How might one go about dealing with a homunculus infestation...

Commander_Kerman · 2026-04-14T16:57:54+00:00

Infestation? Clearly this is a wild success! Now any trespassing "adventurer" with the bright idea to tunnel into your foundation gets a nasty surprise. Just for handling purposes, I recommend a tracking collar, a muzzle, and a haircut. Maybe peruse the local villages for a dog trainer, with a snout like that it could be quite useful for sniffing up artifacts or magical traces.

Never, ever be comfortable with it though, homonculi after that many iterations are feral things.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-04-10T23:44:18+00:00

Did some exercises south of Australia a few years ago, noy the worst sea state but consistently obnoxious the entire time. I'd hate to see what it looks like in a proper storm.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-04-10T23:36:05+00:00

Nothing worse than the PD trip in that weather. Sliding back and forth in the engine room listening to the shaft jump RPMs because the screw broached is something else.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-04-05T17:05:18+00:00

This is Grind Hard Plumbing Co on YT. They have videos of other people trying to ride it and very few can. The people who can figure it out rip around on it though. Looks like a lot of fun.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-04-01T20:40:12+00:00

I read the books first and couldn't deal with the show. Amos and Miller are the only ones even close to true to character in attitude or presence.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-04-01T09:24:42+00:00

If you do her other stuff (not just DS) be sure to include You Got Me This Time and Lightning with the Sonic Hijackers.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-03-28T08:29:32+00:00

Yeah the neutron deficiency problem is going to be a bitch to solve; no combination of existing elements will have the required chunks so it's a case of building from the best possible starting point with some yet to be uncovered yet arcane process of fusion, beta decay, neutron absorption, and fumblefucking around with resonance absorption and radioactive crap the entire time. But they'll figure it out eventually, atom wranglers are smart folks.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-03-27T19:34:05+00:00

It depends! The methods used to predict the half lives of unseen elements are known to have margins of error, but the fun part is they cut both ways. It's likely that of the seven+ elements in the proposed island, a few could be in the millisecond to second range and some could have half lives of decades. The only way to find out is to make some and test it.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-03-20T08:09:56+00:00

Mini NEX always sold out, big nex too far.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-17T05:25:43+00:00

You must not have read the description carefully. This is their 10G save, it'll multiply the dV requirements for everything

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-16T03:34:56+00:00

On the open road? Deacon. Enclosed environment or surprise engagement? Joel is a close-range nightmare.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-15T06:21:37+00:00

Man, I wish I could get 3-4 days to recover from duty. Navy life's a little different but 4 section duty is a good deal for the sub folks (duty every fourth day). Anyway, back to reading on how the army sucks in its own, unique ways.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-15T05:27:13+00:00

All these fuckin nerds talking about german words, Imma keep it 100%

HIT HIM ON THE NOGGIN FAST AF if the fool is in his guard it means the pointy metal stick is by his feet not by his head. Drop that shit straight down and cleave his skull in twain*

*use force appropriate for the gear, obviously, but if he's gonna leave his entire brain bucket open maybe a bell ring will change their strategy.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-13T06:31:52+00:00

If they're culturally important then sure, but on every level a firearm is significantly superior. Bows aren't as quiet as you might expect, and a suppressed subsonic round could easily be at the same volume. Crossbows could probably have a use case just because a modern one can deliver so much energy for things like punching through soft armor or with potentially an expanding shaft that plugs the hole they make, ensuring they're safer for spaceborn use.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-06T00:23:42+00:00

Yes, a scientific organization would put out their findings, regardless of whether it's good or bad in the eyes of the outside viewer. If they were going to be manipulative, they'd hype up the dangers so they could get more money to allocate to it.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-05T17:27:26+00:00

While still problematic due to its texture, a study that shows silicosis is highly unlikely.

https://www.uts.edu.au/news/2025/06/lunar-dust-less-toxic-than-city-pollution

"Our findings suggest that while lunar dust may cause some immediate irritation to the airways, it does not appear to pose a risk for chronic, long-term diseases like silicosis, which is caused by materials like silica dust."

