WestAir

SImmers often get caught up in what's simulated, and many don't really consider what isn't. If you're building a sim you want to sell, flaunting how true to life your sim is is a financially intelligent move. The downside is people believe you. About a year ago Train Sim World came out with a DLC featuring the Railroad I work at. It looked gorgeous, but in terms of realism? It hit maybe the 20% mark if I'm being generous. And that's a train sim - on rails!

Journey.

Go to a Delta crew room full of reserve pilots and ask if you pitch for speed or altitude. You'll get more answers than words in the dictionary. I used to be in the biz, and my answer was always "both," because using both stick and throttle usually got me into whatever config I wanted and made check airmen happy. The truth is: I think a lot of 5k hour pilots and aeronautical degree students don't know as much as they think they know. God knows I didn't.

Most small 4 seat single engine planes have just a throttle and mixture (fuel-air ratio) lever. Most multi engine propeller planes have another lever for propeller pitch. Some planes automatically "feather" the propellers if the engine quits. I don't know how helicopters work.

Plot line for a good episode of Star Trek. "The Holo-Musk has taken over..."

Neural-Link + Biological Immortality = Limitless holodeck-like deep dives. Why would society even bother functioning in the real world at that point, when each individual can play god?

A few youtube videos I saw a while back showed people blasting through riot shields and body armor with bows and crossbows. That said; I don't know the specifics, so I'll concede to your expertise. That concession stated, I still find issue with the the argument that an alien race, based solely on its ability to endure centuries of travel, must also be militaristically superior to us at home field. While not unreasonable, the premise sounds like a logical fallacy. On the topic of practicality: If a species were so advanced as to make short work of us, surely it would be far easier for that species to never invent or maintain such demanding, complex, and resource expensive capabilities to begin with, and instead opt for the much simpler "relativistic planet killer" technique? As a mandatory disclaimer, I'm an expert on none of the aforementioned topics, so I ask you take my opinions as questions in lieu of statements.

I just want to address this concept of a space fairing race being impervious to our attacks. An old bullet can still cause new wounds. In fact: An arrow shot from a bow will penetrate body armor; And so it reasons that a 1st Century Archer is still a lethal threat to a soldier of the 21st Century. Not an equal threat, obviously, but a threat. Like-wise, as far as any of us can tell, any alien race that visits Earth will be subject to thermodynamics, momentum, and the rest, and so it reasons a bullet (or 6,000 rounds per minute from a dozen CIWS turrets backed by a liberal amount of AIM-120's) will still kill them.

I actually enjoyed your post. Some people are offended at being educated; I'm just happy you took time from your day to educate me. Keep it up!

"They blew up our planet!" (gasp) "Impossible! What frightening technological marvel could do such a terrible thing?" "Well... They kinda just threw a baseball at relativistic speeds." "Oh."

Aye. KSK already shot down my entire comment, including my false statement on lasers, a few comments back:

They could also just fire something like 5,000 rounds per minute to get the "laser" effect. It also has the added bonus of doing actual damage. One thing from Star Trek I loved were super-nukes. Each Starship had enough yield to melt the crust off of any planet it wanted. That concept was very exciting, but the writers never really gave the trope much airtime.

It always bothered me that sci fi writers go straight for the rule of cool instead of being an inspiration to real world researchers. Lasers, plasma swords and shields all look shiny, but IMO more sci fi writers should go for sensible and unique countermeasures: Shooting bullets with bullets (See: Advanced Israel iron dome. I think tanks have a special shotgun that destroys incoming projectiles and don't even get me started on CIWS). Lasers being defeated by mirrors or radiators. Projectiles that defeat "cover" by changing trajectory or just exploding behind whatever someone is using as cover and littering them with shrapnel. Electronic warfare, etc etc. Real World militaries could best a lot of sci fi factions right now. I recently saw "The edge of tomorrow" by Tom Cruise and the whole time I thought "We could absolutely annihilate these guys without even leaving the boat..."

