KerikBalm

"That's slightly out of date now since you can Focus on your target in the Map screen and get much the same information." Really? I can go set my conics mode back to default? It will display the trajectory around the planet, not where the planet will be (which you couldn't focus on, making precise burns extremely difficult to set up)? As to the conic patch limit, it determines how many SOI transitions it will show... increasing that number could be very usefull for navigating the Jool system

Spectrophotometers rely on reflected/transmitted light, if its underground, a spectrophotometer won't see it.

Freefall mentioned the use of mainsails: I don't see any mainsails, tbh, I don't recognize half the parts, he's using mods, some parts I recognize as mod parts even though I don't use that mod.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Hygiea Well, this one's pretty big, so its density is probably a bit higher, but its basically twice as dense as water... 2 grams per CC instead of 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche This one should be denser than normal Its estimates are between 3.3 -> 6.5 gm/cm^3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/243_Ida This one is much closer in size to what you're talking about, and it seems to be 2.6 gm/cm^3 So.... it depends on the composition of course, but 2 gm/cm^3 should be in the ballpark for most of them

On titan perhaps? Beyond that. There is no stealth in space, if its warm enough for people to live on it, it will shine like a torch in the IR spectrum across the cool background of space (CBR being about what.... 3-4K?). So, you need to camoflauge it, make it look like just another part of a celestial body. Underground, or some place with a thick atmosphere. Any of the gas giants are too thick - though I wonder how low your orbit could get before it will degrade rapidly, if you were in a very tight orbit around... lets say Uranus, you might not be noticed. How you would get it anywhere without being noticed.... I don't know. And you can't travel back and forth without being noticed... so....

I've often wondered about using the Mun for interplanetary launches... with an orbital period of 1 day 14 hours, most transfer windows (lets say all except Moho?) are sufficiently "wide" that you should be able to use the Mun during Kerbin escape. Of course, the farther from the optimal time, the more dV needed... so I've heard the Mun is sort of barely worth it in most cases.

Hmmm, so here's how I perceive your joke: Ridiculing vegetarians for being arrogant and self- righteous. Then you come with "I will simply say you aren't looking at it close enough. Think it through, to the logical and and you'll see it." When what you posted was complete and utter garbage, I could vomit a better argument than that. How hypocritical of you. But since you insist on looking closely at it, prepare for defeat in detail: I present to you two biological traits we share with all terrestrial predators: 1) A sleep cycle, you don't need to sleep to eat plants 2) A sense of smell, you don't need to smell to eat plants Of course, you find both of these traits in herbivores as well.... just like you find canines and binocular vision in herbivores. Here is basic logic for you: If P then Q does not mean if Q then P Additionally: There are many terrestrial predators without canines, and without binocular vision. So, in summary: Both the statements you made were false. Even if the statements were true, your conclusion does not even logically follow.

That is not true, but a common ad hominem argument devoid of any logical argument. Your earlier post (#14) was completely devoid of sound logic. That said: We evolved eating meat as part of our diet. Why do we need vitamin C? many other animals can synthesize it. However, animals that have a high-fruit diet get plenty of vitamin C, if you eat alot of fruit, the vitamin C synthesis pathway can become mutated or shut off, or completely deleted with no ill effects. We clearly did not evolve from hypercarnivores. But in addition to needing stuff like vitamin C, we also require 8 essential amino acide - many other things can synthesize all 20 standard amino acids from any of the other 19. We cannot, we can only synthesize 12 of them, therefore it seems we evolved with an ample supply of those 8 - suggesting carnivory*. Then there are the ethical arguments.... either tied to sentience, or tied to genetic distance. I sometime do regret the way animals are killed for my meat.... but it is so tasty! I have reduced my meat intake, but I won't stop completely. Then there is the environmental/economic/population pressure argument: You can feed more people if everyone eats a vegetarian diet. * It is possible to have a vegetarian diet supply those 8 essential amino acids. An appropriate mixture of beans, nuts, and legumes should do. You certainly won't get it only from eating lettuce, or even lettuce+fruit. And IIRC, you need beans and nuts, not beans or nuts... Of course, you can also supplement with cheese, which is relatively efficient as far as production of food, and that way you don't kill the animals (but what do you do with the excess males?! yea, sell veal.... oh well) Along those lines, there are some that argue we should switch to an insect based protein supply. I don't empathize much with insects, and it is more efficient at feeding people.... but... eww..... I'd rather go straight from eating only chickens (more efficient than beef) to eating beans and nuts... because I won't be chowing down on cockroaches...

