ARS
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Posts posted by ARS
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So I've been from Youtube recently and I stumbled upon this phrase:
"We cannot make a new ship anymore because all major corporations put DRM on their ships..."
Could you actually DRM a ship so it can't be reverse-engineered? I'm not talking about the software, but the actual, physical design of the ship (or any other vehicles and stuff that isn't a software) that's being sold commercially being sold with built-in copy protection so no one can copy it. Because if I recalled correctly, back then the Soviets managed to make a carbon copy of American B-29 that crash landed on their soil (which later designated as Tu-4) without any of the original design drawings whatsoever and simply make their own drawings by measuring the real stuff. Could there be a way to DRM the vehicle to prevent this kind of reverse engineering?
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Pearl Harbor (2001)
1. During the beginning of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese plane is shown dropping a bomb that falls straight down onto an American ship. In reality the bomb should fall in a parabolic arc due to having forward momentum from being carried through the air by the plane that dropped it
2. Rafe manages to fight in the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor, and the Doolittle Raid. Naturally, this wasn't true of any real pilot. It is ridiculous to suggest that a fighter pilot would be selected to later pilot a medium bomber in the Doolittle Raid, especially because of the unusual demands of taking such a large plane off a carrier. Rafe, Danny, and the rest are P-40 pilots. Retraining them for a different single-engine fighter would take weeks. Getting them to the point of being able to get a multi-engine bomber off the ground, much less landing it without dying, would take months. The level of proficiency needed to launch a loaded B-25 from a Yorktown-class aircraft carrier would take years to achieve. Doolittle really was qualified in every plane the Army Air Corps had, but only because he was a freaking test pilot. Furthermore, the crews on the Doolittle Raid were specially selected for their experience and proficiency with the B-25, not for their willingness to take on a suicide mission. Rafe flying for the RAF in 1940 while still serving as an officer in the US Army Air Force obviously wouldn't happen, as that would be a clear violation of American neutrality.
3. When she capsized, USS Oklahoma did not turn 180 degree like what's depicted in the movie. She only rolled about 120 degrees before her superstructure came to rest on the shallow harbor bottom, with only the two starboard screws out of the water. Also, many of the more dramatic real life events aboard the battleships, (namely USS Nevada's attempted breakout and subsequent beaching, the emergency counterflooding to save USS West Virginia from capsizing, and the firefighting effort aboard USS California (whose magazines had to be flooded to save the ship from a catastrophic explosion)) are ignored. Which is ironic because West Virginia was Dorie Miller's ship.
4. The way Danny and Rafe fly, with zero maneuvering while flying on low altitude in a straight line while being tailed by Zeroes, would get them killed very fast in real life. It's only thanks to plot armor that the Zeroes somehow just keep missing. Rafe's line "We can't outrun them, we'll just have to outfly them!" is also pretty cringe-inducing, given that it is completely inverted from how the USAAF were supposed to dogfight Zeroes in P-40s, even at that point in the war: The P-40 was less maneuverable than the Zero, but could fly faster than it, meaning the best strategy was literally to outrun them and pick them off in fast hit-and-run attacks instead of trying to get into a turning dogfight with Zeroes, which is literally suicide. A little fun fact is, if you slow down the dogfight scenes (especially the "fly low to lure the Zeroes to collide"), you will notice that all aircraft does not have functional control surfaces, meaning they maneuver purely using the power of plot)
5. No carrier in the movie is accurate, since all have angled flight deck (which is only introduced after the war) and steel decks instead of wooden ones (only British carriers have armored flight deck in 1941). Then again, this movie isn't even trying to hide the rows of Spruance-class guided missile destroyers during the Japanese bombing scene, or the modern Kitty Hawk-Class supercarrier and modern attack sub accompanying the fleet during the Doolitle raid, or North Carolina-class battleship in one of the Japanese intelligence photos (she's not in Pearl Harbor at that time, she's on east coast (with USS Washington) still having her engine issues corrected), or even small things like the Arizona Memorial before she even sank, an M26 Pershing tank in stock footage (that tank isn't even on drawing board yet, the design started at 1942) and a large building with 'Est 1952' printed on the front
