Argument Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[Kreanoltha]

That's what I figured, at least for a person not smoking that much (<10 a day). If you're a heavy smoker properly addicted then perhaps having a prosthetic wouldn't change much (or maybe make you smoke more to compensate) but if you're only a casual smoker for the buzz/relaxation factor then losing that would take away any incentive to keep smoking. At least, that's my take from being on ~5 a day.

There is no buzz factor, though, at least not nearly as significantly as the factor of your brain freaking out when you haven't had your nicotine fix. The best way to nuke a nicotine addiction nanorobotically is to tweak the brain to experience nicotine-related pleasure without actually receiving nicotine. Or just traumatize the fuck out of the smokers to scare them into never smoking again (which is what it took for me to convince my mom to stop smoking; I had to convince her that a major clot in her lung was caused by her smoking - thus convincing her to stop - even though the clot was actually caused by her being bedridden after a massive fracture to her leg).

Stopping the brain from freaking out = buzz factor.

[Sen]

lolsmokers

Here, distract yourself with a bloody fucking huge interstellar ramjet. The main drawing is at a scale of 10 meters per pixel; this is a big fucker. What is it? An engine with a habitat ring and cargo hold bolted on! It has one purpose and one purpose only: beat everything else in a race.

On top you can see the core hull; the front is pointing to the right, not left, as this thing is an interstellar ramjet. One with a baxter-style GUTdrive instead of some puny fusion rocket. Of course the other lighthuggers have them too, so you can only really beat them in two ways: reduce drag while retaining power and get up to cruising speed faster by accelerating harder in the initial burn.

Reducing drag losses is fairly simple provided your engine can do its thing with interstellar matter falling through it at high fractions of lightspeed: maximize the length/diameter ratio of your scoop, which will serve to increase your cruising velocity*. Accelerating harder may be done in a couple of ways. The first is by cutting the ship down to the bone; this thing is a mostly-hollow engine with a habitat and cargo hold tacked on as an afterthought. The second is to have more fuel so you can sustain a harder burn longer, which is achieved by using a wider scoop and by adding a big fuckoff fuel tank to reduce your reliance on the magscoop (which can be seen attached on the bottom.

Of course, since this thing is an interstellar hotrod it needs some serious radiators; you can see that the ship itself is dwarfed by its radiators on the right. Note that the large red box around the ship on the bottom is an enlarged view of the small red box on the radiator view on the right side of the image.

[Ularn]

Well in that case, I'd say no to stasis for the reasons mentioned above. Either you're effectively switching them off for the duration of their sentence, in which case they experience nothing and wake up as though no time has passed and only have to adjust to how the world's changed in their absence,* or they're still functional while in stasis, in which case you have to pay for their upkeep, maintenance and medical attention so they don't starve. The expense in this case is likely to be higher than simply locking them up and putting them to forced labour.

*Some people might not even consider this a punishment. Hyrum Graff in the Enderverse novels did it voluntarily to prolong his natural life and allow him to oversee the centuries-spanning human colonisation efforts. Of course, he hit a snag when the other directors decided to sack him while he was still in stasis. If you're not bothered by leaving your life behind, it may appear as a popular way to see what the universe looks like long after you should be dead - hardly a punishment.

EDIT: And oh my god I just discovered the film adaptation of Ender's Game has finally got out of development hell and is due for release in 2013. SQUEEEEEE!

EDIT2: And the cast looks phenomenal!

Link?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(film)

Considering they have to use so many child actors, I'm feeling pretty optimistic.

[Bajireyn]

Link?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(film)

Considering they have to use so many child actors, I'm feeling pretty optimistic.

Thanks.

Now lets hope hollywood doesn't screw this one up.

[Thrashia]

Actually, bridging the slit between the two hemispheres would simply leave it with a few really big gaps, and itty bitty connection between them.
And once again, it becomes a proper Shell.

Yay engineering technicalities!!!

...No.

[Rethan]

It fits the definition of a dyson bubble perfectly: it is an array of statites arranged around a star. Of course, the array consists of only two statites, each of which collects almost half the light of the star, but it still a dyson bubble. It's pretty light too; only 3 quadrillion tonnes or so, which could easily be grabbed from a large asteroid. Well, sort of, the bulk of it (carbon for the nanotubes and metallic elements for the nantenna) would be readily available but various other components (eg, computational substrate, supercondicting power lines) would likely require relatively scarce trace elements in rather fantastic quantities.