Why would you have orbital factories? The raw material is down on the surface of a celestial body, why would you lift all the crude ore and such to orbit, when the refined and finished product is so much lighter?

Indeed, sometimes when I hear of quantum effects, and how things seem to behave differently on different scales, and this "waveform collapse" upon observation, makes me wonder if the universe is a simulation... like how KSP physics doesn't actually fully simulate a ship until you make it active, or it is within 2.5km of another ship. This would also be how I would explain the existence of a god able to defy naturals laws, if there were good evidence that such a god exists

Well, a mule may not be able to reproduce, but its cells can. Its pretty easy to culture any animal's cells Henrietta Lacks may be dead, but her cells live on in labs all around the world (hela cells). If something is made of living things, is it then by definition alive? Is a nation alive? Is an ant colony alive, or only the ants themselves? only the queen? only the ant cells? Of course, humans can't reproduce without glucose, or essential amino acids and vitamins... whereas other organisms can survive on just CO2, N2, light, and some minerals... Then you have some species of mycoplasma, which are obligate intracellular parasites.... pretty darn close to viruses... and a plausible example of an intermediate of a living cell could evolve into a virus. You can have bacteria growing on minimal media. You can have mammal cells growing, but they require addition of growth factors and "complex" media. You can have intracellular parasites growing in very complex media. You can grow some viruses in cell lysate. In some ways, you might say its simply a matter of the complexity of the "nutrients" needed to make it grow. I would say it is any self propogating organization of matter with the capacity to evolve (as opposed to simple crystal structures). In that sense, viruses are life. From a cell/molecular biology point of view (which is what I study) no line is drawn between "living things" and "viruses". At the molecular level, they are pretty much the same, its simply a matter of complexity. You could view the infected cell as the "living virus" and the virus particle as something akin to sperm. You don't often study a pathogen by itself, but the host-pathogen interactions. And infected cell has a certain organization, certain pathways and such, and that infected cell can propogate that organizatiosl scheme. Personally, I consider viruses to be a form of life... just shift your focus from the infection particle to the infected cell, and you've got something that looks pretty much like life. Its really just a philisophical question that serious science doesn't really address. For the purposes of exo-biology, its sort of a "we'll know it when we see it" -and yes, there is plenty of sci-fi where we initially don't know it when we see it -the same goes for sentience -and it goes both ways, with aliens not recognizing us as alive or sentient (typically until our resistance makes them take note, such as in Ender's Game, for example)

Why do people keep bringing up this "Earth like atmosphere" requirement as if that was ever a seriously held "requirement"? Yes, Earth's atmosphere changed over time. No, nobody is saying there can't be life on mars because it lacks Oxygen. Also FWIW, the nitrogen content of Earth's atmosphere has been pretty much stable. As Rathalon said" And also as I previously said: you need to consider the cosmic abundance of elements in the Universe. Its no accident that life here mainly uses the first rows (after hydrogen) in the periodic table. Carbon is more common than Silicon, carbon's bonds are more stable than silicon. It seems rather unlikely that silicon based life would arise unless carbon had somehow been locally depleted. Carbon containing compounds would be more abundant and diverse, and would thus outcompete silicon compounds almost(?) everytime during abiogenesis. I'd wager that the vast majority of life in the universe is Carbon based, simply based on the abundance of carbon relative to other potentially suitable atoms. Water based... I'm not so sold on. I'll concede that amonia based life seems quite plausible (in place of water, Ie, carbon based life with NH3 as a solvent, not OH2) Methane as a solvent: I'll conceed its plausible too, but that is still carbon based life

yes, you get science from them.

