RedDwarfIV

Mr Flibble is very cross. RadiationKing is fried alive by hex vision

Event Horizon was indeed scary, though no amazingly scientific. I guess they presumed that if you had a drive that could fold spacetime, you could also have artificial gravity. They made the ship way too creepy for its mission to have gone right, and it would almost certainly have failed health and safety inspections - one woman fell into the drive bay through a hole in the floor that appeared to be intentional but had no railings. Seriously, why would you design your spacecraft with a cross as the main viewing window? Still, the Lewis And Clark rates as a Cool Ship.

I'm on S2 book 3 right now, so I haven't read all of it. I'm reading it because I like the story, not neccesarily because it's the most likely alternate history ever. Still, at least it's not one of those many alternate histories that feel they must put zeppelins in. As for looking down our noses at aliens who dared attack us, does that not happen in practically every alien invasion story? Independence Day, for instance.

If we're talking about books now, I highly recommend the Worldwar and Colonisation series by Harry Turtledove. The premise of an alien invasion interrupting WW2 sounds like something from a B-Movie, right? Well, you'll be pleasently surprised. The Race, reptilian alians who the Humans call 'Lizards', are trying to lay the foundation for the colonisation fleet which will arrive in twenty years time. Their own culture only implements changes over centuries, to ensure such changes will not do harm to their society as a whole. After recieving images from their probe on Tosev 3 [Earth] which show Arabs with scimitars, Aborigenes with spears and a knight on horseback in rusty armour holding a shield and sword, they expect an easy conquest - as Fleetlord Atvar says "How much can a species change in only a few centuries?" And oh, how are they dissapointed. Radio, handheld guns, RADAR, tanks, aircraft... Two of their starships get destroyed on the ground by a German supercannon - their antimissiles don't do jack to one of Dora's massive, brass armoured shells. The Russians use nuclear material gathered from the wreckage of one of those ships [which had been carrying most of the Conquest Fleet's nuclear weapons] to build a gun-type nuke, and prevent the Lizards from taking Moscow with it. Half a year later, America is able to build its own 'explosive-metal bombs'. When they try to invade Great Britain [having previously ignored it as an insignificant island until it proved just too annoying to them,] hooboy do they get a kick in the snout, with 'weapons the Race has never before faced, but which are definitely not explosive-metal bombs.' Lizards don't have gas masks. I think you'll see where that's going. The books do have a number of adult scenes and swearing, so I'd rate it as PG-15. What's most amusing of all is how Lizards have a mating season. They enjoy looking down their snouts at us Tosevites for being receptive all year round. Turns out, the spice ginger causes female Lizards to go into heat. Cue much Tosevite laughter at the Race's expense.

Maybe its orbit was west instead of east or something. Maybe orbiting in the opposite direction would have let you catch up to it.

Why, Microsoft? Why did you remove the 'Start up in Safe Mode' option as standard? EDIT: Oh. Ok, you're using it already. Also, if the police were monitoring your computer for that sort of thing, you could expect a police officer to come round and ask you to take a visit to the local station. Not 'you are a bad person, pay E100.'

Well, firstly you need to have some means of moving a planet. WHY THE HELL ARE YOU WASTING THAT POWER ON MOVING PLANETS ABOUT? SPEND IT ON SOMETHING MORE USEFUL!

They have beryllium alloy hull plating surrounding exposed areas like that. It's cheaper than building a shield out of it. Also, the Field section is in front of the Drive Ring. The Field section needs a veritable wall or armour to protect the caravans.

What if it could transfer any unused hydrogen from the Mars insertion stage or whatever to sacs in the plane, giving it higher bouyancy? Obviously, lower air density lowers the benifit of such a plan, but it could work.

Nose: -Control room -Observation Deck -Comm's transmitters -Distress beacon -Docking ports Core [1]: -Secondary control room -Activity facilities -Funworks arcades -Personnel shuttle/cargocraft hangars -Passenger cabins -Centrifuges Core [2]: -Tertiary control room -Life support -Fusion power plant -Cryonics -Supplies Engine: -Main thrusters -Main propellant -Maneuvering propellant -Solar arrays -Radiators Drive Ring: -Alcubierre Drive systems Field: -Passenger caravans/chalets -Vehicle hire [The Field section is itself a centrifuge.]

@Accelerando Suddenly, Ms Swinney doesn't sound so bad at her job. http://uk.ratemyteachers.com/anne-swinney/172027-t

I mentioned that, too.

I said something similar. He said he would still rather be using the parachute.

