KerikBalm

Wait, whut?! Are those ground scatters or surface features... I've never seen a mod use custom ground scatters, got a link to the mod's page?

Most of my Eve lifters meant for ascent from sea level, pre breaking ground +rotors, use 2 vectors and an aerospike core. Aerospikes have better Isp overall, but at certain altitudes, the vector beats them. Also, Isp is one thing, but so is TWR, and when drag is a problem, you also should consider thrust to cross section. The vector beats the dart handily in both those areas. So I like to use them, but the aerospike can perform OK the whole ascent, so I use it on the core with cross feeding. The Rhino is a great upper engine for many uses, but getting off eve isnt one of them.

The mod is my own little mod, it only takes text file editing. They do generate science if configured that way (by editing the scienceDefs.cfg file in the same folder, or making your own science defs) Go to the KSP>GameData>SquadExpansion>Serenity>Resources, and open rocsdef.cfg Basically take a feature, copy and paste the text, renaming the feature and changing the body and biomes that it specifies. You can also make your own text file and place it in your own mod folder in gamedata, and it should work Here's some examples, the first one is for the underwater basalt formation (that surface feature is normally found on Eve, but I duplicated it and made it appear in the oceans):

That would be nice, but so far in the serological virus neutralization assays I have seen (a much better surrogate for protection that reactivity of one cell type without IgG reactivity), only exposure to SARS-CoV-1 (causing the original SARS from 2003 and 2004) would offer any protection against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus causing Covid-19), among numerous types of human coronavirus that they tested... There was a bit of overlap with MERS, but not much. It seems that SARS-COV-2 is more infectious but less deadly that SARS-COV-1 and the MERS CoV... So if anything, I'd loik towards SARS-COV-2 exposure to protect against other two than vice versa

Did you read the abstract all the way? The guy on twitter certainly didn't when he made a claim of some level of immunity. "The presence of pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in healthy donors is of high interest but larger scale prospective cohort studies are needed to assess whether their presence is a correlate of protection or pathology" Of note, they mention: " in COVID-19 patients S-reactive CD4+ T cells equally targeted both N-terminal and C-terminal parts of S whereas in healthy donors S-reactive CD4+ T cells reacted almost exclusively to the Cterminal part that is a) characterized by higher homology to spike glycoprotein of human endemic "common cold" coronaviruses, and b) contains the S2 subunit of S with the cytoplasmic peptide " The molecular biology of the S protein should not be overlooked. The spike protein (S protein) first binds to a receptor, which causes a conformational change that causes a protein cleavage and exposes the fusion peptide. The exposure of the fusion peptide allows the virus to enter an adjacent cell. The S2 form of the protein is not "visible" to the immune system until the virus has bound its target cell and is in the process of infecting it. Furthermore, there is a thing called antibody dependent enhancement/entry (ADE). In some cases an antibody will bind the receptor portion of the S protein without inactivating it. Binding the receptor causes the S protein to act as if it bound the target cell receptor, and extend the fusion peptide. immune cells will recognize the bound antibody, and come to the virus-antibody conjugate... and get infected because the S protein wasn't neutralized. - in this case the normal target cells don't get infected because the antibodies sautrate their receptors after their production ramps up, but up to a 25% drop in leukocytes has been observed from "normal" coronavirus infection... 25% isn't like what HIV does or anything... but its also nothing to sneeze at (pun intended?). This ADE is known to happen in other human coronaviruses. Reactivity and neutralization against one coronavirus may result in reactivity without neutralization against another coronavirus. You really need antibodies that neutralize the virus particle. T cell reactivity against S2 but not whole spike may not mean much at all. Also, the referenced paper uses 2 mixtures of short peptides that together cover the amino acid sequence of the S1 or S2 domains, but I would advise caution in interpreting reactivity against a peptide and reactivity against the whole protein, as the 3d sturcture of the whole protein can shield certain epitopes and affect reactivity in other ways. https://www.pnas.org/content/106/14/5871 (talks about the S protein, S1, S2, and cleavage, its not a citation for everything I said, though I can get those if you want) That time frame is in line with the results of the serological study that HUG (University Hospitals of Geneva, where I work now) just put up on a pre-print server

Well, depending on the required dV, the added mass of the components for control and recovery is more than offset by the savings you get by not hauling airbreathing engines, intakes, and the now emtpy fuel tanks (that had the fuel used to get to orbit) all the way to Duna/Eve/Jool. SSTOs do have a cool factor, but I find that reusable boosters/ carrier spaceplanes also have a cool factor. For a long time I used SSTO cargo planes to lift large payloads to orbit, but the SSTO doesn't go past orbit. You aren't talking about a SSTO really, but a SSTD/SSTE/SSTJ... as you want them to go to Duna/Eve/Jool without staging. I already didn't want to do that in stock ksp, and its out of the question in 3x ksp. Craft at the destination have more parts and are not optimized for their destination. Yes, I understand the challenge. I haven't tried rotors on jool yet (always viewed it as a one way trip, and rotors wont keep the craft up as soon as you switch vessels, so they don't allow flying bases, as cool as that would be). I have tried rotors on stock Eve... and I only ever tried an eve sea level to orbit shuttle with no isru. I had to do a 2 stage design with a recoverable fan using first stage. It would have required a base to refuel it (the electric fans would allow it to fly back to base). At the base it would also require some sort of robotics to grab and reattach the orbital craft. Duna on the other hand, rockets easily allow getting to and from orbit with a payload. I did try making Duna SSTO rotorcraft to allow VTOL and flying short trips from the landing site to surface bases - but again, they didn't SSTO from kerbin, and they flew pretty bad/had terrible payload, so I made rockets with giant airbrakes, and a dedicated rotorcraft to fly from the surface base to the landing site (I try to land nearby, but its normally at least a few km away)

