Re: Kicking a few ideas around in my head (SF), would like to get feedback

On Aug 7, 2:35 am, alien8er <Alien8...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
For say contemporary America, you could drive a Saturn V through our
detection systems.
That's amusing and a little disheartening at the same time.

How competent are the guys you have to fool?
I never liked the idea of making bungling strawmen evildoers, so
picture competent, well disciplined enemies. Picture Erwin Rommel and
George Patton and/or Bernard Montgomery dueling in the deserts of
Tunisia; two opponents equally matched in audacity and cunning. In
light of what others have told me though, I've decided to drop the
idea of "imitation stealth" as implausible.

Humans generate about 100 watts each just sitting still; think of a
100 watt lightbulb in a box.
That's something I can punch into an algebra equation. Thanks

Others have answered that, but I've always favored Powered Armor,
like a Jim Suit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JIM_suit
When I think of Power Armor, I think of...
http://www.defitech.ch/divers/oct06/arnaud/index_files/image008.jpg
It's funny, if Warhammer 40,000 were any softer a science fiction,
they'd be flying around in ships with infinite improbability drives
while watching campy movies from the 1950's with their two robot
buddies. But it's still cool. XD
But the JIM suit is cool. Seems rather clunky, but I would guess that
in a few decades, they'll come up with something more efficient.

with force-feedback motors powering all the joints. ;>)
Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (not that tragically bad Verhoeven
movie) had something similar, if I recall correctly.

Energy could be used as currency, but remember it costs energy to
store energy; the energy we get from the gasoline we burn today is a
small fraction of the sun's energy that was originally stored in the
biochemicals that degraded into the petroleum we got the gas from.

Stored joules in your "wallet" would cost more to put there than you
could ever get out of spending them.

Entropy is a factor most economists try desperately to ignore, and
that's if they know about it at all.

Ohh, that's a wrench in the system. Thanks for catching that!

Lets talk about entropy then, not on a universal scale, but on a human
scale. You mention gasoline being a small fraction of the energy of
the sun stored in the raw crude petroleum that we pump out of the
ground. On a universal scale, this is entropy qua entropy, but on a
human scale, we simply pump it out of the ground and that's a nice,
efficient source of energy (one need only look at an Oil company's
balance sheet in order to see that!). Sure we'll run out of
hydrocarbons eventually, but in the future we are looking at
alternative sources of energy such as photovoltaic solar panels, Wind
Farms, and Hydrocells, we'll come up with new ways to generate energy
(hopefully). Of course It's not my intention to take on one of the
fundamental principles of the universe (ahhh, who am I kidding? I've
got FTL), but I don't intent to take my story several trillion years
into the future when humanity needs to pull a Xeelee and hop into
another universe in order to survive, I'm talking about a more mundane
time cycle.

That being said, surely as Proctor and Gamble makes a profit selling
Duracell batteries, there is some profit margin that is made in
selling stored energy, no? How do brand names like Duracell and
Energizer stay in business if every battery they sell is at a loss? Or
am I misunderstanding what you said?

And although I had it in mind of putting joules in wallets; it seems
that the more logical solution would be legal tender backed by joules
which are stored in an energy bank, where the person can use wireless
energy technology ( http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39008/113/ )
to simply "download" the energy to where he needs it, potentially
converting it into watts for use. In light of your input, would there
be a necessary reduced efficiency? Intel's experiment claimed a 75%
efficiency. In light of the fact that this is a technology in its
infancy, what would be the maximum theoretical efficiency for getting
a joule of stored energy converted into something useful?

Economics, they don't call it "the dismal science" for nothing.

As Boomer said, "What are we blowing up today?" Also, who is "we",
meaning what can "we" afford? Antimatter is indeed likely to be
horrendously expensive in any reasonable scenario, but then so are
nuclear warheads. Militaries expect to have to operate at a short-term
loss, as long as the long-term goals are met.

Earlier posts seem to indicate that, dollar for dollar, kinetic
drivers are the weapon of choice. I was referring to ship-to-ship
combat, by the way.

