-- NASA Dawn Mission Status: Spacecraft Tests Ion Engine
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=23755

"NASA's Dawn spacecraft successfully completed the first test of its
ion propulsion system over
the weekend. The system is vital to the success of Dawn's 8-year, 1.6
billion-kilometer (3-
billion-mile) journey to asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres."

phew, here goes guys.

here's the short version: argue not concerning God. i'm not saying "don't use the G-word," i'm saying not to attack others' beliefs directly.

the long version.

some of this may be re-cap, but i'm re-capping for Mystikmind since he wasn't here for earlier episodes. i'll write about people other than myself in the third person, to remain clear.

i guess i'll start by saying that i loathe censorship. it's come up before that other participants don't wish to see this discussion degenerate into "another religious thread", and i agree. it's not that i don't enjoy a good discussion about religion, it's just that i think it's almost impossible to have a good discussion about religion. people are too personally invested, and any productive discussion that moves into new sub-topics tends to turn into circular arguments amounting to "you're wrong and i'm right," and "well i'm rubber and you're glue."

my biggest goal is to keep this discussion vibrant and productive (by 'productive' i mean that people continue to inject new ideas and learn, even if it can't be avoided that some old ideas are re-hashed and such). i don't think anyone has to avoid religion entirely to remain respectful, but it's tricky.

so here's an example. in reply #508, Mystickmind started, "Well if you believe the bible as i do..." Here, "if" and "as i do" show a great deal of respect for other beliefs; they serve to make the statement relative and reflexive. i think it's a good thing in this case that he brought up his belief in the bible: it helped make his subsequent statements and ponderings more clear. i believe he implied a request from others for more knowledge that he didn't have, to correct his own misunderstandings and ultimately to give him even more to ponder about.

in #518, when danielost said "and according to someone it was all an accident", it was dismissive to those "someones". that may have not been his intention, but when you don't take more care about the words you use his intentions and points can be lost (especially on the internet, when the 90% of communication which is non-literal is mostly lost and only at best emulated).

it's not as simple as god/no god. a while back, someone else left a quip, was in Vinraith?, about why something so obviously meant there was no god. and i asked him not to make comments like that.

i ask no one to hide their own beliefs, or anything about themselves for that matter (except perhaps unsightly growths), and i feel sad when they do. i do ask everyone to respect each other, beliefs and all. i know what it's like to believe, in every sense of the word, in your heart of hearts, that your belief is right. what i'm asking participants then is to accept that their belief is one among many, regardless of whether it's the right belief or not, and to show other people, at least here in this forum i started, basic respect -- i'm not even aiming for fraternal love or anything so high-minded. i think that's manageable and reasonable (and i might add, productive to learning of all kinds), and i think anyone capable enough to use the internet is capable enough to discern and use the basic signs and signals of mutual respect. speaking from personal experience, it takes only a little bit of energy, and it brings great returns.

there are no ultimatums to my requests; they are merely requests made magnanimously. with anything short of spamming or utterly offesnive profanity, i frankly lack the energy and drive to say 'told you so' to use any means but words. words are cheap.

and danielost, i'm sorry if you feel picked on. had anyone replied to Mystickmind's "if you believe in the Bible as i do" with something insulting to his beliefs, i would have just as quickly asked that person to leave that kind of talk elsewhere. i hope this difference is clear enough to understand. if you'd have just said something more like "and that's one of the reasons i believe in the bible" to the talk about genetics, it would have been totally fine, harmless, and not in the least bit "hiding who you are." but instead you commented in a dismissive way about others' beliefs - if you're really the type of person who looks down on others so harshly for different beliefs, and if nothing else can't keep it under control in here -- well, i don't believe that's true in the first place, so i won't end that sentence.

all i was saying is that dna is too complex to be an accident. i am sorry but i had to point that out.

even that's a little far, when with seven extra keystrokes you could say "i think dna is too complex to be an accident" or for 9 you could get the extra umph of "i believe".

but as it is, you state it as a fact, and it's a fact you can't prove. that's the kind of insensitivity or carelessness that can spark bad arguments.

