p1t1o

Advantage of laser is that 100% (or near enough) goes in the correct direction. Thrust is woeful though, I doubt it would ever be practical, mainly for the reason you point out - thermal inefficiency. And we cant forget the Kzinti lesson...

Well for one thing, Im not aware of any Earth-ejecta being found on other planets. Ejecta arriving here, only have to survive reentry, which is FAR easier than surviving hypersonic speed at sea level. As for how the ejecta gets to space, not all planets have our atmosphere. Couple those with the very, very different starting conditions and I have no problem holding both ideas at once.

Those are two very different contexts though.

General consensus is that it is either still on earth somewhere or vapour, due to atmospheric drag.

Exact data is hard to come by, the best I could find on google within a few mins was: "As for the gliding scene at the end after it runs out of fuel, Veterans reported gliding their Spitfires 15 miles or more without fuel."

Its weird, I have literally had zero problems with Windows10 updates...it plays nicely with steam, geforce, my antivirus stuff... I think it has updated once or twice since I installed, but they have been fairly benign ones that did their business when I shutdown, completed when I next started up and maybe took 2 mins of my time. Honestly Steam itself updates and crashes more often. Oh man you sound like such a teenager right there lol! (I have also met plenty of adults that exactly match this behaviour) Dont be in too much of a hurry, living on your own has its trials, you just havnt experienced them yet because you havnt needed to. But you will It is, though, mostly pretty good.

Why on Earth would you assume that? Besides the fact that thats not really how aircraft work, the spitfire was known for its excellent glide characteristics. http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfire-I.html

If Im understanding you correctly, it sounds like you are describing an object which is not rotating around the Earth, in which case, no this is not possible. However, there is a name for this because it is possible to use them around stars, they are called Statites. They consist of the payload and a solar sail tuned to support the weight of the mass against solar gravity without being in orbit - the solar wind provides the "lift". A curious property of these is that, because both gravity and the solar wind tail off in proportion to the inverse square law, the same area of sail can support the statite at any altitude, so it can be moved around the solar system at will and it will remain in place where you leave it (subject to the gravity of other astronomical bodies of course).

That must have smelled AMAZING!

They dont vent live, fusing plasma. The matter is allowed to cool, then its just rarefied gas (eg: ITER only uses a few grams at a time). I believe in current test reactors it is pumped out and analysed to study the reaction.

Dude. No.

They are EFPs.

If the Illumanati were still around...they'd just be scientists.

Buttons on computers, in cars, anywhere really. Why are they all so unstaisfying? Why they all have a 1mm travel and make a make that muted "dunk" noise? Why not proper buttons with a good 5mm of travel and a nice solid "Ka-Klick!"? What kind of...of sociopath...prefers the former? Is it just me?

You can guarantee a profit on roulette just by doubling your bet each time you lose. But you need an enormous pot of seed money to get anywhere though...

Am in an RPG mood so tried out "Tides of Numenera" - whilst it is obviously built with love, but OMG so much text! It is very story-rich but the "RPG" side of the game seems like window dressing on an interactive novel. "Tyranny" is a a more traditional RPG and the plot is interesting - the bad guy has already won, the realm belongs to Kyros and you are one of his minions. Good so far. *** In bigger news I am currently curating my mod install, building it up with an eye to getting into a really good multi-month KSP binge.

SATAN - STAA + MIM11CFITOOOGUPROY = IM COMING FOR YOU P1T1O OMG creepy!

Some movies are idiocracy

Well the term "barrel" is not relevant because you ar not using bullets, so no theres no barrel on lasers, though you might use an optical mechanism (mirrors, diffraction gratings, optic fibres) to transport the beam from the place it is generated to a pointing mechanism, which could be termed a "barrel". It seems counter intuitive, but lasers actually do have recoil, its just very small. A laser with an output of 300MW will have a 1Newton recoil force. And since a 300MW laser is usually quite massy, its not really something you will often notice. It scales exactly with power so your 1mW laser pointer has a recoil of....<counting on fingers>...3 trillionths of a Newton (3e-12N). If you're thinking "can that be used to propel spaceships", you'd be right, it is what gets you the theoretical maximum possible Isp (exhaust velocity is c). But it takese a LOT of power to get any appreciable thrust (300MW/N as above).

I have never heard of a real "gas dwarf" before, fascinating. I mean, except for when I asked this question over at XKCD: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=124518&sid=ed573812f136e0561eb2e5b451068aa3

Agreed! And they have like one guy with a machine gun who kills like 20 aliens. Imagine this - give all your soldiers a machine gun. Crazy right? I'd like to see a scene where Cap, Black Panther, Black Widow and Hulk are charging the enemy, fists raised, a Viking Yawp on their lips and whenever they get within ten feet of an enemy and set up a supreme WWF wrestling takedown with 2 horizontal spins, the enemy they are charging gets 5-10 rounds from the line troops at the rear who are just methodically pumping thousands of rounds into the heaving enemy masses. Or Marvel movies with realistic head trauma - so any enemy that ever gets knocked unconscious either wakes up immediately after 3-4 seconds, or wakes up with severe brain deficits. End credits scene is just a huge ER wards with countless rows of faceless henchmen covered in bloodied sheets, bodies ruined, twisted and contorted, bleeding, gurgling and spluttering from awful crushing wounds caused by Caps shield and hulks fists. I think Cap is supposed to be all like ethical and junk, "only" incapacitating enemies instead of killing them. Or is it that he just loves leaving people with permanent, life-changing disabilities? There's a lot of henchmen that can only eat through tubes now. On another note, I'd like to see Game of Throne remade exactly the same except one guy has a machine gun. Just like pick one random character. See how that plays out. Imma say it, a jeep with a .50 cal could take out a dragon.

Too little data to say. If its a lifeless rock, of course, go for it. If it is the only other habitable planet within 1000 light years, then it would be totally unethical to do short-sighted things like dump waste or destroy features which might permanently affect the environment for all future generations. If we find thousands of habitable planets within our local volume, then yeah, its probably totally fine as long as there is no native life. If theres native life, then...it depends...killing native life doesnt normally stop us, but you might hope that society at that point would have some interest in them. Again it probably depends on the relative abundance of life. Anyway, by far the worst thing thing we could possibly do to a planet - is not to dump waste on it or mine it, but to move in.

Freaking heck FINALLY someone has come out and said it! "Yeah of course we can go faster than light, we already know how, all you need is a warp drive" AUGH!

Oh right, I thought there was something more sinister going on.

You know what really gets my goat? Re: Infinity War Oh, spoilers...I guess...maybe you've been on a submarine for the last 6 months?