Spacescifi

Just listen to your body's reaction. Go natural, and avoid pesticides.

They have an air supply that can last about 2 hours. Not too big of a deal lol. Considering the fact that they don't need to suck in a bunch of air first to blow people literally away with their breath, I'd say they can breathe in space for a good while before suffocation sets in. That... and I doubt they spend hours chatting in space. Just a quick chat.

Yeah but if vacuum would not bother you for hours because you were kryptonian... for folks like that who want privacy where no one else can hear them, it's perfect. I really enjoyed how the writers of the period sought to include real science. They even had a comic where they used a fancy scifi telescope to view Krypton in real time since light is old, allowing Supergirl to see her younger self and family and even baby Superman barf on her beore she left the planet (combining X-ray and super telecopic vision can do that). There was also another issue where Supergirl was in space for hours chasing a spaceship, so long her eyes began to redden (no oxygen so boiling really) and she nearly lost consciousness before using a teleportation device to go back to Earth. So Superman would have put a bit of air into the device then lol.

I think the powers that be have other issues as higher up on their priority list, and pesticides is not even on it... or if it is, waaay at the bottom. Like most things fixing it would cost money (increase taxes) and Americans are easy to sway into caring about other issues anyway.

That would be a price I was willing to pay if I were the one pulling the strings. I think in general the golden rule is the fairest way to treat others, with exceptions only created out of absolute necessity.

Main Question: Would America have enough food to feed our population if we stopped using pesticides? Right away I assume prices would go up... but at least we would no longer be eating poison giving us cancer or other preventable diseases. I would like to say yeah America could feed everyone without pesticides... but only at cost, and a cost I don't think leadership is willing to make given it changes every 4 years. I would like to assume pesticide usage is the product of human greed trying to maximize profits and we could survive better without them. Or maybe it's just a subtle population control measure? The rich and powerful can afford healthy food, whereas the average man can only get it part of the time. Or perhaps it is far more simple and simply just capitalism run amuck? Profits matter above all, more than anything else, unfortunately, even human life expectancy. Then again when you are behind the wheel running things and crunch the numbers you probably see matters a wee bit different. Since the one thing anyone powerful cares about most is staying powerful, and money is power to a degree. If they see their money diminishing at all... even for the greater good as it were, they will shelve the greater good in favor of self preservation of their power. So I am sad to say it, but I can understand why pesticides and other harmful practices are tolerated even if I do not agree with it. America is a social darwinistic society. You either rise to the top at one extreme, or die at the bottom at the other, while someone else profits either way. Thoughts?

Wow. So DC comics was science accurate here?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Supergirl/comments/1e09g7h/reposted_supermansupergirls_comic_book_dynamic_i/#lightbox I thought it was really cool that DC comics of the 2005-2011 era sought to include a scifi theme to the Supergirl comics of the same era. Including real world science on occasion that effected the story in small or larger ways. The linked comic pictures portray Supergirl and Superman talking in space above Earth with the aid of headphone devices. Since there is no air in space to convey sound would such a device actually transmit any sound that a human wearing it in vacuum could actually hear? Or my headcanon can just assume Superman being the brilliant engineer he is when necessity calls for it made headphones that shoot out compressed gas into the ears as people wearing them talk in space vacuum. Perhaps THAT is how he can hear what Supergirl is saying? And let's disregard the times Superman heard stuff on Earth all the way from the moon without any hearing device lol... because we both know superhero powers can be all over the place in powerscaling from time to time.

There are many uses we could think of if hyper-diamagnetic materials were ever invented.. But does the current understanding of physics even allow for it? If such materials could be made, how would they be used in conjunction with space travel technology. Known Physics: Making uber magnets has limits, since too high a field (so far around or above 500 tesla) breaks the electromagnet. Therefore I was curious if we could bypass this limit by making special materials that are far more susceptible to magnetic influence?

