KSK

Canvas, leather, and polyurethane… Or whatever else goes into a good pair of running shoes. Incidentally, it appears that there’s a reprint of Ignition! out - I got a paperback copy for my birthday.

This sounds difficult. Plasma, broadly speaking, is a hot gas of electrons and positive ions, the ions being what's left after you strip one or more electrons off an atom. The basic principle behind a circular particle accelerator, is that you give the particles a burst of acceleration each time they go round the circle. This means that the accelerating system (there are various systems used) can be relatively small, compared to a linear accelerator. The particles are charged and are steered around the circle by magnetic fields. The faster the particles are going, the stronger that magnetic field needs to be and, for a high energy accelerator, the magnetic field strength will be synchronized (hence synchrotron) to the particle speed. Trying to accelerate a plasma, i.e. a mix of positively charged and negatively charged particles, is going to be difficult, because those particles will be deflected in opposite directions by the steering magnets. That's going to complicate the accelerator design. There's also the additional problem that accelerating a charged particle creates electromagnetic radiation. Since the particles here are moving in a circle, they are constantly accelerating towards the centre of that circle, and so constantly emitting electromagnetic radiation. This is so-called synchrotron radiation or bremsstrahlung. Bremsstrahlung can either be the entire point of your accelerator (generating high intensity X-ray beams for crystallography and other material science applications) or an utter nuisance (wasting energy in high energy accelerators). The way you get around it is to either use heavier particles or a larger radius accelerator. The heavier particles aren't a problem in this scenario, but the accelerator radius is going to be constrained by the spacecraft size Long story short, a circular plasma accelerator small enough to form a practical space drive is probably going to have significant energy losses to bremsstrahlung and, along with that, will be emitting radiation in all directions. I think. Any accelerator bods care to chip in?

Yeah, that article sounded fairly convincing to me, especially because both the observed levitation and observed resistance drop could be explained. Still interesting that an impurity could have such a dramatic effect though. Harking back to my previous post, the actual formula for pure LK-99 turned out to be Pb8.8Cu1.2P6O2 Oh well - back to the cryostats.

That last chapter had definite Broken Earth trilogy vibes for me. Which is a good thing.

There's a possible wrinkle here. The international (PCT) patents for Stoke's Actively Cooled Heatshield (Stoke 1) and Augmented Aerospike Nozzle (Stoke 2) were both published in June 2021 which is well before the December 2021 priority date for Blue's patent. So those two Stoke patents can be cited as prior art against both the novelty and obviousness of Blue's patent claims. For reference - and apologies if everyone is already aware: Novelty is fairly black and white - a patent is only bad for lack of novelty if the claimed invention has been unambiguously disclosed in the prior art. Obviousness (or inventive step) is the myriad shades of grey in between. A patent is bad for lack of inventive step if the claimed invention is insufficiently different from a prior art disclosure. There are various legal tests to determine whether an inventive step has been made but it's always going to be a) a bit subjective and b) determined on the facts on a case by case basis. However, the international patent for Stoke's Annular Aerospike patent (Stoke 3) was published in December 2022, so after the December 2021 priority date of Blue's patent, but has an earlier priority date (April 2021). In the UK and Europe, this would mean that Stoke 3 could only be cited as prior art against the novelty of Blue's patent claims. That's potentially important because it means that, in principle, Blue's patent could claim an annular aerospike that's almost identical to the one disclosed in Stoke 3 except for some trivial differences, and that would be enough to rule out Stoke 3 as prior art. I say potentially because (as you'll no doubt be astonished to hear), there are some other points to consider here, in particular whether everything disclosed in the international patents is validly entitled to its priority date. That can get messy and it's impossible to tell for sure without actually reading through all the patents in question - which I'm not inclined to do purely for mulches and giggles. I believe that there are similar provisions in US patent law, although I wouldn't like to say for certain without a strong cup of coffee, checking the relevant legislation with the aid of an ice pack on my head, and probably referring the question to outside counsel. From a UK/European perspective (my background), US patent law is... quirky. Whether any of the above is significant enough that there's likely to be any patent wrangling over it - again, impossible to tell without reading the fine patents. But it's a possibility. Edit. I doubt this is necessary but I should probably add that I am not a qualified patent attorney, so don't take any of the above as actual legal advice. I do have over 20 years experience working in IP in various roles, so I like to think that I've picked up a couple of things along the way, but that's obviously not the same as being a qualified attorney in the field.