KAL not needed, I almost never use it. I just use axis groups, one group for prop pitch is all that is needed. Action group the motors on and off, map torque to throttle like any other engine. I only use the KAL for varying the torque on my quad rotor designs to give pitch, roll, and yaw control. Its been a while since I did SSTOs on stock size kerbin. Like Brikoleur, I wasn't able to make an Eve SSTO, but I was able to make a proof of concept reusable eve ascent vehicle (Upper stage got to orbit, lower stage was recovered, I never further refined it to allow the upper stage to reenter and be reattached to the lower stage) I've made plenty of rotorcraft that work on Eve and Duna, but they were always payloads for an SSTO, and not SSTOs themselves. He asked for a: I make craft that can explore atmosphere with props or rotors, enabling the exploration of oxygen-free bodies, enabling biome hopping and resource transport much faster than rovers (and over bodies of liquid water, as on Eve), in completely re-usable (at the destination) form. They are payload to the destination, and remain at the destination... but they do everything else requested. I make surface to orbit shuttles, and a separate rotor craft as a surface to surface shuttle. Basically, I'd take something like this (but with more blades for Duna) if I don't need to much payload capacity: or this if more payload capacity is needed (note, its a modded duna with more gravity and a thinner atmosphere: and to get payloads to and from the surface I use this: But none of that meets the challenge requirements of SSTOing from Kerbin. Even at 1x scale, I never did that much, I don't see the point in taking deadweight along for the ride when you can leave it in LKO and still recover it. I always aimed for reusable over SSTO... to the point that I stopped making SSTOs, and instead made re-usable 2 stage launchers (at 3x rescale, SSTOing is still possible with >10% payload fraction, but really long LV-N burns are needed. Time to orbit and payload fraction were much improved with re-usable 2 stage launchers).

Microscope? no In acute cases (infection still active), you can try to cultivate "live virus". You can cross check with RT-PCR to show that its not some other virus, and you cant do antibody studies. After the infection is over, you can test for IgG, but is that really IgG against SARS-CoV2, or some other hCoV? For that you can do virus neutralization assays. I know of a certain study using virus neutralization assays to test an IgG and IgA ELISA that will go on pre-print servers "soon".

That just sounds like bad science Also, a word of caution on the seroprevalence studies, and the reports of asymptomatic rates. Some excerpts from an e-mail chain from a COVID19 researcher google group: a response and another response: FWIW, I now work in a hospital virology research group assisting them in writing papers and reviewing literature.

Didn't they recently have a (winged) vehicle propelled through the air by some electromagnetic system like this? They also have electric propulsion on boats... but its not practical nor efficient, its a novelty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive

Well, I for one would rather see a possible technology omitted, than an impossible technology included. So even if there is a remote possibility that antimatter is repelled by gravity, I don't want to see a tech based on that

They changed the EVA reports, it is now explicitly breathable (but not pleasant to breath), and Kerbals can remove their helmets on Laythe. When I called it a home away from home, I didn't mean it was just like Kerbin, but only that there was a strong resemblance, and I hope to see other kerbin like bodies in other systems with liquid water, gravity close to 1 G, and an atmosphere close to 1 atm. O2 in the atmo would be nice, but I wouldn't insist on it... That said, such a high O2 content on Laythe doesn't make much sense, so if Laythe can have it, a ketbin like planet can

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truly_neutral_particle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon When matter and anti matter annihilate, they make photons. Photons are affected by gravity. Photons cannot really be said to be matter or antimatter, unless you say they are both and neither at the same time. While I admit the observational evidence is weak, it seems to me like its most likely the case that they behave like everything else with positive energy in response to gravity. It seems to me like there would be serious violations of conservation of momentum and energy if they were repelled by gravity, but could then convert to energy (photons) which is attracted by gravity...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiparticle A photon and an anti-photon are the same thing, as I said. Some particles are their own antiparticle. These cases should be very insightful for the way other antiparticles behave. To quote the relevant parts of the wiki article: ...

