This really is a great new solution, prevent infection before it takes hold. Make the innate immune system stronger. Since no new classes of drugs have been developed for what, a decade? Just rehashing the same old types of drugs again and again, this is at least something new and promising.
Rehashing existing drugs isn't likely to be very effective when it comes to resistant bacteria. It would only take a small evolutionary change in the bacteria population to negate the effectivness of newer drugs. Since this drug does not directly attack bacteria there is no selective preassure on bacterial pathogens. Antibiotics also have the side effect of killing bacteria which are mutual symbiotes, whereas mammalian immune systems can very specifically target only harmful bacteria.
You probably mean the external combustion engine, also known as the jet engine.
A gas turbine is an internal combustion engine. The combustion chambers are between the compressor and turbine stages, more or less in the middle. About the only thing you could call an "external combustion engine" would be a reheat also known as an "afterburner"... AFAIK the only civil aircraft with such engines still flying is NASA's TU144.
I don't think the problem with dirigibles is how to power them. I think the problem is that there's just about zero demand for a transport service that's about as slow as a ship or train but neither as efficient nor as reliable.
Maybe you could cover the upper surface with photovoltaic cells and have a slow vehicle which didn't require fueling.
But the fact remains, on a 2000 KG car, you need at least 2000 KG of vertical thrust to keep it in the air, and 2000 KG of thrust is a LOT.
That's 20,000kN just to keep it in the air. You need more than that to get it into the air in the first place. You also need a decent amount of thrust to be able to go anywhere, possibly make that thrust vectored so you can use it to either climb or move in the horizontal plain. There is also the problem that if you lose your lift thrust you are likely to crash. A parachute will only be of use above a certain altitude.
Electric motors, other the other hand, can be incredibly reliable. If designed for it, they have just a single moving part, and can run continuously, 24x7x365 for many years without issues. This kind of reliability in a small plane would be just incredible!
Electric motors still need to get their power from somewhere batteries arn't that good for storing large amounts of energy nor are fuel cells that good in the 10-100's kW range. You'd probably be better off with an internal combustion engine driving a generator.
No, what's needed is vertical take off and landing vehicles for that price which don't make insane amounts of noise or vent extremely hot gases in a way that is dangerous to third parties.
The only way you get vehicle capable to taking of vertically is by having a thrust to weight ratio of greater than 1. Ideally thrust significently greater than the weight of the vehicle (including pilot, passengers and luggage). The only easy way to do this is by moving a large amount of air.
It's called Monolith, and it's basically about merging two copyrighted files,
Looks like a form of encryption with an arbitraty length key. Just that the description uses non standard terms. "Element file" equates to "plaintext"; "Mono file" equates to "ciphertext" and "Basis file" equates to "key".
Getting into a fight with police just turns law-abiding folks against you, when they otherwise might sympathize with you. It can also get you a nice, juicy felony conviction.
It is also rather hard to avoid if your encounter violent police. Which makes using YouTube rather safer.
. What's more, it becomes easy to discount the magnitude of a viewpoint put forth on YouTube, because there are no warm bodies backing it up. It's hard to argue with a quarter million people marching peacefully in Washington for civil rights, on the other hand.
How hard is it to turn a peaceful march into a riot or at least something which can be portrayed as a riot on the TV "news" though?
It's not intended to help security - it's intended to make the lives of thousands of WA state residents that cross the border daily much, much easier
Which is probably a tiny proportion of the people living there who wish to drive. Why should they pay the cost of more expensive driving documents. When those who wish to drive to Canada already have the option of simply getting a passport.
I don't think it's racist to be angry at people who come to the fairly successful countries we have built in Canada and Oz, and then want to change the rules to those of their fairly fucked up countries that they were so eager to leave.
Locals tend to be offended when it's only tourists with this attitude.
Why can't we put up Xmas trees in our schools? Because some immigrants are "offended". Well, I'm offended when I see women walking around all covered up, and refusing to take off their veils when, for example, store clerks are trying to verify photo ID.
