Animal testing!

[monstah]

On 18/10/2016 at 1:28 AM, Vanamonde said:

Yes, Squad figured animals getting hurt would be depressing, so the mystery goo was introduced instead. It substitutes for animal testing. 

That's not true. They just got tired of finding new dogs, so instead they started to reuse the same dog. They just renamed it 'goo' after a while.

On 17/10/2016 at 6:07 PM, Bill the Kerbal said:

In career they are expensive and if they die you lose rep

Not much of a dog person, are you? This kind of thinking loses you rep in real life too, y'know... (and dogs are pretty expensive, too, even if you rescue one you gotta feed it and all)

[Gaarst]

On 17 octobre 2016 at 7:28 PM, Gaarst said:

We have Kerbals.

What I meant was that Kerbals are already intended to be experiment subjects or early-test pilots. Adding animals to make these tests wouldn't make any sense when most of the game's advertising is based on reckless and silly little creatures testing their own machines in situ.

Also, Kerbals are fake. Dogs are not, and for some reason killing dogs seem to upset a lot of people. Adding a fake animal would once again be redundant with the concept of Kerbals, and also, as stated above animals are not put in rockets by their free will so that would raise more ethical concerns.

Humanising Kerbals at any point is/was a mistake. But then it comes down to the realism debate: KSP has shifted to a more realistic game recently (comms, genders, contracts...) than it was originally. While I like realism and myself play with a good lot of mods adding realism, I don't really like stock KSP's realism when the surface is enhanced with each update but the core gameplay (rocket mechanics) is as basic as ever. I think KSP should have stayed unrealistic and left realism to mods, or hard-shifted to more accurate realism in Beta; but not staying somewhere in between. Kerbals evolution is the same: we have genders, Kerbals that pass out with high G-load, individual specialisations... but they are still powered by zero point energy.

Back to the topic: test animals in KSP are not a good idea IMO.

[KerbalKore]

1 hour ago, monstah said:

Not much of a dog person, are you? This kind of thinking loses you rep in real life too, y'know... (and dogs are pretty expensive, too, even if you rescue one you gotta feed it and all)

You do realize that it does not have to be a dog. It could be a ostrich or a monkey.

[Blasty McBlastblast]

19 minutes ago, Bill the Kerbal said:

... it could be a ostrich or a monkey.

fruit flies, plankton, plant seeds, or even yeast would be easier on the dV requirements  

[monstah]

21 minutes ago, Bill the Kerbal said:

You do realize that it does not have to be a dog. It could be a ostrich or a monkey.

Yup. You do realize it doesn't make the suggestion any better? Because of this:

1 hour ago, Gaarst said:

Also, Kerbals are fake. Dogs are not, and for some reason killing dogs seem to upset a lot of people. Adding a fake animal would once again be redundant with the concept of Kerbals, and also, as stated above animals are not put in rockets by their free will so that would raise more ethical concerns.

 

[Arugela]

27 minutes ago, monstah said:

Yup. You do realize it doesn't make the suggestion any better? Because of this:

 

Like Blasty mcblast said. What if it is yeast and flour or grains(AKA plant seeds) or something and after reentry(heating) it turns into a loaf of bread?

Going back to my idea about the experiments all being about food. This would fit the games idea of the kerbals loving snacks so much. All their experiments ultimately turn into food and they eat them up finding them as a joke. If a capsule survives(they could be very strong against reentry and crash damage) a kerbal manually finding one could eat it and look around like he's sneaking a snack to be funny. And reentry or landing in boiling water or different environments makes different foods out of different ingredients.

This would also give a fun/funny reason to go manually get debri from a wreck. Or even a new type of item you can simply jettison and let crash and collect. If it's not automatic it would be fun to let people who actually go get one find out about on their own. It coudl be a mini easter egg type thing.

And the way you let it descent determines the outcome. If it heats to heavily it turns to food.

It could be the Whammy(incorrectly dropped) of science experiments. If you drop it through atmosphere correctly it's a normal experiment and animal/object. If not it's food and the kerbal eats it. So boiling water(maybe reentry with ocean landing, or simply dropped in unusual alien ocean) makes soup or something. Reentry heat is cooked food. This would be like a lesson in safely reentering also! 8) It would indicate what went wrong if you didn't see the entire reentry thing to know what happened to it upon collection.

And these(any type of dropable science experiment) could be forced to collect manually after dropping on kerbin to make you see it for this type of module dropping. 8) And it would be a new way to remotely deliver physical science experiment results besides antennae. Manual drops!