Having joined the day before me, I always fear that you'll have played enough KSP, gotten bored, and moved on. Yet over the (near-decade) you've never ceased to educate the non-physicists and that's outstanding. I hope I was right and the math shows that hawking radiation doesn't destroy the singularity before in-falling reference frames reach it in finite time. I reeeeallly want to be right for once lol. Thanks. The point where your scalars are infinite. I'm a layman and do not use know proper terminology. By "size of black hole" I meant from one end of the event horizon to the other which, I think your correction perfectly describes. I'll use Schwarzschild radius from now on. Thanks Mike!

Okay, so I'm not very smart, and lost an argument at work to someone that presumably knows more than me on this subject. Google has given me no help, so I've come here to ask the experts. The argument was: From the reference frame of an in-falling astronaut, hawking radiation will annihilate him before he has a chance to reach the singularity. From an orbital reference frame: Hawking radiation will cause the black hole to explode before in-falling astronauts pass the event horizon. And so with all possible reference frames, the singularity never interacts with external reference frames. (My co worker also insisted that black holes never form at all, because matter takes longer than the the heat death to collapse) Is that true? I know you accelerate pretty fast during your plummet but if a black hole is 2 miles across I have a hard time believing you can accelerate to 0.9c, succumb to fantasy-level time dilation, and be nuked by negative energies before your geodesics terminate. I said it wasn't true but I don't know anything about scalars and schwarzchields(sic) and theories.

I'm late to this thread but I'm a current Locomotive Engineer for a US Railroad; I operate freight and commuter trains. As for the article: There's no way he got up to any real speed, and if even if he could, there was no way he was making it to that ship. But what if he had? Well he'd have absolutely demolished everything in his path. US trains, unlike other trains, are built to ridiculous crash standards due to road crossing safety regulations. One of our trains took out a concrete station platform before. That's how strong these things are. They're a lot heavier than their European or Asian counterparts, and one of the reasons you don't see a lot of the super modern foreign rolling stock making its way to the US. As for the training: We only required a high school diploma. I came from the airlines with an aeronautical degree but that wasn't required. There were cognitive tests but it wasn't like you saw a psychiatrist. You have to remember that our job is a lonely one; I can go hours sitting there by myself looking at rail. After 30 years of being confined to an engine with your thoughts, you can see where some level of insanity might creep up. As for technical knowledge: We're pretty proficient at fixing the train on the go. Our trains can carry several thousand passengers into heavily secluded territories with no access to roads or emergency services, and we have a 3 man crew. We can usually troubleshoot most problems, save for a derail or a dead engine. No one wants to be rescued; It could take hours for them to get maintenance or another train out to you. As for cutting out safety systems; We routinely do this when making up trains / yard work / trouble shooting / etc. Usually the switches that disable safety features are sealed but you can break those seals with the flick of your wrist. I am not 100% positive but I think the onboard computer will apply a penalty brake if you accelerate beyond 65 mph with the speed controls disabled. I say I'm not sure because I know they test sections of the rail at 100 mph, and with the speed control activated it limits you to 81 mph. I haven't asked how they do that yet. To Mike Garrisons point on the US being behind in safety - this is absolutely true. At my railroad we have "Dark territory" where you are required to turn off the speed control before entering, and all curves / switches / speed limits are muscle memory by the Locomotive Engineer. God forbid you fall asleep and enter a 25 mph curve at 65 mph. The trains won't stop you from doing that. We don't have any locations in our 750 miles of track where the computer will stop you from passing a stop-signal or hitting the rear of another train or going off the end of the track and into the sea. If you have any questions feel free to ask or PM me. Edit: Oh, I forgot. I was taught by my mentors that the name "Engineer" (Most laymen just call us Conductors. Big pet peeve of mine) came from the fact that Locomotives use air. The idea was that you were "engineering air", hence Engineer. Not sure how accurate that is but that's the legend... I personally think it derived from the fact that we operate the engine.

That's a fair rebuttal. I stand corrected.

