Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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That only goes so far. If it was true Scotty would never tell Kirk while the were trying to get to Warp 11 they could rip the ship apart, and they wouldn't have put the camera and set on tilt tables to simulate extreme vibrations and momentum shifts at extreme warp. This is merely another instance of holes in the fake physics.
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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All right. I have now sunk to the depths. I have to quote the Wikipedia article because I cannot use my real sources, but it may have something to do with combat vehicle survivability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_mirror. Note the history of that page, I have never been anywhere near it editing-wise and the last update was in April 2008, so I haven't "cooked the books" as I have seen folks do on other forums. Now can we just get on with it. I'm not making this shit up. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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Gotta love Dramascience. Insert technobabble here: "The creation and destruction of the warp bubble requires use of the inertial dampeners as the internal spatial frame of reference disengages and reengages with the surrounding space-time fabric." "The stresses related to warp travel beyond nominal engine capacity are due to mechanical stresses within the equipment, and the ability for the equipment to maintain a homogenous warp field - exceeding those capacities will result in physical effects emanating from the warp coils into the surrounding ship structure."
Blah blah blah... |
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is the next Chiquita
Join Date: Feb 2005
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But now I know why I had that image of warp drive acting as a propellant because of those scenes, so it plays back into your point WRT holes. Edit: What do you know, Kickaha the molasses beat me to it! |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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But it can not reflect a single frequency from one side, and pass it from the other. You can't make a one-way mirror for the same given frequency without some serious juggling of QM effects that aren't likely to scale to the macroscopic. And that limitation can be easily taken advantage of in a battle situation... you'd have to guard against (reflect) pretty much any reasonable energy level weapon, and even low-frequency weapons could simply be made *big* enough. I mean, IR is pretty low power, but a nuke has a heck of a lot of it. Here, I'll join you in the depths so you're not lonely... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror#...ypes_of_mirror "One-way mirrors work by overwhelming dim transmitted light with bright reflected light. A true one-way mirror that actually allows light to be transmitted in one direction only without requiring external energy is not possible as it violates the second law of thermodynamics: if we place a cold object on the transmitting side and a hot one on the blocked side, radiant energy would be transferred from the cold to the hot object." |
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BANNED
I am worthless beyond hope. Join Date: May 2004
Location: Inner Swabia. If you have to ask twice, don't.
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See here first:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubie...ve#cite_note-7 There was a more full throated qm rebuttal recently but I haven't the time to re-look it up... |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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I may be a little sloppy with the terminology at times, I'm not a physicist. I am merely a modeling and simulation pogue trying to get the physicists and engineers play nicely in simulations. Big cross-domain simulations. And to prove to them my stuff is worthwhile we have to show that it works, which means coding a bit into too many of their domains -- which are too many for me to grok deeply. I know what works and why, but I wouldn't want to teach the physics specifics because the limitations are where I just don't have all the time to get to. (I also used to be a consumer of the tech, it was very useful when you might need to be where you aren't particularly wanted, or sending packages where they are needed.) Brin's uplift books dealt with these issues too. Sundiver had the cooling/propulsor laser as well as the last book in the series Heaven's Reach. That one also had a peculiar flavor of very effective shield that had a nasty side effect of heating up when hit by a different sort of weapon, and the refrigerant laser was again used to save the day. Last edited by Enki : 2009-06-26 at 22:52. |
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Lovable Bastard
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
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A similar thread popped up in gaming reddit and this link was offered:
Atomic Rockets This is pretty much the be all, end all information resource for sci-fi authors. In fact, there is more information here than any sci-fi fan could ever want. Enjoy Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end. |
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¡Damned!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
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I don't know if anyone here caught Ron Moore/Michael Taylor (Assorted Star Trek, BSG) and Peter Berg's (The Kingdom, Hancock, Dune 2010) Virtuality the other night (I didn't either...I watched it on Hulu) but the starship they were traveling in used an Orion drive...something I hadn't even thought of since I was a kid. It was a pretty neat implementation of the "pusher plate" too. Worth a watch on Hulu if you get a chance.
