KerikBalm

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

Because the 2 years includes the trial phases, which normally take quite a while unless "fast tracked" (even then...). Nowadays, you can produce a vaccine in a matter of days once you've isolated the pathogen - the question is #1) does it work, and #2) is it safe, and at what doses? If you've got the pathogen isolated, you can sequence its DNA in a day, and identify its protein encoding genes in minutes. From there, by homology you can already identify the surface proteins (a quick search in minutes, then a couple hours to review). Then you can compare by homology to the surface proteins used in vaccines for related viruses, take the new homologous sequence, stick it in a plasmid, and start making the protein, which is the vaccine. Because you're only injecting 1 protein, not a complete viron, then it can't possibly be infectious, yet because its the same protein sequence as found on the surface of the virus, your immune system should recognize the virus after being exposed to this protein. This whole process can be done very quickly if needed (not that there won't be meetings, group discussions, review, etc..). But then... you would normally make sure the protein is not too immunogenic (you don't want patients to go into anaphylactic shock when you inject it from an overactive innate immune response), that it doesn't lead to autoimmune disorders or cause too much inflammation, you'll want to test how much you can safely inject, how much to inject to get an effective immune response without causing too much inflammation... then you'll have shown its safe, then you need to show its effective... this is normally another study, in which you need to vaccinate large groups and see who gets sick and who doesn't. Because its humans, you can't deliberately infect them after vaccinating them, so you need to do a large population and follow them for a long time so that you can see statistical differences between the control and vaccinated group... So... making the vaccine is fast, its the testing procedure (pre-clinical+animal studies followed by clinical trials) that takes time. Obviously in a public health emergency some of those things can be rushed a bit if one relaxes the regulations. I highly doubt this for a number of reasons: #1) Trump's mishandling of the response is hurting his re-election chances. It wouldn't be in the interest of the US leaders to start this epidemic, and then be so unprepared for it in the US. #2) Bioinformatic analysis shows it comes from animal strains endemic to china. The simplest explanation is that it jumped from animals to humans in China, in a place where humans were in close contact with those animals. Its much less plausible that the US took viruses from the animals in china, deliberately made them adapt to humans, infected humans and sent them to china, prevented the infected personell from infecting anyone in the US so that a large Chinese outbreak happened first - and was then unable to stop a large US outbreak after china. #3) Trump has been mishandling the outbreak, and often when things get bad, he blames someone else. He recently started criticizing /blaming China even more (mudslinging), so it seems likely that this is just the Chinese retaliating against what Trump said (Trump slung mud at them, they sling mud at the US/Trump)

I wouldn't count on it, and FYI, metallic hydrogen engines are not an example of the developer sticking hard to realism. From the videos I see, chemical engine fuel injectors will likely be ignored, because they want to go way beyond such engines, into medium-ish hardness sci-fi, and in that case, throttling for most of the engines will probably not be based on some idea of throttling limits of an engine design, since no such (complete) design exists. I expect the nuclear pulse propulsion will have a minimum charge impulse, with throttling determining how fast it pulses though

ah, yes, that makes sense. @5thHorseman No hard feelings, I agree with all your bullet points that you listed

@5thHorseman you said "its nothing approaching reality", but in reality, you can have orbits intersecting. In reality, it makes no difference if Neptune's orbit and Pluto's orbit intersect or simply get close to each other, without orbits "on rails", getting close to each other but not intersecting will still result in catastrophe. So, "close but not intersecting" and "intersecting" are functionally the same for the "reality" part of this discussion (*you* brought up reality, so don't now limit it to stock KSP). So back to your statement: "If you mod it so they actually intersect then no, they don't collide still." - this part is correct "but it's basically nothing approaching reality." - no, assuming you mod it so that the orbits do intersect, but the 3:2 ratio of orbital periods are maintained, they don't collide, and far from being nothing approaching reality, its *exactly like* reality in the case of Neptune and Pluto where a 3:2 resonance keeps the 2 bodies from ever getting close despite the elipses of their orbits getting very close.

IRL, and with principia, they would have an issue at closest approach, but the simpler patched conics mean its not an issue, but then as shown in this thread, its so simplified, its not an issue if they do intersect. The resonance would keep them apart, just like in realitiy, where a close approach would massively disturb the orbit and fling Pluto into a very dangerous and unstable orbit

@Wjolcz because people will be online for 3 days at a time? There will be no interstellar travel in MP? My hope/wish is that they have advanced NTR designs as an alternate to metallic Hydrogen when progressing past metha-lox rockets

They none-the-less have an orbital resonance so that they don't even get close

It depends on their orbital period if they collide Ummm, no, the reason they don't collide is that they are never both at the intersection point at the same time. Its called orbital resonance. Its analagous to Neptune and Pluto in real life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance#Plutino_resonances

Huh? I don't understand what you are saying

I'm well aware of the symbiotic nature of our cells. My PhD thesis was on a class of nuclear encoded proteins that are imported into mitochondria and modulate mitochondrial gene expression. After all our cells have 2 types of genomes, and their expression needs to be coordinated. However, we'd never have symbiosis to the extent that we find between the Alpha-proteobacteria and lokiarchaeota (aka: Eukaryotics cells with mitochondria), because horizontal gene transfer wouldn't happen unless tere is something highly favored about our biochemistry *and* translation code, such that it pops up completely independently. Horizontal gene transfer for protein coding genes won't happen if ATG means start/methionine in our system, and an amino acid that we don't even have in the alien system... for example.

