WestAir

Let's be perfectly, completely honest here: In modern and future society, combat is a second--long game where the Military, the Government, or the Police will always win. The heroes / villains in movie scripts will never, ever be able to go head to head with a modern or futuristic paramilitary. Those groups, like the "Empire" from Star Wars, must be "dumbed down" to give heroes and villains any chance at surviving encounters with them. No, Bane would not have been able to take over the US Stock Exchange, Captain America would never have been able to leave SHIELD H.Q., the Serenity would never have been able to fly through an armada of the greatest ships, and Han Solo would have died the moment the Imperial FireTeam opened fire on him and the Falcon in Mos Eisley. So for those criticizing combat in sci fi and modern era movies, just realize how boring your films will be if things were realistic.

K^2, that would be awesome if you could figure it out. From my (limited) perspective it almost seems like the expansion is a natural means to counter any object from "leaving" its visible Universe via any acceleration, up to and including photons.

At lightspeed would you ever leave the visible Universe, or is the fact that space is expanding faster than C enough to stop you from physically being able to journey outside of our visible Universe? If yes, does that mean that travel at C would screw things up because while you can get anywhere in zero time, there are still places that exist that are beyond a sort of "white hole" barrier?

If you're going to quote me and correct me, at least quote the part where I said "connected to a central structure that is not rotating." - In this case, a rotating wheel connected to a standard space station. In your video you'd be docking with the nonrotating part of the space station, completely missing the point of me asking how to "transfer crew" between the nonrotating and rotating structures. EDIT: Also, thanks for linking that video. This game looks utterly amazing. Definitely going to check it out!

Quick question. I Googled it but as amazing as Google is, I couldn't find any pertinent links. My question is: Say you build a space station that has a Stanford Torus or spinning wheel. Obviously there's no way you can dock space-craft with the part that spins, so the station will need a central hull equipped with the airlocks and docking mechanisms that is "still" relative to the Earth. That said, how does crew transfer from the "spinning" part to the "non-spinning" part? For exceptionally large stations, like ones in Sci Fi, stopping the wheels from spinning isn't reasonable. So out of pure curiosity, how do you transfer crew and resources between the spinning wheel and the non-spinning central hull of a spinning space station? A ladder that reaches a chamber you have to "jump" through without hitting a support beam?

What's needed for interplanetary colonization? Space ships. Fuel. Lots and lots of movies and video games... don't want to get bored on those 2,000 year journeys.

Is it possible to have a stable orbit where two moons orbit each other?

At the risk of showing how ignorant I am in neural-science, can these electronic neurons perform their tasks at such high spike speeds without risk of damage to electronic neurons due to heat accumulation? Can those electronic neurons, due to their smaller size, handle the same number of axons and dendrites, and can those axons and dendrites send information faster than 200-300 mph like ours? Will the increase in number of spikes and speed of communication make the relatively gigantic size of a brain disadvantageous?

RuBisCo, Considering the size of neurons, it may not be far fetched to assume that the brain is an extremely efficient producer of cognition, and any greater cognitive machine would need to be larger, as opposed to needing to be synthetic or mechanical.

The question is, do mechanized workers end at just the corporate sector? What if someone says "An AI would make a better Justice on the Supreme Court because it would never be biased or serve the interests of corporations, and can be designed to only keep the Constitution in mind." - Would computers in office be better than a man? What about CEO's or the boards of major corporations? Computers can be programmed to be far more altruistic than a person and would certainly never lie or fall into scandals. Why not have them rise to the ranks of our greatest positions?

When mechanized workers begin to drastically occupy the workforce, we'll finally reach a point where society can focus on what's actually important in life: The enjoyment of it. You spend 8 hours sleeping, 8 1/2 hours working, around 2 hours getting ready or commuting to and from work, then you have a little less than 5 hours to accomplish chores and other maintenance related duties in your life. Where's the time for fun, friends, family, sight seeing and self fulfillment? Remove those 8 1/2 hours because an automated system can do your job better (and it can do it better, more efficiently, without pay, and doesn't need sleep or time off) and suddenly your quality of life has increased tenfold.* *Assuming the rest of society is in the same predicament and we're no longer worried about the scarcity of resources.

Haha, thanks guys.

Wouldn't it act like a gas? It would just shoot upwards towards lower pressure and rapidly expand? Sort of like breaking a steam pipe. Steam would shoot out and kill anyone in the direction of travel of the hot steam, but its range would be negligible at best.

Safe to say you won the thread. That's unbelievable. What does it look like when you launch from Kerbin?

