not exist, which I conclude to be functionally identical to saying magic may or may not exist.

Very interesting... do you have a citation for this?

A slightly less ridiculous alternative to metastable-metallic hydrogen, is monatomic hydrogen. Pure monatomic hydrogen is very reactive, and desperately wants to form H2. As a result, it can be a very energetic chemical reaction with a very low mass reaction product H + H> H2. This reaction can, in theory, produce an Isp > 1500s, which is comparable to that of decompression of metallic hydrogen. Like metallic hydrogen, the question becomes... how do you actually store the stuff. From what I've found, aside from very low density storage and low density complex storage using strong magnetic fields, the best way is to mix it with H2, and freeze it. I guess that in a matrix of solid H2, the single H's don't encounter each other and react. I've seen discussion of concepts using solid pellets of H2/H within liquid helium. So far it seems they haven't exceeded 2% by mass storage of H within H2, if that could be enhanced to 15%, an Isp of 750 is attainable. How likely is that to be attainable? Then the next question: how would you use it in a sci-fi setting such as a drop-ship and ISRU. Without ISRU from gas giants, you aren't going to be able to use much helium. How do you design a system that can: 1) Operate without a working fluid/ operate with a fluid that remains a fluid at temperatures low enough to stop H2/H from melting 2) Keep the H2/H pellets from melting 3) Do 1 and 2 without helium/ be able to be resupplied in situ, without requiring somehow mining helium from gas giants Liquid helium can act as a heat sink, with excess heat removed by boiling it off (the liquid will never be above about 4k). It also provides a working fluid - solving 1 and 2, but its virtually unobtainable from ISRU on rocky planets. I had thought about supercooling hydrogen, but if its incontact with frozen pellets, they will act as nucleating agents, and everything will freeze. Could we simply put some solvent in the H2 liquid to lower the freezing point, and be able to keep the "doped" H2 liquid cool enough that it doesn't melt the solid H2/H pellets? What about our heat sink? sure you could cool mass to nearly 0K, but that doesn't give you a lot of leeway. Warming less than 14 K results in the H2/H pellets melting, the H combining with H, and the whole thing exploding like a mini-nuke. I'd think that you'd really like to have some sort of phase change to keep temperature from rising. After helium and hydrogen, the next lowest freezing point is neon. Hydrogen melts at 14K, neon melts at 24.5K... that phase change won't help/ be much of a usable heat sink. As near as I can tell, this propellant isn't feasible. I'm imagining a drop ship with a helium/H2/H slush that descends, has a very limited time on the surface as the helium boils off, and ascends again before the whole thing blows up. It better have a mothership in orbit with cooling equipment for a quick rendezvous, or jettison all unused H2/H once reaching orbit... and that mothership better have more helium, and when it runs out, no more going back to the surface until you gt more helium from a gas giant... If we could use some doped H2 with a depressed freezing point, with some frozen so that the phase hcange provides a heat sink... we could at least perform ISRU anwhere that there is water/ammonia/hydrocarbons/any other hydrogen containing compound. Or we could just use nuclear power and deal with the radiation issue.... or beamed power (if you have a truly massive ground station or mothership), and drop the idea of some sort of advanced chemical-ish propellent.

I see craters, I see no way of establishing that they are impact craters. Many remind me of this: Which is most definitely not an impact crater.