Spacescifi

Nice.... I was referring to supermarket sharp cheddar. Tillamook brand is my favorite, but others also suffice. I am not privy to gourmet cooking catalogs though. Now I am curious.... several times you said you were unattached (no significant other), and yet I am fully aware that several women I have spoken with WISH their man could cook instead of just them doing it. What I am implying is that there is no reason why you would stay single unless you wished to be.... since you have had relationships before. And no.... I am not hitting on you as I too am male. Yet I suppose that perhaps by now you are 'attached' since you keep mentioning 'we' and I am rather certain you DON'T mean the cats nor are you so egomanical that you refer to yourself in the the third-person like some cartoon villian.

While certainly doable in scifi I do not favor melding man and machine.... even at a distance because I reckon health would ve effected from all the signal radiation and it's strength as well. That is why I favor organuc computing.... since it is mostly made of organic material... only thing not so is the nanite structure that allows for 100 meter signaling and communication with other augments.

Another cool ability to have would be limited programming of the body. Like imagine if you could automatically program your body to fall asleep at a certain hour, or sing a tune you practiced that came out well.... so you do not have to try and potentially fail? All things you would learn normalky of course, but once learned you could use the LIA to help you recall them or even SAY OR READ it verbatim off the 'screen' you can see but normal humans cannot. Cheating on tests just reached a whole nother level I'm afraid ... at least for these guys and gals.

After watching a short scifi film, it dawned on me that information alone could be the biggest boon for a human to be born with.... along with assistance. Imagine if you will that you see an augmented scifi woman in a cafe appearing to scroll an imaginary touch screen in the air. You cannot see the touch screen so she looks silly to you, but she sees a transparent touch screen with information she is scrolling through. In addition she can vocally call her inner assistant by name and it would respond.... but only she could 'hear' it. The Life Inner Assistant would have several books pre-installed that she could read at leisure.... as well as 'space' to make notes or write a book. It could also record what you see and hear for future reference if you desired. And it could do calculations for you on sight or touch if desired.... such as measurements, heat, and pressure, and beats per minute for the heart. All you would have to do is put your finger on a pulse and either ask by 'air scrolling' or vocally to your LIA and it would give the correct answer. It could even teach you math, reading and writing... function as your alarm clock, or inform you of your health with specific data and advice in real time.... like you could program it to warn you to get some rest soon or else. In addition to that you could 'communicate' by 'air texting' to another augment.... so long you are within 100 meters of them. You could even send them video or text. You would have 100 GB of storage space to use. All of this in theory may be possible with an advanced form of organic computing... which is awesome because as you know.... organics can self-replicate and repair themselves. Machines..... not so much. If this were possible in a scifi story, and a whole species with this ability existed, they would have a significant advantage over your average humans. And yet all of those information extra perks should have an extra cost. Which I think would be sleep and wakefulness. Humans like to sleep 8 hours a day. Augments? Would only be awake for four hours before feeling tired enough to need four hours of sleep, which would mean they are awake 12 hours a day at intermittent intervals and asleep 12 hours a day as well. So average humans would at least be able to pride themselves on that if nothing else.

I think I saw it publicized that if you nuked an earthquake fault line you could trigger earthquakes or a volcano eruption. Of course even if you could, I reckon managing to hit just the right spot when more obvious targets are available would make it an unlikely target. Arguably the most lethal thing around are the nuke toting subs.... since the world could burn to the ground and they would STILL be around to finish the war.... or what's left of it anyway.

I think kerbiloid is referring to the 'volcanic winter' because it had been publicized that one of our mountains.... if turned into a volcano (something you could do potentially do with nukes) would be catastrophic for the US.... literally darkening the sky worse than a nuclear winter would do on it's own. As you said it is best such never occurs. Nuclear war is less about winning and more about putting your opponent on life support as it were, barely clinging to life. It's about damage, so I would not even rule out a second pandemic (engineered) to finish the job. Seriously. .. don't want nations doing their best to annihilate each other.

In theory it is possible to make a gun that shoots spider web or a synthetic or engineered equivalent. Unlike Spiderman's web shooters a webbing gun would be used mostly for esnaring it's victims. I am not entirely sure what it would take to make scaled up webbing shoot properly through a gun-like device nor am I sure anyone has tried. Nonetheless it would have novel applications Imagine a sticky webbing shot out to spread and ensnare the legs. A criminal runs but his legs are caught and he falls.... or the webbing merely sticks to his legs.... but also is stuck to the ground, so the criminal is as well until the police catch up with him. Just thought webbing guns could be far more realistic than spiderman's tiny web shootere. A webbing gun would be a medium to big gun, and I am rather certain organic webbing at this scale is a no-go, so likely some synthetic variant with much the same properties could be made. After all we make thread and clothing from plastic (polyester), so making a sort of synthetic webbing should be possible.

