Space is the Place

Discuss all things Battleships Forever that aren't Ships and Shipmaker - Missions, Development, etc.!

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Lizzie
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Post by Lizzie »

Anna wrote:
D00D! wrote:
Darlos9D wrote: ...... wat?
Aka, you can't use modern science (or anything to come in the next few years) to explain space exploration since we haven't even develop the proper technolodgy to send humans past the moon yet. We either have to use vastly radical or hypotherical concepts (which would take decades to prove) to really be able to understand effective and pratical space travel.
Don't be a fucking idiot, D00D. For the most part our understanding of space is fucking sound. We do have the technology to send humans past the moon. We just haven't, 'cause it's motherfucking expensive. Don't say "science doesn't understand it". The truth is, scientists for the most part understand it plenty. YOU don't understand it.
Like Anna said all our limitations with going to space is money and politics.

Politics more so. Because if the government would get the stick out of their collective ass we could fund this stuff. That and a unified country effort generally turns out better then a lone country doing it on their own. And sadly everyone in the world is at each others throats right now.
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Post by D00D! »

If its too expansive and tedious to do it, than we're just not sufficently advanced to do it cheaply and efficently.

Think about it, if we never invented the wheel, we can still build the Great wall of China but at 10x the loss in human lives, resources and time.

Similarly, we will take a planet worth's of fuel and resources and possibly decades or even centuries just to blast us out of the solarsystem with our current technolodgy. Sure, we can do it, but we can do it better and more efficent if we have much more sufficent technolodgy.

So what I'm trying to say is, pratical space travel is almost impossible with our current level of knowledge, so why bother trying to apply our current notion of science to something that is so obviously science fiction?
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Post by duestchland1 »

Cycerin wrote:Besides, the tech required to send people way past mars within reasonable time has existed since the 60s, Project Orion and whatnot.
Project Orion :lol:
Lets see you strap a couple of gigatons of fissionable material to your ass and see if you go anywhere!
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Post by Darlos9D »

Draco18s wrote:Well, one way to think about point defense guns that are inaccurate is the way flares work for distracting heat-seeking missiles: lots of points to potentially lock onto that "Isn't Me."
Unfortunately, none of the point defense systems in BF actually work that way. They all attempt to fire directly at the incoming projectiles and stop them by striking them. Unless we want to say that BF's visual representation system is just "abstracting" the process into the PD shots spraying out and the incoming shots staying straight, rather than the other way around. Though that seems like it'd be a unnecessarily roundabout representation system.

[quote=""D00D!"](blah blah blah) So what I'm trying to say is, pratical space travel is almost impossible with our current level of knowledge, so why bother trying to apply our current notion of science to something that is so obviously science fiction?[/quote]
Because its FUN. Why are you acting like there's no reason for us to be having this discussion? Why does it offend you so? Also, I like how your argument shifts from "we don't understand space and space travel" (which is blatantly wrong) to "we could do it but its too expensive" (which is somebody else's previous argument) and back again. Try to find a point and stick to it, otherwise I'll just completely ignore you.

Man, I'm really sorry I brought this subject up. I don't know why, but saying "realism" and "video games" in the same sentence seems to just make a lot of nearby gamers turn into touchy smart-asses. Even my friends do this. It's not like I'm trying to cram it down anybody else's throat. (I used to, but I quit that) There's some psychology going on here that I can't quite figure out.
Last edited by Darlos9D on Fri Jan 30, 2009 10:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Cycerin »

duestchland1 wrote:
Cycerin wrote:Besides, the tech required to send people way past mars within reasonable time has existed since the 60s, Project Orion and whatnot.
Project Orion :lol:
Lets see you strap a couple of gigatons of fissionable material to your ass and see if you go anywhere!
It was ludicrous, but surprisingly viable. The only thing that stopped them was political considerations.
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Post by Anna »

D00D! wrote:So what I'm trying to say is, pratical space travel is almost impossible with our current level of knowledge, so why bother trying to apply our current notion of science to something that is so obviously science fiction?
Because you're fucking wrong is why. I personally think people trying to impose realism on the gameplay of BSF is ridiculous, but your claiming that our science is not sufficient is complete bullshit. Our technology isn't advanced enough, and we don't have the money to afford it, but in terms of the science, we know fucking plenty about what space is like, what works and what doesn't and HOW it fucking works. So your "discard all the science because [insert completely bullshit red-herring argument here]" nonsense doesn't fucking fly, retard.
Darlos9D wrote:Unfortunately, none of the point defense systems in BF actually work that way. They all attempt to fire directly at the incoming projectiles and stop them by striking them. Unless we want to say that BF's visual representation system is just "abstracting" the process into the PD shots spraying out and the incoming shots staying straight, rather than the other way around. Though that seems like it'd be a unnecessarily roundabout representation system.
If you take scale and shit into account, you could always just say that everything is moving at relativistic speeds, and ergo that makes intercepting incoming projectiles a lot more difficult.
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Post by D00D! »

Uggh, this is getting nowhere...

