amanojaku

Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Byt we've already reached the asteroids, and we've even landed probes on them, the first to do so wasn't even built or designed to land on an asteroid was not intended to, and they landed it literally on a spur of the moment idea when the mission was over! We can reach the near earth asteroids, the rest is just engineering details that can be worked out if we try.

Re: I hope we have cooler looking cars than this in the future. BTW, a cap company in england has announced plans for a new, ultra efficient car for a single person who doesn't need to carry a lot of luggage. They will come in white, red, orange, yellow and blue colors. A picture of a prototype is here. BTW. some of the early test models of the new monocar prototype were accidentally shipped to a BBC set and caused some confusion, hopefully that will be cleared up soon.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-thunderstorms-hurling-antimatter-space-caught.html Interesting possibilities here. If natural phenomena can produce AM then maybe it could be produced artificially more efficiently than we currently can if the natural process can be studied and understood better.

Re: Why We Should Go Into Space 50 billion dollars to go to mars? That's chump change, stop thinking so small! You want a reason to go into space? How about twenty trillion of 'em? Read it and drool, brothers. A small, typical asteroid may contain up to 20 trillion dollars (say that number a few times. Twenty trillion dollars. Doesn't it just feel good to say it?) worth of metals, including metals that are vital to high tech and are getting harder to find on earth, like the so-called 'conflict metals" that are beginning to cause some concern among those with social consciences.

Re: Side effects of eating alien fauna and flora? Has anyone ever eaten any of those unique lifeforms that grow at the bottom of the ocean near the "black smokers" and have radically different biochemistry and such that most lifeforms because they operate mostly off of a hydrogen sulfide powered, thermo and chemosynthesis based ecosystem? Those things are as close to "alien" as you get now, I wonder if they're consumable by "normal" based lifeforms? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_smoker#Black_smokers_and_white_smokers

Re: Space fightercraft in RPGs. Could you please tell me what game you're referring to? Is it a reff to a game based on the sequel to "Alien"? Is it a wargame, RPG or computer game?

Re: Complicate the Person Above If you wanted to complicate some for real, wouldn't you need to create a retrovirus that would infect him and add a lot of extra data to his DNA?

Re: Space fightercraft in RPGs. Well, maybe fighterplane type fightercraft are not plausible, but how about small craft more like a PT boat from WW2? I suppose in an era of huge ships something like a PT boat could be believed as it could have effective weapons, armor, defenses, etc, without having to have space for a large crew, long term resources, spare parts, etc. In terms of short term combat effectiveness per ton of mass/megacredit of cost they might be very cost effective in a world of huge battlestar/star destroyer sized vessels. In short, don't think viper, think raptor. Instead of xwings maybe something more like the millennium falcon in size terms.

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/07/5787276-ces-automated-two-wheeler-aims-to-be-the-car-of-the-future So, the segue didn't mwork, so they're trying to fix it by supersizing it.

Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Dude. earth doesn't suck. It's a lot of the people on it that suck. What you want is a planet that doesn't allow people who suck to emigrate there.

I'm posting this here as it's SF, vaguely possibly maybe related to SFRPGs, the off topic forum has a lot more traffic and non subscribers can read this forum, I think. Anyone else follow Caprica? Like it? Hate it? Sad it gut canned? Like the ending? I like dit, tried to follow it, kept forgetting once the suitheads moved it to tuesday and watched the F5 marathon. The ending was some good stuff, lots of tension, lots of drama, plot twists, surprises, shocks, the occasional "I saw that coming" and an ending that managed to accomplish most of Caprica's mission: Setting the prequel for Battlestar Galactica. I wonder what crappy, stupid, lame show SFC will replace it with...

I'm posting this here as it's SF, vaguely possibly maybe related to SFRPGs, the off topic forum has a lot more traffic and non subscribers can read this forum, I think. Anyone else follow Caprica? Like it? Hate it? Sad it gut canned? Like the ending? I like dit, tried to follow it, kept forgetting once the suitheads moved it to tuesday and watched the F5 marathon. The ending was some good stuff, lots of tension, lots of drama, plot twists, surprises, shocks, the occasional "I saw that coming" and an ending that managed to accomplish most of Caprica's mission: Setting the prequel for Battlestar Galactica. I wonder what crappy, stupid, lame show SFC will replace it with...

Re: A star hero movie list Well, I'd never heard of space raiders, so it's lesser known. Outland is an oldie but a goodie that deserved a mention. Ditto for dark city, which was not a matrix ripoff as it was out a year before the matrix.