Well i would agree that evolution does not justify how DNA came to exist, Thats why they still call evolution a 'theory'. But weather you believe in God or not, i'm sure everyone would agree that how DNA came to exist is indeed a mystery worth exploring!

I was thinking, we have talked about colonizing an Earth-like planet, but what about very unEarth-like planets? Would we have a reason to go there that would make it worth colonizing? How would we do it?

I bring this up, not just because we seem to have digressed a bit and I want to get back on track, but I was inspired by a recent article I read about Titan. Titan, one of Saturn's moons, is a seemingly inhospitable chunk of frozen waste, but let me describe it to show you what I'm getting at. Being so far away from the Sun, and with no noticeable geothermal core (not that we really have the capacity to tell that at this point), it is really, really, cold; roughly -200 degrees Celsius. The most of the planet is composed of a variety of light compounds such as water, ammonia, and some light hydrocarbons such as methane and methanol. The frozen water of the outer crust is as hard as rock; in fact it behaves much like stone does on Earth. The atmosphere is composed of nitrogen and methane, but this atmosphere is thick enough to pressurize some of that methane, condensing it into lakes and oceans. Doesn't sound much like Earth, does it? However, satellites have picked up evidence that, despite the difference in predominant chemical composition and drastically lowered temperatures, in combination these features behave very, very similarly to Earth. It rains (methane, of course), it has seasons, the icy ground functions pretty much the same as rock as I said earlier. There are mountains and cryovolcanoes, which spew up the cryomagma of the mantle, which is liquid water and ammonia. There are "sand dunes" made of grains of ice crystals, wind patterns and rivers of methane shape the icerock into very Earth-like formations. Basically to sum it up, picture Earth, where any instance of dirt or rock is replaced by water, and any instance of water on Earth (oceans, clouds, rain, etc) is replaced with methane. Oh, and did I mention it's cold?

But anyways, I thought that this was definitely qualified as the sort of kick-butt imagery that dystopic mentioned in his inaugural post, and would make an interesting setting for any book dystopic writes (yes, I know you're already pretty much set for your first plot. Emphasis on the 'first'. ). Now, what I'm leading you to, is my topic: discuss the possibility/methods of harnessing the resources of any world, not just Earth-like worlds, to create a viable colony. Most colonization theories involve terraforming, trying to convert radically different systems to new Earths, but I think that this may be the wrong tack; we need to develop processes to utilize the existing conditions of a planet/moon, Titan being my example. While Titan seems like an uninhabitable world, this place is probably the most habitable world in our solar system (aside from Earth). Think about it, it has an abundance of A/ water, a necessity for any life, and B/ methane (a.k.a. natural gas). More so than lunar, or even martian bases, Titan has the best conditions for a self-sustaining colony. The methane provides enough energy to last....a heck of a long time. Water is by no means scarce, and we could use electrolysis it to get plenty of oxygen. I don't know too much about the specifics of agriculture, but I know that nitrogen fixing is an important part of all plants, and definitely one of the limiting factors to any extraterrestrial agriculture is a lack of available nitrogen compounds. Titan has huge quantities of ammonia, pre-fixed nitrogen. Despite the obvious complication of distance from Earth, which makes the moon more likely a candidate for colonization, your setting is in the interstellar 'phase' of space travel. We may simply not find another Earth anywhere in reach, so knowing how to colonize a Titan-like world would be important.

Just remember to bring a blanket.

and the further up a grav well you are the easier it is to drop cargo. ie use gravity to propel your cargo instead of engines.

  

Hmmm i have some very nice ships i could post! I made a series of ships that look like various insects, and they are extremely fun to use in the game!

you may run into a problem mixing natural gas and oxygen.

Don't forget the low gravity, so footings would not need to be nearly as extensive as they are on Earth.

the only thing i can think of that can do this are polar bears.

according to st. voyager. we are supposed to have had a colony on mars for 4 years now. and we could have done it.

in general chemical energy sources are inefficient, at least when compared to nuclear sources. at least the way we build them. with the exception of the renewable energy forms, most of our energy sources are all steam generators, the big difference being how heat is created. methane does have lots of hydrogen we could use for fusion, and the carbon could be a useful building material (carbon filaments).