Alright, if you think that yes, we humans have managed to discover/studied enough of space in our short 500 million years of history then fine, you are entilted to your opinions and I am to mine.

But neither of us have the authority to speak for the whole of humanity and its sum of knowledge on space exploration. After all, none of us here are actually the foremost authority in astronomy, we're just talking internet avatars.

Though being the cynical person I am, I still find it hard to believe that we as humans have acutually unlocked proper space travel in like 5000 years of history.
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Post by Anna »

D00D! wrote:Uggh, this is getting nowhere...

Alright, if you think that yes, we humans have managed to discover/studied enough of space in our short 500 million years of history then fine, you are entilted to your opinions and I am to mine.
Except this isn't about opinions, its about facts, and yours are fucking wrong, dumbshit. I do so hate it when someone realises they're losing a debate on a factual matter and then try to say that their argument is just an "opinion".
But neither of us have the authority to speak for the whole of humanity and its sum of knowledge on space exploration. After all, none of us here are actually the foremost authority in astronomy, we're just talking internet avatars.
Okay, let me make one this clear. 1) You have no idea how much or how little I know about astronomy, 2) You clearly know nothing about the subject, because specifically ASTROPHYSICS applies more directly to this conversation, which is a branch of astronomy. 3) Since you have no idea what you're talking about, you should shut the fuck up.
Though being the cynical person I am, I still find it hard to believe that we as humans have acutually unlocked proper space travel in like 5000 years of history.
And there are dozens of people who find it hard to believe in evolution, the big bang, and the fact that the earth is billions of years old. It doesn't change the facts at all, it just makes those people ignorant retards. Post stupid shit in this thread again and see what happens. You don't have half the I.Q. to debate with me, pissant.
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Post by Master Chief »

D00D! wrote:in our short 500 million years of history
Excuse me? Did I see that wrong?
D00D! wrote:I still find it hard to believe that we as humans have acutually unlocked proper space travel in like 5000 years of history.
Frankly speaking, you've got all your timespans muddled up. In these 5000 years of history we've been perfecting the wheel, not happily unlocking space travel, something which clearly has only been done within at most the last 100 years.
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Post by Skrim »

Somebody said this:
duestchland1 wrote:interesting theory, but for it to even be faintly visible you would have to have an ungodly amount of debris. I find it more likely that the lasers spectrum interferes with the ever-present DARK MATTER. similar to what electricity does to neon. And since the laser is coherent, the light effect is confined to a relatively small area.
Geez. Learn your theoretical physics before you talk out of your rear.


Our current model of gravity, Einstein's General Relativity is clearly not entirely right. It just can't predict the existence of most of the gravity we see in comparison to the amount of mass we see in the cosmos - so we label the unseen gravitational influence as "dark matter". But GR does work well for sending spacecraft around the Solar System.

Einstein had once added a Cosmological Constant to his GR equations(to prevent the Big Bang, an idea he didn't like), and a specific value for this constant would lead to the kind of gravity we see now. But once redshift was observed and the Big Bang was much more plausible, and black holes had been theorized, Einstein scrapped the CC.



The thing is, all physics that doesn't involve gravity, as well as chemistry, can be handled by the extremely accurate Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics, developed laboriously over the 20th century(and now also). BUT, once gravity is involved, everything becomes a mess. General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics contradict each other every time they meet, and something must be wrong somewhere.

In comes Quantum Gravity, the Holy Grail of modern theoretical physics. Several proposals, most notably String Theory(now M-Theory) and Loop Quantum Gravity have been put forward to combine the odd-man-out gravity with the three quantum forces(electromagnetism, strong nuclear, weak nuclear) and resolve the conflict.
Mathematically, they're all good. But experimentally, none of them has been proven. String Theory postulates that "dark matter", the excess gravitational nonsense, is caused by the lightest supersymmetric equivalents of known particles. But nobody has ever seen a supersymmetric particle, which is one of the tasks that the six-billion-dollar Large Hadron Collider(LHC) has been constructed to fulfill.



Whatever the extra gravitational influence is, it will NOT be affected by ANY kind of light or any force except for gravity - if it did, we would have found it already. Lasers are just regular light, just photons. The difference between regular light and lasers is like the difference between a bunch of people walking around randomly in a train station, and the same number of people in a marching band - one is coherent, the other is not.