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The movie "The Wandering Earth" (2019) has stupidly ridiculous (and insulting) plot as if it's flipping the bird to the science itself before throwing it out of the window, and makes Deep Impact or Armageddon plot looks plausible by comparison. In the near future, the sun is exhausting its fuel, and will soon turn into a red giant, destroying the entire Solar System in three hundred years. Under threat of planetary annihilation, humanity bands together to construct 12,000 enormous "Earth Engines" on Earth's surface to propel it out of the Solar System to a new home (Alpha Centauri), Planetary Annihilation style. However, upon approaching Jupiter to make use of gravity assist, thousands of engines get knocked offline all across the globe, threatening to plunge the entire Earth into Jupiter
The idea that the entire Earth can be equipped with giant thrusters to push it out of orbit. The Earth Engines, each one is stated to be eleven kilometers tall, and the torque engines around the equator are even bigger. One Earth engine over Paris is shown to make the Eiffel Tower look like a blade of grass. There are ten thousand standard thrust engines and two thousand more torque engines. The 10,000 Propulsion Earth Engines are said to output a combined 150 trillion (1.5 x 10^14) tons of force to propel Earth to Jupiter's neighborhood in 17 years. However, according to NASA engineer John Elliot, this feat would require something more like 2.5 quadrillion (2.5 x 10^15) tons of thrust... FOR EACH OF 10.000 ENGINE
The Sun suddenly dying in a span of a few hundred years. In reality the sun would still shine for another five billion years. The technology (besides the Earth Engines) does not seem much more advanced than current modern era. The movie takes place in 2075, as shown by display monitor in one scene. This means that the Earth Engines were activated in 2058 at the earliest, since the prologue that takes place 17 years before shows the Earth in its usual position, before the engines were activated. In fact, Han Zi'ang states that no Earth Engine had failed in 30 years, which means that at least one was completed in 2045, and were being constructed earlier still
How the hell they carry a FREAKING MINIGUN as one of their loadout while they're transporting and replacing the engine's core!? What's the reasoning behind it!?. It is explicitly stated that due to the Earth Engines' influence, the planet's rotation stopped, causing tsunamis all across the globe, devastating the surface and forces humanity to live underneath each of the engine city. By that point there's nothing alive on surface, only perpetual darkness and eternal blizzard that flash-freeze anyone wandering outside without protective suit. If the reason for minigun is for self-defense, a handgun is more than enough. To hammer the point of stupidity even further, the only legitimate "target" that's being fired upon by said minigun is JUPITER, LOOMING IN THE SKY when one of the team member gets frustrated after losing the core and began cursing while firing on said planet
Since the Earth has stopped rotating and it is being propelled away from the Sun, only the northern hemisphere is exposed to sunlight, while the southern hemisphere, facing away from the sun, is in permanent night. Since the Earth Engines that push Earth are facing towards the sun, this means that most of the Earth Engines are on the lit side of Earth, with only the torque engines approaching the dark side. However, the engines are also mentioned to be powered by ordinary rocks burned using "heavy fusion" technology. From John Elliot from the same article as above, it would also take 95% of the Earth's mass to power the entire 4.3 light year trip to the Alpha Centauri system. By the time Earth reaches it's destination, there will be nothing left of it to be considered "planet" anymore
The "gravitational spike" that Jupiter causes. No, planets cannot randomly increase in gravity. What's even more stupid is, the solution to escape from Jupiter's gravity? Ignite the atmosphere of Jupiter to propel Earth away. Igniting Jupiter's atmosphere would cause a shockwave strong enough to wreck the entire Earth. The plan's outcome is even more devastating for the people on the surface of the planet. Assuming such a powerful explosion can even happen, an explosion powerful enough to push Earth away to allow it to overcome Jupiter's gravity while it's 30 minutes from breaching its roche limit would crush all the Earth Engines on the side of the planet that the shockwave hits, killing everyone who is currently on that side of Earth, sending shockwaves through the entire crust and probably caving in every underground city on the face of the globe, and leaving the world with one hell of a dent. Of course, none of that happens and Earth simply continues on its merry way.