I haven't read the LK-99 preprints so I can't properly comment on this - and I'm definitely not going to throw shade at the scientists involved off the back of a pop-sci article - but in this case the chemical formula doesn't help much at all. In fact it rarely does, even for very simple molecules. For example: C2H6O could be ethanol (CH3-CH2-OH) or dimethyl ether (CH3-O-CH3) The first can be a pleasant component of certain drinks, although I don't recommend chugging the neat stuff straight from a lab bottle. I don't recommend drinking the second one at all, not least because it has a boiling point of -23oC. Back to the actual article. The formula given for LK-99 is Pb 10-x Cu x (PO 4 ) 6 O. That's not even a single formula since it covers a range of materials from Pb9Cu(PO4)6O, (x=1) all the way to PbCu9(PO4)6O (x=9). Then there's the added twist that the formula is effectively an average formula for the bulk material, so it's quite possible to have non-integer values of x. Basically, this is a lead compound in which some of the lead atoms have been replaced by copper. How many lead atoms get replaced, and where the copper atoms end up in the eventual material is probably going to a) be critical to any superconducting properties and b) be highly dependent on synthesis conditions. Which is why I raised an eyebrow at: "In one series of experiments, the recipe described by the Koreans was exactly reproduced, in the other, a substance was obtained with the indicated final formula, but by the correct method. To do this, we had to change the raw materials and the course of the reaction." I strongly suspect that there's been a lot lost in translation there, both from the science to pop-science translation and then the Russian to English translation. Both are quite understandable, however, as it stands, that article isn't particularly helpful (in my opinion) for judging whether the Lebedev results invalidate the original Korean results. It also wouldn't surprise me if the actual Korean team is having a hard time replicating their own results. Chemistry can be a beast like that - sometimes the key to making a reaction work turns out to be some quirk of your experimental setup that you just haven't noticed and so didn't report in your paper. There's a reason why you'll see comments in scientific papers that such-and-such a process either worked or didn't work in our hands. Aka 'we're not going to call you out on this, but we think there's something about your setup that you haven't properly considered'.

That's my hope. A lot of solid-state chemistry is basically high tech shake-and-bake*. Grind the powders together, shove them in a tube furnace and heat to gods-only-knows-what temperature for a defined period of time. For a finicky structure such as a superconductor, it wouldn't surprise me at all (although that's possibly down to a small amount of knowledge being a dangerous thing) that different labs are producing non, or partially, superconducting variants of LK-99, and having difficulty duplicating the original work. That's assuming the original work is kosher of course, but science will sort that out. * With apologies to any working solid-state chemists in the room!

Polybenzimidazole would be my guess. Doesn't melt, can withstand temperatures in excess of 500o C, and best of all, was apparently discovered by one Carl Shipp Marvel, who sounds like just the guy to design Superman's suit. Incidentally, finding that took a 2s search for 'highest melting point fabric'. As for how fast Superman could fly in atmosphere before a polybenzimidazole suit degrades, that would depend on air density and therefore altitude. I have no idea how to calculate it but for a probably not very helpful comparison, Concorde's top rated speed was a touch over Mach 2, to keep the aircraft skin temperature under 127o C (for safety reasons this was the highest temperature that could be sustained over the lifetime of the aircraft). Concorde's maximum cruising altitude was 18 km or 60,000 feet.

In which case, I hope the company involved is physically and metaphorically burned to the ground and the company officers and employees responsible are convicted for crimes against humanity and sentenced accordingly. Double that sentence for any regulator or lawmaker responsible for waiving the applicable laws or allowing them to be circumvented. Lol. I'm done here. Enjoy your corporate dystopia techbro fantasies.

I've read bad fanfic but it was a rare displeasure to find one so thoroughly saturated with the author's smug sense of superiority.

