austenandrews

Re: Estimated date for affordable and portable Augmented Reality? "Affordable" is a relative term. They can make augmented reality glasses fairly cheaply now, if they want. In fact I'm pretty sure some are already on the market. I expect they're not the highest quality yet, but I'd be surprised if labs across the globe aren't working on them in a bid to grab market share when it breaks open. They'll be huge. The key will be making them durable, reliable and stylish. I don't think any of those is unfeasible within five or six years. At that point you Bluetooth it to your smart phone or tablet and you're good to go. Make sure Apple gets the first ones to market, so public interest skyrockets, and you're golden.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Yeah, very Roger Dean. (One wonders if Avatar will renew interest in the man's work.)

Re: Big Freakin' Lasers! Many people have said that, engineering-wise, lasers will not be preferable to bullets and missiles in the foreseeable future.

Re: The original War Wheel 1917 Reminiscent of the Tsar Tank. Probably would have worked as well, too. Interesting how it was considered a viable possibility at the time.

Re: Is there a semi-plausible way for battlesuits/powered armor to do HVAC? As I understand it, heating and cooling a person's core can be done fairly efficiently. Generating heat against extreme cold should be straightforward enough, though building machinery that operates in extreme cold is another matter. Same with extreme heat - it'd be hard to build a machine that operates inside a blast furnace, but otherwise a circulating coolant system should be straightforward enough. So you've got those kind of temperature extremes as outside boundaries. Within those limits, I think heavy-duty insulation would largely suffice to protect the wearer against outside extremes, with circulating fluid for heating and cooling inside. I expect in high temps or a vacuum, there will be a much shorter time limit for cooling than there would be for heating against extreme cold. I believe waterproofing, pressure-proofing and vacuum-proofing should be a "mere" engineering problem with current tech. Is the suit required to work in high pressure? If you use a dense breathable medium against high pressure, a la The Abyss, that may provide a handy medium for temperature control. The combination of all these features will probably give you something more mech-like than clothes-like. I wouldn't bet money on the various systems functioning reliably if it gets knocked around in a battle.

Re: Space fightercraft in RPGs. There's no such thing as total ignorance. You can always find someone more ignorant than you previously thought possible.

Re: Jokes Hero gamers don't work math problems. Hero gamers let math problems work for them.

Re: "Neat" Pictures What is that, pollen? Seashells? Snack food?

Re: "Neat" Pictures It's a dually. I bet he takes it mudding.

Re: Space fightercraft in RPGs. Depends on how far from the mothership the drones go. If they're close enough to make remote control viable, you augment it with AI and it's effectively the same as manned craft. It's an interesting thought, though. Let's assume an engagement too distant for effective remote control. What might a manned craft do, that an AI-controlled drone couldn't, to gain the advantage over enemy drones? Bearing in mind the diminished capabilities of a craft with life support.

Re: Space fightercraft in RPGs. I can see small, crewed ships for operations too distant for effective remote control and too complex for AI control. Patrols that cover large volumes of remote space, for instance. Though I'm inclined to think the manned ship would be more of a local command center for remote-controlled drones.

Re: Astronomy Pic of the day: 2 Million Galaxies So it's mitosis?

Re: "Neat" Pictures Those are awesome.

Re: Megastructures: Bigger-Than-Worlds Or at the present population density, enough humans to approximate the mass of the Earth? That's a whole lot of real estate.

Re: Megastructures: Bigger-Than-Worlds I'm swearing off of gravity. It's only holding me down. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Re: Stealth in Space Okay, since my previous post was nonconstructive pre-coffee grumbling, allow me to add to the discussion: It occurs to me that we're making the assumption (often considered erroneous, even for modern aerial warfare) that any craft in question will be of the "people riding in a tin can" variety. I wonder if it's not reasonable to presume that unmanned drones would be the norm rather than the exception in a space engagement, and that drones would be easier and cheaper to mass-produce. Here's a scenario: Your primary weapon is an antimatter payload or whatever, loaded into half a dozen drones, which you send inside a volley of several thousand far cheaper secondary drones with identical signatures and much smaller atomic payloads, plus a few thousand more unarmed drones. They all have a package of AI-guided evasive capacity, ECM, etc. (possibly supported remotely by other drones or whatever - not assuming each drone's defenses are entirely self-contained). You blast out this death swarm and they spread over a huge area, in some configuration designed to tax whatever defenses the target has. The atomic warheads will nickel and dime the target, but the antimatter bombs will destroy it. The attacker's job is to make the primary, secondary and decoy drones look identical. The target's job is to choose which drones to focus its attention on. Given what we know, is this kind of approach (a) scientifically possible, ( technologically feasible and © strategically/tactically sound? (Assume for the moment that alternate delivery methods like smuggling in the antimatter isn't an option.)