=/=

*Sen has a proper dyson bubble going in the home system, with a band cut out around the equator so that the planets still get light*

All I'm trying to point out.

You have an inaccurate and incomplete definition and idea of what qualifies as a Dyson Sphere. The idea of a solid shell completely enclosing a star is one use of the term, and the one most used in science fiction because of how awesome it appears. That is known as a Dyson Shell and is probably the more stupid version unless you have a whole lot of spare time, money and resources.

A Dyson Bubble (another form of Dyson Sphere) can be formed through the use of statites around the star. While not as awesome as a solid ball, it's a lot easier to do. So yes, what Sen has would be classified as a proper Dyson Bubble or Dyson Sphere. But not a Dyson Shell.

[Thrashia]

Rethan, he described a Dyson Shell with the equator cut out of it. That's not a Dyson Bubble, which was what he said the 2nd time around that he was describing. Both cases he was wrong. That's all I was trying to point out. You cannot call a Dyson Shell with its equator cut out a Dyson Bubble.

[SquareDisc City]

If the hemispheres are held away from the star in the same way a statite is, I'd say you can.

[Thrashia]

If the hemispheres are held away from the star in the same way a statite is, I'd say you can.

A Dyson bubble, as Sen so kindly copy-pasted over from Wiki for us to see, is composed of Statites...not two halves of a Shell kept together with a few connections. He made a mistake. I corrected him. Let's move on.

[Ruthless Slaughter]

So I have to know: tanks or mec-

KIDDING!

So I use forced quantum singularities as the power source for my larger starships. It was hand wave back in '04 but lately space agencies have been looking into the energy output of black holes and postulating on their potential as an energy source. Anyone think it's feasible? Also what do you all use?

[SquareDisc City]

The most obvious realistic way of getting power from a black hole is to feed mass to it. From Wikipedia, "This process of accretion is one of the most efficient energy-producing processes known; up to 40% of the rest mass of the accreted material can be emitted in radiation." So you're talking second only to antimatter in terms of realistic energy densities. As a power source for systems, it should work very well. Carrying around a black hole on a ship, however, creates its own issues, notably the sheer mass of the black hole is I think likely to nullify the advantage in terms of energy you can extract from fuel.

Small black holes will evaporating by Hawking radiation. In doing so, they emit their mass-energy, so used this way have equal energy density to antimatter. Energy per unit volume - something I personally consider much less important than per unit mass - would I believe be second to none. It's an explosive process though, would be a nightmare to control.

It's also possible to extract energy from a rotating black hole, but I believe this offers nothing like as much as the above two methods.

Of course, if you start altering masses and gravitational effects, then you may be able to break the normal limits.

As for the idea of a "naked singularity", well by definition a singularity is where our physical laws break down, and is unpredictable. In reality, when a theory predicts a singularity that is normally a sign that the theory is not valid in the circumstances.

[The Fedral Union]

My reactors tap quantum foam and its hyperspatial energy grid for power, it produces antimatter as one of its by products, and we use that to power our secondary gravatic drives, our gamma ray lasers or condense it to use in warheads. we also have vacuum batteries and conversion generators on ships as back ups.

[Sen]

If the hemispheres are held away from the star in the same way a statite is, I'd say you can.

A Dyson bubble, as Sen so kindly copy-pasted over from Wiki for us to see, is composed of Statites...not two halves of a Shell kept together with a few connections. He made a mistake. I corrected him. Let's move on.

But it's not a shell at all. Nor did I say it was.

[Rethan]

If the hemispheres are held away from the star in the same way a statite is, I'd say you can.

A Dyson bubble, as Sen so kindly copy-pasted over from Wiki for us to see, is composed of Statites...not two halves of a Shell kept together with a few connections. He made a mistake. I corrected him. Let's move on.

She never used the term "sphere", she used the term bubble. Which is exactly what her construct is. It may only contain two statites, but that still qualifies it as a dyson bubble.

[Thrashia]

She never used the term "sphere", she used the term bubble. Which is exactly what her construct is. It may only contain two statites, but that still qualifies it as a dyson bubble.

Dude, the original quote:

*Sen has a proper dyson bubble going in the home system, with a band cut out around the equator so that the planets still get light*

That doesn't say sphere, but that is describing a sphere with "a band cut out around the equator." If you have statites, you DONT need to cut a band out of it, because there is no "equator" to be cut. It's not that hard to understand and its a simple mistake. I pointed it and suddenly we're in this huge argument. So my question is whats the bfd? Her description did not portray a Dyson Bubble. 'Nuff said.

