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Im on to you, I saTHIS HUMAN CONSIDERS YOUR NEW USERNAME TO BE A VERY NORMAL CHOICE

I love when a spaceship has enough rooms inside to fill the entire volume of the vessel

Nobody walks around in London asking "What is the name of our city?" Sure mate, "our". VERY suspicious.... Oh and "Physics Student" what an ingenious cover...was "Human Person" taken?

Fallout is apparently a bespoke VR version so hopefully it will be quite slick. Oh and I think Doom ("new" doom) has a VR version too. It is slowly but surely entering the mainstream. The headache thing is probably very specific to each person, Im unsure how it would work. I feel like if you remove the motion capture from your head, and just use it as a 3D "window" and use your "hands" with motion capture to manipulate objects, it could be of some use. But this is purest speculation. KSP V2.0:

I can see VR being awesome for KSP, but it would require a lot of re-working how the camera works I think. Its easy to forget that VR goggs are essentially a high-res 3D monitor, which would be worth a lot for most games, even if there was no motion capture. I can tell you that the Vive comes bundled in most places with Fallout4VR And I think there is a mod to make Skyrim work with VR, Im not sure... I wonder - you know those 3D bluerays of movies that you get for 3D televisions? Possible to watch them in 3D on VR goggs?

I have TrackIR, its great, dont suffer any ill effects from it, its definitely a huge bonus for immersion, about the best you can get without going VR. I have heard that the resolution is not quite up to the standard where you can look around a cockpit and read all the instruments naturally, but even with a HD monitor+TrackIR you still have to "lean in" to see them anyway, so its all positive gains and no drawbacks really. HTC are releasing a "pro" version this year with almost double the resolution, which will be a great improvement. Of course there will be a price hike though. I dont want to get stuck in the trap of "Ill get the pro when the price comes down next year" only to find that the "pro-pro" version is getting released...rinse and repeat. In the absence of any hard data, it looks like I will skip VR for the immediate future and upgrade RAM+SSDs. However, its bonus season (somehow Ive trained myself to always forget about bonuses so its always a nice surprise) soon so a coupla hundred quid might find its way into my wallet. And then it looks like the HTC Vive is the likliest contender, mostly due to their association with Steam and the weird stories that are around about the founder of Oculus (and frankly, the "windows mixed reality" sets from Asus, Lenovo etc. look like budget copies of the Rift/Vive. Its hard to believe that external-sensor-free tracking will be as sharp as the others or that they would be superior in any other function).

Now Im confused about whose hand is whose. Honestly its starting to go into more detail than I can comfortably extract without watching the scene over and over. I wish I could post the two screenshots I took to show why Im so convinced, but imgur is garbage apparently and I dont want another account with another nameless faceless storage website. But I gave the timestamps for the youtube clip I took them from so theres that. Two pictures with the same background and Clooney hanging there like they are filming them dangling from a ceiling. If it is not bad science, then its bad cinema, there's definitely something severely off about the scene, I'll take either one.

[snip] Fair points, the EMU is much heavier than I expected, but it feels reachy. Yeah I can believe that there is some combination of events somewhere that would have necessitated Georges suicide, but none of them are evident in the movie, unless you use your imagination. For one thing, his weight was taken by the carabiner on the tether, not his hand. It doesn't make no sense, the lanyard was slipping for sure, but I would still say that going from what is presented, there is no/very little force there at all, not even a mere 95N. A 5-deg/s rotation is just an example and is significant, when I examined two screenshots 8 seconds apart there was only tiny angular differences, not the 45-deg shift you'd get from 5d/s. I would accept "poorly shot" if its not "bad science", either way its grating.

I[snip] To stray back on-topic, nuclear weapons in sci-fi are a mixed bag for sure. Some example pop into mind: Indiana Jones 4 - Safe in a fridge? I dont care about the "lead lining", but he was close enough for a man-filled fridge to be sent tumbling. Thats too close for my comfort. Broken arrow - just because you tossed that strategic-level device down a mineshaft, doesnt mean you will live through it. Gotta love that little shockwave "hump" that travels at approx 40mph and gingerly rocks their jeep up and down. Many instances of ICBMs in space, with all stages intact, even on re-entry. But some representations are very good, "The Sum of All Fears" springs to mind, including the way they were able to analyse the debris to identify the device (real) and the "hotness" of the impact site after the fact, as well as fallout. One thing - if you are wondering about movies where they are very careful with nuclear warheads, and you're thinking "Silly them, it wont detonate if you drop/shoot/damage it". Actually there were some very unsafe designs in service in the early days, some of which could have resulted in a significant nuclear yield if merely dropped sufficiently hard. Nowadays of course they are much safer. One assumes. If nobody had guessed by now, yes, nukes are a bit of an obsession of mine.

