Spacescifi

I cannot speak for fictional weaponry, but regarding real weapons it depends on the type of weapon. Railgun: You could mount a spinal rail down the core of your ship for extra firepower. Longer rail equals longer acceleration/thrust for projectiles fired. Coilguns: Same idea, but better since you are not damaging the coils as you fire, which I read does happen with railguns if what I read is true. Lasers: You don't need a spinal mount, they turret just fine. So completely optional.

Regarding moving mars... theoretically it can be done if one is willing to wait AND has thousands of tons of antimatter at rheir disposal... but I admit that that is ridiculously beyond than modern capability. For what it's worth... I toyed with the idea of a techno-god like race that for all intents and purposes appears to be AI, but the innards actually do have biological components. Post contact with modern humanity causes them to do what they always do... create new races based on the ones they encounter... and then travel back in time and alter the past so that the created races lived and advanced far before and after humanity was made. They use a mix of Earth lifeforms to create new humanoid races in the past, then tell Earth in the present what they have done and say "You kept dreaming of world you thought you would never see. Until now. Be careful what you wish for. They are coming." And with that, the techno-god race leaves and the story properly begins. At any rate giving a plausible reason why the aliens look humanoid (the technogods who made them do not).

If we knew that we would be cashing in on it, not chatting here on KSP forums. Simply put, it is far more within modern capability to send a probe. But even if we did, it would take decades upon decades to give us any useful data back. So unless we live far longer than we presently do, it's like sending a postcard with RSVP dated for perhaps a century if not a little sooner. And to do even this the probe would need engines that frankly.... beyond on paper we don't have. What may be overlooked is the inevitable wear and tear of thrusting an engine for months on end at greater thrust than an ion engine It's never been done. So we won't know what is most likely to break until a test flight. But stuff breaking is a big deal when we have an operational life of about a century with no ressuply. Secondly, why sebd ANYONE to proxima centauri? Current data does not appear to show any inviting place like Earth for the humans to settle down... after being cooped up almost a lifetime in their ships getting there. Basically there are planets like mars over there, not Earth. And even Mars is a really questionable choice to settle with humabs even though it us far closer. So to send humans on a hunch that Earth 2 *might* be in the next star system? Not gonna happen. Since no one will want to sign up for death if the hunch is wrong. As it is, I have not seen any confirmation of any life extraterrestrial life beyond Earth. Until we actually get it, it would be foolhardy to send humans to go colonize worlds that are JUST like the same lifeless ones in our own solar system.

Mars... when your super rich, and really, really want to be left alone to do whatever you want. Ivo Robotnik would love it!

Maybe they should... so they don't take it for granted whenever they do. Which is why I will probably include married folk in my own scifi, just to be different... and to show it can be done.

The challenges are these with regard to fusion: We do not have fusion reactors. We don't even know how to make them. Fusion propulsion without a sustained fusion reaction is something we know how to do (cause a small nuclear exploson) and manifests. Itself as project Orion, Z pinch fusion (does it with pellers instead of bombs) and more. Fusion happens in stars via the pressure of worlds worth of mass. We don't and won't have that, so we resort to high temperatures (higher than core of sun) to cause fusion reactions. With high tempertures stuff melts, and although magnetuc fields do not, plasma which asofar is needed in fusion reactions, tends to escape the magnetic field and hit the container, lowering the temepature and ending the reaction. We do not have fusion reactors because we do not have what it takes, or have not found or designef what it takes yet So far.

To be sure I have no intention of using the bullet scifi plasma fireballs, but I am OK with using a rapid fire version of the 3% speed of light plasma rings humans claim they experimented with. May just upgrade it to 10% speed of light... because scifi. Lots of plasma splash. Useful for disabling sensitive communication satelites and sensors. A poor ship killer, but can sure wreck sensor arrays with X-rays when the plasma hits them. Realistic plasma weaponry is auxiallary at best, optional at least, and not even necessary at worst.

Yeah... but Star Trek captains don't have that excuse. So long the Captain let's his Number One (XO/Executive Officer/Commander) do all the hero away mission stuff instead of doing it himself. Basically more TNG Picard than Kirk or Sisko or Archer. Sits on the starship bridge a lot. I know Sisko lost his wife in a Borg attack... but frankly, Starfleet is foolish for not dropping off wives and kids before entering combat with an existential threat.