Scenario: A scientist who is fed up with entropy creates a device that generates a field that either weakens it or can stop it altogether anywhere within the scope of the scifi field. Let's call it an anti-entropy field. Main Question: Has he done a good thing or a terribly insane thing? Is weakening or stopping entropy ever a bad thing? What applications would it have for spaceflight if you paired it with rocketry of any kind (modern to scifi advanced). And why does some nagging thought in the back of my head tell me that entropy exists for a reason and by changing that it's like opening pandora's box? Someone enlighten me please... lol. This probably won't end well. I can't help but envision a crazy scifi fantasy scenario where the scientist suceeds in weakening or stopping entropy in a limited space... and the universe does not like it one bit. In fact, it hates it so much it summons the great space kraken or Cthulhu who begins destroying a bunch of stuff randomly to balance the entropy being stopped or weakened. So while entropy is being stopped or weakened somewhere else in the universe, Cthulhu is running wild elsewhere and won't stop until entropy is no longer inhibited.

This. It is logical and does not require absurd thinking. For example I could drive an armed military tank on the road but I am not allowed to and for good reason. I think limiting certain kinds of crafts/engines to certain distances is reasonable if realistic energies are involved.

Wait... you are saying that if we make a way or material to reflect X-rays at ANY angle and at a high rate... THEN we could have sustained fusion reactions?

Well that's just it is'nt it? We cannot have cheap and reliable nor even compact fusion due to the sheer heat involved to generate it. Cold fusion would be perfect for scifi SSTOs if we could do it. Nonetheless I still don't think we could get away with a small launch vehicle or SSTO fighter plane using even scifi cold fusion. The reason being that the electrical energy gained from the cold fusion would still need to be converted into heat to shoot propellant out. And the only way such heat won't melt your thermal exhaust chamber is if you have a high enough mass flow of propellant to dump the heat onto. Which means big tanks and really good turbopumps to pump the fuel at an effective rate for shedding the waste heat.

Perhaps... I think Booth was just one of several who would have tried to off Lincoln if given a chance (he made a LOT of enemies). One man can effect a lot of change, especially by laws. And laws are the only thing a man can leave behind when he is dead to effect change. So assuming the next president (was it Grant?) does not simply repeal some of Lincoln's reforms under popular pressure, even then they will be under pressure not to fully enforce the reforms if at all. Especially in the former Confederate States of America. The second problem is that although Grant was praised for helping win the war, he was heavily criticized for running a corrupt government. Even my history book in high school class decades ago acknowledged this but I don't remember the reasons as to why.

Yep.... could backfire though if the Indians and Asians get their act together and decide to conquer Europe... only successfully this time. The Mongol and Hun hordes nearly did, but with knowledge comes power, and assuming Asia evolves faster than it actually did we might have an Asian world hegemony instead of a Western one.

Hahahaha! I would counter your argument and say that this has nothing to do with anything being better, since better is a subjective term and what better is depends on individual opinion. We are what allow. We are not what we forbid. Now Earth has a mix of both, so it is more a sliding scale of what a society allows more versus what it allows less that determines what kind of society they will be. The great irony is that the only people that matter are really powerful people capable of changing history, or those who would have been (but how can we ever know?). I don't know if it would have made life better, but I do wonder what would have happened if JFK was never assassinated. In some cases it won't matter though. For example I believe even if Alexander the Great did not die young his empire would have split not long after his death, since he seemed less concerned with empire administration than expanding it's boundaries through war, and I remember stories that the only reason he stopped trying to conquer the world was because his men forced him to. Probably assassinated him too.

I don't mind make believe scifi tech, but I think (my personal opinion) that the side job of scifi in addition to telling a great story is to tell the what ifs and fully exploit any scifi tech they have as well as utilize it logically. Rather than holding back or using it in the most inefficient or inane ways to level the playing field with guys like us modern day humans who are still messing around with chemical combustion to go places.