It could be the way to get full science credit for physical experiments that can't get it from antennae. You drop them so you don't have to land(but possibly have to manually collect them with a plane and a kerbal or something). But you then have to worry about messing up the experiment if it's dropped wrong. This would be the way to show if you did it right or wrong. Food/snack results are a mulligan and you get minimal science points but a funny easter egg. Proper results keeps the experiment intact and you collect it for full points but no funny scene of the kerbal eating it as a snack.

This would fit the space ship side of the game also by being a way to teach how to properly drop capsules etc. If there is no bad food result and less science there is no reason to learn it correctly. 8) (Unless you really enjoy watching your kerbals snack of course! 8d)

And all experiments could be non offensive things if needed like squid or the other above mentioned examples. Things that can clearly be food! At the extreme maybe you can drop Bessy, your beloved cow, as a giant experiment.... >< This would go back to the original farm theme also. He could turn into a giant steak, or if combined with bread materials, and mustard seeds, tomatoes, and cucumbers experiments a giant stack of mini hamburgers!! Just like in bobs burgers episodes. 8) The kerbals would obviously gobble them up!

I wonder what the scientific results would be on cows in space? this could be important for life support and long term space travel in the real world too... Those and chickens are pretty important to real life food and protein.... Maybe if they added life support it would involve plants making oxygen partially and chickens making food like a small farm environment to be humorous(And replace the beloved farm rocket launch site). Instead of developing real lifesupport they simply made a small farm module and strapped it to the ship. 8)

Edited October 19, 2016 by Arugela

[Blasty McBlastblast]

rocket powered food preparation? I can almost picture the contract now for "RT-10 Ramen Delivery, splashed down at Manley's Hunger" 

although the animal component of this might be limited to flavour sachets...

[Arugela]

That is an idea. You can add that to the idea of failed experiments vs successful and also simultaneously do science vs money... If you do food missions you get more money like pizza delivery. If you do successful landing you get science... But it could still be strapped to mission and stuff to teach you how to purposely come in hot or cold in different ways. Hitting land vs oceans after reentry could be soups vs fried chicken. Could be missions for advanced reentry techniques.

Then you could add locations on kerbin to deliver it too. Or just have someone manually collect it and eat it and say he was the guy who ordered it. 8)

If not a mission thing it could still show you if you made the reentry well or not. 8) Not that the kerbals could mind as they get to eat the failed ones... Could explain the entirety of the advancement of technology for kerbals. The guys in the labs are always kept behind because the astronauts keep dropping the capsules wrong and eating the experiments... This could be why the space science lab was created!! >< Not that the other kerbals wouldn't occasionally steal the experiments and borrow the bunson burners! 8p If not the scientists themselves(in fact they would be the likely culprits). 8) This would definitely be funny and fit the game theme(And be true to life. You know who you are!!!).

If we are going to do droppable capsules and manually collections(I know I'm the only one mentioning it.) We could do toe ropes and stuff to and boats to collect them in different spots.

Even better. Those above things combines with manual collection mean you can drop the experiment on any planet and collect for immediate science. The results could be collected or just given points on the spot. This could be part of the experiments. Test the results of so and so being dropped into Eve's oceans. 8) The results, if not immediate, could be written down by a scientist(who is required to get it) and stored as results in the cockpit or new science experiments storage things and returned to kerbin. And as the reults are written down it could be eaten anyway...

In fact an eaten experiment could be the end of the use of the capsule. Where a successful experiment could be toed back and reused on the vessel for a new experimental result somewhere else after the results are written down good or bad. The eating indicates the lack of use of the capsule(Or at least it's lack of contents to experiment on.). I wonder if you could then take multiple chickens or other things to fill the experiment with and store them on a ship(and you could go back to the ship to reload). then you put them in the capsule and drive them around a planet do different biomes for experiments or drop them from orbit. then those experiments could be limited by how often you mess them up. Obviously some planets could not cook the experiment as they have no atmosphere or boiling lakes etc.

Edited October 19, 2016 by Arugela

[razark]

https://what-if.xkcd.com/28/

[Arugela]

26 minutes ago, razark said:

https://what-if.xkcd.com/28/

The sound barrier could be used to tenderize the steak!! ><

Maybe to make a really expensive drop you have to jettison the steak over the sound barrier or fly at high mach speeds for a long time(Tenderize it). Pick it up, without collecting the results, and take it to orbit and drop it through reentry heat.