Not that any of that really matters; short-range space warfare (in
this case, anything human reflexes are useful for) is extremely
unrealistic. Targets are more likely to be thousands of miles apart,
moving at planet-orbital velocities at least.

I have reflected on this fact. My idea is to use missile/kinetic
driver hybrids as a primary weapon. Accelerate a projectile using a
rail or coil gun to somewhere in the vicinity of the enemy's ship,
letting the momentum carry it in lieu of a big, fat, noticeable drive
system. When the projectile reaches the intended distance, an interior
charge detonates and throws a cloud of flak in the area, hopefully
peppering the enemy ship with high velocity kinetic slugs. Thoughts?
Criticisms?

"Naturally" in the sense that you have more room to put a bigger
power plant, and the option of using a lake, river, or ocean as a
heatsink which a spacecraft cannot do.

When I say "naturally" I mean "it makes sense to us laymen!" which is
your cue to pick it apart piece by piece ;)

OTOH the other local inhabitants of the planet might object, which
situation likely wouldn't arise on a warship.
That's true. There's always the political implications of building a
planetary network of death ray lasers. My plan would be that they
wouldn't actually be mobile. Aiming towards an enemy spaceship of
course, but not capable of pointing at, say, a city. I also thought to
store them in ICBM-like silos, so they would really be nothing more
than a purely defensive weapon which, politics aside, I can see a
planetary population supporting under the right conditions.

Kinda like the WWII flamethrower; best not to be the most dangerous
thing on the battlefield, because it also makes you the biggest
target. Your Super Dooper Laser will require some hefty point defenses
of its own, because attackers will try very hard to knock it out.
That's true, but then I envision it like the Macarena: never a good
idea, but there's safety in numbers. The idea behind terrestrial based
weapons which I was envisioning is that, no matter how many laser
cannons you can load on a spaceship, you can load more on a planet,
with more powerful power plants, and more effective heat-sinks, all
you need are lasers strong enough to penetrate the atmosphere (which,
by logic, would also work the other way around). This isn't counting
kinetic weapons, of course.

Also, as Erik mentions, most particle beams are charged meaning
their composite particles repel each other and thus spread the beam
into harmlessness fairly quickly. The usual cure is to neutralize the
beam, say by spraying electrons into a outgoing positive ion beam, but
that requires the electrons to be accelerated to the same velocity as
the ions which costs extra energy, and then there's the fact that it's
pretty much impossible to do this symmetrically, meaning you skew the
beam out of focus anyway.
Yeah; I figured to just throw the idea of particle weapons out there
to see what happens; but it seems like they will be joining stealth
and space fighters in my "It doesn't work. Period." file.

although here's something to throw out there purely for the sake of
feeding the dogs: lightning bolts. They are a type of particle beam,
no? Is a "Lightning Bolt Cannon" theoretically possible/militarily
feasible? I would imagine that you would need to have some sort of
compensator for accuracy, and I have no idea of a lightning bolt can
even exist in space. Just mind candy to nibble on.

Not all FTL spacecraft trajectories lead to causality violations,
but it's difficult to find a physical justification why they should be
realizable, but not those that do lead to causality violation, other
than to say "it's just that way" AKA Hawking's Chronology Protection
Conjecture.

SImilarly one could postulate some form of FTL energy transfer that
could be modulated to transfer data FTL as well, as long as there's no
causality violation.

Again though, finding a specific physical reason for the difference
so far barely deserves the term "fiction".
I've already filed this under "It's not possible, but I'm gonna use it
anyway because it's cool". If someone is going to figure out how to go
Faster Than Light without disrupting causality or relativity, it's
probably not going to be me. In the meantime, I'll be doing digital
paintings of spaceships shooting each other with exciting looking
weapons with my Wacom Tablet and Photoshop CS4, and hopefully making a
buck while doing it XD

Self-deprecation aside, this is a very fascinating discussion. Even if
it's stuff I can't use, they say the journey is more important than
the destination. Are you suggesting that there is some (extremely
improbable) way of preserving causality and relativity while having
FTL? My understanding is that you can only have two; and reality seems
to favor relativity and causality.

Thanks for your input!
.

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