This video made me shudder. I was literally saying "No!" and it only got worse. The worst and most scary moment was the nuclear fallout clouds. I used to think I could perhaps survive, but based on this and where the nukes are hitting.... my chances of not surviving via radiation poisoning would be high.... assuming anarchy did'nt end me first. Interestingly enough.... the most powerful nations are turned to ash.... leaving the less developed ones as the only remaining nations not nuked silly. Let us hope this never occurs.... because if so I would be unlikely to survive (not only me of course... but it's quite sobering to realize I live in a 'strike zone'). And while I do not live in the UK.... it's small enough that I am certain that a nuclear exchange coukd easily render it uninhabitable for some time.... unless living in bunkers counts for something

I figured everything dies more or less somehow. Natural physical systems are often the way they are because other ways would be a disaster or would not work.

Congrats then... wait... are you the one with the wife who you also met because she was a classical pianist or something? Multi-talented wife? You hit the jackpot did'nt you? Or was that someone else?

Awww.... I answered this once. Everything dies everywhere. Infinite light speed means light from the sun won't have time to diffuse before it hits earth, same goes for all the stars. Imagine everything everywhere being lased with lasers as hot as the surface of stars.... EVERYWHERE!

Oh my.... you guys would have survived just fine 200 years ago with all the cooking skills you have. Although you would sorely miss the instapot. Either that or you somehow beat Edison and make and get an electric patent.... all to get your beloved insta-pot back! That would make for one amusing time travel story. The alternative to fancy quick technology way way way back in the day was of course manpower, popularly levied via nonpaid labor.... and I reckon you would.... as most would... be uncomfortable at the thought. Are'nt we glad we have tech?

Thanks... the irony is that during creation it can be so easy to overlook possible uses of a scifi technology because of it's limitations. For example, although increasing the reflective nozzle surface is a thrust multiplier, it too has limits. Why? If you're not emitting enough repulsor rays to adequately 'push off' the nozzle then it would be just more dead weight to push.... lowering overall thrust. So what I am saying is that the bigger the nozzle the more repulsor rays are required to get the max thrust such a nozzle can can actually yield... otherwise it would be underpowered not utilizing it's max potential. Actual repulsor missiles would also exist, and due to a larger power plant than the tiny darts they can zoom along at 30g continually and go 60g for for a temporary period before releasing radiator fins to cool down. So perhapd the greatest irony of repulsor ray technology is that bigger is always better for speed so long it's unmanned. The main limit on acceleration is sheer waste heat from generating the repulsor rays for high thrust for heavy spaceships... NOT the mass of them. The larger the ship the more resources it has to deal with waste heat efficiently. So what I am getting at is there is no reason why unmanned drone ships could not go faster than both missiles and darts.... 50g large unmanned spaceships! 80g max but only for short periods before radiating the heat away. With unmanned large spaceships that move faster than missiles and darts it would fundamentally change the traditional view of space combat. Missiles and darts could take out slower targets, but the speedy 50g unmanned large vessels would probably be only efficiently killed by massive laser stations in orbit or from a moon base. Or if the drone flew close enough to get 'smashed' by a several giant converging repulsor 'search lights' emitting from a moon base. EDIT: Scratch that.... if you want to kill spaceships at range most efficiently you need an antimatter particle beam fired at near lightspeed. No doubt such would be a power hog, but core world defense stations could afford them. So the irony is that repulsor ray drives actually makes defense as valid an option in space combat as offense... since unlike IRL incoming objects can be deflected or even crushed by repulsor rays.

inverse square law applies... it is behaves like light in virtually all respects, although it's repulsion does drop off dramatically. Three ways to increase max thrust/range of repusor rays. 1. Add more electric power to produce more repulsor rays (brighter). This has energy production and waste heat limits 2. Reflectors increase thrust artficially, the bigger the surface the more the max thrust is increased. SSTO large vessels typically use both methods 1 and 2. 3. Reduce mass.... obviously hardly much of an option for large heavy vessels.... and even the ones that are cannot compete with 'dart swarms' (ny name for the pencil swarms).

