Spacescifi

If only it were so simple. The well of ideas to draw from is vast but also finite. Just like the chords of music are finite but endless musical variations that are enjoyable can be spawned. Who defines what is truly alien? The author. But let's be honest... it won't be original. Nothing in ficfion ever is, since all fiction is drained out the wet towel of reality. What influences the SF author opinion on what is alien can be but is not limited to beast behavior, evolutionary theory, AI speculation, and tech speculation. Really in my opinion the only behavior humans are very familar with is human and beastly. Robotic is another, albeit kinda boring to me. SF Aliens spawned from evolutionary theory may look weirder, but I doubt their rationale for behavior ever strays far from human, animal, or machine behavior derivatives. Believe me when I say I have seen pleny of ugly non-human aliens behave right in line with either human or beast behavior. When that is the case the story is either man vs man (alien behaves as such anyway) or man vs beast (ditto).

Sometimes writers attempt non-human characters by subtracting human emotions. There are pros and cons to this: Pro: Congrats! They no longer act human, they really do behave different from your average joe or jane. Cons: They do not act human. Difficult for reader to empathize with that, and unhuman or nonhuman are terms both used mostly in a negative way. Cons: Eliminate sadness and they no longer can show sympathy or even empathy born of sadness. Eliminate anger and they no longer will feel indignation when evil occurs, and will be more likely to only act in fearful self interest rather than in behalf of protecting those they should care enough to become angry over if anyone or thing hurts them. Eliminate joy and everyone will be sad, mad, or afraid 24/7. Eliminate disgust and there will be no slow escalation to anger, only full on bursts of anger against anything that would normally only cause disgust. Murderous and destructive Klingons basically. Eliminate fear and the death toll goes way up. Your thoughts? I cannot see anyway deleting even one human emotion will serve any scifi civilization well... can you? Your thoughts?

It is true that scifi often carries messages of some kind. Usually a character which may or may not be the protagonist represents the moral center of the story (supporting whatever view that is shared as 'good') with the audience. The villain or villains are often opposed to that view and also the character or characters that support it. Which in conclusion basically seems to make the point that the conflict is often idealogy based, assuming it's not over survival itself for resources. It is also true that some well known scifi promote philosphies and certain theories, some of which will undoubtedly date them as obsolete one day. I think even if one tries to avoid sending philosophy messages into their fiction, at least SOME of the author's views will creep in. At the very least their preferences will creep in. Want an example? When men write female characters they may emphasize how they look a lot and how they act... because guys often do check that IRL. When some women write men... haha, I have seen them write them emotional, and introspective, since women definitely have feelings that burn a bit hotter than men's. Either way no matter the sex I have seen both write well. Females can excel at character feelings and drama between them. Whereas men excel at writing men from literal experience and also from writing based on observation. Star Trek is amusingly absurd at times. TOS: Messages: The American way. Evolution. Atheism. Acting like Captain Kirk toward the ladies was probably based on the 'free love' movement of the 60-70's era. TNG: Evolution. Social justice to some degree but not quite like later series. DS9: Religion is scifi... which was a different view for Trek to take, but it kinda confirms it's connection to it's B5 predecessor, which implied all religion was a mere ploy by powerful not totally altruistic aliens called Vorlons. War is sometimes necessary was another message, also taken from B5. Enterprise: Did not watch it so dont know. STD: Ditto. Picard: Nihilism more or less, and social justice heavily. The rest: No comment barely watched them. You can add to this if you like. What are your thoughts?

How? The status quo is Kurtzman and CO. Talk to them. Otherwise this is futile. 1,000 fans won't move most $$$ will. Can bringing it back do that? Did it when it aired?

This may sound perverse... but I actually feel a sense of pride in FINALLY asking you a question you could not answer. It was not my goal but alas... I finally broke the Brain! Hahaha! Thanks for all your answers though.

