WestAir

Dragon Ball Z TFS Abridged.

A superAI is irrelevant to a society unequipped to utilize its benefits. [Placing Data from Star Trek in charge of the war-torn state of Somalia will not be its tether to success] The real question, then, becomes what happens when a society advances to the point where all basic needs are handled by automated and indestructible systems; Labor becomes an option, and the greatest human challenge is the effective use of free time. Where does society progress then?

I don't think having the CoM outside the EH will save particles that cross it from falling in. I could be wrong but I don't think it works that way.

If all cockroach species died, RAID would go out of business and a lot of people would need new jobs. Not sure mother nature would care, though.

Time travel can be described as having an effect before a cause; We do that all the time. I know dozens of people who act before they think.

The future power source for our cities was always a battle between hydro, solar, wind and Nuclear - with coal and natural gas losing the war (and with tidal and geothermal being regional-dependent) I think the larger question is what our transportation industry plans to do without patroleum.

Hahaha. Actually paperwork keeps us on the ground a lot more often than it gets us in the air. I already know what'll happen when I go in tomorrow, "It's ten minutes past departure... where's our paperwork?" I find it's worse when a crew member calls out sick right at showtime; Dispatch never has the name of the replacement crew and we always end up waiting for an update. Good times. Aye. I was still talking about the coanda affect in that part of my ramblings, but you still get a gold star since I really wasn't familiar with the kutta condition.

You can't say it's any one force or principle that causes a plane to soar. I know flight instructors who teach every student the Bernoulli doctrine like gospel. I've seen books that say the airflow connects again at the trailing edges; They don't. I had a Professor in college who said lift was caused by air "tripping" over itself as it passed over a wing in an attempt to explain the coanda effect; If I'm not mistaken, the lack of separation of the boundary-layer is not caused by the coanda effect (I don't think it has anything to do with the viscosity of the layer at all). On top of that explanation, the excuse I hear most often now is the Newtonian flow deflection theory about air being deflected downward off the trailing edge to create downwash; One sister theory I've heard a lot is the one Cicatrix described where the air hits the bottom of an airfoil with a positive AoA and pushes it up. That's not lift, it's induced drag, and it's pulls my lift vector back to make it perpendicular with that downwash from the other guys theory. In reality, lift is caused by a total combination of the laws governing the conservation of mass and momentum along with a lot of really intelligent math describing pressure and viscosity. If I'm not mistaken, aircraft engineers combine it all into an equation with a Reynolds Number to get some fancy, fraction-of-accuracy result, but I can't remember the name of it (Neither could Google, apparently). All said and done, if you were to board my plane and ask me what made it fly, I'd say money.

K^2, So then a gravitational field is static and what propagates at C is information containing changes to that field? In other words, once a field is made there no information exchange necessary unless a change is made? Am I following that correctly?

I have absolutely no idea. I'm obviously wrong (because black holes exist), but I can't configure how I'm wrong. If gravity weren't affected by space, then we'd see all sorts of weird anomalies (For instance, we'd still be feeling the gravity of Galaxies outside our observable Universe, because the expansion of space would have no effect on the propagation of the gravity waves of those Galaxies) On the flip side, if this weren't the case, Earth would orbit the Sun where it were 8 minutes ago (In fact, we orbit where the Sun is, not where it was 8 minutes ago when its light left). Long post made shorter: I'm confused.

Absolutely true. Gravitons are not affected by gravity, but they still propagate through space. If space is bent into a closed loop, there is no vector that a wave of gravity can travel that leads out. Gravity and space are two different things, you can't say gravity doesn't follow a coordinate system in linear space-time.

It's not that I'm saying gravity can't go fast enough to escape, I'm saying there's no linear path of space that gravity can follow to escape. It's stuck in a closed system. I'm imagining it like if someone placed a 1,000,000 ton marble on a trampoline and it just punched a hole into the fabric. The fabric will return to a flat state, and the information (weight) the marble would normally convey can't escape. As I understand it, that's a fair analogy. The inside of an event horizon is like the inside of a balloon - all directions a graviton can travel will stay inside the balloon because there's no linear track that leads outside of a balloon.

This is what PackledHostage is questioning. How can something interact with its surroundings when the information telling the Universe how it should interact is trapped inside a singularity. Once you fall into an event horizon, all physical space-time directions bring you closer to the center. (I.E, the actual singularity is ALL AROUND YOU like the walls of the garbage compactor from Star Wars. No direction brings you back to the Universe, all directions bring you closer to the center). So how can an object stuck in this cosmic garbage compactor send a note to you or I telling us its mass, spin, or charge? K^2 gave a pretty decent excerpt a few months back explaining the answer, but it went over my head. The fact is, however, that saying "Gravity isn't affected by spacetime" isn't a valid retort, because we know that it is.* *Except in this instance, obviously.

I got my private pilot license from "West Air Aviation" back in '07. I think... or maybe it was my instrument? Either way I got some rating from them.

I used to own duct tape... then I started a space agency.

Heights. Put me next to a cliff-edge and you'll see me freak out. This applies to heights as small as subway platforms. EDIT: As an aside, the sheer irony of Labhouse' comments when put next to his name is not lost on me.

Is there a reason this thread isn't 17 pages of pictures of the 757-200?

It might work to: Burrow a hole with a laser, insert explosives, pulverize the inside to hollow it out then collect the debris from the chasm you just made. In this way you reduce freefloating, hyperfast debris while keeping all the ore in one place, which also happens to be indoors. You could also slowly liquify the ore and collect it before it solidifies, bit by bit. Thirdly, you could do a KSP maneuver and place RCS thrusters on the body and move it to where your equipment is as opposed to moving your equipment to it. The above ideas were made in haste on 2.5 hours of sleep and should not be taken as hard science.

If you've ever mined an asteroid in space engineers you can imagine how dangerous and clumsy the whole process COULD be without proper planning.

I dunno about zero efficiency. I'm pretty sure I've seen square plywood fly before. (^Tongue in cheek)

Star Wars wings were flat surfaces on both sides (short of the N-1 Starfighter). The lack of curves and the blunt/flat leading and trailing edges should make them pretty inefficient as an airfoil.

To be fair, a lot of the "Spaceship with wing" concepts are lifting bodies, not winged spacecraft. (X-24 comes to mind)

ROFL! I laughed out loud at that. This should give you negative reputation points.

I just looked through it and do not see it. Are you certain?

I did not check to see if this has already been suggested; I'm suggesting KSP implement competition to career mode. Have one or several "competing" agencies whose progress can be compared to your own. You get major contracts and awards for beating them to the Mun or Duna, and lose out if they are the first to plant the flag. Similarly, it might be interesting to see "foreign" stations/equipment during your travels, and it might even be a fun dynamic to build joint stations with your competitors. Just an idea.