Not only that in many parts of the world someone who covers their face without good reason is generally assumed to be up to no good. Wonder what would happen if the average Canadian woman wanted to walk around Ryad in her usual clothes...
This reached its latest peak in the Quebec provincial election due Monday. The government, in response to protests from a few dozen Muslims, was going to allow Muslim women to not take off their veils to verify their identity. (Everyone else has to provide photo ID before being allowed to vote.) Only after massive protests that would have seen native Quebeckers wearing masks, bags, etc. on their heads did the government back off.
Maybe they should have worn motorcycle crash helmets. A very practical form of headgear, yet often expected to be removed when entering buildings.
It's unusual for UK viewers to get anything first, usually the UK is in the situation you describe, and lagging 6 months behind the US.
Actually it's quite common for the UK to get the end of a series (season) before the US. In the US (and to some extent Canada) a tradition of a "season break" has appeared. There may actually be a need for this in some cases to prevent the possibility of broadcasting overtaking production and causing problems. Whereas in most parts of the world broadcasters simply don't start showing episodes until it is likely that they can be shown without any breaks (except possibly for the likes of Christmas). If the North American broadcaster times their break right you would tend to see a UK broadcast "catching up" or possibly getting a few days ahead. What has changed is that viewers had no choice when this happened with Babylon 5. Now they do and just about every fan wants to watch each episode as soon as they can. They really don't care if the first episodes come with a US Sci-Fi DOG and the last ones come with a Sky One DOG.
People tend to advocate piracy more when they're being shafted by the networks...
Or if you prefer "broadcasters are advocating piracy by shafting their viewers".
They run like 100 hours of content a week. Can you possibly explain how people are seemingly 'offended' that they are running 1 hour or wresting?
Because they are supposedly a specialist channel with a certain type of content. Thus about 1% most definitly isn't "sci-fi". Wonder what proportion is actually any from of "sci-fi".
SkyOne aired the second part of season 10 of Stargate SG-1 several months before Sci-Fi did. In fact, they showed the last episode a few weeks ago. They're all available online.
Not that I'm advocating piracy (hell, I own the first 9 seasons on DVD and will get the 10th whenever it comes out), but it's Sci-Fi's fault for dragging their ass and waiting so long to show it. In a globalized world, you don't get to screw people over just so you can get an extra half of a rating point.
If anything you lose viewers, hence ratings this way. Problem is that the people involved just doin't "get it". They continue to treat their viewers with what amounts to contempt. There isn't even the issue of "still in production" which AFAIK is the usual reason for "season breaks". I'm not sure exactly what stops either showings starting later or production starting earlier in the US. Maybe it's simply a case of wanting to be different from everywhere else. But something like the US Sci-Fi channel can't even manage very well with series made by the BBC...
The United States, the Best [sic], Greatest [sic], most Awesome [sic] country in the world is, as always, way behind everyone else and/., being based in the US,
IIRC the US is way ahead of the world in quite a few ways. Just that things like "the land of the free" having the worlds biggest prison population isn't much to be proud of.
typically fails to acknowledge the simple fact that everyone in the civilised world has already seen the series finale of SG-1 and the season 3 finale of Atlantis.
When it comes to TV series the US often gets the first few episodes first, but often the last few episodes get shown in the UK or Canada before the US. Where the US tends to really get stiffed is on DVD releases. With it possibly being quicker to row across the Atlantic and back than wait for the US DVD release. (With walking to and from Canada, from Florida, being a possible alternative in some cases.)
For some incredibly stupid reason the US broadcaster, Sci-Fi, decided to take a 6 month break half-way into the season and the last 10 episodes won't be aired until sometime in April.
Let it go. You've milked this cow long enough. Let Stargate die in peace. Atlantis too. And BSG too [if it doesn't stop sucking ass with filler episodes].
SG-1 has run for 10 years. This is a long time for any series, especially one where you can't easily change the location and/or cast. Maybe they'd do better to try something new instead of more Stargate. e.g. give Joss Whedon a call and then give his ideas full backing.
