Spacescifi

Omitting the vampire part, what you said is true... besides, if it were true that would make you one as well if I am not mistaken.

You are absolutely right. In moderation it's fine, but too much is lethal. In California it is so hot you need only to put your arm out the window as you drive to feel a burning sensation on your skin. You could cook eggs without power if you have a cast iron pan and put it outside where the sun hits hardest.

Oh I get that (I understand). Maybe the difference between a tanned face and a pale body is so jarring to look at in the mirror that they rather just do the full body tan. Maybe that's it? Since for anyone with naturally tan colored skin, the difference is no where near as pronounced.

Help me understand please. I am at the gym and have seen several people walk into the tanning rooms. As I am not white I have no need for tanning, but I tend to wonder why they want it knowing there are dangers/risks. So perhaps you could enlighten me? My thoughts on why: 1. A perception of beauty. Women dye their hair blond and tan to get that Barbie or Baywatch look at the beach or gym. Guys? I dunno really, I guess they like the look. Even my boss says he needs a tan when he looks at his pale legs when wearing shorts. 2. They either minimize the danger of UV lamps in their heads or think a few times won't kill them. Or they know a Barbie-like friend who tans all the time and they are'nt dead so it must be OK right? 3. I dunno, but maybe some dislike how pale their skin is and wish it were golden or orange, thus the tanning booth popularity. Ironically in some Asian countries lightening their skin to make it pale is what they do to look beautiful. 4. They are fine with pale skin but like having the option of changing their skin and hair color like a chameleon. Since I am not white but know my mindset, I can say honestly I would not use tanning booths if I was. And if friends mocked ne for being pale and I grew tired of it I would just work outside, mow the lawn or go outside more. Or I would just ignore it or say "So? Cancer and me are not exactly BFFs." Thoughts?

Interesting that you mention 3d printing... that sounds more gross than a maturation chamber but also kind of cool. Like a body assembly line line with ready made parts you just attach already made. Cool. Horrifically cool!

Interesting.... and no I did not even know about the book... I was just brainstorming. Strangely, without even knowing about the adult dummy syndrome you just mentioned I already had a baked-in solution of sorts.

Scenario: How many times have you seen birthing/maturation chambers that grow an infant to an adult body in a matter of hours or days at most? In scifi? Do you think this is remotely possible? My thoughts: Yes.... a remote yes though. Factors involved: 1. God mode bio-engineering. The ability to create whole new designer species is a prerequisite. Whatever body made must be DESIGNED for rapid maturation inside the chamber but somehow go back to normal aging time when released. 2. No human size normal body has the energy or nutrients to grow from infancy to adulthood in hours or even days. The chamber must supply all of that, and the bioengineered body must be designed to take such concentrated energy and nutrients inside a relative short window of time. Doubts: Perhaps a body of flesh could absorb all the nutrients and energy required to grow it to adulthood in hours... but I reckon it would need cooling to avoid overheating. Thoughts on this subject?

I know a little already... suffice to say he relies on pure fiction scifi shields to compensate... without which missile swarms could and would make all his battleships virtually obsolete and little more than missile buses.

Thing is, that fundamentally changes the battle. Probably makes it kind of one sided too. Assuming the enemy fleet has competent command and running out of fuel is not an issue then there is almost no way in which they will lose against a foe who has limited fuel supply that will run out sooner than later in battle. How does fuel no longer being an issue effect the battle? 1. Repeat strafing. The fleet could split up into multiple divisions or wings and laser anything in range at a light second out. This is an optimal strategy too since the defenders cannot really afford to chase down an enemy fleet with virtually unlimited fuel. 2. What this means is the enemy can do drive-by laser zapping all day long and at a range where the defenders are unlikely to hurt them. In the scenario where both offender and attacker have both have virtually unlimited fuel then what that does to effect the battle depends on whether or not missiles also have unlimited fuel. If they do then space battleships become extinct like dinosaurs since missile swarms would outrun and overwhelm them as well as be cheaper. If only ships have unlimited fuel then what happens is fleets can chase each other indefinitely across the solar system, and spaceships also become massive RKVs that make moon bases nearly undefendable from attack as well as make leaving on a planet less safe.

Scenario. You have torchships. So does the enemy fleet you are fighting. However once they have warped into your solar system you really have no idea how much propellant the enemy fleet has in their tanks left, and if you knew that you could plan your attacks to exploit it. What you know: Classified intelligence from ten years ago shows that the enemy has torchships that can burn through their propellant at 1g in 4 hours. You currently have torchships that will burn all their propellant at 1g in 1 hour. They have 200 torchships, you have 188. They have FTL jumped near Mercury and are headed toward your fleet which is orbiting Mars. Enemy vessels are known to have and use Ravening Beam Of Death laser cannons that can burn through steel a light secomd out. Your vessels use mainly use macron (dust) cannon and missiles, as well as railguns. What you don't know: If the enemy has vessels more advanced since your intel is a decade old. What do you do? A: "Hey guys, it's just a misunderstanding? Can't we all just... get along?" B: "Let's get our most brillant minds and think up some solutions and win this thing!" C: Attack and hope for the best . Maim Question: Is the unknown delta V factor not a big deal, especially for long range combat?