Although technically only pulverizing it enough can make steak tar tar.... so I guess it's a preference of which recipe. 8D Lots of air friction only(low altitude high speed flying tar tar) vs heat (reentry steaks.)

According to a certain documentary I saw steak tar tar used to be made by Mongols(or similar peoples) who put the meat under their horses saddles or similar and rode the horses all day to tenderize it. It was edible after this even though it started out raw. And technically still was raw.

That would be a whole new world for frozen food delivery though!! ROFL Pre-seared frozen steak anyone?

One a side note this is the next one:

https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
 

Quote

 

But just to be sure, I got in touch with a friend of mine who works at a research reactor, and asked him what he thought would happen to you if you tried to swim in their radiation containment pool.

“In our reactor?” He thought about it for a moment. “You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.”

 

This one is also hypothetically relevant:(Not saying the radiation pool was.)

https://what-if.xkcd.com/30/

Quote

But I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive. The cold of Titan is just an engineering problem. With the right refitting, and the right heat sources, a Cessna 172 could fly on Titan—and so could we.

I almost had a short post there. But I ruined it!

Edited October 19, 2016 by Arugela

[KerbalKore]

@Arugela i like your food testing idea!! Any modders that want to do this? 

[Arugela]

If squad wanted to do it they could cut out the animal part by making the testing objects parts of animals like Steaks instead of cows or chicken carcasses or legs instead of live chickens. That way it bypasses the previously living part that people are so squirmish about. Since people are not that familiar with the practical aspects of how that food is made anymore. ><

Edited October 19, 2016 by Arugela

[Vaporized Steel]

This is hypocrisy.

In a universe with billions of planets with potentially lots of life there may just actually be a green goblin race experimenting rocketry right now as we speak.

At alpha centauri maybe or 100mpc or 1gpc+ away from us. Who knows?

So the lifes of Jeb and friends are as important as belka, strelka and Laika.

But in all seriousness. I can imagine this would be a moral issue for people. Which answers why this may not happen.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Vaporized Steel

[Wjolcz]

What even is this thread why am I seeing people suggesting space bread

[KerbalKore]

6 hours ago, Veeltch said:

 why am I seeing people suggesting space bread

Because this thread is (hopefully) more science!!! 

<---science

Edited October 21, 2016 by Bill the Kerbal
autocorrect

[kerbiloid]

On 18.10.2016 at 6:51 AM, Blasty McBlastblast said:

I always thought that mystery goo was a combination of kerbal ear wax, left over snacks, and rocket fuel

So, you've realized what the Kerbals are made of.

On 18.10.2016 at 4:30 PM, razark said:

Kerbals have no free will.

They are randomly placed on a list, arbitrarily selected to a second list, and after that, they do only what they are explicitly told to do, no more or less.

They are golems possessed by the evil will (so-called Gamer).

On 17.10.2016 at 9:49 PM, Darnok said:

What do they eat?

Usually they don't stay alive enough long to get hungry.

On 18.10.2016 at 6:28 AM, Vanamonde said:

so the mystery goo was introduced instead. It substitutes for animal testing. 

You've broken my heart. Now I'm tearing thinking about all those poor mystery goos lost in space...

 

Old photo fake.

https://www.lytkarino.info/forum/topic/53387-istoricheskie-fakty/?page=3

 

Edited October 21, 2016 by kerbiloid

[lodger]

On 17.10.2016 at 8:49 PM, Darnok said:

What do they eat?

Snacks.

[ottothesilent]

I think one could send "living" things to space, without the stigma of killing dogs/etc. if a "creature crate" part were added (similar to the new Science box). From a scientific point of view, t could represent experiments like those conducted on the Russian Zond missions, instead of generic reports on the ambient environment.

[Kerbonaut905]

On 18.10.2016 at 2:47 PM, Streetwind said:

Early trailers actually show it as a kind of goo octopus thingy soaked in toxic waste, or something.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu9eoD1ot0A

 

That octopus could have a larger role ingame. It's cute but not too "cute". Think about killing mosquitoes. That's ok.

Edited October 23, 2016 by Kerbonaut905
*that* octopus

[Vanamonde]

I think octopuses are cute. I do not want to squish them in my spaceships. 

[SpacedCowboy]

How 'bout a "Kerbpanzee"?

[Will Donati]

On 10/17/2016 at 8:28 PM, Vanamonde said:

Yes, Squad figured animals getting hurt would be depressing, so the mystery goo was introduced instead. It substitutes for animal testing. 

Monkey I guess

Edited October 26, 2016 by Will Donati