Nah... thst opens up a host of other problems and questions really... such as why are they not using such powerful tech in other ways? Sure one can make up a reason, but the more one has to weaken the potential of a scifi technology to limit hiw uber it is the less real it already seems to me. True... and yet one can make some unique plots on occasion by following even a sliver of real life physics as I showed

Several of you know well why SSTOs as depicted in SW and ST are utter fantasy.... that is, unless you want to radiate everything behind you with chernobyl exhaust from some kind of freakish nuclear saltwater rocket. Scifi is about telling stories and what ifs though, so therein is the fiction. The fantasy element is how vessels somehow can be the size of a automobile van and still have enough thrust to reach orbit and back without melting the engine. Worse yet... I have seen escape pods in Star trek literally fly across a solar system to reach a planet within days at most. On top of all this, if a ship with such a fantastic energy storage source as this crashes and explodes on a planet, somehow you don't get a nuclear mushroom cloud or worse. Scenario: Assuming you wanted a ST or SW setting with casual SSTOs you absolutely have to ignore, make up, or figure out a realisic way of shedding the humongous amounts of waste heat such a drive would generate. This energy debt occurs regardless if the SSTO is powered by a seemingly reactionless drive or a rocket. Known physics does not allow for getting anything for nothing without incurring SOME cost in energy use and release (often expressed as heat or radiation). Ironically the one thing you could afford to not ignore and still have a scifi story (albeit modified) is realistic power levels that match what the ships are depicted as doing onscreen. Granted, this often does require ignoring or using make believe to avoid the waste heat issue that would occur in real life. But if nothing else if power levels were at least realistic and scifi ignored or used make believe on waste heat as it often does.. that would change the plot. Example: Han Solo wabts to visit a planet with the Millennium Falcon, yet since his vessel will explode with the force of hundreds of nukes if it crashes or blows up, instead of letting his vessel land, specialized large shuttle vessels with only enough energy stored for round trip to orbit rendezvous and back before getting a recharge at a base would be employed. And all those fun looking aerial battles with alien SSTOs dogfighting with F-15's? Not likely. At all. Since the moment one of the alien fighter SSTOs is downed or crashes it is going out like a nuclear explosion, wiping out friends and foes alike for several kilometers. So you can forget mass formations of scifi SSTO fighterss mixing it up with Earth's finest air forces. What is more likely to happen is that in the case of an invasion, Earth is just nuked into submission. Since if we have nukes now then anyone with energy storage good enough for van size SSTOs will have nukes galore and even better. So you can forget the scifi laser beams and just let the biggaton explosions wash over you until humanity raises the white flag. No it's not fair, and no it does not make for an ending people generally want And yet... it does follow the whole survival of the fittest concept. Meaning whoever deserves to survive (by being the most able to adapt to cope with and overcome challenges/dangers) will. It just takes time. And time alwats reveals tye truth, sooner or later.

The ISS looks kind of flimsy. If one tried to push it into solar orbit using beefy chemical rocket engines I wonder if some of the solar panels would snap off from the stress of the multi-gees of acceleration. In theory they could put in in a solar orbit if they used a nuclear boosted ion drive.

I was considering objectivity versus subjectivity, and came to the conclusion that for all the negatives that come with the potentials of subjectivity (believing in stuff without proof that may not even be real), there perhaps ARE some reasons why having subjectivity can be used in a positive way. Assumptions are often wrong, but on occasion our assumptions, ergo are intuitions, are correct, as truth reveals later. Perhaps this is why we at times blindly make assumptions since we learn to lean on them so much rather than have the dread or fear that comes with total objectivity (which means you assume nothing, instead relying on known data and researching and testing what is unknown). Main question: Is total objectivity practical for a scifi alien civilization? How different would life be compared to our own? I imagine one big change would be that persons would be more honest, even brutally so. If so, I would imagine that if living among humans such an alien individual would enjoy having a bit more privacy but would clash with humans annoyed over their brutal honesty until they learned to tone it down for humans. If on the other hand, all subjectivity and assumptions are is intuition in action, in other words, an educated guess, then the answer is absolutely not. No civilization could arise without the ability to make educated guesses or gambles even if they are often wrong... since they only need to be right once to make a difference and build upon it with futher correct guesses. You need data even to make educated guesses, and you need to be able to make educated guesses when doing science not done before. So I guess I answered my own question lol. The only way a totally objective being could exist is if they were all knowing. The easiest way a life form of this nature could exist in scifi would be a type of AI... perfect for the data it has, but asking for more and beyond that and it cannot make any decision as it lacks data.