Re: Religions in SF settings. Unfortunately, some people here already decided that they know the truth about aliens, and how to deal with them. http://www.aliensthetruth.com/UFO.php?ID=9&view=1

Re: A star hero movie list I don't see why the reading list and this couldn't/shouldn't be stickied, both have good reason to be stickies as they provide good reff material for starhero campaigns. Also, please try to come up with lesser known movies that are good reference for SFRPGs, they're the ones that need to be hyped.

Re: Space fightercraft in RPGs. Well, yes, those would do. Sounds like the 'fghters" haldeman had in "the forever war". I suppose any small manned craft that were carried/serviced by a larger unit and were mostly weapons and tactical systems would count as fightercraft.

Re: Define [steam/diesel/whatever] - punk? Anyone want to create a modern american genre called "capitalist punk"?

Re: Another "Battle Royale" Question: John Preston Vs Judge Dredd ? Batman kicked dredd's ass when they fought.

I know this thread has a lot of potential flammability, but I hope people here can discuss the idea without it becoming a flame war. What do you think of fightercraft in space? I know some people, thinking stuff like star wars, dismiss the idea, but what about some form of small, relatively heavily armed assault vessel designed to serve as, say, a "gunship" type vessel? I think it depends mostly on the technology you decide to use. If you have FTL drives that are huge and can only be mounted on large vessels, the idea of "fighter carriers" may work if you have small, effective STL drives. If you have some sort of inertialless drive, maybe fighters work even better. In one SFRPG I like, fightercraft were made plausible because most capital ships carrier fairly weak weapons mounted in turrets meant to engage targets tens of thousands of miles range, and as such the gear needed to keep the beam focused at such ranges took up as much or more space than the weapon, and the 3d factor of space combat made turret weapons often necessary as the enemy can come from anywhere. So most spacecraft carrier weapons not much more, if any, more powerful than mall vehicle weapons in terms of damage. but could engage targets at thousands of kilometers instead of tens of kilometers. Now some vehicles could and did carry heavier weapons, usually mounted in fixed mounts that could only fire in a limited arc. (Small spinal mounts.) The justification for fighters was that they had no FTL drive, limited duration and life support, and could carry a fairly potent weapon in a fixed mount that could threaten a larger ship in addition to mounting enough armor to defend themselves from some turret weapon hits. Again, some think space combat will be all huge ships with massive defenses and such, and small ships would be vaped on sight. Some think small fighters would work in a serious SF game. I'm curious what people here might think.

Re: Your favorite SF gear. Well, in some ways older weapons can outdo modern ones. I mean, compare the range and damage of a Browning Automatic Rifle to a modern assault rifle. A BAR fired 30-06 rounds, for hell's sake! It had more power and range than a modern assault rifle, but a modern assault rifle has other advantages.

Re: Your favorite SF gear. I quit reading weber a while ago, got sick of having his sociopolitical views shoved down my throat in every book.

Could we get a sticky for a star hero movie list? It's the same idea as the reading list, and would apply to good SF movies that may be too obscure or hard to find for a lot of people to know about, but are still good viewing. My recommendations would be "Moon Zero Two" and "Ikarie XB-1", the latter in it's original dialogue with subtitling.

Re: Define [steam/diesel/whatever] - punk? As a guess, I'd say that "punk" refers to members of an underclass that is on the wrong side of some great social divide and is accordingly angry, not really very pro-status quo and seeks to make it's way as best it can, conventional social values befrakked! Assuming my definition has any validity and you wish to use it, then steampunk reflects the terrible conditions the poor of the victorian era, as shown in the works of dickens and carrol, with elements of some strange alternate tech thrown in to make it more interesting than a straight historical story. Ditto for diesel and cyberpunk. The "punk" aspect of the lower classes opposing the system and being angry, possibly nihilistic, antisocial or even amoral and violent remains the same, the only difference is what tech you use to create your alternate world. Hope that helped. Happy new year.

Re: Astronomy Pic of the day: 2 Million Galaxies Have a peek at my screen background: http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2009-32-c-full_jpg.jpg I first saw that stunning image on the cover of a free SFRPG product on rpgnow.com, "Stars without number" and posted a link to it on bad astronomy/universe today forums asking what the source image was since the credits in SWN didn['t say. Nice people there helped me find the original image.

Re: Antarctic "Ice Cube" Observatory scp=?