InterCity

Something is wrong with it then... I play on a 2015 MacBook Air and haven't had a crash in over half a year with several mods installed. Try reinstalling, or, if the problem persists, check your drivers and hardware. Might as well be a big issue of your machine.

Call me crazy but... http://maserati-gran-turismo-s-mj2012-img1.jpg I love Maserati Gran turismo. Actually had the pleasure of driving one... best day in my life

Two atoms are talking. "I think I've lost an electron.", says one. "Are you sure?" "Yes! I'm positive!" --EDIT-- OK, I found those, so I'll give them: The optimist will say that the glass is half-full. The pessimist will say that the glass is half-empty. The engineer will say that the glass is 2 times bigger than it needs to be. The politician will say that the glass would be more empty if the opposition were in charge. The project manager will say that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. The fanatic will say that the glass is full, even though it isn't. The IT support person will say that you should try emptying the glass and then refilling it. The alcoholic will ignore the glass and go for the bottle. The surrealist sees two giraffes and half a tree. The opposition will always say that it would be full if they were in charge. The mathematician will only discuss whether there is actually anything inside. The entrepreneur sees the glass as undervalued by half its potential. The scientist says a guess based on a visual cue is inaccurate, so mark the glass at the bottom of the meniscus of the content, pour the content into a bigger glass; fill the empty glass with fresh content up to the mark; add the original content back in; if the combined content overflows the lip, the glass was more than half full; if it doesn't reach the top, the glass was more than half empty; if it neither overflows nor fails to reach the top then it was either half-full or half-empty. Now what was the question again? The waiter will hurry to replace the glass with a full one. For him there are no doubts: the glass was empty when he took it away; it is full in the bill that he brings you. The ineffective organization would discuss the question during the board of directors meeting, convene a committee to research the problem, and assign tasks for a root cause analysis, usually without a complete explanation of the problem to those assigned the tasks. The directors would consider the problem to be above the pay grade of those assigned root cause analysis tasks. The adolescent student says the glass is just another dirty trick played by the teacher to prove that students are dumb. The efficiency analyst says the glass is operating substantially below optimization level, being consistently exactly 50% under-utilized during the period of assessment, corresponding to an over-resourcing in meeting demand equating to precisely 200% of requisite capacity in volume terms, not accounting for seasonal trends and shrinkage, and that if the situation continues there is in theory opportunity for savings or expansion. The 'perfect' 1950s housewife would not leave the glass sitting there long enough for anyone to consider the question, but would scoop it up, wash it up, dry it to a gleaming shine and put it back in the glass cabinet in a jiffy. No half-full or half-empty in her world... just a full glass or an untidy one. The obsessive compulsive postpones the question until the level is checked, and checked again, and again, and again... The phobic says yuck, someone drank out of it and left his germs on the glass. The psychiatrist would ask you, "Is the half-empty/half-full glass really that important? I mean... really? Think about it. If fact, let's not. Let's set that particular issue aside for a few moments and talk about what's really bothering you.." The Taoist sees that the glass is both half empty and half full, that neither half could exist without the other, requiring a point of balance in order to maintain equilibrium in the universe, and therefore, are merely two mirror images of the same realistic concept, so in the purity of absolute truth the glass is neither half full or half empty, the glass simply IS... The optimist says: "The glass is half-full." The pessimist says: "The glass is half-empty". And while they are arguing, the pragmatist takes the glass and drinks it. The boss expects the half-empty glass to be filled in half the time it took to fill half the glass, at half the going rate. The drill sergeant says make the glass do push-ups until it sweats itself full!!! The IT support person asks if you've tried emptying the glass and then refilling it. And my personal favourite... Yoda says: Half-full or half-empty glasses, hmmm. A Jedi craves not these things. To the dark side they always lead. Or... Size matters not but what you do with it. Drink. Or do not. There is no try. Or… Half-full or half-empty, glasses not make one great. Or... Judge glasses by their size and appearance, do you? May the force be with you. Or... Luminous beings are we…not this crude matter poured in half-measured glasses.

I don't see much of a difference. Whatever you throw in will get lost.

