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Stargate525

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Everything posted by Stargate525

  1. Stargate525
    It wouldn't increase efficiency if they needed to burn several thousand dV to get down to the lower orbit. If they built the panels in the orbit of an asteroid belt or something, you save on logistics.
  2. Stargate525
    If you have a society intent on galactic communication and with power enough to spare, they could broadcast signals at EVERY system that has a planet with a composition friendly to life, and hope for the best. We've invented spam, why wouldn't they have?
  3. Stargate525
    Because you can't tie retro-rockets to that wrench you lost grip on or the nut that shook loose. And because like most people said, we didn't care or have the margins for it before. And considering Mt. Everest is facing a serious issue with hills of frozen human excrement... we tend not to deal with the issue unless we absolutely have to.
  4. Stargate525
    We lose satellites every year from failures.
  5. Stargate525
    I can't think of one. Theoretically you might be able to if you could figure out a way to aerodynamically skip against the karman line, but you'd still be touching atmosphere every orbit, and you'd quickly decay.
  6. Stargate525
    So weigh the plate. Run the device for a couple of hours, and get a sensitive scale. If it's ablation the plate should be measurably lighter, no?
  7. Stargate525
    Secondary question: how fast would those suckers grow in our sunlight (assuming atmospheric and ground conditions the same). Would they grow like kudzu because of all the extra energy, or would they burn?
  8. Stargate525
    If you're in the US or any European country, you should be able to force the doors. That hole in the door is for a leverage device to do so. Protip, though: if the spot for the inspector's certificate is blank, or says 'on file in maintenance office' or something, don't take it. It's never been inspected.
  9. Stargate525
    I'll tell you right now that Grand Island ain't gonna happen. Your best way in is via puddlejumper from Omaha or Vegas, or into Lincoln (which is equally teeny) and then suffering through an hour or two on I-80. I went to university just an hour from the place. Dear GOD don't put it there. If you want somewhere small-ish while still actually being able to get there, I'd suggest a city like Milwaukee, Kansas City, or Colorado Springs.
  10. Stargate525
  11. Stargate525
    If the ring inside is a rigid moving walkway, with electric engines wheeling it along the outside static habitat, the vessel would encounter a net torque, I'm fairly certain.
  12. Stargate525
    The other problem with aerodynamic drag is that the air will start to spin, and then the spinning air will start to spin the station...
  13. Stargate525
    It's hypocritical to say no. To be fair, if they wanted to take my backyard with eminent domain, I'd sell them the whole lot and move a bit further out. In my neighborhood, yea, no problem. (There's a massive chemical plant five minutes from my house already) How do you figure they got that money in the first place? People who aren't concerned about fees, taxes, and penalties are not the ones who have money, for good reason.
  14. Stargate525
    There's a difference between a well that can't get capped and a pipeline rupture. The biggest one I could find on a quick search was about half a million gallons (and that's a VERY high number compared to most spills, which barely ever reach 100k). Pipelines are probably one of the safer ways to transport the stuff. At least, I'd rather a dedicated line for the stuff than having it shipped piecemeal along highways and already overburdened rails.
  15. Stargate525
    Good luck hauling the equipment needed for a nuclear power station out to Mars. You know, several of these:
  16. Stargate525
    I'm not fooled. The problem you're overlooking is that whether we have ten people or ten thousand is irrelevant when we need very precise, uniform objects. Industry can make a lot of an object, but they are also CONSISTENT. Look up the french Chauchat for examples of what happens when mechanical objects aren't built within good enough tolerances.
  17. Stargate525
    No, we're limited by logistical and mechanical ones. The first copyright was issued in 1662. Before about 1600 no one would have any concept of what you're talking about. And really, you're talking more trademark. Which is still silly, since you won't be able to breach it for hundreds of years. Yes, but we need to first make the things we need for the production. It's not hard to make a cake 'from scratch.' Unless you need to grow the wheat, tame the chickens, birth the cow, refine the sugarcane, distill the vanilla, and make the bowl, whisk, pan, oven, and grindstone. I'm pretty damned sure there is no real-world analog to a material that can be mined out with a bog-standard pickaxe, laid down in a powder, and can transmit signal without any mechanical or electrical input over distances of meters.
  18. Stargate525
    If you're talking coming into a system at interstellar speeds, you could probably bleed some speed off by clever and numerous flybys. Or massive aerobraking.
  19. Stargate525
    And the power on Mars for such a laser is coming from...?
  20. Stargate525
    Okay, Mars in three days. Cool. How the hell are you going to STOP?
  21. Stargate525
    Seed for the map is generated when the map initially loads. The numbers you're going to get and the order they come in is determined from the drop. Movement, pickups, and anything that doesn't involve a roll do NOT use numbers in the seed. Firing will have the exact same result regardless of whether you move a character before the shot or not. So the number of rolls you can go through in a turn is actually quite lower (one of the hidden benefits of the sharpshooter with the pistol upgrades is that they can sometimes get 5-6 shots in a turn, burning through a lot of numbers if you need to).
  22. Stargate525
    Beetroot. fields upon fields of the hardy vegetable. Cheap and easy sugar, and that'll keep your economy going as refined sugar would sell its weight in gold.
  23. Stargate525
    Let me rephrase. He isn't STUPID, he is NOT AS HIGHLY EDUCATED. He was not given a comprehensive education from age 5 and schooled for at least 13 years to attempt to give him a broad base of all knowledge available. Telling him to 'anneal something to 1000 degrees' is jargon, and you know it. It would literally be a matter of telling him 'this dial tells you how hot your forge is. Get this metal to 1000, keep it there for a bit, and let it cool slowly.' He'll have a name for that process already, and from that point forward will know YOU call it annealing. And I specifically said that if you ignored the language gap. Put him in a modern forge with latin or greek writing, and an untrained uptimer with their language of choice, he will be the one able to turn out better work more quickly, every time.
  24. Stargate525
    I understand that. But having the HOW down already makes teaching the WHY a hell of a lot easier. Almost literally, all you need to do is turn 'heating in charcoal' into 'adding a very specific amount of what charcoal is made of.' Your foundry workers don't need to be your chemists, or the ones testing the purity of the metal. You're falling into the trap of thinking that ancient peoples were backwards bumpkins, when they very much weren't. A Roman smith (given the removal of the language barrier) planted into a modern machine shop would be up to speed remarkably quickly. Your biggest issue are going to be the scientists and the scholars, actually, as much of their view on physics and chemistry is based in greek philosophy, and very wrong. There, you need them to unlearn entire lifetimes of knowledge before you can build it back up.
  25. Stargate525
    Define 'concept behind the material.' You don't need a degree in metallurgy or physics to understand 'blend metals, get qualities from each.' They've done it, they've MADE those materials.
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