I just looked at the old NTSB animations of the accident, ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwcSGbvM6yc ) and from what's depicted, it looks like the aircraft entered a left turn before nose separation. My (uneducated) guess is that when the aircraft subsequently passed wings level in a shallow right roll, the trim that kept the aircraft stable in its left turn translated into a steep climb when nearing wings level. This right roll continues until crash into terrain, but would certainly be responsible for the nose up pitch depicted in the animation. Assuming, of course, that trim or elevator back pressure needed to keep positive climb in the left bank was maintained until impact with the bay. I'm not sure the nose up pitch had much to do with the CoG or airflow change. Though someone who works with the Queen can feel free to correct me.

Once upon a time I used to fly for two separate carriers, and before that I was a flight instructor. I haven't flown anything since 2016 but stuff like this makes me relieved to have left the industry. Everything I've heard about this debacle, including from two of my old coworkers who are both FO's at Delta, terrifies me to no end. What happened was beyond inexcusable. We are not new to the jet age; the terrors of the DeHavilland Comet or the DC-10 should have taught us the patience, strategy, and foresight to prevent single point accidents. I'm curious to see how the industry changes in response to the Max.

The main reason I'm abandoning traditional airlocks is for uniqueness. In todays world of storytelling, more of the same is just boring. If a butanol or fermifluid airlock can get a whole cargo / passenger shuttle into a pressurized hangar,, using real world physics, then I'd be pretty happy. As for pressurization concerns, as RCgothic and Magnemoe stated, I might be able to get away with a 0.5 atm crushing pressure using ethanol. Not great, not terrible. Thanks for the math. As for the atmospheric pressure push into the vacuum, I think I can get around this by just having airtight seals on both the vacuum and hangar sides of the pool, opening one at a time to allow transport of the shuttle, and both sides closed when the airlock is not in use. Thanks Magnemoe! I wonder, since water is heavier than ethanol, I wonder if I can't just have the pool be made of water, and the ethanol floating on top of the side where the roof is vacuum. That way ships get a nice bath on their way out of the dusty vacuum and workers don't get drunk off of fumes. Never played Oxygen Not Included. I had to look it up. That game looks pretty fun. As for the barotrauma, do you know if having only one side of the pool open at any one time (with the other sealed airtight) would eliminate the concern completely? That way the air in the hangar never has a chance to push the water, ethanol, or ferrofluid into vacuum and no need for digging longer shafts? Awesome! Now ferrofluid's are easily magnetized. Will RCS thrusters / electronic components / solar flares make the pool dance out of its tub?

Or just have a roof over the pool that keeps it closed when the other side is exposed to vacuum. Thanks Cubinator! I was trying to engineer a hard sci fi solution to the problem of big Star Wars / Star Trek like spaceports being ridiculously impractical to pressurize/depressurize. I wanted to go with a more natural airlock that didn't need hours of time, required huge pumps, and had no fail-safe for if the power went out. Doesn't look like I'm smart enough for the task, though.

Google has failed me. Every search just discusses water. I'm making a sci fi and I'm trying to come up with a unique, but possible, way to handle airlocks on celestial objects with no atmosphere for large objects like ships or rovers. This is what I came up with: My problem is that I don't know what liquid can stay a liquid at 0 ATM, but also won't be corrosive to a ship or explosive if RCS thrusters are fired at it for landing or lift off. Obviously the pool can be kept heated or cooled to an ideal temperature. Any help would be great. Thanks!

That's actually a very fair and rational explanation.

I don't know how to better explain my observation. Most people would be against interfering with alien life. Most people wouldn't be against interfering with / dissecting / interacting with new life found at the bottom of the Ocean. So our willingness to interfere with life changes based on how far that life is from our homes. For instance, if we made a colony on Callisto and those colonists, born and raised on Callisto, would be way more likely to dissect and study and interact with life they find in the sea below them than we would if we found life there tomorrow with no humans on Callisto. In fact we might agree not to disturb them at all.

An interesting trend with humans is that we, perhaps due to our territorial nature, oppose interacting with the environment the further away that environment is. Spider web in your attic? Nuke it. Spider web on Mars? Colonize around it. Spider web on a planet around Alpha Centauri? Make it a capitol punishment to go anywhere near it. It's a curious behavior, one that I'm totally too inept to fully understand.