I'm not an expert, but in my opinion, most bonds would get broken, because the composition of electron layer is being altered. Also there's quite a bit of energy being released by radioactive decay. I think that in the cases of endothermic reactions, that might actually be enough to break the bond.

[quote name='KasperVld'] Done[/QUOTE] Thanks! Have a nice day...

Hello, could I request a name change to [B]InterCity[/B]? I hate my current name...

I'm not quite sure whether this is a good idea. If you make 100 000 ft long part, you'll get extreme lag and extremely low-res textures - and crashes.

Kreenpeace has filed several class action lawsuits against my space agency, but they've died of radiation exposure from falling NERVAs before the case made it to the court.

[quote name='RainDreamer'] And well, there scale of sci-fi hardness is a sliding scale, and there are several levels in between. Ultra hard sci-fi are barely fi, mostly sci. While soft one are just technology indistinguishable from magic. I think we are not that far into soft scifi yet with this story.[/QUOTE] Mea culpa. I wasn't using the correct term. It will probably sound quite ignorant, but until this day, I thought that hard sci-fi is the one less backed by facts. I didn't mean to be ignorant and I didn't mean to derail the thread, so please excuse me. Anyway, I'll try not to write a completely scientifically inaccurate story, and try to have at least a grain of truth in it. I won't touch orbital mechanics (I promise ;) ), and make the ship exit Alcubierre FTL at still quite an awesome speed, so it will need to burn retrograde in order to reach stable orbit. No lightsabers (albeit those are super cool) and no force. As for the centrifuges, I think that it's everyone's call whether it has the wow factor or not, and given where this thread is, pretty much everyone will opt for the centrifuge. And indeed, "uncurable" meant "extremely hard to find a cure for". Dunno what is wrong with me. Sorry.

[quote name='Shpaget']Are you calling ST and SW hard SF? Star Wars is not even science fiction, let alone [I]hard[/I]. In any case; 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendez-vous with Rama, Ender's Game, Babylon 5, Orphans of the Sky, Ringworld. Heck, even Halo and Moonraker.[/QUOTE] Alright, sorry. I have no intention to cause a flame war, and probably my definition of sci-fi is diferrent than yours. Let's just settle with "A story from futuristic setting".

[quote name='KerikBalm'] Also... I have a hard time considering the setting hard sci-fi if the biological science behind the plague is so weak, and you've opted to basically make the floors out of black holes to get gravity instead of just a centrifuge... what does that do to the ships dry mass? the gravity gradient? what about the floors above your head falls up and you feet fall down?.... ummm.... I'd rather be in a centrifuge than your ship [/QUOTE] About the plague: Engineered lifeform. [I]Designed[/I] to be uncurable, but went out of control. Spread fast and undetected (long incubation period), so it was everywhere when cure started to be made (also, terrible neglect by the government. Our science can solve it, right? Wrong.). As for the ship, yeah, centrifuges are way better, way more scientific and way more convenient, but loses a lot of sheer wow factor. For instance, AFAIK there is no Star Trek, Star Wars or pretty much any hard sci-fi ship that opts for centrifuges over some magical artificial gravity solution. Indeed, the mass of the ship is exorbitant, but so is the propulsion thrust. Its TWR is still high (if you mean this). Last, I'd also hate to find myself on that particular ship. Despotic dictatorship, rapidly spreading virulent plague and fairly low hopes (not to mention later stages, the ship is there mostly as the thing that brings our heroes to the setting. Will not write further spoilers, since the first chapter is almost complete and link will be published soon (though this might change, it's probably too much of a backstory dump.).

I don't think it will be successful. True, it's the way forward and true, it's awesome but let's face it: Even those globally-commuting managers whose time is [I]expensive[/I] would probably spend more for fuel then he/she would save in cash for time. If I was such businessman, I'd definitely buy Canadair/Bombardier Global Express or Cessna Citation X (If I wasn't Bombardier-rich). I'd get where I need for less cash. EDIT: $120 000 000 for one? The subsonic/transsonic luxurious jets cost about $25 000 000 now...