That is a legit reason. And the fact that even she almost died makes her spot seemed earned indeed. Although I will also say that any villain trying to make their conflict with the hero personal is also inviting a very likely final not so nice confrontation with the hero... assuming they are the vindictive type. The other reasons? Pandering it seems to me. Because we all know that *** sells and is a very easy to give into.... especially for men. So it's author profit motive I suspect at work.

Yea I forgot about recoil. A big deal when you scale down. Which is why only the land 4 legged drones will have guns. The air drones would have mini-missiles, and once gone they would just ram targets with an oboard explosive kamikazi style.

Picard. Sisko (well he was but his wife died). Kirk (no explanation needed why), Janeway. Comics: Virtually ALL superheroes do not marry and lead a normal life with their one true love and have kids. More often nowadays they behave like wild party college kids wih regard to relationships, often having multiple ones on and off on the regular. Why is this? What? The writers are reliving vicariously their wild party days through the fictional characters they make? Or is it a reason that is actually legitimate plot? I hardly think so, since it is quite doable to do a main character with an actual family... hero or captain though they be.

Great! Now the drones can expend less missiles to blow it up. You want a mobile jammer so you can herd my drones where you want to blast them with AA missiles. Assuming they don't take it out before then.

Not likely. Crows, cats and dogs are actually smarter than any AI we have. Yet they don't rule the world (cat jokes aside). There are some high tech weapons that have virtually no low tech counters. Nukes for example... unless you wanna try taking it out in midair with a catapult propelled projectile. Good ideas... but I think I can counter them... ethically it's VERY wrong though. 1. Spread leaflets that jamming the drones will make them more dangerous. Don't do it. 2. When jammed the drones go into seek and destroy anything with a thermal signature that looks human mode, until the jamming stops and they get instructions to do otherwise. But only in the target city. 3. When microwave jammed, some drones are designed to detect and seek and destroy microwave sources. So jamming will lead them to you.. like bees to honey.

How fictional stuff works is of no importance at all... other than it's effect on character's who reader's are supposed to love/hate. I came to this thread thinking scifi plasma weapons were totally useless, and they just about are. Yet the realistic version, which is fired so fast you won't see it. While doing spread damage, would be an excellent choice if you want to disable unshielded satellites without blowing them up. One shot or two is alll it takes, rather than the prolonged beaming a laser would take to hit the right spotson the target's surface. In other words, it would work well against 2020 human satellites, but not scifi spaccraft that are expecting this sort of thing.

Reality is often superior to scifi tropes. I just wanted to know if human soldiers could actually stand a chance against dedicated remote small war machines. The answer is probably no. Inasmuch throughout history man has designed more efficient ways of conducting wars. Other than placing tons of IED's ahead of the land drones I don't know how scifi soldiers would deal with them wiithout taking heavy casualties. They have no answer beyond shotguns against flying armed drones.

End Of The Soldier Era In Scifi: No matter how scifi a setting is... this never changes. Humanoids with guns. Yet I tend to think... oh really? We have flying drones already, and it is not a stretch to make four legged robot running drones that have gun mounts. Land drones would be heavier armed. Assuming both air and land combat drones existed and were employed on a massive scale, would soldiers become obsolete? I mean... take 2000 drones, 1000 air, 1000 land. All armed with bullets and or bombs/rockets, vs 2000 modern land soldiers with guns. Drones are smaller targets that don't eat or sleep. Or poop. For that matter they can even recharge electricity on solar power. I know jamming remote signals is possible, but I doubt it since it comes from satellites, and if you jam a satellite, you will have bigger problems soon enough unless you're already an Earth superpower nation with nukes. What do you think?

Not too far I imagine. I think the reason they classified it is the ongoing tensions between the only powers that launch stuff into space a lot. They may have managed to minaturize the technology for anti-sat applications. If said plasmoid does cause X-rays on impact it could wreck anything we have up there electronically and even kill through radiation over time... since our radiation shields don't even totally block space radiation, Let alone dedicated human maliciously induced X-rays impacting a spacecraft. But even then, we are talking about the kind of thing that can turn a cold war hot (it's not over till it's over).