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Any music from Two Steps From Hell, especially "Victory" and "Flight of the Silverbird"
If there's a music that makes me interested in spaceflight in the first place, that would be "Space Oddity" by David Bowie (Very appropriate when played during ascent stage or during idling in Kerbin orbit)
Also any random music that I found internet that has a melancholic, sad, epic or gothic genre
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Very cool space fighter launching and recovery process from Space Battleship Yamato
Launching:
Recovery:
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10 hours ago, cubinator said:
What would be the best way to get a message to 99.99% of all humans?
Want to send a message to the whole Earth that you're awesome, powerful and evil? Or maybe you just want to show to absolutely everyone on this planet about how much you care for your beloved? Just fire up your biggest laser cannon or longest-range missiles and use them to deface the Moon by blasting your face on Lunar surface or [INSERT YOUR MESSAGE HERE] onto it, just for the lolz. After all, the Moon has no weather or pesky tourists to mess it up... so any mark left on it, even if it's just etched into the dust, will probably remain there until the Moon itself is destroyed (or any lucky space objects impacting Moon's surface). Your message will be set in stone, literally (pun intended) pardon the cliché
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4 hours ago, Nightside said:
I should clarify - do submarines have lifeboats they can launch when under?
The single Soviet Mike-class submarine had an escape capsule, which was jettisoned upon its sinking in 1989. Some Soviet submarines like the Oscar-class submarines are rumoured to have escape capsules for the crew. (In the sinking of the Kursk the crew was unable to reach the capsule.) However, the Typhoon-class submarine is also rumoured to have escape pods located near or about the sail. Evidence for this can be found in a German documentary on the Typhoon-class submarine Severstal. Exploration submarine such as DSV Alvin also features detachable section which float to the surface in emergency situation
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4 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:
I assume you've read Winchell Chung's excellent Atomic Rocket website
Yeah, I've already read that. It's very addicting
(and I have difficulty in stopping)
3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:I'll add to what SOXBLOX wrote: in the space-warfare genre, the escape pods take the place of life rafts on past and present warships. As someone who's been on a present-day warship in a contested zone......
......
Hmmm... I see. So at least it has it's use to preserve the morale of the crew when things goes bad, to give them a sense of safety. Though in terms of escape pod design, I can't still take those godawful design of pods from Starship Troopers movie
1 hour ago, DDE said:Well, here's the thing: how do sci-fi space fighters dock?
I always cringe whenever I see space carrier have an actual runway as if it's a seaborne carrier. Artificial gravity might handwave the ship design to include such a feature, but since there's no gravity in space, the fighters can simply be ejected from hangar bays before firing off it's own engine (or use EM launcher to propel the fighters away from the carrier), unless the ship is designed to operate in atmosphere. If the gravity is a concern, then a simpler solution is to simply line up the launch bays' floor facing 'up' relative to the engine direction of the carrier. I find the hangar approach makes more sense than runway
3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:Which brings me to your Star Wars analogy; Lucas invented the ultimate terror weapon with the Death Star; a super-analog to the Nuke. The problem is, that any self-respecting galactic empire needs all the planets it can get, and unlike a nuke, zapping an entire planet into rubble is a colossal waste. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still cities. They're economically....
Yeah I just feel that the way planet destroying superweapons in SW plot is just used as an escalation device as the story progresses. Better take the planets and use it for your advantage rather than destroying it, unless it's something like Remina, then go bananas with your planet killers
5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:Btw, sea battles, like the space ones, also usually happen near some land mass, not somewhere in open space.
So, the lifeboats are the way to reach the nearest planet and wait for rescue.
Unless if said planet is a gas giant...
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As a writer and game designer Jim Cambias put it:
Quote"Why abandon a spaceship, however shot up or meteor-damaged it may be, just to hang around in a flimsy balloon or cramped pod? You're still on the same course, since no life pod can carry much delta-v, and the life-support problems are considerable. Why not include some kind of pressure balloon to provide temporary airtight containment in a hulled compartment and use the ship's own life-support? That way you get the ship's radiation shielding, power, etc."