How about some low hanging fruit? It would be very nice if we had CMG's that could spin at high thrust for hours on end before saturating, instead turning that potential into waste heat. Could altering fundamental forces locally of the CMG's do this? Is this a wannabe perpetual motion machine but not quite there? As I know it would extend the life of propeller planes in atmosphere a great deal, as well as turbines and anything that spins with resistance .

Some but not all. Planets move. If a spaceship flies into space and goes to hyperspace to visit another world, there is an automatic difference in speed that may be several kilometers of seconds off. So trying to simply fly down would result in some seriously deadly reentry heating through the atmosphere. The only thing one can presume that would allow for what is shown onscreen is a never mentioned ability to come out of hyperspace matching the target destination. Which is apparently contradicted by the lightspeed ramming of the second of the newer sequels... but I digress.

The superhero post was a way of learning about fundamental force control. In truth, I am far more interested in a having a scifi powerless race with tech that can alter fundamental forces. Because as physics stands a lot of scifi tropes are dead on sight. One example? Any vessel that uses fusion engines would have a big flame coming out the back on an Earth world. Also the heat of the fusion would be so great that you would need unobtanium to contain it. Which means if you coat the ship with it it should be immune to blaster fire which is historically weak based on footage alone. Now assumming blaster fire is not weak, each hit or miss hitting the ship or ground should cause a massive explosion of energy. Also the ship being an SSTO would require a tiny payload, we are talking a Millennium falcon that is far more full of propellant than a cargo ship. Small vessel SSTO's are rather illogical from the standpoint of current physics, but they do scale up well. Can't get off with a big payload ratio though, not without nuking yourself like project orion.

It is simple in concept.... harder to execute. Like from a physics standpoint the mathematics checks out as yes, this is possible. But what are you willing to sacrifice? Nukes equal radioactive death cancer air. There are NTR that are closed cycle that can reduce that, but they also have lower thrust... meaning they neef normal rocket boosters to even reach orbit. Open cycle NTR could with the proper design reach orbit... but it spews radioactive death air the whole way. Thus why we have not done so. What we can and should do are often different things.

Or just go project orion (a nuke equals enough energy to propel to orbit if you do it repeatedly off of a pusher plate). Lots and lots is essentially why space rocketry is what it is. A lot of anything requires a lot of energy or mass to push, and since people freak out over nukes and rightly so... we are stuck with using lots and lots of mass (propellant) instead.

The answer is probably no. I am no expert, but if it was that easy we would have done so already. The main issue I see is low, low, thrust. To get higher thrust you either need high energy exhaust or high mass exhaust (they are interchangeable) since: The equation — E = mc2 — means "energy equals mass times the speed of light squared." It shows that energy (E) and mass (m) are interchangeable; they are different forms of the same thing.Mar 30, 2017 If your exhaust is weak, don't expect to arrive anywhere soon. We already have ion propulsion, which has about the same amount of thrust as a piece of paper hitting your hand. It works great over long periods (years).