But still, you don't need Quantum Gravity unless you want to try and analyze Black Holes or the Big Bang/Bounce/whatever. The only serious technological prospect for which we do not have scientific knowledge is FTL - faster than light travel and communications. For slower-than-light space travel and technology, GR and QM will do.

D00D wrote:If its too expansive and tedious to do it, than we're just not sufficently advanced to do it cheaply and efficently.

Think about it, if we never invented the wheel, we can still build the Great wall of China but at 10x the loss in human lives, resources and time.

Similarly, we will take a planet worth's of fuel and resources and possibly decades or even centuries just to blast us out of the solarsystem with our current technolodgy. Sure, we can do it, but we can do it better and more efficent if we have much more sufficent technolodgy.

So what I'm trying to say is, pratical space travel is almost impossible with our current level of knowledge, so why bother trying to apply our current notion of science to something that is so obviously science fiction?
No, we are sufficiently advanced. Just the world governments are too lazy and the corporations are getting whatever profit they need to on Earth itself, so no one really cares.

If we really want to, we can get VASIMRs up within 5 years, nuclear pulse propulsion in under 10 years, and fusion rockets up and running in the next 20 years. But the only thing that would get governments off their lazy asses is cutthroat competition. See how much aerospace tech advanced during the Space Race, and how it's been in a lull after the USSR disintegrated.

Should something motivate world governments to move, they can moot the funds to apply known science - and "applied science" is technology. Once applied, the immense initial investment is over and we can begin space-flying.

What we are not sufficiently advanced for is interstellar travel - we've got the science to go anywhere in the Solar System, but there are only a few reasonable ways to go beyond - Antimatter Drives, Bussard Ramjets, and FTL. Antimatter Drives and Bussard Ramjets need engineering beyond our present capability, though they are scientifically possible. FTL needs quantum gravity, and a lot more - it needs negative mass, something which we haven't even been able to hypothesize yet.
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duestchland1
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Post by duestchland1 »

My apology as to dark matter, and to the practicality of the orion drive a severe limitation is you would,
A) find a nuke-proof blast damper.
B) Build a combustion chamber with similar properties.
C) detonate the warheads at long distances which would mitigate most of the propulsion gain.

Also much of the earths population wouldn't like massive EMP charges erasing their .Shp files. Scratch that, we have a handy dandy EM shield protecting our dear planet.

And there isn't a sufficient source of hydrogen in the void for a ramjet.
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Post by Malahite »

String theory put simple:

Image



Anyway, I think that trying to apply our knowledge to spaceship travel/combat is a bit the way Leonardo tried to create flying machines - he knew some basic, he had a good idea, but he lacked most of the knowledge and materials needed.
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Post by Skrim »

@ Malahite,

Alternatively, instead of trying to reconcile QM and GR(which is what String and LQG do), you can kick GR altogether for a Grand Unified Theory that quantizes gravity and relativistic effects. The quantum field of gravity would be propagated by gravitons, similar to what photons do for electromagnetism, gluons do for strong nuclear force, and W/Z bosons do for weak nuclear force. Special relativistic effects(like the impossibility of accelerating to the speed of light, or time dilation at high relativistic velocity) would be accounted to the Higgs field and it's Higgs bosons.

If the LHC does find the Higgs Boson, both String and LQG get a good whooping.
My apology as to dark matter, and to the practicality of the orion drive a severe limitation is you would,
A) find a nuke-proof blast damper.
B) Build a combustion chamber with similar properties.
C) detonate the warheads at long distances which would mitigate most of the propulsion gain.
Yeah, Nuke Pulse is pretty inefficient. It is presently in a banned status, too, AFAIK.

Still, VASIMRs and Solar Sails ought to stand in well until fusion drives become a reality. They're the closest things we have after the pathetic chemical rockets we're using currently.
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Post by duestchland1 »

Yeah, plasma is the way to go at this current time as the technical hurdles behind solar sail construction is a little extreme.
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Post by Venator »

Skrim wrote:Yeah, Nuke Pulse is pretty inefficient. It is presently in a banned status, too, AFAIK.
My memory of Orion is shaky, but I seem to remember that you have to get it a good distance into space before you can even use the main engine, or face the prospect of nuking a good chunk of the area on launch (be it at ground zero or a high-altitude airburst, it's not going to be pretty).

---------

Solar sails are nice to think about, but when you consider the sheer area of a sail to generate a decent velocity, it becomes a bit mind-boggling (as duestchland1 mentioned).

One idea that I've always had a pet interest in is the "fusion ramjet", a rocket which uses a giant magnetic "funnel" to suck up hydrogen and power a fusion engine. It's got the obvious benefit of not having to move the weight of it's own fuel and the equally obvious downside that, like Orion, it'll rip the planet a new one if you turn it on in-atmosphere).
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