Why do they always insist on beating shows into the ground rather than coming up with something new? Stargate's been old and tired for years...since O'Neil left. Stargate:Atlantis has never been anything more than mediocre. It's like Star Trek all over, the show gets lamer and lamer, but they just keep propping up the corpse for "the fans".
Do you really expect much in the way of imagination from TV execs? How many of these understand sci-fi let along sci-fi fandom.
Even stranger, all those BC planets in various galaxies have the same pseudo-medieval village.
Maybe the Canadians can use pseudo-medieval villages as tourist attractions. If things get really bad South of the border they can even people them with American refugees.
The reason is that they feel they have the right to copy whatever the hell they feel like with their own copying equipment and to hell with people who say they can't. Most everyone I know has burnt something onto a CD or DVD that copyright law says they cannot and none of them feel they have done anything wrong. Young, old, 20 something, 50 something.. Copyright law is fundamentally distant from the social intuition of fairness.
Which is something the politicans don't appear to want to address. The whole "author's life plus 50 years" vs "author's life plus 70 years" thing is utterly meaningless to just about everyone (including any sane authors, poets, song writers, etc). Once copyright excedes the average human lifespan it really dosn't matter if if does this by 1 second or 1 billion years. The only way to make things credible in the eyes of the general public would by to have copyright of the form "X years from first publication". Where X is probably less than the 14 it was a couple of centuries ago but most definitly isn't greater than.
of course, with respect to the lunacy of your last line, its very simple why they should be old enough to be put on trial: The moral obligations of a person in most societies is taught and understood at a much younger age than anything you mentioned. The mental maturity to consume alcohol in a manner that does not molest or harm others is generally lacking even in people older than 21 in the US, but more pervasively lacking in children.
This appears to be a cultural thing. There are plenty of parts of the world where there would be nothing remarkable about people far younger than 21 having a glass of wine or a beer with a meal. (Even if they are too young to buy it themselves.) If anything the US attitude of "no alchol until you are 21" appears to hinder people learning how to responsibly use alcohol.
keep in mind I did not refer to copyright infringement. For a 7 year old, its hard to explain why its illegal to borrow a friend's video game and put it on their computer(or download music in this case) and as such, should be relegated to seeing a 9 year old driving a car: an unfortunate incident of a parent not being able to control every minor thing their child does, followed by a punishment in line with the damages(in the case of the car, a bit of a scolding from the officer that sees it, in the case of copy right infringement, maybe 2$ per track downloaded(assuming a 10 track, 20 dollar cd which is way over priced).
I don't agree these are comparable. A car is easily capable to causing death and destruction when misused. Which is why there tend to be all sorts of conditions attached to operating cars on public roads. Including carrying sufficent third party insurance. On the other hand I've never heard of any cases where someone downloading files has caused any damage to any bystander or their property. Thus a 9 year old driving a car is a very much more serious situation than a 7 year old downloading music files. Only when the latter can result in someone getting killed would they become remotly comparable.
Once you let someone be a full-time politician, the power goes to their head. The influence of lobbyists and the nice gifts they bring matters much more than any pathetic constituent. Show me someone who's a life-long politician and I'll show you a crook - party need not matter.
Even if you could actually find one who wasn't a crook it would be very unlikely that he or she would have much in common with the average member of the public. The only practical solution is either have only part time politicans or drastically limit the amount of time someone can spend as a full time politican e.g. no more than one thousand days (anything more than half a day) per lifetime.
I felt a bit let down by the season finale which degenerated into the "big giant monster summoned by creepy bad guy for no readily apparent reason" mould.
And (3) sanity. What you're describing is the equivalent of trying to land on Jupiter in a Cessna. And we have a lot less experience with the Jovian atmosphere than any people capable of intersteller travel would have with rocky planets like the Earth.
Even if such a species evolved in an environment very different from Earth they'd still know about rocky planets with gas atmospheres because such planets are common. Of course any alien from an environment unlike the Earth's surface would probably have to wear some kind of "hostile environment suit" in order to leave their craft. Any alien which could "walk" on the surface of the Earth with minimal or no artifical life support must have originated from a planet similar to the Earth...