That is clever, but it would only work if you are flying away from the pencil swarm and it is chasing you. Why? Like normal light 'repulsor light' will spread with distance.... and it's repulsion decreases dramatically at range from it's source. So much so at that at a kilometer out you would only feel a gentle breeze from the rays in some cases depending on the size of the nozzle... but if you were right up next to the nozzle... especially a rocket sized one for SSTO spaceships... you would be quite dead after being blown away literally and likely dying via lithobraking... though I reckon the initial blast might snap necks before one hit the ground anyway. Second example: Disco ball loses likely. If a pencil swarm is coming head on then their sheer momentum may be too high even for a ship to repel them with multiple repulsor nozzles used to ward them off. Remember that spaceships due to sheer mass have lower accelerations (often 3g for manned and 10g for unmanned vessels that have been made as light as possible with only essentials they need). A repulsor beam would be ideal of course.... but so far I have more or less canceled such a concept... since I have no idea how it would look since repulsor rays can be emitted from a lens but after that if another lens is between it and the chamber it came from it would only repel (*blast*) it into shrapnel. So I figure using them in nozzles is about the best the aliens who made themcan do... unless you are also clever enough to figure a way to make a repulsor beam even though it cannot actually go through any lens to be focused after emission.... it would just repel. In theory a race with precise artificial gravity manipulation and control could create a repulsor beam if they got their 'hands' on the technology.... but not all aliens in the setting I am dreaming up use repulsor ray propulsion, just the main one in the story. Artificial gravitational lensing I presume could be used to make a repulsor beam.... but the main aliens in the story do not have that. 1g acceleration is good enough. Quite clever idea though... the disco repulsor ball drone, and defense repulsor turrets! I had not thought of all that and will adopt it. Thank you! Basically, the larger your nozzle the further the distance the repulsor rays will go without weakening as fast. So in theory.... yes, moon bases could have a few giant nozzle turrets to blast any number of 'pencil swarms' that came it's way. Although the caveat is that if the pencil swarm is moving at a significant portion of lightspeed I am not sure what would happen. I reckon the pencil swarm would either be crushed by the oncoming long range repulsor rays or just plow through them and obliterate the mega nozzle turrets and the moon base. At least now I know all spaceships using repulsor ray drives have very good reason for using one big nozzle instead of multiple smaller ones. And for a bonus the main engine nozzle should be capable of thrust vectoring (tilting the nozzle under thrust). That would keep the pencil swarms at bay if not slow them down altogether if chasing a repulsor ray spaceship.

Quite right.... an armored nose ICBM that releases a swarm of missiles when the nose is lased enough... or whenever fleet command tells it to. Ultimately how far one can minaturize torch drive missiles will decide how much less effective PD is. For example... in the setting I have dreamed up rocket engines are history.... replaced by repulsor ray engines. Which use bell nozzles that are mirrored inside with a lens down the throat that emits 'synthetic light', an artificial form of optical radiation that is extremely repulsive to all normal mass. Reflecting off mirrors increases the maximum thrust virtually for free, so that is why spaceships using it use reflective mirrored surfaces inside their nozzles. It's like a torch drive on steroids, since the power required is not a lot but you get a lot. it's energy use is the same as for any equivalebt bright flashlight running continuously. Here's the real end of virtually all other weapons though. Why? Pencil size repulsor missiles zooming around at 30g. Carried by a an ICBM of sorts that launches a whose swarm of them once near enough to it's target. It does not matter if your warship is unmanned and can endure high accelerations.... since whatever they are they will not match a swarm of 30g pencil size missiles launched a few thousand or less kilometers away. Plasma PD would wreck them of course, but not if they spread out enough One thing gaming taught me is that sometimes THERE IS NO FIRING SOLUTION. in some circumstances you will get hit no matter what and your best defense would have been not to be there in the first place!

Well for what it is worth it hardly seems a capitol spaceship killer. Since I reckon that TNT damage goes down dramatically at far range. Yet it does illustrate what could be possible. I think the end result would be much like lasers. You want mega effective range? Then you need a giant powerplant and radiators. At least you do not also need a large focusing lens like a laser would need. Again.... it's best used as a forward or rearward weapon. Cheap will beat expensive at the ranges the plasma railgun does heavy damage if enough missiles are launched. So ultimately, in a setting with limited fuel... plasma railguns are great, since all spaceships are glass cannons anyway.... and cannot maneuver for long before running out of fuel. Yet in a constant high acceleration starship setting.... plasma railguns are best used for defense, since a swarm of high thrust constant acceleration missiles could in theory overwhelm it's firing solution. Yet in scifi it is quite possible to have an uber plasma railgun that just kills missiles when they get too close. Who needs shields when you have a plasma railgun that is like a relativistic shotgun at close range? Perfect point defense.