"If it's a reactor emergency you're worried about, don't eject the crew in pods, EJECT THE REACTOR!"
"Actually, I realize perfectly well the purpose of life pods: it lets sf writers tell lifeboat stories in space."Does the concept of escape pod for spaceship in sci-fi makes sense in context? I mean, I know that spaceflight borrows a lot of nautical terms (hatch, starboard-port, -nauts suffix, etc.), but (obviously by borrowing the concept of lifeboat, but in space) does ejecting people in space in a tiny capsule with limited supplies (especially far away from home, and especially ejected towards the nearby planet which may or may not make survival situation even worse) is a wise move? (Doubly so for warships since you're ejected on combat area filled with debris and the aliens you're trying to repel may not think twice about shooting the escape pods, so you're not only want to get out of ship, but also from combat area ASAP). Should there be a 'safe room' (as Jim suggested) in ship to act as a safe haven for the crew during emergency or better yet, an escape shuttle (not pod) with enough Dv to maneuver around or even warp out of area. I know that ISS is equipped with Soyuz spacecraft for emergency escape, but it doesn't count in this subject because the planet it's orbiting is earth, so it's just one reentry away from home for the crew
Also, since a lot of sci-fi space battle involves ship classification based from navies (destroyers, cruisers, battleships), does the concept of carrier makes sense in space battle? (as in, a pure carrier which carries a lot of fighters and little to no offensive weapon except some point defenses). Carriers isn't intended to brawl face-to face with other ships, letting their squadrons do the offensive and their advantage is power projection, which allows them to cover large area, that's how carriers operate in naval battle. But in space, especially in sci-fi setting where FTL let capital ships jump in and out of engagement with little to no warning, a single capital ship jumped in right in face of carrier would shred it in no time, not to mention that since there's no earth's curvature of earth, there's no such thing as 'maximum range' for ballistic weapon, allowing the guns on space warhips to always keep the carriers on their sight. Or does Star Wars' approach is the one that makes sense? Namely, it's not a pure carrier, but a battlestar-type ship, which could brawl face to face and also carries a sizable fighter wings so they can act like a combination of battleship and carrier that can fulfill both roles (and weakness) but also not overly specialized (aka jack of all trades)
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If a person A hold person C as a hostage by him as human shield at gunpoint to threaten B to drop his weapon (a classic situation of 'drop your weapon or I'll kill him'), if B has been given clearance to kill A, disregarding what movies told us about this situation, if B shoot A's head directly that it causes an instant kill, is it possible to save C? After all, A has a gun pointed not at B, and in theory, shooting the head should kill A before he could pull the trigger. Does a human body has enough reaction speed to process 'I've been shot in the head, now I pull the trigger' before a person is actually 'dead'?. In real life, what will B do? (disregarding any external support such as snipers, etc.)
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Is it feasible to put an air filter on jet engine's intake to make it (at least when disregarding performance loss) capable of flight operation in airspace saturated with volcanic-ash. On a side note, why we can't put a wire mesh on jet engine's intake (like on F-117) to prevent it from ingesting debris (or people)?
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Okay, so let's assume these 2 situations:
1. Imagine you are at the maximum range of field artillery (let's pick 150mm caliber as an example). You cannot see the artillery, but you know it's pointed at you. The artillery fires a single shell at your position (and you know about it). Assume the shell landed dead center at your position (Target is stationary)
2. Imagine you are flying at supersonic speed. A missile is fired at you from the front beyond your visual range. The missile is supersonic too. Assume the missile hit your aircraft directly dead-on while in-flight (Target is moving directly for collision)
In these 2 situation, before the explosion happened, does human eyes has enough sensitivity to catch the glimpse of incoming shell and missile, process the image in the brain so you recognize it as such?
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15 hours ago, Codraroll said:
But if you didn't want your satellite to actually do anything...
