New answers tagged technology
0
votes
What would the effects of a space based laser weapon system capable of tracking and destroying any projectile posing a threat to human life?
As described so far, the laser would destroy any lethal projectile to which it has line of sight. This wouldn't make projectine weapons obsolete, indoors or with any cover from the laser they will ...
- 348
0
votes
How would a scaled-up ballista designed to launch 50-foot spears function?
Is there a reason why the spear has such a large diameter? A "spear" 50 feet long and 3.5 feet in diameter is more of a blunt projectile, with such a low aspect ratio. A 15:1 aspect ratio ...
1
vote
What would the effects of a space based laser weapon system capable of tracking and destroying any projectile posing a threat to human life?
The sensors for this system would change everything.
The ability to detect and recognize a bullet in flight would mean detecting and classifying bullet-sized objects in the environment, worldwide, 24/...
- 112k
3
votes
What would the effects of a space based laser weapon system capable of tracking and destroying any projectile posing a threat to human life?
No, this would not render modern projectile weapons obsolete. It would make them more difficult to use, and it would change the tactical environment.
Consider that Adam wants to kill Bob. Adam has a ...
- 55.8k
7
votes
What would the effects of a space based laser weapon system capable of tracking and destroying any projectile posing a threat to human life?
The first effect? There'd be a lot more anti-satellite weapons developed.
The second effect would be a lot more light based weapons in general use.
Weapons and armour are an age long ever evolving ...
- 117k
10
votes
What would the effects of a space based laser weapon system capable of tracking and destroying any projectile posing a threat to human life?
Such a system, assuming that for a moment it could actually work, would make war terribly easy!
Having a laser capable of vaporizing a bullet from a distance of at least 80 km in the few milliseconds ...
- 276k
2
votes
How would a scaled-up ballista designed to launch 50-foot spears function?
(...) scaled-up ballistas designed to launch 50-foot full-metal spears across a distance of ~250 yards (...) The question is, with technology equivalent to that of Europe in the Middle Ages, how would ...
- 136k
3
votes
How would a scaled-up ballista designed to launch 50-foot spears function?
How would a scaled-up ballista designed to launch 50-foot spears function?
It wouldn't, no one in their right mind would design and build such a machine. The cost and labour would be prohibitive and ...
- 23.7k
11
votes
How would a scaled-up ballista designed to launch 50-foot spears function?
Summary similar to the other answers
Thanks for the clarifications and improvements. I've retracted my close vote.
Basic math: A cylinder 50 feet long with a radius of 1.75 feet has a volume of 481 ...
- 117k
4
votes
How would a scaled-up ballista designed to launch 50-foot spears function?
You do realise that a 100 metric tonne bolt is the weight of about a Boeing 757. Having a ballista launch something like that is not really feasible, not even with today's technology.
I would suggest ...
- 41
6
votes
How would a scaled-up ballista designed to launch 50-foot spears function?
Poorly
The likely "full metal" for the mid-1400s would be cast iron. A bolt a metre in diameter and 15 metres long comprised of cast iron would mass about 90 tonnes.
Medieval ballistae used ...
- 30.2k
-1
votes
Designs for copper-gold-silver armor
Tangental to your question
Quoting wikipedia:
The mass of the Earth is approximately 5.97×1024 kg. In bulk, by mass, it is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (...
- 7,237
5
votes
Designs for copper-gold-silver armor
There was in fact a period in some parts of the world referred to as the chalcolithic, or copper age. That would seems to be a good start for your future research. It spanned quite a considerable ...
- 72.4k
3
votes
Designs for copper-gold-silver armor
Armour is tailored to protect against the weapons used. In this case the metals are unsuitable for weapons so weapons would be wood, stone and bone based, like the one in the picture. Many cultures ...
- 23.7k
7
votes
What causes my expedition RTG to produce way less power when deployed in a magic realm
Quantum Demons
Suppose there is a magic user, or a class of them, that is capable of using magic to drain energy from nearby quantum fields. This explains the energy loss observed by your expedition, ...
- 13.8k
2
votes
What causes my expedition RTG to produce way less power when deployed in a magic realm
As an option to add some field/particle, you may want to play with time.
For example, if your expedition finds out that they spend twice time in Magic Realm than lasts for observers in our reality - ...
- 3,234
5
votes
What causes my expedition RTG to produce way less power when deployed in a magic realm
Expanding on L.Dutch's answer a little: consider the possibility that in the other universe, the weak nuclear force is weaker still, or even absent entirely. A "weakless universe" is a ...
- 72.4k
5
votes
What causes my expedition RTG to produce way less power when deployed in a magic realm
The "easiest" explanation is not that there is an additional decay, but that there is some unknown field which slows down the decay by about a factor 10, explaining why your RTG performs 1 ...
- 276k
3
votes
How to recreate a "land" harp that can work in the deep sea?
If you want to have something that is played similarly to the harp, I suggest an underwater variation of a hydraulophone — basically a pipe organ that uses water rather than air. Here's what I have in ...
- 517
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
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
1
vote
Is it possible to use rail guns or mass drivers as some kind of anti orbital weapon?
Its an excellent question and I don’t know why people are falling on it as a pack of wolves. In fact the edit isn’t necessary either.
Some people have mentioned the high velocities. Well we have ...
- 44.6k
5
votes
How to recreate a "land" harp that can work in the deep sea?
Your problem is not the pressure, but the density.
