Ahh Miss Moon, yesterday was indeed a great success - Many people enclosed the Hackers in their hearths as saviours. I also found a cam-rec revelant to the 'Crews' we encountered.
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Those who have some experience is ship design and engineering should see instantly from the debries that it was a pidgeon. How it's called again? Firefly, thats it.
And about Cardamine.. Thats a hard subject, because those who study it always doing it in secret. Except from the Outcast scientists, but what they revealed its certainly lacks information compared to the fact that they had eight-hundred years for their studies - and if we look at the lifespan expanding effect - this time period could even taken literately.
However, I can speak of my own experiences. The effect cardi gives somehow the complete opposite of the chill sythweed gives, and it's also realy far from the dumbness and mis-coordination what the usual Liberty Ale presents. Its just a little bit similar to the amphetamine based Cryer-coffee products what you must be already familiar with. They either gives an 'edge' to the brains information processing abilities - however the Cardi usage doesent comes with the raising pulse, overall tenseness and the increased cardiovascular pressure.
The problem is, that all the documented biological changes induced by cardi are side-effects. (Assuming that noone takes her regulal cardi amount for the extended lifspan.) The most traceable of those is the increasing activity of the adrenochrome hypophysis - just as it were documented with several hallucinogenic substance from the old Sol. Anyway, the term could be misleading because average folks imagine halucinogens as those will make you see... I dont know, vivid colors, spacecows and such. Thats a misbelief what will never get ridden of - just because those effects are personal, depending on lot of the circumstances of consumption and subject's disposition - thus they'll be always hard to scientificly document. Even the common language is lacking the words and expression to describe. In a nutshell, it helps you recognise 'patterns' (not exclusively visual ones). And the strange thing is once you start to see (or have an insight for) those, you will realize that what you experienced was always there. Cardi doesent gives 'illusions'. It expands the perception to a level where you almost can see the tapestry the Universe made of. And you will be aware of it when its effect are worn off. It gives the feeling that you are experiencing something not ment for humans to see. If you know a database what still keeps Sol materials called 'books' (the textual ones, not those like 2D holotain) Id suggest downloading Gates of Perception by Aldous Huxley. He never took cardi of course, but when I was reading him, I thought he should.
And a sidenote. Being addicted to cardamine is unlike any other substance as in withdrawal. It modifies your DNA structure, and after long and countinous usage it has an effect on all the organs and cells in the users body. It does not forms psychological dependency - by itself. However withdrawal affects the whole body, givig a sickness with fever, pain, sweating, unconscious muscular activity. It looks bad I must say. You are a scientist, so I dont have to tell you about operant conditioning. So even your body learns soon enough what should it do to get rid of this state.
Ah, and the plant itself tastes extremely awful. And cardi-cola can still leave a terrible smell if you spill it in your cockpit. I'd suggest to stick with the attenuated and flavored gas canister form. Thats the usual package what 'casts are mainly export.
And also note that I'm no scientist, so everithing witten here is from personal experince, not facts.