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patrick

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About patrick

  • Birthday 08/06/1973

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  1. Awesome! Thanks! I just bought the PDF and hadn't scrolled down that far. I thought it would've been in chapter 2.
  2. I was wonder if there was or if anyone had put together a map for the Hudson City area, ie the surounding suburbs and counties?
  3. Re: One Small Step for Man... Well I can guarantee that if NASA had the DoD budget of $504 billion as opposed to the crumbs ( $16 billion ) that fall off the table we could put permanent settlement on the moon, land on Mars in ten years, and let the HAL 9000 go nuts in Jupiter orbit only 25 years late. Oh well, I guess it’s all about priorities.
  4. Re: The Sky is FALLING!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis Although 2036 will be the astronomical equivalent of threading a needle, I wouldn't want to take those odds to Vegas. Coincidentally in my homebrew sci-fi setting I have Apophis smacking into the moon in 2036 scaring the hell out of humanity and spurring on space exploration and colonization in effort to get all of our eggs out of one basket in the event of a rock this size or bigger hits home.
  5. Re: Orbital Skydiving! Now granted this guy http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d63_1182464189&c=1 was only 19 miles up, but this is pre Apollo program. Cool stuff.
  6. Re: Designing Interstellar Cultures In my homebrew setting I actually took a lot of time working out the cultures of my aliens. It helped that I’ve only got two alien species (actually three but the third are uplifted chimpm and they’re from Earth so they don’t count when talking about original cultures). I based the alien cultures off of species traits and environment. Around eighty thousand years ago the greys first came to Earth collected flora and fauna and deposited them on other Earth like worlds. One species they picked up was Homo neanderthalensis. They were dropped on a planet with two large continents that was colder than the Earth we know (think ice age Earth) which also hasn’t had a climate change since the Neanderthals were dropped off. Neanderthals are not a highly imaginative race; they were around three times longer than us and never got past crude thrusting spears. Plus the fact that they’re in a harsh climate… • Neanderthals are big into the group effort; they had to be to survive their world’s climate. • Their technology rather than being innovative and flashy is refined and utilitarian • Their clothing is also very utilitarian, think overalls and smocks with lots of pockets and sensible shoes… for both sexes. The second species are Homo sapiens. But not like you and me. Granted they were taken from the same stock that walked out of East Africa eighty thousand years ago so some of them do share the same mtDNA as some of us, but the greys messed with them genetically. Where both species are genetically Homo sapiens the introns, or junk DNA, in these Humans has been fiddled with. Some switches off in us are on in them and vice versa. End effect… Humans with scales. Why the greys did this is unknown. It’s been hypothesized that the greys looked at their collections the way a gardener looks at roses… to be manipulated till the desired traits come out. The planet they were left on was a paradise. With 18 continents about the size of Greenland alternating north and south of the planet’s equator from half in the tropics and extending into the mid latitudes agriculture was never a problem. No tundra, no large mountain ranges blocking rain, no large continents with desert in the interior, and no large oceans for breeding hurricanes… • Scaly Humans are very individualistic since “the group” was never that vital to survival. It was just too easy to get a living out of the land. • Their technology is flashy and innovative though somewhat undependable. The Scalies are always moving on to the next thing. • Their society though somewhat technologically advanced has never gotten past the city-state. • Their clothing is bight and showy. Very individualistic. Both sexes wear body paint to attract mates. They do anything to stand out. • Lots of dueling and warfare on the small scale. Scalies just don’t get organized like we do. Both races are an exercise in either not having enough resources or having too many. Because of this by the time Earth has achieved FTL technology and we have stumbled upon these worlds by 2300 ce, both races are still at a late twentieth century level of technology, even with the greys helping them out from time to time.
  7. Re: Greening Earth’s Deserts Bedouins relocated to terraformed Mars or other fun spots like asteroid mines. Wouldn’t be the first culture destroyed in the name of progress. Sounds interesting, not so much for the Bedouins, but it makes the project more feasible especially if crops are engineered to deal with the poor soil. I had originally thought of a big orbital mirror to reflect away some of the sunlight, but that wouldn't go over too big with Europe.