As a 0th order approximation, considering that water is 1000 times denser than air (and water pressure doesn't affect water density appreciably), it ...
- 276k
2
votes
Is it possible to use rail guns or mass drivers as some kind of anti orbital weapon?
The problem is the atmosphere. Its what creates friction and resistance and is as much a hold back as gravity. So lets imagine for a moment a rail gun, slightly slopped that leaves the harshest part ...
- 1,428
3
votes
Is it possible to use rail guns or mass drivers as some kind of anti orbital weapon?
"Yes, but."
Richard Kirk's answer basically tells you what you need to know... humans were able to shoot a projectile above the Kármán line back in the 60s, and technology has marched on a ...
- 72.4k
4
votes
Is it possible to use rail guns or mass drivers as some kind of anti orbital weapon?
See also Project HARP. This used long-barrelled guns of up to 16 inches diameter to shoot a projectile into near space. The highest it got was 180 Kms with an 84 Kg projectile. Whatever it shot had to ...
- 7,058
5
votes
Is it possible to use rail guns or mass drivers as some kind of anti orbital weapon?
Sure
I mean - we already have anti-satellite technology, we have the ability to intercept orbiting vessels.
However - for a real-world example:
The Thunder Well
This is one of those batty 1960s 'Let's ...
- 18.5k
0
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
It depends on the number system.
Programming languages are mostly based on mathematical notation, rather than natural language. For example, x = F(y) could be a ...
- 101
6
votes
Could I make a city float using lifting gas?
A quick calculation - giving it a bash anyway!
On Earth the Hindenburg (lifting gas hydrogen) had a lifting volume of aprox 200,000 cubic meters and could lift approx 230 tonnes including 90 ...
- 15.5k
3
votes
Could I make a city float using lifting gas?
If you build your city inside a large geodesic sphere, you can even let it float with the warm air inside it.
See the answers to this question for calculations and practical problems with this, though....
- 7,899
0
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
Seems like someone interested in the unique features of Cherokee would be aware of this, but there actually is a Cherokee Syllabary, independently developed by Cherokee in the early 1800s.
This was ...
- 3,218
1
vote
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
Contrarian answer here. :-)
Of course current popular programming languages have English influence:
Typical control structures follow English grammar: ...
- 319
5
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
The question you should ask yourself is how your society would notate mathematics. Although a lot of math is influenced by western languages, it ultimately does not follow the grammar of any natural ...
- 3,367
1
vote
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
The Minority Report for your programming question is they would use Perl ;)
Larry Wall, the linguist who designed that programming language, explains his thoughts on the similarities between natural ...
- 31
1
vote
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
If space is a transport medium for the information of gravitational attraction and you want to hack the transport medium to create the false information of mass to be transported, while the mass does ...
- 1,428
3
votes
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
Normal gravity has monopole sources. Just assume that artificial gravity is an artificially generated dipole e.g. by pair production of mass and "anti-gravity" (repulsing) particles stored ...
- 910
9
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
As for the programming languages: There would be no difference.
Programming languages are not related to human languages. They respond to universal logical principles that are not affected by human ...
- 229
5
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
For the programming language part, i think the other answers allready covered that well enough.
For the text adventure part of your question, i think that shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
The ...
- 113
19
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
Not a worldbuilder, but am a software engineer.
The different language would have no significant effect on the development of computers. The underlying fundamentals of computation are universal, and ...
- 291
6
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
If it helps to continue your writing:
Computer languages do not follow or resemble the spoken language of the programmer. Perhaps you imagined they did.
At a very basic level they use the concept of ...
- 281
0
votes
Tongue Keyboard
Not "ultra-thin" yet but looks like this mouth touch pad technology is moving along in a positive direction particularly for paraplegics. It will be interesting to see if this crosses back ...
- 241
22
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
Every computer language now in use is far and away simpler than the language of the person who developed it. Even the languages with the simplest grammar are more complex than the most verbose and ...
- 2,238
0
votes
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
How about you have "gravity plates" for the floor, but then put "anti-gravity plates" around the hull? To nullify it out? They could even be the same plates facing backwards. Or ...
- 121
0
votes
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
Why artificial gravity generation?
The Expanse gives you two very good science-based answers here, neither of which need the complications of artificial gravity generation.
Constant acceleration
...
- 20.3k
15
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
Mathematics has a very precise notation where particular symbols are given precise meanings. You can express the same relationships in words, but you lose precision.
Here's an example. The word '...
- 7,058
0
votes
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
A slightly different perspective:
Let's assume your humans have discovered a technology that lets them somehow turn electrical energy into gravitational force. Let's also assume the process behind ...
- 1,842
0
votes
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
Hypothetically yes.
Membrane physics...
I recall a science documentary, where String and M- THeory.
It establishes 1-dimensional strings consist 2 types, One bound, one unbound.
Unlike the other ...
- 645
43
votes
How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
Early computer programming languages were originally machine code, which was effectively a sequence of numbers that encoded machine instructions, memory addresses and the data on which the program ...
- 55.8k
-1
votes
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
100% IMPOSSIBLE in real life by any lifeform, and please remember Gravity is not a force, but an effect so what you are really asking is about creating a virtual spacetime with a virtual mass so that ...
- 1
3
votes
Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
What if instead of the gravity being short ranged. You had an anti gravity shielding on the hull that cancelled out the gravity.
This neatly solves the problem of gravity escaping, but also creates ...
- 6,474
Top 50 recent answers are included