Spacescifi

Suppose someone gave the USA a battery that could be charged with and store 3000 terawatts. The battery would also be capable of discharging the power at ANY ratio... including 100% (not recommended for staying alive reasons). Like real batteries, too much heat can cause the battery to combust, unlike real batteries, it suffers no extra heat during discharge, but can take on extra heat from it's environment (like whatever it is attached to that is heated from the discharge of energy). So how useful is this impossible battery? Ideally you would have super materuals that could survive high discharge rates (but if we had that we would also have fusion so... ), but since we do not... what can we do and how far can we utilize this impossible tech?

Doubt we will have fusion reactors in say... Somalia etc. Given the heat loads, I reckon a great amount of steam would be billowing into the air constantly. Whether or not it adds to global warming depends on how powerful the fusion reactor is and how many of them are available.

You are referring not to HLHL, but VLHL. I do agree on low grav airless worlds that VLHL is very much possible and practical. On Earth or similar though... or going to an Earth analogue, it would seem you are better off, for the sake of simplified engineering and less possible points of complexity that can fail... to use wholly either HLVL or VLVL. For HLHL ramps are a possibility to reduce runway size, just burn for a some seconds, let inertia take the HLHL vehicle up the ramp till it is vertical and burn upward into the sky. Landing would involve standard gliding and runways or could involve the ocean if an amphibous vehicle. VLVL is something Elon has well covered though I think... unless anyone has anything to add to it who is not Bezos...

I am referringto horizontal launch/landing versus all vertical ones with spaceflight. It seems going either all vertical or all horizontal is the best approach for either. Thoughts: VLVL can work anywhere, whereas HLHL does not work so well in places with low atmosphere since often HLHL relies on wing interaction to glide or guide to a safe landing. The main advantage of HLHL is easier egress of cargo and personal before launch.... something one may want with a mature future regular manned presence in space, but not now. Now what do you know?

Metalkic hydrogen or some similar future uber non radioactive propellant would work. Just be huge ship is all.

I know... I an just saying how a torchship will actually look... using known physics. Regnerative cooling and a high propellant flow rate are known ways of keeping the nozzle from melting. Alternately... the irony is that torchships begin to have a lot in common with project Orion. They scale up great, but they don't scale down well without melting or ablating.

While I am aware why 2 staging is superior, if we actually did have rocket engines powerful enough to enable SSTO's, would they not be huge? Which is ironic since smaller nozzles are preferred for launch, but a heavy SSTO would likely need a big nozzle to diffuse the torchship heat from melting it. I suppose with torchship energies, launching with a giant vacuum nozzle into orbit is your only option, since smaller nozzles may melt. Why make heavy torchship SSTO's? Seems to me SSTO's are basically best for ferrying or shuttling payloads to or from planets. SSTO' torchships should NOT be designed for long distance cruising in space. Rather actual long distance space cruisers should be 2nd stage vehicles. While SSTO's should be shuttle ships, but huge, unlike the tiny van-size ones Star Trek uses. Likely real future spaceships will be stacks or racks of spaceships linked together, detaching at will for whatever mission is required. There won't be jack of all trades vessels, rather, spaceships will be like a combo pizza or swiss army knife with various tools... in this case ships of various kinds will link as a supership. No mothership, just a bunch of ships stacked or linked together, because in space you can link stuff on indefinitely... so long the inertia load is not greater than engine thrust. You have endless amounts of free space... may as will use it efficiently. You do not need a big cargo hold in space since you can literally just link up with anything you want. The only ship that needs a large cargo hold IS an SSTO. Scifi miseducates the public in so many ways it's not funny. Everyship needs a cargo hold in pop scifi... when in reality it pays to optimize space only ships and then shuttle only ships. Huge Shuttle SSTO freighters will be a thing. Millennium Falcon? No. Since making a full on optimized war vessel would do better than an SSTO optimized for doing SSTO with weapons added on as an after thought.