I think the science Juniors are stupid... what is the materials bay anyway? IMO, they should function a bit like the lab-> you get a transmission boost. Then the manned mobile lab is what you need to clean experiments, and returning data to the mobile lab give you a huge science boost... to something like 90%. It is a bit pointless now. Every instrument except the goo and science jr is fully reusable. The goo + materials bay adds up to 1/10th the mass of a processing lab. I have started using it around the mun and minmus with a lander that I keep refueling and cleaning out, but then I tried just stacking on a bunch of goo+ mat bay packages, and that worked just as well (discarding each one after use, picking up a new one upon docking) - but then its limited to 9 such pacakges before the mobile lab becomes more attractive... except using disposable science Jrs and goo canisters means that you can discard them before ascent+rendevous, whereas to use the lab requires hauling them to orbit... Opps given the mass ratios of the craft, this often means you'd need to visit 20 or so biomes to break even (less on gilly or minmus, many more on tylo or especially eve) I suppose the transmission boost is nice for places farther away than kerbin orbit... more science you can use "now" as opposed to many months later when the ship returns. As long as other planets only have 1 biome, there isn't much point in taking it. I really think we need an unmanned version that you could leave, for example, on the surface of Eve or Tylo (granted, returns from Tylo aren't so hard)

yea... cold gas has a terrible, terrible ISP... I suppose you might be able to do a burn when outside of weapons range, and then fire a supercooled gass thruster, or even use a solar sail to alter your trajectory sufficiently, that when the enemy opens fires on where they expect you to be, they'll miss, but I wouldn't count on it working, and once you fire any weapons, your heat signature will likely be too big to hide. And the gas would be detectable anyway... It may not be stealth so much as camoflauge. It may be hard to tell an enemy ship from a space rock that has something subliming, but it will be detectable, but perhaps not identifiable. But during war, if there is something drfiting close to your planet, better to be safe than sorry, and zap it with a pulse of a few gigajoules from a terawatt laser.

Who was saying that molecular oxygen was one of the main requirements? Its not even a requirement for animal life... You do need the element oxygen though

400 f is like the inside of an oven, you'd suffer from "burns" (like putting your finger on a hot plate, and gettign a blister, not combustion) pretty fast. I guess it is like asking how long you'd last inside an oven - probably over a minute. The denser atmosphere will speed up the heat transfer

Fortunatelt, they are easy to mod. I took the old .18 basic jet engine (it is slightly different, I think it is just the texture), and made it into a "ducted electric fan" These stats feel "balanced" to me (note, I had to add "atmosphere" intakes and an atmosphere resource): mass = 0.4 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 7 maxTemp = 3600 MODULE { name = ModuleEngines thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 30 heatProduction = 50 useEngineResponseTime = True engineAccelerationSpeed = 0.5 engineDecelerationSpeed = 0.75 useVelocityCurve = True fxOffset = 0, 0, 0.74 PROPELLANT { name = ElectricCharge ratio = 45 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = IntakeAtmosphere ratio = 1 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 1000 key = 0.3 1800 key = 1 2000 } velocityCurve { key = 275 0 0 0 key = 250 0.3 0 0 key = 175 0.7 0 0 key = 0 1 0 0 } } It really struggles to fly in Duna's thin atmosphere, but it can, it actually seems to work better on Eve. It consumers quite a bit of power, especially when the ISP starts to drop at high altitudes (or anywhere on duna)