If we had ridiculously strong magnets (1000-5000 tesla) could that make containing and compressing fusion plasma in a vacuuum chamber easier? Or does magnetic field strength not really matter and plasma would leak out anyway killing the fusion reaction? I would a imagine a scifi fusion plant to be powered by a plasmoid within a vacuum chamber, suspended in space and compressed into fusion while being sustained by uber 5000 tesla magnets. Meanwhile the chamber walls are cooled with reaction mass constantly (LH or liquid helium). Or is fusion too much even for the master of magnetism lol? https://www.deviantart.com/lordkai/art/Magneto-X-men-97-tribute-1043949214

OK, I think part of my idea will be necessary to deal with the heat, but to focus and contain the heat we would need either reflectors or beams to focus it. I guess this is difficult because it is essentially trying to make a stable system out of extreme hot and cold, when by nature one will attempt to overtake the other. Maybe a bunch of masers would help to focus the heat (they penetrate well). A more advanced version would be X-ray lasers causing a fusion reaction. Come to think of it.... maybe total containment is not the way? Maybe we should not do it that way? Could we not cause a fusion reaction and sustain it while letting some of it blow out as exhaust like a rocket? While a bunch of masers shoot downward into the rocket plume to keep the heat balanced for whatever is lost? And so the exhaust is not totally wasted we could make it turn a turbine or something so we are not radiating the air with radioactive fusion exhaust. What I am saying is this is hard but impossible it should not be. Fusion literally seems to require going big or staying home. Micro fusion reactors will probably always be fiction. Another big problem is neutrons caused from fusion damage materials. Ideally a fusion reactor would want low to zero neutrons, and that can be done with pure fusion designs that do not rely on fission as a trigger.

Whenever something is not done with engineering there is usually a legitmate reason. Elon and his crew are trying to do whatever works but without spending more than they have to. So the reason is somewhere in there. They for the most part only design stuff on starship as they do because they have to (the really pointy nose being an exception since Elon was inspired by the Sasha Baron Cohen The Dictator movie). I hope the reason is not money, because that means they could do your idea but just choose not to. It would be more reasonable if your idea was a bad one due to the TWR not being able to match the weight of the anti-heat covering.

People always say the heat is too much, when we have virtually unlimited mass to shed the waste heat. We know how to create a fusion reaction, but trying to contain it with a magnetic field is like trying to band jello with a rubber band. It will slip out inevitably. So I propose a solution that, while expensive and it might increase global warming by some degree, WON'T slip out the fusion plasma unless you desire it to. Idea: Create the fusion reaction some way and sustain it. If we don't know how to sustain it or have a way of doing so then that's the main problem. I thought we did. I assumed holding the reaction was the problem because it melted everything. Yet there should be a way to keep a fusion reaction chamber from melting on earth. How? Regenerative rocket based cooling. Pump liquid helium or liquid hydrogen through the reaction chamber walls to keep them from melting. Will probably need either a spherical or cylindral shaped reactor since either is better for even flow of pumped liquid to cool it. Outside the fusion reactor building you would see rocket bluish plumes shooting up into the sky instead of steam plumes you see at nuclear plants, because more energy would be generated and thus more heat. Can this be done or am I oversimplifying it? Because if I thought of this surely somebody would have come up with a reason not to. I hope the answer is not liquid hydrogen and liquid helium are too expensive to burn constantly at a fusion plant. Because I don't think they are. We have more hydrogen than we could want. As for money, we (the USA) already spend ridiculous amounts on matters arguably less important, so that argument does not hold either. But if physics says it cannot be done, I can accept that.