Okay then. This definitely should have a bearing on scifi SSTO design then. Reaction Control System rockets in scifi may be higher thrust especially with high mass vessels like the battlestar galactica or a star destroyer. I know they don't use or show it onscreen, but given their mass, would not their RCS have to be throttled just like main engines? Due to the sheer mass being pushed (9000 tons or so). Also I assume with torchdrive rockets, toggling full thrust on and off might be easier. Why? Less propellant is required for thrust, which means less pressure on the turbopump etc right when full thrust is toggled on and off right?

I often see large heavy rockets like what Elon is doing gradually throttle down instead of just shut off. Is it possible to just shut down a rocket at fulk thrust or do you have to gradually throttle it down? RCS thrusters are usually not made to be throttled and have static thrust so they are made to be turned on and off at will.

I have given much thought to the look of RCS on space vessels and the reasons behind it. Specifically for large classic scifi SSTO vessels. At first I wondered why often RCS is shown as nozzles dotted into the hull itself spaced apart, or sometimes in rows, but never clustered into some circular port. Why? Two reasons come to mind. 1. RCS may draw it's propellant from a main tank that feeds all of them... even if they have a few smaller auxilliary tanks nearby. 2. For large SSTOs, you may want to cover the nozzles on the roof of your hull to protect against hail, snow, and debris while landed on a planet. This is easier to do with metal doors if nozzles take up less space such as with linear ports or simply spacing out nozzles embedded into the hull. But a circular port with a cluster of nozzles would by extension require a broader door to cover it from rain/hail/dust on the rood while landed. IRL I never see a cluster of nozzles used for RCS, only main engines, but if you are using multiple nozzles anyway for RCS, why not cluster them in their respective areas? Probably for aesthetics? I dunno? Looks ugly? Any functional reason? Like if you have 4 thrusters each for yaw, roll, and pitch, is there any advantage/disadvantage of clustering them in their areas VS spreading out their thruster locations more? Maybe it has to do with maneuverability I dunno and COM.

If they were real and just as incompetent, then they would inadvertently cause a The Road Not Taken scenario to occur as we assimilate their technology and conquer the stars with it after stomping them with a mere Windows virus.

My scifi q-laser is not visible from the sides, since most of it's energy is exotic and extreme repulsive force. Only if you look straight at a beam can you see it but you would literally be blown up anyway if not at a far enough distance for the beam to spread out and weaken. It's a messy way to go as it desposits virtually all it's energy as repulsive force.

Well... I don't have to work.. I could live on the streets and eat out of garbage cans... but I don't want to. I work because the benefits outweigh any conflicts or dumpster fires I have to deal with around abrasive personalities at work. In the same way, the benefits of being connected to the greater galactic community must outweigh the unevitable conflicts that arise from simply being connected to a wide range of personalities and interests. You see... the poor are at the mercy of the wealthy... that is why they beg so often. The way I see it, life is made of the haves and the have nots, and it is always better to have than not. Some aspire to work to have what they want legally, others want to take it by force.

Scenario: We have a scifi Q-laser blaster. It fires an exotic laser beam which has extremely high repulsive force. Sounds like a loud crack since lasers obviously break the sound barrier but this one is far more interactive with mass. Because of the smaller size of the power supply, the discharge of it's energy occurs faster than larger power supplies that spaceships use. 30 seconds of continous zapping will drain your power completely, so pulse firing is recommended. How powerful is a single zap? Same power as a grenade blowing up on something at point blank range. Cannot be throttled down. Note of caution: If your gun is somehow blown up it will detonate your remaining energy supply in the gun. Question about utility: How and when would such a gun be used? I do not see it being standard issue because it is dangerous. Maybe only special tactical forces would use it or specially trained military but that's it. I don't see them used in random fire fights where you care about collateral damage. If you don't care about collateral damage and leaving craters then this is the perfect weapon though.

Let's look at this as a microcosm shall we? At work there are people we tolerate only because we have to, and people we actually like. War in nature with animals is often about dominance, who gets to have control over this or or access over that. For animals and humans the two great drivers are a desire for food and the desire to reproduce to continue the species (pretty nifty that we are made to enjoy the very thing that keeps us around and not extinct). Yet humans are more complex and have wars of dominance simply to decide who is on top. Even at work we face this... new guy on the job does well and as all of a sudden is trying to show dominance to guys who have been there before him by trying to make them obey or follow his lead. Me? I don't follow anyone unless it makes sense to me... and I don't care if they whine and get annoyed at me in the process of failing to dominate me. I may not be on friendly terms with coworkers who would love to dominate me instead, but I am no one's lapdog nor doormat and if they have a problem with that so be it. War is like that. On a macro scale. Bring. It. On.

I am no expert and I know many of you are better informed on this, but from what I have read, moving magnetic fields creates an electric field, leading me to believe that whenever Magneto does some stupendous feat with metals, they are all electrically charged. In other words, he can turn ANY ferromagnetic metal into an electromagnet or any part or parts of it, and also direct it with moving magnetic fields he can create and move at will. Results? If you touch it you probably die from electric shock. It's not in comics or TV, but it is an example of how mixing reality/fiction makes everything twice or thrice as dangerous/deadly.