You don't need a gigantic gravity ring to get gravity from rotation... all you need is to separate the main ship into halves with a kilometer long tether and rotate the halves at 1 RPM (1 rotation per min). Only downside is you can only do this while drifting... not accelerating.

So you are saying bones that adjust their metal crystals to magnetize or demagnetize at will? Clever, but I don't really need a fully magnetic skeleton, and not sure if doing that at a crystal method is harder biologically than some other method. At any rate, thank you and others for input. At least I know the idea is somewhat plausible with permanent magnet looping more than electromagnets. For biologic magnets

Nice... so I can use this instead of electromagnets. So they will lose the shock ability, but will retain the suction plate glow via bio-luminescence when the magnetic field aligns. They will use a type of chemical permanent magnetic fluid that is flows back to their bones when they do not want to do the magnet trick. Their bones likely have a lot of metal content too... with lots of iron. Likely have to be some weird alien bones that grow and repair like normal bone but heavier and more durable. Harder to break.

Not sure why you presume a higher iron content implies they would not have to mine and process it like we do. Giving them niche abilities does not mean they will be incredibly useful right away. In fact without processing iron the only ability that they really can still utilize is electric shock. Rust is not magnetic, however if the rust is not fully rusted it still will be attracted. Take a magnet near partially rusted metal and you may be pleasantly surprised how much rust... that still has some ferromagnetic qualities in it... is attracted. I know this from experience. As a kid I killed a bug with nothing but rusted metal dust and a donut magnet. Dusted it with so much rust that his body BECAME attracted to the magnet as some of the metal became stuck in folds and creases. It died... for science. After being drawn to, sucked, and finally colliding with the magnet one too many times. I am not convinced gecko feet are an option to retain humanoids similar to us. Sure if you lower the weight, but I was not doing that, since they would have to be smaller or else more hollow. At first I thought it would be cool to shoot lightning too from the sucker plates... but I though that stretches plausibility too far. Shocking via touch is fine. Also I presume shocking in water is to be avoided for obvious reasons.

Rare? It has iron concentrations similar to a planet in our own solar system! It's like a 1g mars with breathable air and plant and animal life imported over. Adhesion while retaining the humanoid look is simply impossible. Why? Surface area required to adhere is greater than hand width, and even high tech adhesive tech we have made is still wider like basketball wide). Magnetic is the only way to retain the human form.

They were settled millenia on the 1g world they call their homeworld. Unlike Earth it has a lot more iron, so much that the planet has orange soil and yellow plants and grass all over. From space people would see a lot of yellow, with blue ocean and patches of orange deserts. All life on the world was settled there... nothing is actually native living there. as the planet itself was one of many that was terraformed ages ago. The environment has enough iron in it that does not take long for the humanoids living there to figure out they can stick to ferromagnetic metals. As an ability, it most useful for niche situations, like working and repair high off the ground, and the static shock is useful for self defense. Electromagnetic... as in they can turn it on and off at will. When on the suction plates glow and will also shock if they touch a person.

They are a designer made race, created as one of many iterations of a kind of ubermensch... using science. Humans were used as a template... with extra abilities added on to create the OP. So lots of iron eh? They would both weigh more and be slower than a human of equivalent size. Likely tire quicker too unless they eat foods nurtient and energy rich enough to compensate.

I just wanted to know what science and physics would allow for, so those that know would be helpful here. Imagine a scifi humanoid with small suction plates on fingers, palms, and the soles of their feet. Since I am fully aware other methods of adhesion won't work well if at all, what if the suction plates were electromagnetic? Strong enough that an adult of average weight could climb ferromagnetic metal surfaces without slipping or falling. And since magnetism and electricity are related, they could also use static shock but at high enough levels to incapacitate or even kill. Main question: What features would a humanoid body need to have to generate such power as well as survive it? How much power would they need to generate to allow them to generate enough magnetic force to stick to metal surfaces as well as incapacitate people with static electricity via touch via suction plate? How plausible is it? Or is it simply not at all... or would it require a non-humanoid creature?