  8. Re: Greening Earth’s Deserts Wow! lots of great ideas! I admit that the only way anyone would be able to pull this off would be if there was some sort of corporate feudal police state involved (i.e. humorless people who shoot those that disagree with them.) Though that may be a not be problem. Not to sound Orwellian, but there a few types of government capable of administering populations of ten billion plus (too many voices in the crowed). The ones that can usually aren’t the ones keen on debate. I didn't know about the Qattara Depression. That's very interesting; though to do it we'd have to come up with a solution for the salinity (I understand that the bottom of the depression is a salt basin). Is there anything naturally that eats salt? Also the idea of recycling waste for biomass is cool. It would do wonders to clean the coastlines and get rid of landfills. I'm picturing some chap from the Middle East going door to door internationally "Excuse me, but would you mind selling me your garbage and poo?" Farming is better work for the soul than oil, though not as profitable.
  9. A lot of sci fi involves the terraforming of Mars, but here’s an idea… terraforming earth’s deserts. The Sahara is 3.5 million miles² and the Arabian Desert is about another million. Together they’re about the size of the U.S. That’s a lot of unused land that if adapted could feed a whole lot of folks. The problem isn’t necessarily not enough water either. Say even if you could desalinize enough water to adequately irrigate these deserts, evaporation would cause the leaching of salts from lower layers of soil making the top soil too alkali for crops. One idea I had were genetically engineered organisms (fungus or bacteria) that would take nitrogen out of the air and place it in the soil and also take excess salts out of the soil. Another idea was placing towers about 300 ft. tall (think large windmill towers) throughout areas of reclamation and stretching a translucent material between them blocking 10 to 15% of sunlight and evaporation. A side benefit could be the material doesn’t reflect the blocked sunlight but instead turns it into solar power effectively turning these areas into large solar panels. Now granted there are going to be unforeseen consequences. We probably would want to test the technologies on Mars before trying them here. Also politics would probably play a massive role in whether something like this could be tried, but who knows what kind of a future lies ahead. In the end it is just sci fi. With that out there, are there any other ideas on the subject?
  10. Re: L.A. Caveman 1) True mitochondrial DNA only tells half the story, but if any significant viable interbreeding went on some of it would have been Neanderthal female-Sapiens male. Granted that all depends what we call significant, but with genetics killing the multiregional hypothesis, a multi-species population would stick out like a buger on a wart on a sore thumb. 3) Fine, I'll sell the guys soul on the other side:D 4) I've always thought that using real hominids, as opposed to Tolkien races, would make for a more interesting setting.
  11. Re: L.A. Caveman All kidding aside, as cool as I think it would be that Neanderthal DNA was present in our own, mitochondrial mapping of populations supports the notion that the modern human population descends from a few thousand folks that walked out Africa. Successful Neanderthal/Sapiens breeding would give us a population group in Europe and West Asia that would NOT be part of the mitochondrial chain. Now granted Neanderthal/Sapiens breeding attempts could have been made, but I suspect that that the offspring would have been a mule, unable to reproduce. I'd sell my neighbors soul (not mine, I'm using it) to meet a Neanderthal. Basically they're a separate species that were probably as intelligent as humans (though maybe in a different way) and capable of speech. The idea of having a conversation with another species (besides teaching a gorilla sign language) is just way too cool. Damn shame they didn't survive. Imagine how world history would've been different if the had.
  12. Re: Sulfur hexafluoride in action I'm not sure if breathing this stuff is the smartest of ideas. At more than five times the density as air it might be a pain to clear it out of your lungs, thereby diminishing lung capacity. Granted you could do a handstand with your mouth gaping wide open to try to get the last of it out. Still I'm pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be the test subject to find out. But then again people do silly things with lungs all the time… smoking, nitrous oxide, huffing model glue.
  13. Re: L.A. Caveman Who says they're a throw back. Some folks just evolve slower than others. I'm only the third generation in my family to walk upright. My Uncle Junga still like too paint horses and wooly rhinoceroses on the living room walls and fire still freaks him out.
  14. Re: Astrogator's Handbook Here's resource that I've used a lot recently http://www.stellar-database.com/ Basically punch in the name of a star and get gobs of info:D For a list of stars http://www.solstation.com/stars.htm Both sites together provide a lot of information to plug into AstroSynthesis That said I'm definitly picking up The Astrogator's Handbook.
  15. Re: Need a new game My god it's been years since I played nethack. Ok I'm old. When I start to remember computer games in the same nostalgic way that I remember Faith No More and Oingo Boingo it's time to hang it up.
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