Re: Stealth in Space The conversation shifts. Is that a horror? People take a "no stealth" stance, and when the topic shifts to drones, they say "Who needs drones!" as if drones weaken their stealth argument. Huh? The reason we shifted to drones is because the "no stealth" argument is so strong. Then interesting drone discussions are met with "But drones aren't stealth!" Response: Facepalm. I refer you back to Jhamin's good point about environmental differences. Making something fly in an atmosphere is hard. In space, not nearly as much. Plus the distances and targeting opportunities are orders of magnitude different. When you don't have much stealth in space, the topic shifts to "What else is there?" I apologize if "Nothing, dadgummit!" isn't much of an answer. Honestly, what's so awful about the concept of decoys that they don't even warrant idle speculation? I'm baffled by the offhand dismissal.

Re: Stealth in Space These types of arguments truly baffle me. Does it really have to be specified that a drone disguised as a ship would be designed to generate the heat of a ship? Can you honestly not think of a reason drones might be used as decoys instead of missiles? Maybe I'm expecting too much, but dismissals like these read to me like you're not really thinking about the situation.

Re: Stealth in Space In such a scenario, it could be useful to create your own environmental conditions around your enemy. When you're at war with someone, fill their skies with decoys, redirected asteroids, dust clouds, false signals, jamming signals, etc. Give them enough to chew on that when you slip in the real thing, the alarm bells don't ring as loud. Of course the real answer may be to use ordnance that doesn't care if you detect it at the edge of the solar system. "Hey Floyd, is that a ten-mile-wide comet heading straight for the Earth?" "Yep. It'll get here in six months." "What can we do?" "We have no chance to survive make your time.""

Re: Stealth in Space It's an interesting question. If I can hover a helicoptor right over a battlefield and make it look like it was five thousand feet in the air, would that be considered stealth technology? Or camouflage? Or something else entirely? I think Ian's idea has merit - if you know an enemy spaceship is out there, but you're not sure if he's a hundred miles away or a hundred thousand, that's a pretty big advantage.

Re: Stealth in Space Correct, it would only work if you had that kind of intel. You wouldn't use it otherwise. So it's probably not going to work against an entire developed system's sensor array. It would be more suited against individual ships or small stations. In any case, as noted above, decoys are transitory feints that aren't intended to stand up to prolonged scrutiny. If they're effective enough to make the enemy commit resources against them in the second or two required to get data from more remote sensors, they've done their job. Has anyone written a story like this? I think you could hammer out a workable tactical system, given time. It's mind-bending because it's unfamiliar, rather than illogical. Love it!

Re: Stealth in Space Doesn't scale if you're talking about massive power generators. Decoys are temporary feints, part of some larger tactical or strategic plan. I don't think it's difficult to imagine a scenario where such a scheme could be useful.

Re: Star Wars Hero: Advice please... Here is TheQuestionMan's impressive compilation of Star Hero conversions. Much Star Wars is on the list.

Re: Stealth in Space In short, if you shine a beam of light at me in the right way, it'll look like you're shining a much more powerful light in all directions. A sensor recognizes a spaceship by actively or passively detecting various flavors of radiation emitted, reflected, refracted or obfuscated by said ship. The sum of these signals comprise a "beam" with a certain signature that strikes the sensor. A real ship will show such a signature from any direction. That's why it would take a lot of energy for a decoy to mimic a real ship's powerful engines. But if you only have to send that energy in a small beam to a sensor, the energy requirement is far less. That way you can mimic a fleet of ships without having to expend an equivalent amount of energy.

Re: Stealth in Space