It's non reactive, inert with several things... barring LOX of course. Hmmm.... would a sort of uses would abio-gel have, as we know biological processes can make methane? Or how about an electronagnetic gel? Would that have any uses... rocketry and besides?

Are Gel Propellants The Future? Imagine if you will, a gel propellant that had a greater density of chemical propellant than liquid? Would it be competitive with liquid propellants? Or would it only have niche applications? By competitive, I mean using gel propellants for 2 stage to orbit launch systems... and maybe even SSTO's. One crazy idea I had was what if it was possible (is it?) to make a propellant gel that ALREADY has the oxidizer 'baked' into it, and only needs some heat applied to combust it? Like a methalox gel? Just heat it and you are good, no need for separate oxidizer and propellant tanks, just a single tank, heating elements in the combustion chamber, and fuel injectors.

That is unfortunate and sad. Prostate cancer is something that can be encouraged by eating regularly from red meats, fatty foods, high sugar content, and alchohol. To discourage it feed on brocolli and other cruciforous veggies, eat low sugar if at all, and low fat, and a variety of fruits and veggies. That's the best I can do for any one here... since nobody wishes to get that disease. Regular exercise helps too... recycles the blood flowing through your veins... like a human oil change.

Money supply is effected by UN sanctions. Civil unrest, literal wildfires... I could go on. In theory Russia could do a lot. Physics and science allow for it... what stops them is always people. From within and from out. Because who is going to spend the same amount of resources competing with Musk when you have more pressing 'wildfires' all around to quench... or at least attempt to?

While the Challenger disaster was tragic... at least sometimes the school of painful experiences forces mankind to refine technology so they don't die using it. Several common things in use people died using in the begininng attempts Aircraft. Submarines I think... X-rays... sure there are plenty more.

Without any bias, the facts are: Russia will defintely lose a certain degree of space dominance if Elon's system works as intended... so it should not come as a surprise if any dislike Starship while they are stuck with less funds for playing KSP IRL. Until another nation can and has the will to commit a similar amount of resources to do something similar to Elon... this whole conversation is simply an unrealistic scenario... that requires peer rival nations with USA abilities. It is not as if the USA has a peer rival for sheer supremacy in resources and power projection, and by the time any nation does the USA will either have surpassed their current strength or have ceased to exist. Because power management is not static... it's fluid. Rivals love to poke jabs at each other, but it does not change the reality of the situation at hand. Surpassing a rival leads to snippiness from the surpassed rival, and bragging rights from the upsurper. On and on. This is per the usual in human history BTW. https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/07/business/russia-space-dmitry-rogozin-elon-musk/index.html

What if it was Godzilla versus... THE MOON! What then? Or better yet.... BATMAN versus the moon (as in memetic with prep time Batman)? People would watch just to see how in the world he pulls it off... because the rest of the league are on vacation for some reason LOL.

Even so... so long they stay funded... I believe they can definitely build and fly their rockets successfully. Why? I have faith in German work ethic... which has international renown. They still have that after WWII, and they are capable of putting it to rocketry uses. Afterall... remember where Russia and the USA found a lot of the technology for the stuff they currently use? Germany. Again. Never underestimate the Germans. I reckon Elon probably knows... but he is busy with you know what LOL. Bezos is also busy... in a different way. Peter Bec-who the world is Peter Beck?!

Do it. Look up mods currently online. DO IT. I mean ask the mods

I dunno man... if I found out my future potential wife used her mouth to.... clean.... I would dump her right then and there LOL. No I am not getting graphic.... since you know what I mean about cats. Suffice to say I read an article where an owner saved a runt of the litter (mom left it to die). Cat likes being cared for and alive, yet momma cat evidently never taught him how to clean thy self... since the cat tries but does not get all the uh... gunk. Thus cat runs around with a dirty posterior that the owner has taken to cleaning... against the cat's wishes. Lately the owner says he figured wiping a fish meat on the cat's rear is the only way the cat will be clean itself thoroughly... because fish they like. Thus cat is happy and so is the owner.