I'm with you on the entire alien-free-planet-to-date argument, but you may want to reconsider that particular belief. Travelling distances between stars is a completely different thing from landing on a planet and this includes the mechanics involved.
If these aliens evolved on a planet with an atmosphere they'd have had to work the mechanics out in order to get into orbit around their own planet. Even if an alien species could evolve in some completly different environment gravity is a fundermental universal force.
You may be incredibly fast in a vacuum but perhaps you've never encountered Earth-like gravity before or this Nitrogen floating around in the atmosphere so much.
Hence you'd probably want different vehicles for travelling through intersteller space vs looking around planets vs descending into planetry atmosphere.
Looks harmless enough, but what do you know, it just happens to set the primary coil reactor on fire and corrode the entire fusion circuitboard in a matter of seconds, what an awkward time to find this out.
Hence you could use these useful things called "robot probes". Also "seconds" is plenty of time for an autopilot to select "abort to orbit", unless the pilot has reaction times several times slower than humans it is also plenty of time for them to do something about the emergency.
Or maybe you just have no idea to compensate for 10 times the gravitational pull of your own home planet, maybe simply because your landing thrusters have nto been designed with that in mind.
The only thing any aliens need to know is the mass of their own craft. From that they can work out the mass of every object in the Solar system.
Basically you assume two things in your belief: (1) familiarity with the Earth environment
Actually "familiarity of a planet gas around it".
(2) total absence of mechanical/electrical/whatever failures
Or using multipally redundent systems. Especially of a a vehicle you intend taking into an alien environment. The idea of intelligent aliens who are capable of intersteller travel, yet ignorant of the basic mechanics of the universe and incapable of the engineering needed to stay alive is just incredible.
Slashdot Mirror
This really is a great new solution, prevent infection before it takes hold. Make the innate immune system stronger. Since no new classes of drugs have been developed for what, a decade? Just rehashing the same old types of drugs again and again, this is at least something new and promising.
Rehashing existing drugs isn't likely to be very effective when it comes to resistant bacteria. It would only take a small evolutionary change in the bacteria population to negate the effectivness of newer drugs.
Since this drug does not directly attack bacteria there is no selective preassure on bacterial pathogens. Antibiotics also have the side effect of killing bacteria which are mutual symbiotes, whereas mammalian immune systems can very specifically target only harmful bacteria.
Soon, the complete idiots who build their homes next to airports and then complain about all the noise will have another thing to whine about.
:)
A pity Boeing can't build an aircraft that runs on hot air
You probably mean the external combustion engine, also known as the jet engine.
A gas turbine is an internal combustion engine. The combustion chambers are between the compressor and turbine stages, more or less in the middle. About the only thing you could call an "external combustion engine" would be a reheat also known as an "afterburner"... AFAIK the only civil aircraft with such engines still flying is NASA's TU144.
I don't think the problem with dirigibles is how to power them. I think the problem is that there's just about zero demand for a transport service that's about as slow as a ship or train but neither as efficient nor as reliable.
Maybe you could cover the upper surface with photovoltaic cells and have a slow vehicle which didn't require fueling.
But the fact remains, on a 2000 KG car, you need at least 2000 KG of vertical thrust to keep it in the air, and 2000 KG of thrust is a LOT.
That's 20,000kN just to keep it in the air. You need more than that to get it into the air in the first place. You also need a decent amount of thrust to be able to go anywhere, possibly make that thrust vectored so you can use it to either climb or move in the horizontal plain.
There is also the problem that if you lose your lift thrust you are likely to crash. A parachute will only be of use above a certain altitude.
Electric motors, other the other hand, can be incredibly reliable. If designed for it, they have just a single moving part, and can run continuously, 24x7x365 for many years without issues. This kind of reliability in a small plane would be just incredible!
Electric motors still need to get their power from somewhere batteries arn't that good for storing large amounts of energy nor are fuel cells that good in the 10-100's kW range. You'd probably be better off with an internal combustion engine driving a generator.