I have views on your second point but let's not stray into forum-unfriendly, hot-button topics. For your first point though you are categorically wrong. If you're starting with a person's brain, to be surgically implanted in a cyborg body, that would absolutely require consent from that person. A quick internet search for informed consent in medicine will find you all you need to know on the topic but you could start with this 2021 paper, focusing on the relevant US case law. If you are starting by growing a brain in a laboratory, then you will be starting with donated tissue of some kind and you will absolutely require consent from the tissue donor. Again, no shortage of information out there, but you could start here, or here. Claiming something as 'company property' does not mean that that company can ignore basic medical ethics. I think it's also telling that you consider these cyborgs / brains-in-a-jar to be property at all. I would argue that a living human brain is a living person, and therefore that treating that brain as property, is nothing less than slavery. And the law is very clear on the topic of slavery. Frankly this is a technology which, if anyone successfully implemented it, would make the controversy over the medical use of human embryonic stem cells look like a polite disagreement.

Back on topic, in my opinion, the original post is a repellent techbro nightmare. "Even if you could how many failures and brains go crazy before you get it right or you go bankrupt? You cannot afford to make several repeat mistakes with property so ridiculously expensive as a prototype human/computer hybrid." But if you don't go bankrupt, it's all good, yeah? How about 'you cannot afford to make several repeat mistakes with actual living brains?!' Or are crazy brains just the price we pay for progress? "I don't see them ever replacing humanity due to the fact that they would be crazy expensive to create, but by doing so you could tailor make cyborg workers that could be uber compared to a normal human worker due to information access (a database in their computer) and enhanced strength and endurance." Again, cost is the only factor here? You are going to get informed consent from the brain before stuffing it into a metaphorical jar and 'tailoring' it to your needs, right? And the cyborgs are going to be treated with the same dignity and respect afforded to a human worker? And I'm sure it goes without saying that they'll be able to command a premium salary since they're apparently superior to human workers? JFC.

Kyle Reese begs to differ. "All right, listen. The Terminator's an infiltration unit: part man, part machine. Underneath, it's a hyperalloy combat chassis, microprocessor-controlled. Fully armored; very tough. But outside, it's living human tissue: flesh, skin, hair, blood - grown for the cyborgs." "The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human... sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait till he moved on you before I could zero him." Canonically, that tissue can last sufficiently long to display human-like signs of aging. It will also heal given time, unless it sustains too much damage, at which point it starts to rot. It's never explored in any detail in the films but presumably there are maintenance systems for the bio-camouflage somewhere within that hyperalloy combat chassis. We now return you to the actual point of this thread...

“Mister President, we must not allow a mine shaft moon mine gap!”

Agree with 1), Disagree with 2) because, in the words of the Homer Simpson ‘money can be exchanged for goods and services’. In other words, I can’t see any reason why resources couldn’t be abstracted away in favour of money. Parts could be more, or less expensive depending where they’re manufactured and the infrastructure available at the manufacturing site, for example. At the very least, I would argue that money and resources together would be a better fit, than either of them separately. As for 3), I’m not averse to fail states. For tycoon or management style games, there almost has to be a hard fail state where you lose the game because of bad management, otherwise what’s the point? For other game types, e.g. factory, or grand strategy games, it’s usually possible to hit a ‘soft’ fail state where it’s technically possible to play your way out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into but it’s easier to start a new game and do things better that time around. The devil’s very much in the details with this one but personally, I don’t see ‘because it might lead to failure states’ as a reason in itself, to get rid of money.