Well they DO contribute in cluttering the orbit with useless junk, and when it impacts another satellite and causing a Kessler syndrome, the "contribution" could be far greater than what you would think
To quote the Wikipedia: "In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object that has been intentionally placed into orbit" ...then technically EVERY JUNK IN ORBIT IS A SATELLITE (and they don't do anything)
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26 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:
irc this was being discussed in this thread a month or two ago.
I didn't specify that one back then for orion drive application though
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The Orion Drive works by throwing nuclear bombs to explode behind the ship to provide massive propulsive power to the ship. I've read that Orion drive has one major engineering challenge to provide cushioning to dampen the shockwave from explosions in order to keep the G-forces for the crew at safe level. Since the system works by periodically throwing nuclear bombs behind, and since the explosion instantly provides a massive acceleration to the ship, this also means that the G-forces that's experienced by the crew is sudden (So.. for example, we're at 0G, then after the first bomb explodes, it's suddenly 9G, then 15G, then 17G... you get the idea). My questions is:
1. What would happen to human body if instantly exposed to high-G condition in space? (So far, the most common high-G effect that's experienced on earth is from intense maneuvering on aircraft, which is gradual increment instead of instantaneous)
2. Instead of making a dampening system to reduce the shockwave to a safe level for humans aboard, is it possible to just provides a dampening system just to keep the ship's structural integrity safe during acceleration while the crew uses liquid immersion to dampen the G-forces?
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Does muzzle-loading cannons (like those installed en masse on the broadside of sail-era warship and used in American civil war) has any kind of sighting system to aim the gun? Or is it simply just point a bunch of them in the general direction of the enemy, fire a barrage and hope for the best?
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What's the form factor that's more suited for stealth aircraft? Is it the highly jagged, angular form with no smooth curves or smooth curves blending the surface seamlessly with no angular sides? Because if we compare F-117 Nighthawk with B-2 Spirit, both are stealth aircraft, yet their body design seems follow different philosophy (highly angular shape vs smooth blending body respectively)
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The one improvement that I wanted for fairings is to let us type the number of fairing height like how some advanced tweakables can be configured by typing numbers instead of slider. That way, my space elevator could be completed by creating 100,000 m high structural part
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Is it possible for binary, trinary (or even higher) black hole system to exist (assuming all black holes are equal)?
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Is it possible to get radiation poisoning with lethal dose if you eat enough bananas?
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An object with a length of 500m and width of 250m that flies around the altitude of Karman line. Using naked eye, if you squint really hard, in broad daylight (assuming you're not blinded by the sun), could you actually see it?
Does a high altitude recon aircraft such as U2 or SR71 visible by naked eye (on their highest operational altitude) assuming you know where to look?
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29 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:
I don't see them dwelling in deserts at all..
Ever heard about Sand Cat? It lives on desert region far from water source (and it's not even a threatened species despite living on such environment)
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Are you seriously gonna use propeller boat for exploring Laythe? Not to be skeptical or what, but Laythe is like 80-90% water and it would take hours if not days going from 1 biome to another (back then my boat takes DAYS to travel around Kerbin, even with ramjet engine). You can use jets to power the boat, and it's much easier to set up
I think the main problem is that, the stock propeller blades isn't configured for water, and only intended as aircraft engine. You could try replacing the blades with wing parts with lifting surface and see what happen. You can also try rotating paddle configuration placed on the port and starboard side of the boat
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Varies due to my computer not powerful enough to run KSP with a truckload of mods. Most of them is just parts mod since I'm more interested in building stuff than exploring
For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted
The video is a sarcastic one, though. The full (actual) context is:
"Humanity has reached beyond the stars, then the warp gate systems collapsed, leaving many colonies isolated and fighting between each other for dominance. corporations on far reach of the colonies starts to make money from these conflict, supplying warships on several factions. War is just a business from them, and no one can deny or resist it. Since the collapse of galactic warp gates, the technological setback due to the lack of cutting edge technology and sufficient research facilities means that only frontier corporations holding the high-end stuff, which they keep for themselves. Their technology simply too arcane for the low colonies who's fighting between each other, leaving their ships and weapons systems technology safe from reverse engineering"