No, what's needed is vertical take off and landing vehicles for that price which don't make insane amounts of noise or vent extremely hot gases in a way that is dangerous to third parties.
The only way you get vehicle capable to taking of vertically is by having a thrust to weight ratio of greater than 1. Ideally thrust significently greater than the weight of the vehicle (including pilot, passengers and luggage). The only easy way to do this is by moving a large amount of air.
It's called Monolith, and it's basically about merging two copyrighted files,
Looks like a form of encryption with an arbitraty length key. Just that the description uses non standard terms. "Element file" equates to "plaintext"; "Mono file" equates to "ciphertext" and "Basis file" equates to "key".
Getting into a fight with police just turns law-abiding folks against you, when they otherwise might sympathize with you. It can also get you a nice, juicy felony conviction.
It is also rather hard to avoid if your encounter violent police. Which makes using YouTube rather safer.
. What's more, it becomes easy to discount the magnitude of a viewpoint put forth on YouTube, because there are no warm bodies backing it up. It's hard to argue with a quarter million people marching peacefully in Washington for civil rights, on the other hand.
How hard is it to turn a peaceful march into a riot or at least something which can be portrayed as a riot on the TV "news" though?
Even an English surname won't save you. There are lots of names on the list, including Congresspeople.
:)
Those might be legitimatly on there though
It's not intended to help security - it's intended to make the lives of thousands of WA state residents that cross the border daily much, much easier
Which is probably a tiny proportion of the people living there who wish to drive. Why should they pay the cost of more expensive driving documents. When those who wish to drive to Canada already have the option of simply getting a passport.
I don't think it's racist to be angry at people who come to the fairly successful countries we have built in Canada and Oz, and then want to change the rules to those of their fairly fucked up countries that they were so eager to leave.
Locals tend to be offended when it's only tourists with this attitude.
Why can't we put up Xmas trees in our schools? Because some immigrants are "offended". Well, I'm offended when I see women walking around all covered up, and refusing to take off their veils when, for example, store clerks are trying to verify photo ID.
Not only that in many parts of the world someone who covers their face without good reason is generally assumed to be up to no good. Wonder what would happen if the average Canadian woman wanted to walk around Ryad in her usual clothes...
This reached its latest peak in the Quebec provincial election due Monday. The government, in response to protests from a few dozen Muslims, was going to allow Muslim women to not take off their veils to verify their identity. (Everyone else has to provide photo ID before being allowed to vote.) Only after massive protests that would have seen native Quebeckers wearing masks, bags, etc. on their heads did the government back off.
Maybe they should have worn motorcycle crash helmets. A very practical form of headgear, yet often expected to be removed when entering buildings.
It's unusual for UK viewers to get anything first, usually the UK is in the situation you describe, and lagging 6 months behind the US.
Actually it's quite common for the UK to get the end of a series (season) before the US.
In the US (and to some extent Canada) a tradition of a "season break" has appeared. There may actually be a need for this in some cases to prevent the possibility of broadcasting overtaking production and causing problems. Whereas in most parts of the world broadcasters simply don't start showing episodes until it is likely that they can be shown without any breaks (except possibly for the likes of Christmas).
If the North American broadcaster times their break right you would tend to see a UK broadcast "catching up" or possibly getting a few days ahead.
What has changed is that viewers had no choice when this happened with Babylon 5. Now they do and just about every fan wants to watch each episode as soon as they can. They really don't care if the first episodes come with a US Sci-Fi DOG and the last ones come with a Sky One DOG.
People tend to advocate piracy more when they're being shafted by the networks...
Or if you prefer "broadcasters are advocating piracy by shafting their viewers".
They run like 100 hours of content a week. Can you possibly explain how people are seemingly 'offended' that they are running 1 hour or wresting?
Because they are supposedly a specialist channel with a certain type of content. Thus about 1% most definitly isn't "sci-fi". Wonder what proportion is actually any from of "sci-fi".