[quote name='Deadpangod3']You could just, y'know, undock the infected module and let it dock with the sun at high velocity. :P oh right the hero needs the module, id guess what others have said and let it bake in UV for a while.[/QUOTE] It's not a module. It's a part of a hard sci-fi ship that is welded together from prefabricated section and in shape and layout it resembles a naval ship. I've traded scientific accuracy here for more wow factor (hypercompressed material in bottom level for artificial gravity, not centrifugal forces. Please don't slam me for this one ;)). I only write this to specify what we're dealing with. More precisely, The section is the observation deck.

[quote name='Cirocco']Okay, I actually work in the pharmaceutical industry where we constantly need to disinfect entire rooms to produce medicine so here's some theoretical principals and practical applications that we use in the industry. Might be of use to you. *[I]One of the best walls-of-text I've ever read[/I]* Hope it helps. [/QUOTE] Thank you for your response. Your post is invaluable and definitely will (at least partly) make its way into the story. I do have a medical background as well, I work as an internal surgeon (Hope I've translated my job title well enough), but all I've ever sterilized myself are medical supplies (scalpels, clamps, tweezers...), and those are usually sterilized by heat in autoclave - and I'm not even the person whose job that is. Thus I was almost clueless about sterilizing large spaces full of equipment. I do indeed know that bacteria don't live suspended in air on their own, but they're contained on particles and surfaces, and they often spread through little droplets released when coughing or sneezing if transmitted via air (hence the coughing and hypersalivation the pathogen causes for maximum infectivity). HEPA filters are indeed [I]the[/I] good solution, and I confess, that didn't cross my mind when thinking about it, and indeed everything you've said in that regard is true. About that H2O2, I didn't count with it in the water treatment system, but I might just as well add it for the story's sake. Thanks for the idea. On a second thought, I was not [I]completely[/I] clueless. The operation room is indeed disinfected as well. I couldn't be sure I have a supply of Stéridine (the disinfectant we use, I only know it by brand) available in space, so I decided against including it. Thanks again, your insight is most welcome.

[quote name='KSK']A slightly sci-fi solution but your cyborg? Is there any way those nanobots he/she is carrying can be duplicated? More importantly can they be retrieved after their disinfection mission?[/QUOTE] Yes, there is, and he's eager to do this. But the society is condemning this as "rejecting humanity" - and there is no way to do this without people's awareness: he'd probably get burned at a stake. As such, he's often looked at as an inferior being.

Thanks for the responses. It has definitely shed some light on the problem. [quote name='Bill Phil']I'd recommend heat. Heat does wonders. Have them go near a large heat source. Idk though, it may not be sufficient.[/QUOTE] Unfortunately, although the best solution, this is impossible. Only the fusion reactor compartment and its coolant conduits are hot enough to kill pathogens, and these are unfortunately not an option. I should have been more clear on the reason for sterilizing the large compartment - the heroes need a place where they could place people awakened from stasis into quarantine to see whether they have already been infected. For this reason, it needs to be devoid of the pathogen (so they don't get infected while in quarantine) and habitable over three days (the incubation time). But then again, I guess I just could buff the climate control system... [quote name='Findthepin1']Do they need the abandoned section of the ship?[/QUOTE] Yes, they need it, as explained above. [quote name='PB666']Go to within 50 million kilometers of the sun, open the airlock then point the airlock at the sun. Wait. Have the ship pass through the suns corona. Less radical, Sterilization with formaldehyde gas.[/QUOTE] Neither of this are an option. They would get a big metal box heated to insane temperatures (or full of plasma in the worst-case scenario). Formaldehyde would be really nice, but really hard to come by with the limited resources on-board. [quote name='fredinno']Yeah, I think OP needs to be more specific on the kind of disease.[/QUOTE] Sorry for not being specific, I wasn't quite sure then. I've decided for it to be a bacteria with airborne particles/droplet transmission. Extremely infectious, with 100% fatality rate. Early on, it causes wet cough and hypersalivation, later stages involve pulmonary fibrosis, low oxygen saturation and ultimately total organism failure due to low oxygen intake. Infects only humans, animals (and one of the heroes due to being cyborg and having air filters built into his trachea and nanobots in his blood) are immune. [quote name='NuclearNut']Does the ship have a nuclear reactor onboard or do the shuttles/ships nearby have nuclear reactors? If that is the case, evacuate the crew and then transport a couple of fuel elements around the ship using a robotic probe and watch as everything dies from radiation exposure. If you want more drama, have them jury-rig a system to do the transporting of the spent(ish) fuel elements throughout the ship. [/QUOTE] The ship is powered by a tokamak (fusion reactor), but I might just add a fission reactor for, say, making tritium and deuterium necessary for the fusion. Also, the compartments are necessary, if not crucial, so irradiating them is probably not the best idea, although I'll have the characters consider this one. It is the fastest, easiest and in short term not-so-dangerous way to deal with the problem. [quote name='Dispatcher']Besides vacuum exposure, how about hosing down surfaces with chlorine bleach?[/QUOTE] Corrosive. Would destroy every single piece of equipment stored in the compartment. Not good for my purposes, but great emergency solution. [quote name='Stargate525']A UV bath of the entire compartment would be sufficient to kill a lot of bacteria. Vent the compartment in question, pull off the radiation shielding, and wait a few weeks. Should be sufficient unless your germ is an extremophile (in which case, why does it love being inside humans?)[/QUOTE] Good point. So far the best solution for the purposes. I'm still interested in other possibilities, though, so keep on thinking :)