I just don't see Mars...being the endless desert without breathable air that it is, with toxic soil to cap it off, ever being a place humans will WANT to live. Unless we pushed it closer to the sun, even then major terraforming is required. A fixer upper is an understatement for Mars. We would have to literally either add mass to the planet to hold a proper atmosphere or somehow blanket/shield it to keep thicker air brought by us from escaping. For every world humans ever visit in the future, we won't stay unless we make it like home or it already is. Even then, what about human to human behavior? Everyone always gets along... right? Everyone shares limited colony resources equally all the time right? No colonists will ever murder another right? Well... assuming humans act like 2020 coronavirus humans? LOL NO! I played a game that had quite the real angle on the human side of other world colonization. Mars won't even have half of the resources as an Earth-like world, but human nature? Consider it brought. On. If they come, drama will follow. Just like a baby born crying into the world. What do you think?

It also bothers me that when kinetic rounds are fired in space the firing ship is not pushed back at all. Especially with rapid fire railguns! I mean... the rocket equation man! That's one way to travel lol!

Just make a Nuclear Thermal... Sewage rocket engine. Guy pitching the idea to SpaceX: "Man Elon you gotta hear me out, I have a new STS rocket engine that will save hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars!" "Go on." "All you need is a nuclear reactor... that's the hard part, the second is easy. We need everyone's 'number two's'." "Yeah... I will get back with you on that." He won't though, since even Elon would have a difficult time getting a nuclear reactor, and he is the closest thing we have to Tony Stark.

They are not IRL... just the opposite besides being impractical at best. Assuming we had scifi plasma ball cannons in space, there is one thing they would be good for. Hitting objects that unpowered objects that cannot dodge. Assuming the plasma balls can hold for any sufficient amount of time you could fire of beads of plasma and do a bunch of thermal burning. The only real advantage over lasers that plasna balls have that don't dissipate is that they don't lose much energy, so they will do more thermal damage than a laser... if they hit. Yet even magnetic fields can deflect plasma something fierce. So for space combat plasma cannons are one of the worst weapons you could buy, even though they are ironically more expensive to make than a laser. Use it for showing off to your friends how awesome your ship is. Or use it for spaceship morse code... even though you could even do it with glowing bullets. Hmmm... farfetched. Mainly because antimatter is finicky and inside plasma is like pure chaos for antimatter. An antimatter catalyzed nuclear pusher plate missile could be small and do the same thing AND follow it's target. Not only that, unlike a plasmoud you can forget deflection with a magnetic field. Antimatter catalyzed nujes change everything. Meaning you can get nuke bombs the size of baseball.

So we all know about the bullet speed plasma fireballs so popular with spaceships. So provided we invented one that operated just like the scifi ones (highly unlikely but bear with me) what good would they do? At close range I can't see them doing much better than lasers. It's a thermal based effect. I mean wwt good use? Asteroid mining?

Hmmm... I usually don't have a 'way' of dealing with a certain kind that I have on standby, I just do what comes naturally to me. Which by no means means that everything I do is always the way I should do it. Certain personalities and people I tend to favor, which like it or not... everyone does that. For example, when I was in middle school, I once did a four legged race, but I was teamed with a kid who was big. Wanting to win at any cost, I ran so fast that I literally tore loose from my bigger partner as he fell to the ground. Without looking back I passed everyone to the finish line, looking in bewilderment when I saw the disappointed look on my teacher's face. As an adult I am more respectable with others.... but I had to learn. Young children are arguably the least bias and most honest humans on the planet. But even they are bias to an extent, the older they get the more so.

Haha. Two weeks? Did you leave that job or did Mr. Creepy? My first regular job over a decade ago was also my most challenging. At least two coworkers who were... either creepy or flirtatious quickly pegged me as an innocent, naive newbie. Thus they made a concerted effort to get me up to their 'speed.' The female, although older than me and an apparently single mother with kids invited me out to the place adults dance and drink at night. The male was VERY creepy, saying things about customers that literally almost made me vomit while eating lunch. The finale? The female eventually gave up and accepted me as an awkward, naive teen who apparently wished to stay that way. The male allegedely lost his job after Ieft months later having... you know what on the job with a customer. I did not believe it at first... but he definitey did seem like the type.

Only things that are OK per forum rules. I'll go first. I had a coworker who talked a lot about a certain well known vice. Eventually I grew tired of it and asked, "I dunno, what's the point if you have a wife?" He was quiet around me for days after. Because he had a wife! What about you? Anything you have said that is appropriae that alienated coworkers? Either accidentally or on purpose?