(sorry for the very late reply) Yes, you could, I've thought about this as well as a counter argument to the "no stealth in space" arguments... But if stealth depends on knowing where the enemy is, then the enemny and you can't both have stealth at the same time, or it becomes just a roll of the dice. Note that the narrower your radiation cone(s), the less heat you can radiate, and you'll need to radiate a lot to cool the sides you're presenting to the enemy to about 3K/cosmic background radiation temperatures. I suppose the first side to get an observation array with full 360 degree coverage along every axis (well, assuming a radiation cone is not less than... say 30 degrees) wins the conflict. It can destroy any opposing IR observatories that are launched, while remaining hidden. Unless, both sides get such an observation array up before the war commences... then there's no stealth. Knocking down the observation arrays is like knocking out sam radars to allow non stealth planes to operate safely. But for current purposes, pretty much everything is orbiting in the same plane, you could just have a supercooled ring in the same plane as the planets orbit, and radiate "north" and "south"... But once you start having military activity in space, those will likely cease to be safe directions to radiate. And I suppose you could deploy an observation network even if the opponent has one up already using mass drivers firing supercooled, dormant payloads, they could get quite far out before warming up to detectable levels. And any fusion reactor powering lasers firing terajoul -> petajoule pulses is going to make so much heat that any heat sink will be quickly overwhelmed, a "stealthy" rate of fire would be pretty low. Of course, this all breaks down once your ship has to move. While you can do directional radiation for your ship.. it has to expell reaction mass... and unless you propell your ship with a mass driver firing out little probes that also have that directional radiation system, your hot exhaust will give you away. The maneuvering thrusters on the shuttle would be visible from the asteroid belt... when you try to move a ship, the exhaust will give it away, and then its simply a matter of plotting its course, and firing at the right place in the darkness at the right time. If you tracked it accurately enough from its initial burn, you'll fire, and not even see the thing until it explodes

The ability to glide doesn't mean the ability to land safely... It basically means the ability to counteract the force of gravity and exert control over your trajectory by aerodynamic means. Case in point: wingsuits -> they simply glide too fast, with their sink rate being too high, to land safely under *most* circumstances. The "pilots" are not in freefall/accelerating at 9.8 m/s, but can maintain a constant velocity, and change their velocity vector That trike can glide, it may not be able to land very well (although I would find that surprising, I basically fly those things sans engines). Basically anything that can be aerodynamicaly stable while maintaining a non-zero angle of attack, can glide.

Sal - sorry, I'm just very tired of hearing that stuff. It no doubt comes from "popular science" rags and internet articles written be people without a clue what they were writing about. Something just really rubs me the wrong way when people act as if they are well informed when they aren't, and those popular science rags are major contributors to it. That "Science" magazine and NASA published that stinker of a paper just makes me die a little inside... There are organisms that metabolize methane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylotrophy see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogen Note that in the beginning, molecular oxygen was a toxic byproduct. The buildup of oxygen cause a mass extinction, the oxygen catastrophe. It is well established that you don't need molecular oxygen for life. You do need the element, for life as we know it. Nothing says that a methane atmosphere precludes life as we know it. Life as we know it evolved without an atmosphere of molecular oxygen. I'm pretty sure the surface of venus is sterile. There are no plausible complex structures (chemical or otherwise) that would be stable under those conditions, and have access to an appropriate energy gradient. I don't know of anyone that seriously suggests there are no other planets with life. #1) what does them coming here have to do with anything? #2) Such devices require exotic matter (negative energy), and still may not be possible (ie, physics says no). Please don't use a trite analogy with the sound barrier, the two are not even close to analagous #3) Hundreds or thousands of years is not much of an argument. Life has been here for 4 billion years... that is 4,000 million years. If one could travel at 0.2C, one would get from one side of the galaxy to the other in 0.5 million years. With fusion power one could travel that fast, even faster if Busard Ramjets could be made to work. Thus in the geological time scale, the galaxy could be colonized very rapidly. Even at a modest 0.01C average speed of colonization, if there were thousands of spacefaring civilizations out there, the galaxy would be completely colonized very rapidly. We thus arrive at the Fermi paradox, one possible solution is that complex, intelligent life, just is not that common, requiring special planets, and special circumstances to direct the evolution of intelligent species. Take Earth, complex animal life has... about 1 billion years left, being optimistic here, before the sun's output has increased too much. 4 billion years have passed, 1 billion to go, were 80% through the usable lifetime of our star (for this planet's orbit), and we don't have the capability to be self sufficient in space, or go to other stars. All the evolutionary innovations we have (limbs, fingers, eyes, ears, a brain, a neocortex, etc) have been around for at least 300 million years, only now have they given rise to a technology using species If we nuke outselves into extinction, or pollute ourselves into extinction, Earth will likely never produce a spacefaring species... And earth had a lot going for it. We may only have a handful of planets give rise to intelligent species per galaxy. So, lets treat the Earth as special, lets assume its a very special planet, perhaps no other planet in the galaxy had the "right stuff" that Earth has. Maybe we should act like we are perhaps the galaxy's only hope at a space faring civilization, and that if we fail, there will be no one to take out place... a vast expanse devoid of life... no aliens will visit earth and learn our story, it would be lost forever. Or... Maybe there is an alien probe out in the Kuiper belt right now, keeping tabs on us... So lets make a good impression and treat our planet and each other well.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO Please, for the love of all that is right and good, stop repeating this BS. That was a very very poorly done paper and has been thoroughly refuted.

