26
votes
Accepted
What makes small-scale private star-harvesting profitable?
Small-scale harvesting is more art than science.
Your flow of PhoNE is variable and difficult to predict. It changes constantly.
Large-scale operations just throw a huge "net" and sell ...
- 80k
24
votes
Accepted
What would a medical condition that makes people believe they are a machine be called?
While I do support Monty Wild's clean and concise solution, I do want to suggest a catchy title:
Mechanophrenia, or to have the mind of a machine, could be the term used for those humans who believe ...
- 3,806
24
votes
Accepted
Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
I would vote no.
Whether or not you are in the well of a black hole doesn't really matter. The gravitational well of a black hole is almost identical to that of any other celestial body outside the ...
- 1,922
23
votes
How could a Renaissance level feudal society get into space?
Not strictly "medieval", but we're going with sci-fi, so...
Lost Precursor Technology
There were ancient people at a much higher level of technology. Are they the ancestors of the current ...
- 30.4k
22
votes
How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?
Assuming your version of Venus is still cloaked in dense cloud cover even though it has a breathable atmosphere?
With the invention of radio, in particular VHF radio. This is because Earth's ...
- 15.5k
20
votes
How might a science-fiction world's technology advance faster than our own?
Lack of wars
Contrary to an assertion in another answer, wars do not really advance technology. What really advances technology is money put into research. Now wars can justify nation-states putting ...
- 20.3k
20
votes
What would a medical condition that makes people believe they are a machine be called?
Trivially, this is termed a Delusional Disorder. Medical terminology has no allowance for making catchy titles for these disorders, even if they become common.
However, disorders may also be named ...
- 56.3k
18
votes
How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?
Martian canals were described in 1877. As we know now, the descriptions were wrong. Over the next century, this was gradually shown. Part of that was showing the lack of water in the spectrographic ...
- 112k
16
votes
How to recreate a "land" harp that can work in the deep sea?
Compare this video of "Under the Sea" performed underwater on a piano to a normal piano cover, especially the first 5 seconds of the song. The former version has these completely dead-quiet ...
- 1,960
15
votes
How might a science-fiction world's technology advance faster than our own?
Make technological progress a huge priority for your culture.
A big limitation for progress in human society has been the amount of resources devoted to research/engineering and its prerequisities (...
- 437
15
votes
Iron drive: does this fusion superengine require clarketech?
To fuse hydrogen (not deuterium or tritium) to helium alone is a slow process. Just getting a given proton to fuse with another to form a deuterium nucleus is said to take billions of years, which is ...
- 56.3k
14
votes
How could a Renaissance level feudal society get into space?
Cartoon Physics
Julius Verne was a great author, writing steampunk fiction with broken science that sounded logical to the average reader of his time. Any nerd from even a century or two before him ...
- 137k
13
votes
Accepted
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
TL;DR: Decide whether any part of your system needs actual FTL (and wormholes do not require this by themselves, if the mouths get moved at sublight speeds). If you do need FTL, handwave a preferred ...
- 72.9k
13
votes
How might a science-fiction world's technology advance faster than our own?
The Singularity
Many science fiction writers (and a number of other people) believe that we will reach a point where scientific progress accelerates exponentially, when computers (AI) are able to ...
- 10.5k
12
votes
Accepted
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
It would be conceivable, which is the important part. You are hypothesizing a new development in scientific knowledge.
A simple way would be to introduce a rule that the effect is only short-range. ...
- 27.6k
10
votes
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
There is no modern day Physics-based answer to this question
By definition, artificial gravity does not work in the same way as the one, and only one, way we know to create gravity - having mass. ...
- 7,198
10
votes
How might a science-fiction world's technology advance faster than our own?
War
Nothing advances technology like war. I’m not talking about little skirmishes or proxy wars. All out war that threatens your way of life that’s worth sending a generation off to die. Those wars ...
- 3,866
10
votes
What makes small-scale private star-harvesting profitable?
Space is dangerous, as we all know. And space around big stars, space that's full of the stellar wind that contains Phone, is extra dangerous.
So if you're a big corporation harvesting Phone with ...
- 36.9k
9
votes
What makes small-scale private star-harvesting profitable?
Social problems
Two social factors might do the trick:
persistent sabotage by political groups unhappy with the status quo
non-violent people who also want to live off-grid
If your fictional world ...
- 14.2k
8
votes
What makes small-scale private star-harvesting profitable?
First possibility: there's no difference between PhoNE and gold, today. Large corporations mine gold, but it's valuable enough that medium and small (even hobbyist) miners can make a living (even gain ...
- 117k
8
votes
How could a Renaissance level feudal society get into space?
Naturally occurring space elevators
Your society may live on a world where plant or animal life exists that forms a natural space elevator. For example, giant plants that live in the upper atmosphere ...
- 1,303
7
votes
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
The universe may have an in-built mechanism for causality protection, preventing wormholes specifically from forming time machines.
Wormholes as we understand them don't always form time machines. ...
- 6,405
7
votes
How to recreate a "land" harp that can work in the deep sea?
String instruments would work fine, albeit with a more muted sound, as would many percussion instruments.
You might have seen the Danish orchestra who started doing underwater performances, if not, ...
- 3,110
7
votes
Accepted
Iron drive: does this fusion superengine require clarketech?
Can we fuse hydrogen all the way to iron at your tech level? Sure, why not? If stars can do it so can we.
Would we use it for propulsion at your tech level? Probably not, no.
Why? Because the energy ...
- 5,077
7
votes
How could a Renaissance level feudal society get into space?
Hyperspace
Usually hyperspace is an alternate dimension where the distances between points is shorter, but that doesn't have to be the case.
In The Long Earth, somebody figures out how to step into an ...
- 14.5k
7
votes
How could a Renaissance level feudal society get into space?
Tame wild space horses
The Reefs of Space (Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson, 1964) features a whole ecosystem living in the vacuum of space...including air-breathing mammal-like animals (sleeths) ...
- 28.6k
7
votes
How could a Renaissance level feudal society get into space?
Hot Air Balloons and Ornithopters
According to Wikipedia, Vijaypat Singhania set a world record and reached an altitude of over 20,000m in a hot air balloon in 2005.
So, what I would suggest is to ...
- 1,912
6
votes
How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?
I would imagine that some form of radio telescope would be needed to detect the faint radio signals from early Venusians radio. In all likelihood the first signals would be missed as the signals would ...
- 36.9k
6
votes
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
You could just say that time travel doesn't happen. No, really - this isn't a cop-put. Sometimes nature is just like that.
Suppose you are looking at the Andromeda nebula. If you have good sight and ...
- 7,068
6
votes
What makes small-scale private star-harvesting profitable?
Artisanship
What's the difference between a McDonalds, a local Fish and Chip takeaway and Gordon Ramsay?
All of these could be considered as real-word proxies for your PhoNE resource. All of them are ...
- 18.9k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible