For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[Green Baron]

Yes.

The range is wide, from no effect to lethal consequences.

Depending on wavelength and intensity it can be used as a therapy.

Intense radio frequencies, UV, Microwaves and gamma rays will damage or kill.

As will a simple electric discharge.

Edited October 31, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

If you look at a nuke, stop touching the wires.

Never mind, too late.

Edited October 31, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Diche Bach]

On 10/29/2018 at 3:04 PM, Green Baron said:

Thanks :-)

Yeah, the article is on the fantastic side in some parts.

Stasis for humans does not exist. All info i ever found or asked, as well as the articles we browsed upthread, are about temporary cooling of body parts by a few degrees and for hours, under intensive observation and attention by medics, to prevent deterioration for a transport into hospital for example.

For now, lowering body core temperature below 30 degrees celsius is life threatening.

Maybe in the future, who knows :-)

I have absolutely no problem using hibernation in a scifi works. I only objected that it is no hard scifi because nobody knows how to do it yet (how to prevent a body from dying) and it is not as clear that it will work as is for example fusion energy, where we know that it works, have the first small experimental results, "just" look for an industrial realization.

Edit: btw., in another thread, we came to the conclusion that accelerating a mass of 1 ton to 0.2c requires many magnitudes more than the mass of the whole observable universe as reaction mass, even with electric superpower ion drives. You We actually need a drive that accelerates reaction mass to relativistic speeds and even then millions or billions of tons for every 1 ton.

So, anyway, you we probably need wormholes or warp drives or some magic to tap vacuum energy to reach other stars with humans on board.

Valid until the contrary has been proven :-)

I think your definition of "hard sci fi" differs from the norm

16 hours ago, Terwin said:

Longevity generally has little to do with entropy until you get to galactic time-scales.

So long as an organism is consuming energy, they are generally contributing to entropy(often as waste heat), the ability for  cell to repair damage with some of that energy does not counter the fact that the processes starting with capture of the energy and through every use of it, is less than 100% of theoretical efficiency, and thus increasing entropy.

You could have an amoeba that was formed mere seconds after the big bang and expecting to live until the heat-death of the universe without violating the second law in any way.

Yes, physics can fully explain chemistry, and between them, physics and chemistry can fully explain biology(you might be able to do it all with chemistry, but some things like muscles and bones working together for mechanical advantage are easier to explain through straight physics)

What are referred to as 'Physical Laws' are theories that have stood the test of time and been validated by every test that anyone has come up with thus far.  While some are considered to be incomplete(here is looking at you gravity), that does not mean that we have any known way of violating those 'laws', not with  chemistry, biology, or anything else.  The closest you will get to violating physical laws is with unproven theories, generally things that are not taken seriously by the scientific community.

Sounds very nice, but I think you've actually evaded the question. I asked why senescence rates in eukaryotes vary between very brief time intervals and relatively much longer ones. You can refer to physics all you want, and it is undoubtedly true that whatever ultimate explanation to such a question is reached will be explicable in terms of physics. But you are NOT going to be able to arrive at that explanation with pure physics. You need the more inclusive level of scientific inquiry, commonly called biology, to get to your explanation. Biology explains how organisms can--by degrees and temporarily--defy physics is my point.

Frogs shouldn't be able to go dormant for a whole winter in the mud under a lake, with their entire body temperature dropping very close to the freezing point of water, and some of their peripheral limbs actually freezing and survive: but they do.

You cannot tell me why senesecence rates vary because this is a big question in biology which has yet to be fully explored, and physicists are in no position to answer it either.

[Terwin]

8 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

Sounds very nice, but I think you've actually evaded the question. I asked why senescence rates in eukaryotes vary between very brief time intervals and relatively much longer ones. You can refer to physics all you want, and it is undoubtedly true that whatever ultimate explanation to such a question is reached will be explicable in terms of physics. But you are NOT going to be able to arrive at that explanation with pure physics. You need the more inclusive level of scientific inquiry, commonly called biology, to get to your explanation. Biology explains how organisms can--by degrees and temporarily--defy physics is my point.

Frogs shouldn't be able to go dormant for a whole winter in the mud under a lake, with their entire body temperature dropping very close to the freezing point of water, and some of their peripheral limbs actually freezing and survive: but they do.

You cannot tell me why senesecence rates vary because this is a big question in biology which has yet to be fully explored, and physicists are in no position to answer it either.

Biology never defies physics.  Never.  One single instance of that would be head-line news across the globe and no doubt result in multiple Nobel prizes.

 

Senescence rates in eukaryotes is primarily about evolution.  Live long enough to spread/propagate your genes to the next generation and then get out of the way before you lessen their chances of survival.  Organisms that do this poorly die-out, and those that do it well have more progeny to out-reproduce those that are not as good at it.

You can get there from pure physics, but just like designating a butterfly half-way around the globe for your origin point when calculating the physics of a rocket launch, the math gets much more complicated than it needs to be.

There is nothing unreasonable about a survival mechanism that allows for partial freezing in cold weather, difficult to pull-off, sure, and probably requiring quite a lot of energy to minimize and repair freezing-related damage, but sacrificing part or all of a limb is not even a terribly uncommon survival action(lizards dropping otherwise intact tails to distract predators comes to mind).

 

In any case, my point was about chemistry and biology never violating the laws of thermodynamics, and insisting that I comment on differing life-spans of organisms is either completely irrelevant to my point, or attempting to move the goal-posts into another time-zone, depending on how generous you are in the analysis.

 

[Green Baron]

I doubt that the question can be answered quickly. Evolution, metabolism, complexity of cells, organs, functions of an organism play a role, mutation rates, environment, nutrient intake, .... As well as the overall organism and the environment. And, by the way, some trees don't grow much older than some humans. But i am no biologist and have no overview over the work on aging, be it at molecular, cellular, of an organ, whole organism, evolutionary and species level.

And in the end maybe one sees that the molecular rates aren't that different in living organisms, it is the higher complexity or exposure to adverse conditions that makes some things fail earlier than others. But i do not know, just a random shower thought of mine !

Fact is: we are no plants, our lives cannot be prolonged over what the material and circumstances allow (physics !) and the same is true for a plant. Otoh, plants don't write scifi stories or play computer games :-) And we are no frogs, we have no antifreeze stuff in our cells and putting some in will wound or even kill us unless we figure out how to do it, which i cannot see. And even if we figure it out, it will not necessarily make a journey of hundreds or more years more survivable.

For interstellar travel we need a combination of wormholes / warp drives  / vacuum energy use and or a very long time, in the range of what all the history and early history since the first farmers until today took.

Edited October 31, 2018 by Green Baron

[Spaceception]

Hey, this definitely doesn't belong in its own thread. So.......... potentially dumb question. Is the correct phrase Orbital, insersion, insertion, or incursion - or something else - burn? 'Cause I'm pulling blanks and Google isn't helping.

[StrandedonEarth]

31 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Hey, this definitely doesn't belong in its own thread. So.......... potentially dumb question. Is the correct phrase Orbital, insersion, insertion, or incursion - or something else - burn? 'Cause I'm pulling blanks and Google isn't helping.

“Insertion” is the word you’re looking for 

[Spaceception]

5 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

“Insertion” is the word you’re looking for 

Thanks! I realize how many times I've heard it, but never once seen it spelled out

[Lisias]

I'm looking for an add on that allows me to execute an action on all same parts on the vessel (i.e., if I turn off a LV-02 Lending gear light, all LV-02 lights are also turned off). [while flying the craft]

I had read about it recently, bur forgot where (probably here), and I don't managed to find it again by keywords - I don't remember the name, and I didn't managed to find the right keywords to find it on search.

Can anyone help me on this?

Edited November 5, 2018 by Lisias
Added a note - I think I induced my colleagues to error by a bad description!

[YNM]

On 10/30/2018 at 12:30 AM, Diche Bach said:

eukaryotes

They're not closed loop still.

You can stash supplies but they eventually run out. Senescence is about how quickly you went through that supply, and how many there is to undo.

Life is all about the action, not about the inaction.

I mean, sure, the sun is stable for billions of years, 'burning' away hydrogen, but do we call the sun a 'life' ?

[kerbiloid]

13 minutes ago, YNM said:

do we call the sun a 'life' ?

Does the Sun have a self-reproducing process with accumulation of information?

[YNM]

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Does the Sun have a self-reproducing process with accumulation of information?

Metallicity ?

[kerbiloid]

8 minutes ago, YNM said:

Metallicity ?

This is just another kind of chaos.
Does the Sun matter create solar frogs?
Do the solar structures self-reproduce themselves accumulatng the reactions on former changes?
When the mud material in the lake gets combined into frogs, the frogs self-reproduce themselves. If it's hot, then hot-loving frogs survive more often, and next generations are more hot-resistent,

Edited November 4, 2018 by kerbiloid

[SuperFastJellyfish]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

I'm looking for an add on that allows me to execute an action on all same parts on the vessel (i.e., if I turn off a LV-02 Lending gear light, all LV-02 lights are also turned off).