Good point. Im not sure what was taken into account, got the figure from here: https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/living-ocean

This caught my eye Total coastline length is hard to calculate because they are fractal, but google gave me an estimate of 372000miles of coastline. Lets be generous and say "swimming distance" is 10miles. So 3.72million square miles of valid landing area, in a total area of 197million square miles. So theoretical probability is around 2% This is just a very broad guess though, as she was bound to land somewhere close to her orbital track, and without knowing more about that, and the land that lies underneath it, its harder to say - but 2% seems like an adequate guess. Not impossible, but she got pretty lucky! Oh its much more than believed. The stimulated decay of Li6 into tritium was well understood, however Lithium7 - which made up about half of the lithium present was assumed not to take part in the reaction. It did however, and the yield was tripled. More tritium made for greater neutron flux, which enabled more of the uranium radiation case to fission, which is where the majority of the extra energy came from.

Ive got some old (coupla years) components to sell, am thinking about taking it down to "Computer Exchange" because ebaying each item is such a hassle. These are the big-ticket items, what would be a fair price to get? Item: Intel Core i5 4670K 3.40GHz Item: Asus Maximus VI HERO Z87 (motherboard) Just looking for ballpark figures, I know they probably arent going to offer full market value, I just want to know if I am getting totally ripped off.

Fricken ninjas!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium And guess what. A crystalline compound of lithium and deuterium has been touted as a possible fusion fuel source for space engines. Not exactly dilithium crystals, but give'em some credit! http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek-researchers-to-begin-fusion Thing is, its still bogus if they were rotating. Clooney doesnt lose his grip, he suicides. If there was rotation, a few seconds would bring him into contact with the ship, and if there was no rotation, theres no force. I think its pretty clear they at least are not rotating with anywhere near enough speed to produce intolerable g-forces. Anyhoo, I'll quit bashing Gravity, it *is* one of the best real-world space movies ever made, artistic license an'all.

My main use will be flight simulators, so the lack of walking is a non-issue. The immersion in flight sims is reportedly a game changer, and I readily believe it, it does seem better suited to that kind of simulation than an FPS.

If its so gentle you really have to watch for it, they cant be experiencing that much g-force. If the tether is say, 50m long and we'll be really generous and say their angular velocity is 5deg/s (which would be eminently visible) you get a total force at George Clooney's (assuming George is a 100kg mass) wrist of...38N (going up to 76N if the tether is 100m long with the same angular velocity) Now I know that Sandra is not securely attached, but thats very little force, and would be a very visible rotation. If the extant forces are around the 10-100N order of magnitude, I wouldnt be surprised if a human could throw that piece of tether (that George has a hold of) with enough force to arrest his "fall", saving himself. Plus I cant think of any rotation that would not bring them both back into contact with the station, Sandra doesnt drop him, he lets go on purpose. Blergh, the more I think about it, the more the scene erks me.

Ooh I've got another one: Alastair Reynold's "Revelation Space" series and universe (which, BTW, are excellent sci-fi, this issue aside - nobody's perfect) has various sci-fi techs in it. The machine I am referring to is an aircraft. It works by having the underside of its wings completely covered in intense heating elements, in operation hot enough to be dazzlingly bright. So it has a wing, with a very hot skin on the underside. Which somehow produces lift. Enough lift to fly the thing about like a Harrier jump-jet. I get that hot air rises, but this cannot possibly be an engine, right?

Of course that was the first thing that occurred to me too, but I dont buy it, I just watched the scene on youtube, its clear that they are not rotating: 2 shots 8 seconds apart, little difference in orientation to planet. If there is a rotation, it is very gentle. Also it follows from the situation, they come on a rapid uncontrolled approach, crash into the station, graze along it and overshoot, theres no way they picked up a whole frame-of-reference rotation, the whole station would have to be spinning, which it isnt. And if they were rotating independant of the station (which can be seen not to be the case, the station is stationary behind Sandra) then they would just rotate back into the station.