Ok, to be fair, despite the consensus that antimatter behaves just like normal matter in response to gravity, the observational evidence confirming this is weak due to the difficulty of making such observations. There are a few dissidents, but the vast majority of physicists expect it to have positive gravitational mass. I will also point out that photons are unique in that they are their own anti-particle, and we observe that they are affected by gravity.... we would expect this to apply to all other antiparticles. E=MC^2, and we can observe that the energy release from a proton and anti-proton, that the energy is equal to the mass of 2 protons. They have positive energy, thus presumably positive mass, and presumably positive gravitational mass, and should act like any other mass with regards to gravity. and the 2nd part of your statement: "he was trying to say a vessel of antimatter would be repelled by masses of normal matter" This has no observational evidence backing it, and the consensus among physicists is that this statement is probably false... so he shouldn't go around stating it as if its true, and I will call out any statement that is probably false that seems as if it claims to be true.

You ever read a post, and there's so much wrong, you don't know where to start? * I have never heard of such a drive, and I don't find anything with google either. * A spacecraft made from antimatter is not a "drive" * Antimatter is not repulsed by normal matter. Like charges repel, so an electron and an antiproton would repel, but an un-ionzied anti-hydrogen moleculeand an un-ionized hdrogen molecule would not repel. An proton and an anti-proton would in fact attract each other. * I can almost gaurantee that it is not being tested by CERN at the moment, and you are just spouting stuff with no basis in reality, or based on a severe misunderstanding of the facts. No, an anti-matter spacecraft launched from a matter planet would annihilate itself and release massive amounts of gamma rays, as if it were a gigantic nuclear weapon. * Anti-matter is very hard to make, ding ding ding, we have a true statement. * If a planet of anti-matter was found, I don't know how you'd go about setting up a manufacturing plant, unless you could already make large amounts of antimatter anyway. If you built anything out of matter and sent it down, it would explode in the atmosphere of the planet. * It seems highly unlikely that there are any antimatter planets. There are no significant concentrations of antimatter in the observable universe, yes they've looked, and yes they'd be able to tell from the massive amounts of gamma rays that would be released even from the diffuse mass in the interstellar or intergalactic medium. We can't see anti-matter galaxies, nor stars, an antimatter planet would not form without an antimatter star, which wouldn't form without an antimatter galaxy. To the best of our knowledge, there are no antimatter planets in the observable universe. * No, just no * Getting close to a powerful blackhole would destroy an antimatter spacecraft, as there is quite a bit of matter flying around a black hole, and when this contacts your antimatter spacecraft, it annihilates with normal matter in massive gamma ray bursts. * It absolutely would not push to FTL speeds. So, in summary, everything you said is wrong except that antimatter is hard to make.

Can someone post an example config (perhaps now, perhaps after 1.9.1 drops?) to help the rest of us enable the awesome shaders on our mod planets? Before I accidentally updated to 1.9 (I suppose I could revert), My mod planet's surface was just featureless black, and I don't know what to do to change that.

That is great news!

@Vanamonde On top of that, you can click on the docking port and focus the camera on it, so you can get real good view when you get in close.

Ughhh.... Just what we need, even more population growth driving the population density up. Personally, I am rooting for the virus until we get our population under control

Well, as far as colonies, its more realistic that it takes a whole colony to produce fuel, with specialized infrastructure for each fuel type than the current ISRU system where you can supply huge amounts of fuel with a relatively small ship Well, the Fuel that shall not be Named, and its even less realistic cesium doped variant come immediately to mind... but going too far down this path will again require moderation...

It can be hard to distinguish a bot from a ... ummm... to refrain from derogatory statements... a very eccentric person. Just as an aside, I don't think that is the standard for passing the turing test. If they optimized the engine well enough, to enable much larger part count craft, made a more streamlines colony system (since colony mods are out there), and made other minor engine improvements (terrain level of detail, scatter, etc)... it could be enough, but I do see your point. I agree, its not near-future. I think they aimed for "hard" sci-fi, and missed the mark a bit. PS - I like your term for that fuel causing much debate.

but... petroleum is organic. Define "organic" if you disagree. Organic, in scientific terms such as organic chemistry, refers to carbon containing compounds. And a hydrolox rocket's exhaust is water, but is not organic? what is your concern? pollution of the home planet? All you said previously was "Why the loudness" What else can you say to make one grasp a big concern? how about saying a coherent sentence?

Well, I have a hard time imagining whose interests this virus would serve... If it was a US group behind the attack, what would be the goal, and why would they do it now? The specific allegation involves the secret US military/intelligence services... If the goal was to influence the election, I think its a bit early, and also these groups could likely just leak a whole lot of more incriminating documents. A plot by some arm of the US government, aligned with Trump or not, does not really seem plausible, the accusation seems really contrived. Often when discussing ideas about some plot, one would ask what benefit comes from the alleged actions, and who does that benefit go to? In my estimation, the only benefit to come out of this is environmental, CO2 emissions are way down due to reduced travel, depressed sales and manufacturing, etc. I happen to believe that the world is overpopulated and overconsuming, and the biosphere/ecosystem itself benefits. So, using the criteria previously mentioned, the only allegation that would that pass my first plausibility test, would be that some sort of militant-environmentalists / eco-terrorists are behind it... and I don't think that's likely that such a group have the organization and resources to pull it off. So I'm going with a natural explanation without anybody planning this

Spoilers from the game files: It seems to only have 1 type of surface feature to find