I had a strong feeling the answer might still be no... and was ready to laugh out if frustration... thinking that one has to literally invoke god-like powers to do.... what turns out to be kinda god-like stuff... since the physics is like... maybe??? Ish? In other words... impossible for us. Then there is this article: This post is not related to Stormlight Archive, but the general idea of manipulating natural forces seems similar to the 10 surges like Gravitation, Cohesion, Division, Tension etc. I came across this brilliant Quora answer today that tries to explain what are the implications of being able to control each of the four fundamental forces of nature: Electromagnetism, Gravitation, Weak Nuclear Force, Strong Nuclear Force. Just wanted to share this with you all. Reproducing them here for you. As far as we know today, there are 4 fundamental forces of nature: Electromagnetism Gravitation Weak Nuclear Force Strong Nuclear Force I will also interpret “manipulate” as “able to change the underlying quantum fields which represent these interactions at will” — just to get rid of any ambiguity! I’m also going to ignore unification, because otherwise that takes the fun away! So let’s have a quick, whistle stop tour of what each force governs, and how being able to manipulate it would work out: Electromagnetism Electromagnetism is a force which is created by electrically charged particles. EM forces are everywhere. Electromagnetism is what holds molecules together, it is what governs electricity and light, basically every single thing you think of as a “force” (which isn’t gravity) is an expression of electromagnetism in some way. Contact forces? Yep - they’re electromagnetic in nature. As I type on my keyboard, the electrons in my fingers repel the electrons in the buttons - this repulsion is what forces the key down, registering a keypress. This in turn fires an electrical signal through a maze of processors, into my computer — this is then translated into visible light on my screen (light is part of the EM spectrum), and also into radio waves, which connect to the wireless. Control over electromagnetism would allow me dominion over all of these things. I can generate “push” forces on demand, by creating intense localised electric fields — so I can knock things (or people) over, lift them up, or just throw them around: I can also use these fields to move myself around — yep, full on flight! I can create illusions and holograms, by manipulating the electric field to create visible light wherever I choose. I could even make these illusions interact with their environment, by giving them their own electric field to repel stuff — essentially making “solid light” I would be able to manipulate matter at will — able to shift the chemical bonds and structure of matter. Sure — I wouldn’t be able to change the atoms themselves (that’s another force), but I can rearrange the atoms which exist: I can also go full evil, and start chucking bolts of freakin’ lightning around: Sure, with a more complex manipulation of matter (as described above), I could give all the atoms a boatload more energy and essentially manipulate fire — but that’s a bit too far. Lightning is probably enough! Gravitation At first, being able to manipulate gravity doesn’t sound like much — wow. You can float….what a surprise. Unlike EM, this wouldn’t even let you fly properly — you have nothing to give you a sideways push, except generating a gravitation field in the direction you want to go. In essence — you can’t fly anywhere, you just have to fall everywhere. I hear it is possible to do this with style, however…. But gravity has one really important thing on its side. You know that clever Einstein bloke? Relativity? Time being “the fourth dimension”? Yeah. That. General Relativity tells us how gravity, space and time are actually all one and the same — a big mixture of a curved Riemannian 4D space. Thus — control over gravity means a fundamental control over space and time. You can warp the spacetime metric however you please — you can generate an Alcubierre metric, and travel faster than the speed of light (sort of), without ever getting out of your chair. You can warp time, and knock planets out of orbit. You could age someone a thousand years in a second (backwards is a bit….complicated), you can expand the space between you and an enemy, hurling them thousands of light years away. You would be a Lord of Space and Time. Freakin’ badass Weak Nuclear Force Ugh - who’d want the weak nuclear force? If you’re going to go for a nuclear force, you’d want it to be strong wouldn’t you? Well…maybe. But the Weak force has something pretty good going for it — the Weak Interaction governs nuclear decay and nuclear fission and fusion. Let’s start with the first — with control over nuclear decay you can halt or accelerate nuclear decay. By appropriate manipulation of fields, you could even force previously stable things to undergo decay. This means atomic transmutation. You know how alchemists always wanted to turn lead into gold? Yep. With appropriate control over fission, fusion and decay you can simply and easily turn a big lump of lead into gold (there’ll probably be some subatomic leftovers….deal with them carefully!) You could also use this as an offensive power — enemy running at you? ** STONE! ** Stuck in the wilderness? Just manipulate the elements into everything you need. Can’t start a fire? Get some lithium, and chuck it into a bit of water — voila, sparks. You don’t have as much control over the structure of the matter — but you can fundamentally alter its atomic structure. Feeling really evil? Just use your powers and don’t clean up the subatomic fragments I mentioned earlier — you will be essentially a walking, talking dirty bomb. If you were feeling nice, you could provide the world with sustainable energy, through nuclear fusion (boring!) — or you could go full supervillain and put out the Sun. The Sun uses Weak interaction to power the thermonuclear processes which release energy — you can now stop those (or crank them up!), either way — you'd better call Dave Consiglio, because a lot of people are going to die. My summary of a Weak-manipulator is that they’re overpowered but clumsy. You could change the entire planet into stone — but you don’t have the finesse powers that EM and Gravitation let you do, such as flight, illusions, time manipulation and so on. Strong Force Much like the Weak Force, the Strong Force is overpowered, but clumsy. The Strong Interaction is what holds quarks into protons, and protons and neutrons into the atomic nucleus. With the power to manipulate this field, you can disassemble all the atoms and subatomic particles in a block of matter — there wouldn’t be an explosion, it would just…..stop sticking together. Matter would blow away like dust. Sure, electrostatic interactions still occur between the quarks and the electrons….but nothing nuclear is holding it together. Matter as we know it simply could not exist! You’d also be of great interest to physicists - by turning off the Strong Force, you can isolate quarks….which we don’t think is possible. If you can do it, you’d be a very popular person! Or — maybe you could increase the strength of the nuclear force. I don’t know exactly what this would do — but it doesn’t sound pretty! You wouldn’t be able to touch electrons in any way — they do not feel the strong force, so you’d be vulnerable there. As I said — you have one incredibly overpowered ability, but not much else you can do with it. TLDR; Summary: Electromagnetism : telekinesis, flight, light manipulation, illusions, matter manipulation (structure only) and lightning. Lots and lots of applications and subtle ways to do different things with one power — but powers are (in general) fairly standard. Nothing overpowered. Gravitation: Flight (rudimentary), faster than light (ish) travel, ability to warp time and space. Fewer uses — but the ability to manipulate time is a big bonus Weak: Elementary transmutation, ability to create or prevent nuclear bombs, ability to control the sun. Hugely overpowered — but transmutation is pretty much your only power which isn’t “kill a whole bunch of people” Strong: Ability to control the bonding of the atomic nucleus — can reduce all matter in the universe into dust. Ridiculously overpowered. Can literally destroy all matter in the entire universe. However — not much versatility in the powers. 19 4