On an earlier thread we established that if we could move space past a spaceship at FTL speeds so we did not actually have to move the ship itself, you would have to be moving space incredibly fast to see stars streak across the screen as in scifi. Much faster than 1 LY per hour which is actually above average warp for some scifi universes. Instead you would just see the stars slowly crawl past the side view, not so much the forward view. Main Question: I hear space is near empty but not totally. Let's assume a spaceship can move space past it at 1 LY per hour. How much hydrogen gas and dust will be hitting the ship's deflector field per second? How would it look? Would there be enough to make it look like the ship was flying through a billowing cloud of fog through space on the view screen? What if the deflector field ionized the gas and dust hitting it? How would that look? Since space has hydrogen in it, I presume... a billowing cloud of pink plasma would be left in the ships wake perhaps, only to later cool and no longer be visible to the naked eye. Thoughts?

Please explain it to me... because I can think of a few but that won't mean I am correct. 1. Cars that speed up in a parking lot knowing full well they have to slow down soon... they often do this when no car is visible ahead of them. It is foolish because of how fast that can change... because it's a PARKING LOT. 2. Cars that drive ultra slow whenever they get near their destination, blaring gangster rap the whole way to the parking spot, also blaring it while parked. After about 10 minutes of this they finally get out. 3. Cars that rev their engine while parked, before speeding off inside the parking lot. My guesses: 1. Lack of self/emotional control, also impatient. 2. They destroyed their hearing and need to blast music to hear it at all. Maybe on some level they think or like to think they are making an entrance. One time I simply passed a guy doing this.... thinking to myself, I have to be at work! The earlier the better! I don't have time for this foolishness! 3. Attention. They want it. In all cases these folks display a certain selfishness and it would do them well and make the world more tolerable and safer if they embraced being selfless a bit more. With age they usually do, since with age you simply cannot afford to do the things you used to get away with. Not forever anyway. Thoughts?

Wisest saying I have seen in days! And for me it especially rings true since all my family belongs to a high control religious group that tells them to keep little to zero contact with any family or anyone else who has left it (me). It's a captive organization, since if you choose to leave... as I did, you lose everything. But at least I am free... and get to have my own opinion... and that's priceless.

Wait... what about North Korea lol? Ever see Iron Sky? This part was hillarious... and frankly has some basis in reality with how nations actually are:

Realistically how much a spacecraft manuevers and how fast depends on the the power limits of the propulsion system and how much fuel/propellant is available for it. Because of this, quanity is roughly as good as quality in space war, since given the extreme velocities involved and the total lack of scifi forcefield bubbles to protect spaceships from attack., a bunch of less expensive weaponry will easily wreck the most expensive space vehicles and infrastructure we can make. In real life, space infrastructure would be the target of space wars, since barring safe torchdrive SSTOs, you need it to even make a beachhead in space colonization or even for ISRU. In such a case, I honestly think swarms of small spacecraft with nuclear or plasma drives, slow though they be, would dominate space war. Since they are the one thing you do not need space infrastructure to put them into orbit. It may take months or years, but once the swarm arrives it's space station or moon base target is as good as dead, unless it has good enough defenses, but offense is much easier than defense in space so the odds are against defense really. In scifi spaceships often have near or unlimited delta V while missiles are always limited. If such were true, then spaceships could evade most hostile encounters by simply avoiding or evading them altogether Battles would only be forced around space or orbital infrastucture spacecraft are seking to protect. One thing scifi often gets wrong about torchdrive spaceship battles is that it would be more about space jousting and drive bys than anything else. If a fleet is going to strike your moon base or your orbiting station the safest way is to fly fast while doing a drive by, since the slower they fly the more time the base or the orbiting station has to destroy them. Which means, amusingly enough, that instead of being pounded on by a fleet hovering above you, it will zoom past while blasting you, and then take probably hours to retroburn to make another pass and do it all over again!

This should be an interesting scenario. A scifi alien humanoid of average weight and size for a human will eat 300 pounds of food in a single sitting at breakfast, which will keep them feeling full until lunch. 300 pounds is more than people of average weight weigh. If they eat lunch it will be about the same amount lest they start feeling hungry at dinner time. For dinner they eat a bit less (100 pounds) and then go to bed feeling satisfied, so long they ate heavy with breakfast and lunch. When they have to use the restroom they excrete normal human amounts of waste... which means most of the food they eat is being metabolized into energy. If this is so for a person of average weight, how much stronger/faster would they be to a normal human? It goes without saying they would starve to death much faster, and unless their blood was thick as glue it would also beat much faster I imagine. Would their body become impractically hot metabolizing so much food into energy? Thoughts? EDIT: Assuming scifi aliens with high appetites like this existed, I imagine meal time would be taken far more seriously... meaning longer lunch periods, and little to no talking while workers chow down. I would expect most workplaces to have in house cafeterias to feed workers on site too. And since starvation is a very real possibity if one skips even a few days of eating, fasting would likely be seen as torture to them if not alien in concept altogether. Thoughts?