Hello, kerbonauts. I'm writing a story right now which has the protagonists, members of the last plague-surviving group of humans in the universe (I know, cliché) travelling through space to find themselves a new planet. The twist is that the plague (without any remedy) appears on the ship and starts wreaking havoc on the survivors. The solution to this is closing everyone into stasis tanks, hoping that the cure will be found sooner than later. But story happens, and so one of the heroes has to disinfect a large (abandoned) part of the ship without any ethanol or formaldehyde at hand. So far I was thinking it could be achieved by sealing the section, disabling the heating and climate control systems and opening the airlock for an extended period of time, say, 30 days. I know that this should be enough (in theory) to kill any bacteria if it was open space, but the ship is enclosed and radiation shielded. I'd like to know whether the vacuum itself is enough to kill the pathogen (either bacteria or virus), or I'll need something more than that. P.S. It is not the world's most resilient pathogen, but neither it is the weakest.

Well, I'm not a programmer (just a doctor), but your basic concept seems correct. From my experience with java, I'd advise you to give each colour a number code like this: [CODE] int Black = 1; int White = 0; int Red = 2; int Blue = 3; int Green = 4; . . . [/code] Then dump it in an XML? [code] <Picture> <column> 1.0.0.1.0.1.0.1.0.1 </column> <column> /* ... */ </column> </picture> ... [/code] In my experience, the XML is much easier to work with than a bitmap, and you can get that bitmap by just making the program read the XML and dump it there. If you want to get the single ints, just use some equivalent of String.split() (In PHP it's explode(), IIRC) and the "matches()" keyword (preg_match in PHP) to get it together. Hope this helps...

Banned for killing Green Iron Crown.

Then the universe has exploded and mathematical laws don't apply anymore. What if I was the last human on earth?

The new structural hardpoints work quite like engine pylons.

[IMG]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/USS_America_(CV-66)_in_the_Suez_canal_1981.jpg[/IMG] Problem, desert?

We really should go for it. Earth, as beautiful, friendly and great as it is, is not going to sustain our population for much longer. Today, we're running low on oil, tomorrow we'll be running low on food if we remain where we are. We need surface area, we need resources and we need relatively friendly environment, and every single of those things awaits out there, just waiting to be claimed in the name of humanity. Someone in this thread (Can't remember his name, sorry) argued that we should never limit ourselves to save some suffering people, and I agree. Imagine the advancements we could achieve, and imagine how those advancements could help those poor people if we could only attain them. I think that the science and technology associated with space exploration/colonization will help the poor infinitely more than if we constantly feed them. There is an old Chinese saying: Also, we should do it just for the sake of it. To show the rest of the universe that humans are not space-scared wimps who will keep hugging their planet and die with it.

KSP is like a black hole. Even if you don't fall directly into it, you'll be forever making close passes around the center at insane speeds. OT: It's a good way to kill time.