Maybe, maybe not. One thing is pretty certain, the two groups of organisms will not be adapted for the other, and will likely not be able to coexist in equilibirum. Also, there's going to be substantial subsurface life. It would take massive crust melting bombardment to sterilize. If a planet has its own biome, I'd leave it alone, or only use thoroughly sterilized robots. They will likely have completely different biochemistries. Right off the bat, the the earth and alien organisms may not be able to make use of the other organism for food (although simple sugars will probably be usable, certain molecules are likely to show up repeatedly, we have found amino acid chains in space after all). Our immune systems should easily recognize foreign microbes as invaders, they would be so dissimilar, it would be pretty much a sure thing. Some of our defenses however are tuned specifically to Earth-life, and would do nothing to alien life: something like the membrane attack complement system may or may not work depending on the alien membrane composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complement_membrane_attack_complex cell wall presence, etc. Likewise, alien pathogens would have evolved to get around alien defenses, and would likely be of no use against our immune systems. If they can't really make good use of the organic molecules in our bodies, they will be at a further disadvantage when "trying" to infect us. Some of our defenses like acidic compartments after macrophages engulf foreign microbes should work even if the alien microbe has different biomolecules (acid is acid, and will cause chemical reactions in lots of compounds). I'm assuming we wouldn't be walking around in acidic environments. Earth has some bacteria that can tolerate very high acidity, and are adapted to it, but they aren't pathogenic because they aren't adapted to the ambient environment of our bodies and cells. Alien viruses infecting our cells would be a non-starter, they can't hijack our cellular translation machinery if they have never encountered it, and use different genetic molecules/a different genetic code. So I actually thing the risk of infection is overstated... however, our bacteria and their bacteria would immediately "go to war". Their bacteria would be adapted to the conditions on that planet, and would seem to have an advantage... but time and time again we see on Earth that an introduced species becomes invasive because nothing has evolved to counter it. We also see cases where introduced species simply cannot compete with the native life in the native conditions. Its likely a binary outcome... either our biosphere wins out, or theirs does. If the bottom falls out of our biosphere, our food production will fail, and the colony will fail. I do not see 2 very different biospheres coexisting. If it seems their biosphere wins at the microbial level: It might be possible to wipe out native macroscopic life, and adapt our plants to coexist with their microbes, but we may also need to adapt, as our intestinal flora may need to be changed for native flora. Their microbes should rapidly adapt (years? decades? centuries?) to make use of our biosphere's organic molecules as nutrient sources. I can imagine them fairly rapidly forming symbiotic associations with plants and our guts following that... Or, our microbes win out. If we're careful what we bring, if we can introduce our bacteria and archea without any phages, then the base of our biosphere may have an advantage. There will surely be native viruses that will harm native life but not our own. Right now phages are an enormous selection pressure on our microbes. If native life has its replication rate checked by viruses, and our microbes don't, if they are more or less equally adapted to the environment, ours might win out if we can avoid introducing our biosphere's viruses. So, I suppose if you want to terraform, and don't have a moral objection to wiping out the native life, you start by introducing large amounts of diverse (and thoroughly screened) kinds of our microbes to the planet, and see if they take hold. If they do, then you just wait for the biosphere replacement. If they don't you'll need to cause the equivalent of the LHB, and try again in a few millenia.

No, it means its not super far from its sun. We use solar panels out to Jupiter IRL. I use solar panels at Jool in KSP fairly often. Only with OPM or mods like that do I need to ditch solar panels in the outer reaches of the solar system.

Well, KSP1 had laythe as a sort of home away from home. I expect them to have at least 1 kerbin-like exoplanet, that is at least as similar as laythe is. In such a case, I would be disappointed if they don't have signs of life. If airbreathing engines are still relevant when going interstellar, then I expect at least 1 planet with an oxygenated atmosphere, which implies life. My mod planet clearly has life Its made clear in the science reports, if it wasn't clear from the green ground around the water, O2 in the atmosphere, and those ground scatters. In the case of my planet, the idea is that it shares a common origin with life on kerbin due to material transfer from ejecta. I hope something like this is in KSP2, although with an entirely independent origin of life (since they are in different star systems). I don't want to interact with intelligent alien life beyond discovering easter egg features, as in KSP1.

I just don't understand why they don't have (or haven't shown) more advanced NTRs, which would have similar performance to mH. Also my problem with the mH rockets goes beyond the metastability issue, and extends to the non-sensical cesium doping somehow making un-ionized hydrogen able to be contained by magnetic fields. In liquid core NTRs, they simply design the engine such that part of it is molten. Why can't they do that with mH. Youd basically take a liquid core NTR design, remove the U235(or U233) and change the molecular H2 for mH

And so might popcorn. I demand they include my popcorn drive! Its equally scientific. (I'm referring to my posts in the metallic hydrogen discussion thread, which is sort of where this thread is going, but with FTL mixed in too)

Which shows that he doesn't understand the basics of the science behind what he's putting in the game. The question is if it is substantially metastable, not if it exists. The question is about the material's inherent properties. You can no more solve it than make water liquid in a vacuum. It only works if it is metastable, and its not.

There's obviously a spectrum as to how "hard" the sci-fi is. I don't see why its amusing that there are differences in how far along the spectrum people are willing to go. If something is shown to be pretty much impossible, and there is no science to support its possibility, it shouldn't be in. I'm looking at metallic hydrogen and FTL here. Even a torchship engine has antimatter to fall back on, what does a warp drive or metallic hydrogen have to fall back on? (scientifically speaking)