In a previous thread I discussed an overpowered railgun, and quickly learned that the materials would not survive the launch.... namely the projectile, and it would also need to be a ridiculously long coilgun or railgun. This was due to the fact that moving mass to relativistic high speeds requires a lot of energy. Plasma on the other hand is less dense than gas if I recall correctly, so shooting it via a coil or railgun up to extreme speeds (from LEO to the moon in 30 seconds) ought to require a gun that is smaller and shorter than the previous monster. Yet the effective range due to plasma spread would be much less. I presume that the only good use for coilgun plasma or railgun plasma cannon is if they can be made for point defense at short range. The ability to spread would be a boon at that point since the plasma would hit more incoming missiles or projectiles. So perhaps plasma weapons are far better at defense than offensw in space... scifi is wrong again eh? Still a power hog, but all starships with FTL are anyway. It would also have to be rapid fire. Only better than traditional PDC in that it has longer effective range and does more damage the closer something is.

Perhaps future RTG's can be made smaller? Although I am also aware that some things do not scale well down and others do not scale up well

The cooler part is that RTG's are not hazardous to humans nearby unless you literally take them apart, grind up, and inhale the fuel pellets. Which no sane person would do. So the android could work around humans without issue. Humans would have to be suited for cold weather though, since I am not sure what temperature the android would need not to overheat from the RTG, but I reckon refigerator cold levels are in order..... since the android will overheat at the same temperature that a human would.

I do not have any recommendations per se, but Bestbuy stores (if one is nearby) will sell you a gamepad for considerably less. Joysticks can be bought for less than a hundred but they tend to break from use easily (the rotating ball). I am not anti-joystick, I just know of too many cases where they broke... I have never, ever had a gamepad break on me and I was a die-hard nearly *liquid* myself gamer growing up. Think about it.... joystick makers have little incentive to make joysticks NOT break. Gamepads due to design cannot break easily, because mashing buttons is an easier affair than a rotating ball with pressure on it. No matter what you buy you will have to configure it. Google will help but the OS you use matters. Ubuntu will have records of lines of code you can copy to configure directly into the system for you... windows I am not sure but likely a bunch of downloade and a bit of configuring through a GUI.

Scenario: An android is capable of eating human food but it simply converts it into electricity for it to use instead of digesting it the way we do. Nonetheless the android must still 'liquid' and do number 2 to get rid of waste from eating and must sleep like a normal human. Alternately the android can use it's own nuclear reactor (a small one that fits inside it's humanoid body) for electricity. When using the reactor the android does not have to sleep or eat, as the reactor provides all it's energy needs. The only risk it runs is overheating because a NUCLEAR REACTOR is running inside them. So they must be in cold environments to compensate or else they would die from heat exhaustion. And also avoid humans for fear of radiating them. Main question: Provided the android has the same energy needs as a human and was living in some frigid icy location... like Antartica,.... would a nuclear reactor small enough to fit inside the human body provide enough energy for him to to do what humans do.... or will hw behave and have only the energy level of ninety year old? Why do I have the amusing feeling that the energy a small nuckear reactor like that would put out may not be enough to match daily human energy needs. What I mean is enough energy to perform like a twenty year old. Coukd nuclear do that or not?

I read online that the culture uses drugs that can induce or inhibit certain emotions so as to keep all but the most stubborn happy. There is even a gruesome account of the culture sending an semi-sentient weapon disguised as a pretty female to eliminate an assassin.

Gamepad controllers are cheaper still if you don't mind.... just putting it out there. Don't know where you live.... but in the USA $100 is not much money, especially when working full-time. So if you are not then I could see how it could be expensive to you, when it is not so much if you have the money for it. But if you don't.... then work for it. Not old enough? No problem. You could teach english online to some other country, or tutor some kids online. So many options that will pay you in experience that will serve you well even when not playing KSP.

Yeah... in the absence of a good speech writer a US president may be at a loss... especially if based on a certain IRL history president or two after JFK..... lol. He may have to defer to a more eloquent speaker and just look imposing/impressive/important behind him/her lol.