SkyOne aired the second part of season 10 of Stargate SG-1 several months before Sci-Fi did. In fact, they showed the last episode a few weeks ago. They're all available online.
Not that I'm advocating piracy (hell, I own the first 9 seasons on DVD and will get the 10th whenever it comes out), but it's Sci-Fi's fault for dragging their ass and waiting so long to show it. In a globalized world, you don't get to screw people over just so you can get an extra half of a rating point.
If anything you lose viewers, hence ratings this way.
Problem is that the people involved just doin't "get it". They continue to treat their viewers with what amounts to contempt. There isn't even the issue of "still in production" which AFAIK is the usual reason for "season breaks". I'm not sure exactly what stops either showings starting later or production starting earlier in the US. Maybe it's simply a case of wanting to be different from everywhere else. But something like the US Sci-Fi channel can't even manage very well with series made by the BBC...
The United States, the Best [sic], Greatest [sic], most Awesome [sic] country in the world is, as always, way behind everyone else and /., being based in the US,
IIRC the US is way ahead of the world in quite a few ways. Just that things like "the land of the free" having the worlds biggest prison population isn't much to be proud of.
typically fails to acknowledge the simple fact that everyone in the civilised world has already seen the series finale of SG-1 and the season 3 finale of Atlantis.
When it comes to TV series the US often gets the first few episodes first, but often the last few episodes get shown in the UK or Canada before the US. Where the US tends to really get stiffed is on DVD releases. With it possibly being quicker to row across the Atlantic and back than wait for the US DVD release. (With walking to and from Canada, from Florida, being a possible alternative in some cases.)
For some incredibly stupid reason the US broadcaster, Sci-Fi, decided to take a 6 month break half-way into the season and the last 10 episodes won't be aired until sometime in April.
That's no mystery TV execs arn't the brightest...
Let it go. You've milked this cow long enough. Let Stargate die in peace. Atlantis too. And BSG too [if it doesn't stop sucking ass with filler episodes].
SG-1 has run for 10 years. This is a long time for any series, especially one where you can't easily change the location and/or cast.
Maybe they'd do better to try something new instead of more Stargate. e.g. give Joss Whedon a call and then give his ideas full backing.
Why do they always insist on beating shows into the ground rather than coming up with something new? Stargate's been old and tired for years...since O'Neil left. Stargate:Atlantis has never been anything more than mediocre. It's like Star Trek all over, the show gets lamer and lamer, but they just keep propping up the corpse for "the fans".
Do you really expect much in the way of imagination from TV execs?
How many of these understand sci-fi let along sci-fi fandom.
Even stranger, all those BC planets in various galaxies have the same pseudo-medieval village.
Maybe the Canadians can use pseudo-medieval villages as tourist attractions. If things get really bad South of the border they can even people them with American refugees.
The reason is that they feel they have the right to copy whatever the hell they feel like with their own copying equipment and to hell with people who say they can't. Most everyone I know has burnt something onto a CD or DVD that copyright law says they cannot and none of them feel they have done anything wrong. Young, old, 20 something, 50 something.. Copyright law is fundamentally distant from the social intuition of fairness.
Which is something the politicans don't appear to want to address. The whole "author's life plus 50 years" vs "author's life plus 70 years" thing is utterly meaningless to just about everyone (including any sane authors, poets, song writers, etc). Once copyright excedes the average human lifespan it really dosn't matter if if does this by 1 second or 1 billion years.
The only way to make things credible in the eyes of the general public would by to have copyright of the form "X years from first publication". Where X is probably less than the 14 it was a couple of centuries ago but most definitly isn't greater than.
of course, with respect to the lunacy of your last line, its very simple why they should be old enough to be put on trial: The moral obligations of a person in most societies is taught and understood at a much younger age than anything you mentioned. The mental maturity to consume alcohol in a manner that does not molest or harm others is generally lacking even in people older than 21 in the US, but more pervasively lacking in children.
