Seret

So xenomorph555 essentially you're trying to crowdsource a rebuttal to an idiot?

OK, that's a fundamentally different question to the one in the OP. Instead of just limited access to energy you're now talking about a world lacking the most basic resources such as timber and livestock. However, certain factors remain the same. Mankind's greatest asset would still be knowledge. We'd struggle hugely in your new world, lack of decent livestock and beasts of burden would hold us back. The problem wouldn't really be ease of access to energy sources any more, we'd have much more immediate problems that would stop us even getting up to the level of a confident well-organised agrarian society. We'd have to get some forests planted and raise some livestock to be back in business. But again the knowledge of where we should be heading would accelerate whatever advances we could make. We wouldn't mess about with beam engines much this time, because we know we should be heading towards turbines. Likewise we wouldn't use over or undershot waterwheels much, we know we should be using Pelton wheels, and Kaplan and Francis turbines, etc. We'd understand germ theory and have better hygiene, which would make us healthier than our ancestors at equivalent tech levels were. Bottom line is that unless the constrained resources completely knobbled us, we'd return to higher levels of civilisation relatively quickly.

Really depends on how pre-industrial you're talking. If we jumped back to the early 19th century where we had things like water wheels, domesticated livestock, iron and steel, etc then we'd be able to reimplement a fair bit. There's still masses of coal available, it might be tougher to access than before but it definitely wouldn't be out of reach to a society that well organised. As others have said, recycling of modern materials would go a long way. Your probably talking about only meeting the demands of a substantially reduced population if we list ability to farm intensively. Things like steel can actually be smelted with pre-industrial tech, folks have been accidentally making steel during iron production for centuries. Having the knowledge of what outcome you want would shortcut centuries of trial and error. I think we'd reindustrialise within a few decades. Once you've had things like refrigeration and medicine you'd want them back sooner rather than later.

Size of the event horizon, innit? The singularity doesn't have any volume, because it's a singularity. So if you define the "black hole" as everything within the event horizon then the answer is 100%, and if you only include the singularity then have fun dividing by zero

You'll still have to burn enough fuel to kill your entire vertical component, and almost all of your horizontal. The added weight from having to reinforce your lander to survive a tailhook landing might make the small fuel saving pretty marginal.

You're suggesting people at the time couldn't conceive of the Martians coming to visit us? Jules Verne was showing interplanetary flight in 1865, War of the Worlds was written in 1897. The idea had occurred to them, they just got on with their lives.

If the universe contains more space than it used to, then it's expanded. It's not just that the matter in the universe is moving relative to each other, spacetime is actually stretching. This expansion isn't "into" anything, there's nothing to expand "into". It's just that the size of the universe continues to increase. The universe used to be very small. It used to only be the size of tennis court. Before that it was the size of you. Before that it was the size of an atom. Before that it was even smaller. That's the Big Bang. The Big Bang didn't fill an empty space with matter, it was when the universe started to increase in size. It continues to do so (in fact it's accelerating). You don't have to believe this prima facie, that's not how science works. If you look into it you'll find it is a hugely well supported idea, and fundamental to modern cosmology The Big Bang didn't happen at the centre of the universe, it happened at every point in the universe. It happened right where you are now. Every point in the universe is in motion relative to every other point, not to some central point. That's what's been observed.

It's not expanding into anything. It's just that every point in the universe is getting farther apart. This isn't some weird theoretical idea, it's been measured. Some parts of space are expanding away from us greater than the speed light. Their local expansion is much slower, but because all the space between here and there is expanding to our speed relative to them is greater than light speed. We can never know what's in those parts of the universe.

NZ but I live in the UK.

It might be somewhat easier to simply modify the humans living in reduced gravity so that they were better adapted to the conditions. We're malleable, planets aren't.

It's impossible to guess what kind of technology they might be using. We have no competence at interstellar flight, so we're really not in any position to guess what a civilisation capable of interstellar flight might look like. What we can make an educated guess about is our reaction. I'm not convinced there'd be much hysteria on Earth, mostly because there wasn't last time. In the late Victorian era it was widely reported that there was an alien civilisation on Mars due to the supposed discovery of their canals. The public took this idea in their stride without going mental.

They'll buy it to a certain degree. They'll need to attract existing talent away from other space programmes to get anything done. After that the infrastructure and programmes they set up will create demand for local talent. But there's no way they can achieve anything on such short timescales without simply throwing money at the problem.

Very much so. I'm not suggesting that all 250 million men, women and children in Indonesia are frothing zealots.

Also, biggest cultural event in the world, biggest sporting event in the world, and the biggest TV event in the world. It might be irrelevant to you because of your personal preferences, but let's keep things in a bit of perspective. I personally think football is about as interesting as picking lint out of my navel and didn't watch any of the recent World Cup, but I have to recognise that it was a huge event.

Get editing then! Sounds like it needs your help.

Er, it sounds like you're saying the Olympics is irrelevant? If so, this must be some new obscure use of the world "irrelevant" that I'm not familiar with.

Their military is highly politicised, and prone to throwing it's weight around in the geopolitics of the region. They've been known to put their military on alert over the smallest perceived diplomatic slight, and their behaviour in E Timor can hardly be said to be promoting peace and prosperity. From what I've heard the only reason that one didn't turn really ugly is the US leaned on Indonesia behind the scenes. Visit any of their neighbours in regions bordering Indonesia and look at the force stance of their military bases. RAAF bases like Tindal look about ready to wade through a nuclear war. They do feel threatened.

Taking off in an unairworthy aircraft is risking that patient's life too.

That's because you're not in Southeast Asia. Having served in that part of the world, and in fact had the pleasure of exercising with the Singaporeans on several occasions and serving with ex-pat Singaporeans I can assure that there are definite tensions in the region. The Spratleys, political and relgious instability and general belligerence in Indonesia, political instability in Thailand, etc all contribute to Singapore having to maintain one of the more competent military forces in the region. I assure you their neighbours take them very seriously. It's quite possible you aren't completely up to speed on the balance of power in the Gulf States too (I know I'm not). In short, just because you haven't heard of the issues surrounding some far-flung country doesn't mean there aren't any.

Apparently not.

Only as much as the Olympics are. The Commonwealth is the name for the diplomatic and trade cooperation body that was left after the British Empire was dissolved. So the Commonwealth Games are like a mini-Olympics for the Commonwealth members. A bit like the way there's also the Pan-American Games and Asian Games.

Their money originally came from oil, but now they've got massive sovereign wealth funds and are investing in all sorts. Their finance sector can quite happily generate it's own revenue. Nobody would be happy about 30% of their GDP disappearing overnight, but UAE are pretty well positioned to be ok if oil revenues started to decline. Unlike some of their neighbours, who would be completely stuffed.

UAE's not actually massively dependent on oil for a gulf state. They've got Dubai, which is a major financial centre, and they've been making a concerted effort to diversify their economy. Looks like oil is still about 30% of GDP, but it's not like they're Saudi Arabia.

Pretty much any pilot in any country is going to put it down pronto if they lose an engine on takeoff. The people criticising him don't know what they're talking about.

Their objective seems to be to stimulate a high-tech knowledge-based economy. If they're just looking to develop payloads initially that seems realistic and admirable. Good on them.