So it goes. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Cool thread, and I'm both late to spot it and a bit fuzzy from meds to offer too much help at teh moment, but thought I'd throw in a couple of points.
Re: mirrors Xray lasers (while impractical in atmosphere) are never fully blocked by mirrors (and only partly successful at high angles of incidence anyway) Ditto neutron/cosmic ray weapons... don't necessarily need to kill the ship... if you can ghost the crew inside you've potentially got the UFP Coffin/RadiationSickness driftin the spaceways afterwards and maybe threat negated. Re: particle accel LHC@CERN is pushing Hadrons close to .9999c (or will be when it comes back online), so even 'current' tech is well over .9c with subatomic particles. Railguns (wikipedia salt grains req'd) notes 2008 testing at 2.5km/s... again, presumably in atmosphere and with materials challenges in durability of components Youtube even has footage of prior tests All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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And these weapons are why "spacehmens" will use Really Big Magnets™
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Lovable Bastard
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
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Minor bumpage for questions about navigation.
Actually, I suppose it's one big question: how does navigation work? What's the difference between a heading and a bearing? What other terminology should I be aware of? How would one navigate in space? Would you navigate relative to the nearest star? Would spacefaring civilizations set arbitrary celestial points (i.e. the celestial sphere) and then use them as reference? Would you do it relative to your ship? Would it be situational? i.e. in battle, one navigates relative to the ships position, but elsewhere, one navigates relative to a star or the galaxy? (sidenote: I've written six chapters so far This is unquestionably the longest thing I've ever written and I don't even think I'm halfway through. If anyone is maybe interested in a sample, PM me ) Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end. |
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Join Date: May 2004
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I believe the heading is the absolute compass direction in which you are going. I believe the bearing is the relative compass direction to a target. I would guess you can come up with a system that makes sense and not be tied to terrestrial navigation since ships and submarines don't really worry about 3D. (For maneuvering, submarines make reference to a clinometer and maintain an angle to the horizontal, "degrees down bubble" or "degrees up bubble" where a zero bubble is horizontal. For weapons control, it's more point-and-shoot, and then steer to allow the weapon's sensors to acquire the target.) I'm sure a pilot will come along with some better suggestions. I doubt if you want to change your frame of reference during battle. I'd want to keep the navigation the same and keep track of targets relative to your own heading. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Astrogation
Memory-Alpha distinguishes the terms as follows: Quote:
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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If that was changed to zero heading is coincident with the Galactic center's direction of travel when projected onto the mean galactic disk then you have an absolute direction vector with which to work and compare against. Bearing and mark are really just the angular components from a 3D polar coordinate system based on the ships own origin. When you add range you have a fully specified local polar coordinate. For galactic nav you can do the same thing using the above vector as the 0,0,0 for galactic center. None of this is exotic, current weapons systems already use the an appropriately constructed Earth-centric variation of these conventions. |
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Lovable Bastard
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
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Bumping because I have a new question about protocol: a senior officer will usually refer to a junior officer by "mister," not his rank. What if the junior officer is a woman? Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end. |
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Rocket Surgeon
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: The Canadark
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Miss.
Reference: Although that implies that Mister or Miss is just for cadets, not all junior officers. |
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Lovable Bastard
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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You need some vector which is fixed in the galaxy regardless of what the ship is doing. Say a vector from Galactic Center through Betelgeuse. Now you have a "fixed" relationship. Notice it isn't static, just fixed, which means we can compute all the relative motions of everything, even though Betelgeuse is moving too. But we would always use GC-> Betelgeuse as 0 0 0 in a 3D polar coordinate system. I doubt Betelgeuse would actually be a good choice, it's just an example. Quote:
F*ck-wit, imbecile and moron, amongst others, were reserved terms for moments surrounding a certain class of "learning opportunities". |
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Lovable Bastard
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
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Would that work? You would need more than just north, east, south and west, though, because of the z-axis. (Yay! Time to make up cool sounding sci-fi terms! Any suggestions?) Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end. |
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Formerly Roboman, still
awesome Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
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This thread is so over my head. I'm so glad I write fantasy, where you get to more or less make up all the rules, and the only things you have to worry about are things like "Is it okay for a being of infinite darkness to wear no pants?"