[Rethan]

She never used the term "sphere", she used the term bubble. Which is exactly what her construct is. It may only contain two statites, but that still qualifies it as a dyson bubble.

Dude, the original quote:

*Sen has a proper dyson bubble going in the home system, with a band cut out around the equator so that the planets still get light*

That doesn't say sphere, but that is describing a sphere with "a band cut out around the equator." If you have statites, you DONT need to cut a band out of it, because there is no "equator" to be cut. It's not that hard to understand and its a simple mistake. I pointed it and suddenly we're in this huge argument. So my question is whats the bfd? Her description did not portray a Dyson Bubble. 'Nuff said.

I'd hardly call this argument 'huge'. When arguments get 'huge' I abandon threads for cool down time. This is just a friendly debate I'm using to distract me from boring college work.

So she used some words incorrectly to describe what it looks like. It looks like a sphere with the equator cut out, but it's actually two statites. It's still a Dyson Bubble.

[Thrashia]

Except that a Dyson Bubble is made up of thousands to tens of thousands of statites (satellites basically). She was describing two lamp-shades covering the sun with the middle open. Last I recall, that's not a statite or a Dyson Bubble. It's simply an alternated form of Dyson Sphere (which by the way would be a very dumb thing to have in your homeworld system...a Dyson Sphere that is).

[Sen]

No, they're statites; they are supported by light pressure.

[North Mack]

Holy fuck! Everybody shut up about it already! Move on!

[OMGeverynameistaken]

So, Heisenburg Shields. The work by measuring the exact velocity of incoming particles, causing them to forget where they are, neutralizing all incoming energy and kinetic weapons.

They also have the side effect of causing any physicist within 5 AU to explode.

[North Mack]

So, Heisenburg Shields. The work by measuring the exact velocity of incoming particles, causing them to forget where they are, neutralizing all incoming energy and kinetic weapons.

They also have the side effect of causing any physicist within 5 AU to explode.

Could you not measure the exact position, causing them to forget how fast they were traveling?

[OMGeverynameistaken]

So, Heisenburg Shields. The work by measuring the exact velocity of incoming particles, causing them to forget where they are, neutralizing all incoming energy and kinetic weapons.

They also have the side effect of causing any physicist within 5 AU to explode.

Could you not measure the exact position, causing them to forget how fast they were traveling?

Indeed, we could measure the exact position, but that would cause them to attain a random velocity, which could be bad.

[Rethan]

Holy fuck! Everybody shut up about it already! Move on!

Pfft. You're no fun.

Could you not measure the exact position, causing them to forget how fast they were traveling?

Indeed, we could measure the exact position, but that would cause them to attain a random velocity, which could be bad.

Or it could be really, really hilarious. But yes, I can see how that would be problematic. Also, how do you avoid killing off your own physicists? I can imagine that could also be a pretty big problem. Although it'd make for an awesome impromptu alert system for your civilians when they explode.

"Oh, I guess someone's attacking us. Larry just exploded."

[Ularn]

Holy fuck! Everybody shut up about it already! Move on!

Pfft. You're no fun.

Indeed, we could measure the exact position, but that would cause them to attain a random velocity, which could be bad.

Or it could be really, really hilarious. But yes, I can see how that would be problematic. Also, how do you avoid killing off your own physicists? I can imagine that could also be a pretty big problem. Although it'd make for an awesome impromptu alert system for your civilians when they explode.

"Oh, I guess someone's attacking us. Larry just exploded."

Why waste good physicists? Just clone their brains and keep them in jars!

...Or better yet, teach physics to mineshaft canaries!

[SquareDisc City]

So, Heisenburg Shields. The work by measuring the exact velocity of incoming particles, causing them to forget where they are, neutralizing all incoming energy and kinetic weapons.

They also have the side effect of causing any physicist within 5 AU to explode.

I don't think it would be quite as good as you hope. If you measure their velocity with high precision (you can't be quite exact, unless space and time are discrete), then indeed their position becomes very uncertain. Which means there's a probability of said position being somewhere critical, like your captain's skull. (Come to think of it, hasn't your captain exploded already? I mean physics is in your space military curriculum, right?)

I think it will be most effective against lasers, then particle beams, and least effective against massive projectiles, just on the basis of how affected by quantum mechanics they are normally.

(Also, strictly speaking it's their momentum you need to measure, not their velocity.)