This appears to be a cultural thing. There are plenty of parts of the world where there would be nothing remarkable about people far younger than 21 having a glass of wine or a beer with a meal. (Even if they are too young to buy it themselves.) If anything the US attitude of "no alchol until you are 21" appears to hinder people learning how to responsibly use alcohol.
keep in mind I did not refer to copyright infringement. For a 7 year old, its hard to explain why its illegal to borrow a friend's video game and put it on their computer(or download music in this case) and as such, should be relegated to seeing a 9 year old driving a car: an unfortunate incident of a parent not being able to control every minor thing their child does, followed by a punishment in line with the damages(in the case of the car, a bit of a scolding from the officer that sees it, in the case of copy right infringement, maybe 2$ per track downloaded(assuming a 10 track, 20 dollar cd which is way over priced).
I don't agree these are comparable. A car is easily capable to causing death and destruction when misused. Which is why there tend to be all sorts of conditions attached to operating cars on public roads. Including carrying sufficent third party insurance. On the other hand I've never heard of any cases where someone downloading files has caused any damage to any bystander or their property.
Thus a 9 year old driving a car is a very much more serious situation than a 7 year old downloading music files. Only when the latter can result in someone getting killed would they become remotly comparable.
Once you let someone be a full-time politician, the power goes to their head. The influence of lobbyists and the nice gifts they bring matters much more than any pathetic constituent. Show me someone who's a life-long politician and I'll show you a crook - party need not matter.
Even if you could actually find one who wasn't a crook it would be very unlikely that he or she would have much in common with the average member of the public.
The only practical solution is either have only part time politicans or drastically limit the amount of time someone can spend as a full time politican e.g. no more than one thousand days (anything more than half a day) per lifetime.
I felt a bit let down by the season finale which degenerated into the "big giant monster summoned by creepy bad guy for no readily apparent reason" mould.
Sort of attempting to copy Buffy S7...
And (3) sanity. What you're describing is the equivalent of trying to land on Jupiter in a Cessna. And we have a lot less experience with the Jovian atmosphere than any people capable of intersteller travel would have with rocky planets like the Earth.
Even if such a species evolved in an environment very different from Earth they'd still know about rocky planets with gas atmospheres because such planets are common.
Of course any alien from an environment unlike the Earth's surface would probably have to wear some kind of "hostile environment suit" in order to leave their craft. Any alien which could "walk" on the surface of the Earth with minimal or no artifical life support must have originated from a planet similar to the Earth...
I'm with you on the entire alien-free-planet-to-date argument, but you may want to reconsider that particular belief. Travelling distances between stars is a completely different thing from landing on a planet and this includes the mechanics involved.
If these aliens evolved on a planet with an atmosphere they'd have had to work the mechanics out in order to get into orbit around their own planet. Even if an alien species could evolve in some completly different environment gravity is a fundermental universal force.
You may be incredibly fast in a vacuum but perhaps you've never encountered Earth-like gravity before or this Nitrogen floating around in the atmosphere so much.
Hence you'd probably want different vehicles for travelling through intersteller space vs looking around planets vs descending into planetry atmosphere.
Looks harmless enough, but what do you know, it just happens to set the primary coil reactor on fire and corrode the entire fusion circuitboard in a matter of seconds, what an awkward time to find this out.
Hence you could use these useful things called "robot probes". Also "seconds" is plenty of time for an autopilot to select "abort to orbit", unless the pilot has reaction times several times slower than humans it is also plenty of time for them to do something about the emergency.
Or maybe you just have no idea to compensate for 10 times the gravitational pull of your own home planet, maybe simply because your landing thrusters have nto been designed with that in mind.
The only thing any aliens need to know is the mass of their own craft. From that they can work out the mass of every object in the Solar system.
Basically you assume two things in your belief: (1) familiarity with the Earth environment
Actually "familiarity of a planet gas around it".
(2) total absence of mechanical/electrical/whatever failures
Or using multipally redundent systems. Especially of a a vehicle you intend taking into an alien environment.
The idea of intelligent aliens who are capable of intersteller travel, yet ignorant of the basic mechanics of the universe and incapable of the engineering needed to stay alive is just incredible.