And is okay to find that hot? and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Hoonigan
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Canada
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Here's some good advice for your writing, bro.
Sci-Fi Writer Attributes Everything Mysterious To 'Quantum Flux' Very helpful if you have some weird shit going on that's hard to explain. |
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is the next Chiquita
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Wow, murbot, that really clarifies the earth-shattering question of whether to call a female lieutenant "Miss".
"We have to call her Miss because of you know, quantum flux..." |
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¡Damned!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
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Let's say we have GC > Sol as our home vector, then any perpendicular angle starting at GC as our vertical vector. Wouldn't we need some sort of reference as to what angle vertical starts at? I could either be 1000 parsecs above or beneath Sol and I'd still have the same coordinates wrt to the horizontal and vertical vectors if I didn't have some other coordinate telling me I was over or under our system. Does that make sense? Basically we need another horizontal marker intersecting the Sol/GC point at a 90 degree angle. I doubt we could use the galactic disk as a value, since the absolute edge/center of that probably couldn't be defined (and wouldn't work anyways if we wanted our system to be a 0 data point), so what could be used? Ideally it'd be something "fixed" like the GC, but since that's impossible, would something like Earth's orbit be a decent marker? Neptune's? The Kuiper belt? I don't know. I'm wondering. So it goes. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Most of those orbits aren't circular, so aphelion and perihelion might vary by a significant enough amount to make precision in-system jumps dicey.
And the Kuiper belt is a huge smudge of a torus extending millions of miles, not a single orbit, so what reference do you pick? All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. |
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¡Damned!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
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I knew the planetary orbits would probably be off enough to not be entirely useful, but I didn't know enough about the Kuiper belt to know it wasn't some nice, thin ring of objects ala Saturn's rings that could be reasonably averaged to a center*, so I guess that's out of the question too.
But, exactly, what do you pick? *though, in thinking about it now, I should have at least assumed that. So it goes. |
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Antimatter Man
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
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Our first extrasolar probes... Pioneer 10 and 11 had rudimentary plaques indicating who built them and where we were by representing the distance from Galactic centre and 14 known pulsars (frequency identified in binary). The mini solar system map is integrated zoom.
One of the wiki links is 'how to read the pulsar map on the plaques', but I'm not sure if it will help you. The Golden Records we put on Voyager 1 and 2 contained the same pulsar map plus playback instructions for audio and images (minus the naked humans that allegedly drew complaints). NASA's Voyager Golden Record page (quite old) has a Flash site linked which is a pretty cool set of samples from the record. Similar sites exist. Carl Sagan led the design team for both, with the pulsar map credited to Frank Drake. Click images for NASA image pages with >2k versions. All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. |
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¡Damned!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
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Is it strange that they didn't include the asteroid belt in there? I wonder if that was something they discussed.
Anyways, it's a shame that they dropped the shaved-apes picto. Now we're all gonna get zapped when we wave hello, because they'll take it as an aggressive gesture. THANK YOU religious zealots, once again, for constantly fucking up our planet. So it goes. |
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Formerly Roboman, still
awesome Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
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While I'm certainly not trying to defend religious zealots, I'm not sure they're to blame for the human portraits being removed from the Golden Record. You have to remember that additional information had to be included on the record to explain how to make it work - there really might not have been room (and the record contains images of people, as well, albeit only in silhouette). The rudimentary diagram of our solar system was removed, as well. I find the instructions fascinating - it's really interesting to think about how we have to explain things like distances and measurements to a completely different species. I get that they're both more of a ceremonial thing, but it's still cool. and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong |
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