"Captain, there's an enemy ship about 85,000 kilometers away. It's coming inbound retrograde!" "Red Alert! Open a channel." "Ignored. They're preparing to fire missiles." "Target that ship and destroy it!" "Opening fire. Impact in 3... 2... 1..." "Status?" "Captain they've got some sort of hyper-polarized quantum energy flux shield. Our attacks did nothing. They're returning fire!" "WHAT!?" "Nah I'm just screwing with you. They're all dead. Military satellites shot them down already and destroyed the enemy countries launch sites days ago. War's probably over already. Anyone want tea or something?"

GoDores, I've learned over the years that no two pilots fly the same. If you've ever been to aviation forums like Pprune, you'd be well aware that pilots with 10k hours will endlessly argue over even the most basic of procedures; One will quote the manufacturer handbook, the other will quote their company policy, another pilot will quote what they did in the military and the last guy will quote the procedure his instructor taught him back in 1970. Take a walk into the little room all the standby pilots are always waiting in and ask "Do you pitch for airspeed or altitude?" and get ready to never hear the end of it. My point is that I no longer argue with pilots when they say they've done something or tell me what way is the right way. Pitching for 120 knots worked for those guys to restart their prop and who am I to argue? I would have pitched for best glide.

Pakled, I had no idea, that's really cool. I took a look around the internet and you're completely right. Boeing is usually several miles ahead when it comes to systems design, so I wonder why the APU isn't designated for inflight restart. It seems like in the event of fuel starvation or birdstrike the crew would be S.O.L. [Well, more SOL than they would be in an A320 that hit a bunch of birds, anyways]

If the speeds are in the thousands of meters per second, and the impacts are putting off enough newtons to vaporize the colliding parts, how could anything catch Kessler Syndrome objects? If the net were somehow able to catch high velocity debris, I imagine an old hinge and bolt from a 1970's launch would be hard to catch in a net. Additionally, if it were in LEO wouldn't the debris decay into re-entry over the next decade or so anyways?

A lot of science fiction depicts humanity spreading into the stars. Many suggest we'll have colonies on the Moon, Mars, Callisto and Titan, Colony ships and sprawling mega-structures in orbit. Many of you know more than the writers of science fiction. So I ask the question: Based on the factors of reality, what is our most likely future in space? Will we see colonies, cities and nations form out of Earth, or were the 1960's the golden age of space?

Is it true that, unlike with other forms of suffocation/hypoxia, in a vacuum if the subject isn't returned to survivable pressures within about half a minute survivability is improbable?

K^2. You are correct. For those questioning it, a 1:4 glide ratio at 200 knots would yield you a 5,063 ft/min descent rate if my math is right. [50 miles down for every 200 miles forward. 50 nautical miles is 303,806 feet / hour. Divide by 60 to make that 5,063 feet per minute] That is disastrous. To put that in perspective, if this 747-400 were to do a typical ILS landing, the formula for it's approach descent rate is [Descent Rate (feet/min) = Ground Speed (kt) x glideslope %]. Because a 747's approach speed can vary more than 60 knots, I'll put it in the middle and use a generic 150 knots. Assuming the winds are zero, the groundspeed is then 150 knots, the typical glide slope is 3° which gives us 5%, so: Rate of Descent = 150 x 5 = 750 ft/min. A far, far cry from the 5,063 ft/min glide. K^2 mentioned flight simulator; About a half-decade ago I flew a 747 deadstick into a waterlanding. The video is still on YouTube (skip to 6 minutes to see it): Thank god. In February I had the wonderful close-call of flying a small C172 on the flight before it suffered an engine failure. The pilots were able to restart it in the air. Like the long-retired 777 Captain I mentioned in an earlier post, they never pitched for best glide. According to the guys at the flight school, the extra speed allowed them to restart the prop. Had it been me, I would have pitched for best glide and been in the back page of the Las Vegas Review Journal somewhere. Thankfully I've never had to deal with such a situation out of a sim.

The 747 is controllable with a quad engine failure. Between the RAT and the APU you will have viable use of most the control surfaces and essential avianics.

Query: Would that brick glide over someone's head?

Two corrections: A 777 only has two engines, not four. In a glide the landing would be survivable because the pilot would flare it before landing to soften the impact. (Like the miracle landing in the Hudson). Also, I thought Vx (best angle of climb) was the unit closest to Vg (best glide), as opposed to Vy (best rate)? In the planes I fly Vx is closer to Vg than Vy. Even in the trainers I fly (Cessna 172SP) Vg Best Glide is 65, Vx Best Angle is 62, Vy Best Rate is 74. I'd imagine if you've lost thrust, the time (rate) it takes to return to Earth isn't quite as important as the distance (angle) it takes. Unless you're flying a seaplane over the ocean. Then I guess you'd pitch for Vy. (EDIT) As an additional note, a coworker of mine who says he used to fly for United told me a few months back that he wouldn't pitch for best glide if his 777 lost both engines. He'd shoot for something like 300 knots so he could try to relight the engines. Thought that was interesting.

So that may or may not be the coolest thing ever.