And all life uses oxygen as well. I'm not saying it breathes O2, I'm saying it needs the element oxygen If it uses DNA, then it needs: CARBON! Oyxgen Hydrogen Nitrogen Phosphorus As for what the OP proposed, that specific biochemistry seems unlikely, I doubt any life would use mercury - if for nothing else than the cosmic sparisty of it. One thing that needs to be considered, is the cosmic abundance of various elements. You can go down a column in the periodic table, and say that the element has similar properties to the lighter one.. maybe life will be based on that element rather than the lighter one... but then you look at the cosmos, and see the lighter one is orders of magnitude more abundant. To get a situation where the heavier one is locally more common than lighter one requires some special circumstances*. Or you need some special circumstances to argue that the heavier one is better than the lighter one. *one such case is lithium vs sodium, sodium is much more abundant, as stellar nucleosynthesis favors the destruction of lithium and formation of sodium, despite lithium initially being much more common immediatedly after the big bang. Also, lithium is more reactive - I'm not sure if that is much of a reason, Earth life probably uses sodium instead of lithium because its simply more common. Still, generalyl speaking, the lighter the element, the more common it is...Realistically, we shouldn't be looking at elements much heavier than Fe (you can't use a fusion reaction to release energy if the products are heavier than Iron. IIRC - if it is lighter than Iron, you can fuse it to make heavier elements, and release energy. If it is heavier than iron, then a fission reaction would release energy), simply based on cosmic abundance. This still leaves "inverted" biochemistries, where the solvent is non polar (like methane, ethane), and a cell's lipid bilayer membrane would have polar groups in the center, and the non polar side would be on the outside. And similar inversion of polar/non polar regions would occur in the protein analogues... ie, what they speculate ould be on Titan. It may not be water based, but I'm pretty sure it would be carbon based.

Venus' atmosphere is deficient in hydrogen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape#Thermal_escape_mechanisms I doubt its coincidence that Venus' atmosphere is mostly CO2, and there is pretty much no hydrogen or H20 vapor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape#Significance_of_solar_winds Basically, its mainly size, temperature, and the molecular weight of the gas molecules that determine if you keep an atmosphere. Also it should be kept in mind that high energy light can cause some molecules to decompose. Venus, due to its temperature and isolation, has lost its lighter gas molecules. Titan, despite its low mass, is able to hold on to an atmosphere because N2 is relatively heavy, and its very cold due to lack of sunlight. The water vapor of venus would have escaped long ago. N2 molecular weight: 28 H20 molecular weight: 18 CO2 molecular weight: 44 H2 molecular weight: 2 As you can see... it doesn't look good for water once the temperature/solar wind gets too high. And if hydrolys is occuring, releasing free hydrogen, it happens even faster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Magnetic_field_and_core Its also worth noting that water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas, so thermal escape alone would have been higher when Venus still had water vapor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Atmosphere_and_climate (I don't know where they get "several billion years" from, the planet is likely not much older than 4 billion years old.

Seems to me an X-15/Spaceship 1 style craft would be the most cost effective way... except neither of those were orbital. I imagine something like a gutted C-5/An-124 ... or this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conroy_Virtus It would not be outside the realm of possiblity that you could have a carrier aircraft get a payload of 100 tons to 1,000 km/h at 14km From there a 100 ton Scramjet craft* is dropped, hopefully you'd get something like 10-20 tons to LEO with it. Then they both return to base *I'm not sure if a Sarbe engine would be of much use in that situation The first stage - the massive cargo plane, shouldn't be much more expensive to operate than a normal heavy cargo aircraft. The second stage - the scramjet spaceplane, would probably be about as expensive to refit as the shuttle orbiter, so you'd save on the SRBs and the big external tank.