I had read about it recently, bur forgot where (probably here), and I don't managed to find it again by keywords - I don't remember the name, and I didn't managed to find the right keywords to find it on search.

Can anyone help me on this?

There is a button for 'action groups' in the VAB.

[Lisias]

Just now, SuperFastJellyfish said:

There is a button for 'action groups' in the VAB.

It's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a mod that would echo the command on evert equal part, exactly to avoid setting up Action Groups on VAB. Thanks anyway.

[K^2]

21 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Is the correct phrase Orbital, insersion, insertion, or incursion - or something else - burn?

While "orbital insertion" is definitely what you're looking for, one of these could be a part of orbital incursion. Perhaps as an orbital diversion or an orbital dispersion. Either way, there is no doubt of orbital controversion over such orbital assertion.

[Spaceception]

37 minutes ago, K^2 said:

While "orbital insertion" is definitely what you're looking for, one of these could be a part of orbital incursion. Perhaps as an orbital diversion or an orbital dispersion. Either way, there is no doubt of orbital controversion over such orbital assertion.

How long have you been wanting to use that?

[Gargamel]

11 hours ago, Lisias said:

I'm looking for an add on that allows me to execute an action on all same parts on the vessel (i.e., if I turn off a LV-02 Lending gear light, all LV-02 lights are also turned off).

I had read about it recently, bur forgot where (probably here), and I don't managed to find it again by keywords - I don't remember the name, and I didn't managed to find the right keywords to find it on search.

Can anyone help me on this?

Action Groups Extended by LGG might be what you want, but I'm not sure....

[Lisias]

Just now, Gargamel said:

Action Groups Extended by LGG might be what you want, but I'm not sure....

When two people answers me "in the wrong way", in reality, the problem is a bad question.

 @SuperFastJellyfish, now I understand why you suggested that! My bad! 

Recently I had read about a mod that would add an option on the Twekables while flying that would allow to "echo" the same command to every same part of the craft. For example, if I turn on the LV-02 Lights with that option, every LV-02 on the whole craft would had the light on too. I forgot to mark it, and now I can't find it as I can figure out a search that returns it (too much widely used keywords!).

It's more or less as Part Commander - in reality, I think that Part Commander should have this feature!

[Gargamel]

2 minutes ago, Lisias said:

When two people answers me "in the wrong way", in reality, the problem is a bad question.

 @SuperFastJellyfish, now I understand why you suggested that! My bad! 

Recently I had read about a mod that would add an option on the Twekables while flying that would allow to "echo" the same command to every same part of the craft. For example, if I turn on the LV-02 Lights with that option, every LV-02 on the whole craft would had the light on too. I forgot to mark it, and now I can't find it as I can figure out a search that returns it (too much widely used keywords!).

It's more or less as Part Commander - in reality, I think that Part Commander should have this feature!

It might be a bad question, it might also be a bad location.      

Try posting in the mods discussion forum? 

But the AGE mod will do what you want, but it'll take a bit of legwork. 

Edited November 5, 2018 by Gargamel

[Lisias]

Just now, Gargamel said:

But the AGE mod will do what you want, but it'll take a bit of legwork. 

Exactly what I want to avoid!  While developing an craft, I usually try parts and compositions that I don't know if it will work the way I want or not. So, it's a waste of time configuring AGX, because nearly half (or even less) of my ideas do work.  

[0111narwhalz]

On 10/31/2018 at 3:48 AM, ARS said:

Why (Most) tracked vehicles can't operate when it lost track links (As in, using only wheels (that moves the track in the first place) without the caterpillar track)?

As I understand it, many tracks are driven by the fixed, often toothed wheels at the front or back of the track. The road wheels are typically idlers.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

by the fixed, often toothed wheels at the front or back of the track. The road wheels are typically idlers.

Spoiler

 

[ARS]

7 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

As I understand it, many tracks are driven by the fixed, often toothed wheels at the front or back of the track. The road wheels are typically idlers.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

  Hide contents

 

So does it means the wheels on the bottom (not the toothed wheel) cannot move the vehicle by itself without a track?

[p1t1o]

31 minutes ago, ARS said:

So does it means the wheels on the bottom (not the toothed wheel) cannot move the vehicle by itself without a track?

Correct