LOL. Thanks... may use it hahahaha!

How would an engine survive such heat and pressure using fundamental force manipulation? What? By arbitrarily increasing the strong force on the engine so it does not explode? With abiliies like this you could fly thru the sun and probably survive. We just turned a spaceship into....

Just curious, if we ever figure a way to harness the fundamental forces to adjust as we wish, would that enable mass replication from existing mass? In other words, if I have a propellant tank full of water, could I by adjusting or tweaking the four fundamental forces make more water from it so I would never run out of propellant for my nuclear thermal rocket? Until the mass replicator breaks anyway... At. Any rate the future is made of the same stuff as the present, meaning we shall overcome... using means already in existence. How is the unanswered question. What do you think about the original question?

If all stoplights on roads were replaced with roundabouts it would be chaos. Yet I really do think at least some races in scifi have behavior that could actually make roundabouts work. And I don't mean AI. I mean scifi races with behavior that is such that they won't have any issue avoiding traffic accidents while driving cars and using roundabouts only instead of stop signs Who do you think? Vulcans? Anyone else?

The Star Trek tricorder is OK, but like many things in scifi it can be improved by making it more practical using common sense and modern tech. Here is how I would improve it: 1. Shape it like a gun, make it bigger too. Point and scan. Have a detachable smart phone part one can take off to look at the data after scanning. The scanning would be point and scan, but configuration of the scan and the scan radius will be done beforehand with the detachable smart phone device which you then reattach to the scan gun to configure it. 2. Assuming you needed a miltary tricorder scan gun to give real-time data, you could wear smart glasses that show the scanned data on your glasses as you scan, and you could even program the scanning via your eyeball movement, blinks, and voice as desired. What are your ideas?

Haha... I think they like some of them more than others... namely the ones that are less far out and more down to Earth.

Umm... so long AI lacks the ability to reason on new information by comparing with stored info (even animals have a good capacity for this), humans can use deception to beat them so long tech disparity is not too high. The reason why animals do not rule the world is because they have no desire to do so like humans do. Eating prey is fine along withhaving offspring.