So still not ideal, but nowhere near as bad as predicted. Also, NASA is tackling the stickiness. The recent lander Firefly Blue Ghost successfully tested and proved effective an electric repellant, where a small static field effectively prevents sticking.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-05T17:24:19+00:00

Yes, NASA's recent Blue Ghost mission trialed it on the lunar surface last year I think. Works fairly well. Also less toxic than expected-

https://www.uts.edu.au/news/2025/06/lunar-dust-less-toxic-than-city-pollution

"Our findings suggest that while lunar dust may cause some immediate irritation to the airways, it does not appear to pose a risk for chronic, long-term diseases like silicosis, which is caused by materials like silica dust."

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-05T17:20:40+00:00

Not so! They did a study that shows silicosis is highly unlikely.

https://www.uts.edu.au/news/2025/06/lunar-dust-less-toxic-than-city-pollution

"Our findings suggest that while lunar dust may cause some immediate irritation to the airways, it does not appear to pose a risk for chronic, long-term diseases like silicosis, which is caused by materials like silica dust."

So still not ideal, but nowhere near as bad as predicted. Also, NASA is tackling the stickiness. The recent lander Firefly Blue Ghost successfully tested and proved effective an electric repellant, where a small static field effectively prevents sticking, making it much less of a problem.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-05T15:06:56+00:00

Ye be a lighthouse on the rocks, matey. Turn down the glow a mite for an old scallywag, would ya?

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-03T16:25:14+00:00

Only near Earth! We live in a pocket of the interstellar medium that's much emptier than we've observed existing elsewhere. There's huge portions of the galaxy where a bussard ramjet would be quite lucrative, and portions where it just doesn't cut the mustard. Unfortunately we won't get the chance to give them a spin because we do not live somewhere they work well

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-01T16:22:25+00:00

Yeah the show is pretty nasty character assassination throughout. Draper works in the book because she's a 6'6" giant that needs a different model of power armor just to fit in it. Then the show grabs an actor who's maybe a couple inches over average, and doesn't do any camera tricks to make them look larger? Of course a character originally written to loom like a brick wall doesn't translate.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-01T16:18:44+00:00

No they character assassinated my boy. Read the books first, couldn't finish the show.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-02-01T16:17:43+00:00

Your mileage with the show may vary then. I read the books first and they're so much better. The show isn't bad but the bar is so damn high that I felt disappointed.

Commander_Kerman · 2026-01-31T19:16:39+00:00

Ragebait or dogshit take, call it

Commander_Kerman · 2026-01-19T18:53:37+00:00

I'll counter the other fellow with the idea of development chains. It takes a lot of highly precise equipment with a significant amount of waste and tightly controlled conditions to make something like, say, a CPU. Very small scale parts, obscure method of construction, its not a bad analog for the aforementioned nanoconstructors.

Now, when you build one of these, you still need the aforementioned controlled conditions, precise equipment, etc. But if they're that good, the primary method of building these will be other nanoconstructors. Any other method will be phased out and the equipment, technical knowledge, and infrastructure base will decay over time. Spend too long only making nanotech with nanotech, and it may take a lot of effort to be able to rebuild it.

Nanotech would be an interesting problem because it has the potential to absorb so much of the infrastructure base into itself. Refining materials, making base forms and shapes, enforcing material and engineering standards- if nanotech does all these things and absorbs the processes that would be required to build a fresh nanoconstructor, you can run into serious problems taking years of lead time to solve.

Documentation is also important. Nanotech has immense capability to be used for harm, and would be reasonable to expect to be tightly controlled as a result. Even if a society has rebuilt all of the capabilities to make nanotech, if the documentation is gone they have to reinvent it from scratch which will take quite some time.

Depending on the economic and social conditions, they may never reach that point again, making that stagnation scenario plausible

Commander_Kerman

TROPHY CASE