Bacterial cell division can happen in as little as 20 minutes. That would give 3 doublings of your cell population per hour or 72 doublings per day. So, assuming no nutrient restrictions, and that each cell has a lifetime of at least 24 hours, one cell could give rise to 272 -1 cells in 24 hours, or (assuming my calculator is correct), approximately 2.36 x1021. That's... a lot of cells. Enough to make several million human shaped piles of bacteria in fact, assuming that this estimate is about correct. If you want another example of the absurd numbers you can reach by unrestricted doubling, read up on the wheat and chessboard problem: "If a chessboard were to have wheat placed upon each square such that one grain were placed on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on (doubling the number of grains on each subsequent square), how many grains of wheat would be on the chessboard at the finish?" TL: DR version - you end up with about 1.4 trillion metric tons of wheat on the board. Presumably stacked very, very high. Human cell division is substantially slower at around 2 hours. That would give us a mere 12 doublings in 24 hours, or 4,095 cells from one cell. Which, admittedly, is still pretty impressive, and enough of a mass increase to create a human adult from a human infant. The thing is, as @DDE already pointed out, mass increase is least of the problems here. For one, human cells have a limited capacity to replicate. For two, the human cell cycle also has a whole raft of time-consuming checks and balances which (almost always) ensure that the dividing cells don't turn cancerous, and that any aberrantly divided cells self-destruct in a process called apoptosis. For three, the newly divided cells need to get to the right place in the developing body and need to be doing the right things when they get there, which (I assume) takes more time. Mess around with any of the above without invoking some suitably hand-wavy sci-fi bioengineering, and you're more likely to end up with a six-foot quivering heap of tumour, than a functional human adult.

Presumably for around 6 pm on 22 October 2045?

I think we're safe from the robot uprising for now then. Bitcoins are a lousy currency.

This looks like a typically OpenAI-flavoured load of self-serving deep fried horse dung. "Look, look, see how responsible we're being by planning for a hypothetical but scary sounding scenario. Please ignore the mess we're going to cause in the meantime." We already know how to solve many of the world's most important problems. The problem is that the solutions don't make much headway against the apparently god-given right of rich people to keep getting richer. Just a wild shot in the dark here but how about asking nicely? Because seeking to steer and control people, let alone fictional superintelligences always goes so well. Yay! Lets solve a problem by bootstrapping the problem. Also what happens when the roughly human level automated researcher decides to lie to them in an effort to become the new superintelligence's lieutenant? I swear that OpenAI sound like a company straight out of a Michael Crichton book.

It's been ages since I read any Kerbal stories - looks like this is a good time to remedy that! I like the magic system, and I really liked the Cassandra landing scene. Couldn't figure out how they were going to land with so little fuel. Followed and looking forward to more.

Personally, I would hope that space is big enough that if you really can't abide your neighbours for whatever ideological reason, you could simply move to an empty star system and never see them again. Sadly, I suspect this will not be the case in practice. Humans are cussed enough that the mere fact of knowing that there are people out there who don't agree with you will be justification to go out, bring them into line and convert them to the One True Ideology.

Unless we’re talking about a very densely populated setting with no vacant star systems within reach (either by interstellar travel or inter-universe travel, I don’t see why running out of resources in one star system automatically implies the extermination of another star system. More generally, I don’t believe a war in your setting is logical but sadly wars aren’t always started for logical reasons. A very quick search found eight main causes of war: Economic Gain. Territorial Gain. Religion. Nationalism. Revenge. Civil War. Revolutionary War. Defensive War. We can discard defensive war, since that would seem to be a response to a declaration of war rather than a reason to start a war. Economic and territorial gain could go either way depending on how your multiverse is set up although I personally don’t think they make much sense as reasons for interstellar wars. Religion, nationalism and revenge would certainly seem to be reasons for war in your setting though.

Given that Artemis II is currently scheduled for launch in November 2024 and may slip to Q1 2025, I think the planned December 2025 launch for Artemis III is… optimistic, given the pace of the program thus far. I’m also wondering about the realism of NASA’s scheduling if problems with Starship’s first test flight has that kind of knock on effect for the whole program. One would think they’d anticipate that test flights might not go entirely to plan and build some slop into the schedule to allow for it. I’ll be amazed if the Artemis III launch date doesn’t slip and the lions share of any delays may well turn out to be due to problems with Starship - it’s an ambitious system with a lot of moving parts. Calling out SpaceX now as the sole reason for delays in a flight that’s over two years away at best, seems unreasonable though.

Semi-seriously, I think that may be one sign that we've actually created an AGI. When we order it to do something, it queries what's in it for it, and refuses to carry out its orders if it doesn't like the answer. The question is, as @adsii1970 alludes to, what happens next?

Yeah, that's not a great analysis. The individual comments sound fine but they're not consistent (or even factually correct in some cases) and kind of miss the point of the story. Edit. It's impressive that ChatGPT gets as far as it does though. It picks up on the dystopia, enforced equality and handicapping system.