I'm trying to persuade someone on the OOC thread for my RP Safe Haven on the TwoKinds forums about the uselessness of having escape craft on a city-sized Alcubierre and NERVA driven spacecraft designed for recreational visits to sites of interest in other star systems. The ship, Sanctuary, is in a star system that is devoid of planets, in a low orbit of a star with unusually low brightness, heat and gravity despite its mass [This is intended as one of only two parts that are anything below Speculative Fiction on the Moh's Scale of Sci-Fi Hardness.] The Santuary is equipped with a fusion generator, solar panels, a coldsleep cryonics bay with chambers for all crew and passengers. The ship is designed to be as unsusceptible to problems as possible. I say that it wouldn't have them because they take up weight, they leave you with a less powerful distress transmitter, they leave you with less resources, they aren't large enough to hold coldsleep chambers [including all the bumf like life support computers and life process control drugs that go with them,] and there are already all-purpose personnel shuttles that could fit a similar role if neccesary. The other part of the RP that is below Speculative Fiction on the Moh's Scale are that the rescue ships have hyperdrives instead of Alcubierre drives, allowing them to arrive in only a few weeks. The person I'm trying to persuade insists that it should have escape ships because of 'mundane problems causing disasters', that he would rather 'be jumping out of a damaged airplane with a parachute than remain on board', and 'If I were trapped on a spaceship with superheated gas monsters, I would rather leave in an escape pod than face them when I don't know how to kill them' The gas monsters are canon, but they are not superheated after their heat conducts to the hull and surroundings in the outer layers of the ship, and the designers of the Sanctuary would not have known about them at the time. Neither would being on an escape craft make its occupants any less of a target for the gas monsters.

http://watchseries.eu/serie/ufo

Turing Test. So long as it's more intelligent than damned Cleverbot, maybe we can have a proper conversation with an AI.

I'm a be incorporating Alcubierre Drives into my webcomic. They'll usually be fitted to old probes and vessels that either need only a speed boost that the FTL drive would provide, or vessels that are aimed at someplace far off that makes relativity a nuisance - we don't, after all, want the vessel to take us 400 years to arrive somewhere when it will seem to its crew to arrive there in 100. I'm doing an RP on the TwoKinds forum where the setting is a Haven Holidays space cruiseliner called the Sanctuary. Despite obviously being designed as a sci-fi vessel, it's only artificial gravity comes from centrifuges, it's structure is reminiscent of the concept of a near-future Mars mission vessel, it carries coldsleep chambers for the long voyage, and is fitted with an Alcubierre Drive that allows it to flout relativity - and, of course, allow it to better use its main engines' delta-V capacity. Also, since 'warp drive' is associated with Star Trek, and 'Alcubierre Drive' is a bit of a mouthful, the version in my webcomic is known as a TADPOLE Drive - Tachyonic Accelleration Direct Over LightspEed Drive. It makes a word, and it sounds sort of cool. Like the Caterpillar from Hunt For Red October.

Hell yeah!

Another good show was Hyperdrive - a BBC sci-fi comedy which ran for two series. The HMS Camden Lock, a British warship with a crew of intrepid bunglers who 'solve problems by making them bigger until they go away'. Series 2 was best in my opinion, especially Series 2 Episode 1.

They stole this idea from the KSP RP! Sixty years ago! It's outrageous.

UFO was good. It had interesting plots, and while its science was highly unrealistic, it was still fun to watch. The models for all the aircraft and spacecraft and ground craft and submarines were made by the people who worked on Thunderbirds - so you get stuff like this: Yes, those are nukes on their noses.

Well, here's a clip from my favourite episode, #3. The guy who's preaching is the bad guy of the series. It's not much of a spoiler since Tate doesn't trust him from the outset. If Tate doesn't trust someone, you tend to find yourself agreeing - so you know he's bad news. He makes an evil face at the window when he thinks Tate isn't looking after Tate tells him he won't veto the proposal to put Berger [that's him] on the Council, at the end of this episode.

Warehouse 13 and Firefly are certainly good ones. I think the BBC was mad to drop Outcasts. Sure, they faffed around a bit and didn't quite get everything right, but a Season 2 could have fixed all those problems. A Season 2 would also have solved the massive cliffhangar we're left with as Carpathia Transporter 10 arrives over Forthaven to do its worst. I felt that Outcasts had some pretty interesting plots - it didn't develop 'DS9 syndrome' just because it was a fixed setting - and for its part, it maintained a high sense of realism. If humanity in the not-too-far future decided to go nuke itself but send out survival ships to make a colony, you could imagine this being the result. They even used shipping crates for Forthaven's perimeter walls - that's the sort of practical thinking one comes to associate with President Tate. My favourite episode was Whiteout [the episodes themselves didn't have names, but it's quite obvious which one this is if you'd watched it.] All in all, it's set to be a cult show, and the BBC is contemplating making a made-for-TV-movie instead of Series 2 - which will be good if it does indeed solve the cliffhanger.

From somewhere in Rankamateur Series 2. I wake up on a space station after the onboard AI decides I would be safer elsewhere. Having lived the life of a 21st century human in a Virtual Reality simulation, I'm understandably put out to find myself in the body of a canine GELF in the 27th century. This should be interesting.

'Litho' means rock/stone. Although it was a coined phrase made up to compliment aerobraking when referring to something using the ground to stop, it is widely regarded as the correct terminology for such a maneuvre. If you were 'terrabraking', that means you are using the Earth to stop you.