Wow. So essentially land warfare just became like sea warfare, with the carriers being carrier tanks, and the command human tanks being the 'battleships', while the army of mini tank drones are the advance force that screen attacks directed at tank. For this to work they would need a swarm of drone aircraft that can hover and shoot for extra protection.

Teleoperation means a drone COULD tell whether a man has a harmless box of food or a bomb. Like thermal and infrared vision to count just a few. In fact, with proper sensor equipment, land drones teleoperated could easily be privy to information that a soldier's Mark I eyeball won't see. Furthermore, teleoperation can be done via the human squad AND flying drones, suppossing satellites fail for some reason. I said 'tank' for the tread tracks, not the tank shape per say. Once weapons and sensor and telecom equipment is installed it's good as a human soldier or better... at destroying. What it is not good at: Reconnassiance: Everybody WILL notice and try to destroy the land drone. Chances of getting away is low. You either fight your way out leaving carnage in your wake or lose an expensive land drone.

I see. So the only way robots totally replace humans are either repetitive tasks without thought, which we already do... or human teleoperated robots, which we also use for military flying drones. I think the reason mini tank land drones have not caught on is because as far as military is concerned... humans are cheaper. In other words... when in war the preserving of life is not priceless, it has a price that sometimes is higher than those at the top are willing to pay. So instead of armies of mini tank land gun drones with smaller human squads, it is cheaper to risk life and limb of all human soldiers, augmented with equipment. I suppose a high tech foe could jam telecommunications of the land mini tank drones. But low level tech gun toting foes would not stand much chance against mini tank drones... without resorting to IED's anyway. Which they already use effectively against human soldiers.

I love covers. This is a cover of Sommerfagel originally by Wintergarten.

Consider a setting where humanoid robots with the same mechanical abilities as a human body are actually a reality. What they lack is the ability to reason and rationalize like humans do. They simply follow whatever program given within specific perimeters. I was curious... would such robots be a proper replacement for human labor jobs? Where much thinking is not required? My thoughts: Yes, but they would need a human overseer or overseers to handle or oversee problems that come up that they are not programmed to handle. Like say the see a leaking roof? Report that. Say the item they are sent to look for is not where it is supposed to be. Report it. Specific robots: The humanoid shape is a jack of all trades shape. It can build or design everything but it is not the most efficient at specific tasks. Specific robot bodies CANNOT build or design everything but are more efficient at a given task. Example? Instead of a group of guys with shovels. What is most optimal? If the environment is lethal (Mars or space) use all three. Namely humanoid robots to do specific human jobs to free up the crew or not endanger them. Efficient specic robots where efficiency is key, and human overseers to assist robots when programming fails to solve something or it has a question. Your thoughts?

Haha... my thinking has recently changed... a bit. Constant acceleration is not necessarily needed anyway for long distance travel. Scifi cheating of some sort is if you want to get anywhere fast. Like just using a warp drive at lightspeed would allow you to wind up close to where you want to be. From there you could just shut off the warp drive and let gravitational pull reel you into the planet's influence. Warp and rinse repeat. Keep up until the trajectories and speeds match up how you want them and warp right above where you want to fall... no hot reentry required, since one can literally pack on or lose however much speed they want by using a warp drive creatively above a planet. Warp changes your location, gravity changes your speed and can also change your trajectory. The nice thing is it has an analogue to real spaceflight. Prep time. You accelerate into the speed and trajectory you will need where you will warp to later.... and THEN you warp. Any more course corrections done in deep space far from a gravity well will just require burning lots of propellant or busting bombs orion style. Long story short, any drive that relied on gravity redirection thrust by relying on nearby celestial bodies depending on gravity field strength is good enough. Not as good as constant 1g acceleration anywhere, but it at least gives you constant thrust where it is most needed (launch/landing/orbit velocity). In deep space it will do no good, but what's of interest in deep space anyway?