As a Briton, its difficult, but I have been lucky enough to travel abroad once or twice and I think I've seen it over there. I think they call it "Blooce Kye" or something.

Weird how subjective some things are. I think interstellar is visually awesome with a story written by someone with little interest in science. Dont tell me they actually love science because that would be worse. I think Starship troopers is a pretty good sci-fi action movie. I think Dune is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. Even Frank Herbert liked it so much he retconned certain features into later books. But thats art for you.

Are you saying you *dont* have a 9mm under your labcoat and an M4 slung across your back at all times? Have any of your superiors seen any movies? I bet your work doesnt even involve doing something because you can or playing god amirite?

Oh this is a good topic. Gravity. It nearly made me scream because it was trying so hard to be realistic but theres a bit where george clooney is hanging on for dear life, and he looses his grip, and...falls off. What? Wow, almost ninja'd by @RizzoTheRat, but not quite One common trope is IR vision that can see people in detail through walls, which is garbage. Unless the wall is made of some monolithic, optical-quality IR transparent material, which bricks and drywall are not. Every movie where a professional scientist hand-picked to crew a prestigious space missions and does things like: "Screw this Im going into the biohazard area without any of this plentiful safety equipment!" "Wow its so beautiful here in this totally alien environment, better take my helmet/breathing apparatus off!". "Hi, I have a PhD in anthropology and my main field of study is human emotions, though I do have some academic experience in zoological biochemistry. I also have a life-size skull tattoo'd on my face, am ex-special forces black ops, can bench 4500lbs and have enough firepower stored under my bunk to hold off an armoured division. You know, in case the local fauna is agressive." "In fact, lets give all the scientists automatic weapons!" "Im really disgruntled about being here even though somehow I got through all 17 layers of the application process and was selected above 3000 other people, all the heads of their field from all over the world. I think I will be insubordinate all of the time." I dont know about "scientific inaccuracy" but something that made me laugh out loud: In Jupiter Ascending, there is a part near a farm. This and that happens and at one point someone is about to fire a large, sci-fi weapon. Its huge, about the size of a bag of golf clubs. It lights up and starts one of those whining "charge up cycles", the noise growing louder. Lights start to flash faster and faster. And VOOOM the weapon is fired and the person firing it struggles with the immense recoil. What effect does the weapon have on the target? He falls over. Oh and a good several square metres of corn is flattened.

Guys...guys...I didnt write to Dyson because I couldnt figure out a way to remove dust from my keyboard! I wrote them because I want to do it with an (actually workable) tiny hoover! And how cute would a perfectly miniaturised Dyson be!

Yes, but it requires storing it under pressure, or actively refrigerated down to its liquefaction temp, both of which cost way too much mass. **edit** For the record, the Sea Dragon design used kerosene and LOx in its 1st stage (ie: the stage most in contact with seawater) so there is going to be far less ice than you'd think. You dont need as much volume of LOx as fuel (especially when its LH2), and LOx is much less cold than LH2. This is a good thing, because I dont think a massive tank of LH2 is going to take kindly to being immersed in water that is 250K hotter than it. **edit2** Actually scratch that, from the material on project rho, the whole thing is fuelled horizontally in the water, so the whole thing about LOx and kerosene and water is moot. Dang thing is crazy. Maybe its just supposed to have really good insulation I dunno...

Big-hitting questions for sure, questions which I am confident are not relevant to decryption software. I dont think my PC is artificially intelligent, no. But yes, there are definitions of "AI" that might include things like my PC or your phone, or the decryption software used with the Voynich manuscript, but when a scientist, or anyone of subjective significance says "We used an AI." it automatically invokes one or more of the stronger definitions of AI because one is unlikely to assume that they would say "We used an AI" and be talking about something which you would only class as an AI after a conversation about definitions A fair and valid point. For me it is similar but converse. I dislike people assuming (or implying) AGI when someone means something far less paradigm-shifting, because they are getting an inaccurate idea of what is really going on.