Photon Guy

It's the management of NASA that I don't like. It's because of how careless and impatient the managers can be that we had disasters such as Challenger and Columbia. With Challenger the engineers knew there was something wrong, they knew about the faulty 0-ring and they warned management but management decided not to listen to them and went ahead with the launch anyway. One of the engineers even knew that Challenger was going to blow up before it happened but management wouldn't listen to him. Just to satisfy their own egos and impatience they decided to throw safety out the window and it cost lives. With Columbia they knew that some of the crucial heat shielding had been damaged and they could've launched a rescue mission with Atlantis or they could've even allowed some of the crew members to do a spacewalk and repair the damage but they didn't, and that too cost lives. So that's what I don't like about NASA, how they can be so utterly careless and ignore danger and as such it leads to disaster.

Well that's good. While Im a really big fan of space exploration, I am not a fan of NASA. I don't really trust how NASA is run and I wouldn't mind if NASA was completely dissolved, or at least greatly down graded, and the space industry was taken up by private businesses. So by upper atmosphere I take it that means the Thermosphere. I've never heard of airplanes flying that high.

In the movie 2001 the now defunct airline company Pan Am had gone from the airline industry into the space industry. We know that won't happen now since Pan Am went out of business in 1991 but I've been thinking of the possibility of other airline companies and private businesses in general going into the space industry. To the best of my knowledge in the USA the only organization that sends people into space is NASA which is entirely government funded. It would be better if private companies would take up the space industry since that way the space program wouldn't rely entirely on government funding and there would be more opportunities for people to go into space not to mention more opportunities to develop technology used in space.

Well in terms of science fiction cases of planets with really strong gravity in which, as a result, the inhabitants of such planets are super strong, an example would be with the series The Orville. In The Orville there is a little girl with such tremendous strength that she can smash through walls and pry open big metal doors and bulkheads. The girl, whose name is Lt. Alara, is the chief of security on The Orville and the reason she is so strong is because she is a Xalayan, a fictional race from the planet of Xalaya which has a really strong gravity. The gravity on Xalaya is so strong that a human who stepped out on the surface would be crushed flat like a pancake without special protection such as a gravity suit. A metal can from Earth that's thrown onto the surface of Xalaya would instantly be flattened. Now The Orville is a spoof on science fiction and its not supposed to be taken seriously, even by fictional standards, but still that would be a science fiction example of a planet with really strong gravity having really strong people.

Sometimes in science fiction they have planets that have very strong gravity and as a result the people from such planets are really strong. For instance, people from a planet that has twice the earth's gravity would be able to perform tremendous feats of strength while on Earth or while on any planet or environment that has gravity around the same level as earth's gravity, able to bend steel bars and lift cars and so forth. Im wondering though just how realistic that would be in real science. Let's say Earth did have twice the gravity, would we all evolve to be super strong? Or is that just in science fiction and not in real science?

You would have to ask Stan Lee if you want to know exactly what kind of radioactive spider we're talking about when we're talking about the spider that bit Spiderman. So can you have access to good drinking water without having to lug large amounts of water around, when you don't have running water? Let's say you're out in a desert. Or let's say you are in an area that does have water in the form of oceans and rain, is it drinkable water? The water in our oceans is not drinkable for various reasons, not the least being that it contains way too much salt. That's the problem with water that you find in nature, it could not be the drinkable kind.

There is also the fact that science can "ruin" science fiction. For instance, back when Spiderman first came out the story was that he was bitten by a radioactive spider and that's how he got superpowers. Today, with all the scientific discoveries we made since, we know that if you're bitten by a radioactive spider you will die when the radiation goes through your bloodstream and all. Back then, though, they didn't understand all the stuff about radiation that they do now.

Well here is the science fiction media where I got the idea of dehydrated water. As I said, it's science fiction. https://spacequest.fandom.com/wiki/Dehydrated_Water_(original_version) The point is that we have technology today that functions just like the communicators in Star Trek, whether its cell phones or satellite phones the point is we have the technology that at one time only existed in science fiction. Yes you're probably right that we would have mobile phones that function just like the communicators from Star Trek whether we had Star Trek or not. And yes they do get some stuff right but lots of stuff they don't. Im still waiting for phasers that can be set on stun or kill and which can completely disintegrate an object, transporters where you can almost instantly teleport down to a planet's surface and back or over other vast distances, and warp drive that can break the lightspeed barrier.

The point is we didn't have anything back then that could function just like the communicators in Star Trek where you could communicate with an orbiting spacecraft while at the same time being able to fit in your pocket. Today we do, they're called satellite phones. Sure, we had walkie talkies back in the 60s but they were these big huge things that you couldn't fit in your pocket and that had nowhere near the range of the communicator. Now we do have real Star Trek communicators. But the 1901 Marconi is way too big to fit in your pocket. And we do have phones today that can communicate with orbiting spacecraft (as the Star Trek communicators could) and that can fit in your pocket in the form of satellite phones. Be that as it may we didn't have the technology back then, we do now.

Well it was science fiction so there you have it. Anyway, lets say you take a cup of drinking water and take out all the oxygen atoms. With the hydrogen that's left, how hard would it be to get it to bond with the oxygen that is readily available in the Earth's atmosphere so that you get back your one cup of drinking water? But we didn't have any wireless communication devices that could work at the range at which the Star Trek communicators could work while being the same size or smaller than the communicators, not until we had small cell phones. And Im talking Star Trek TOS of course.

I've seen in science fiction this special product called "dehydrated water." What it consists of is simply a can of hydrogen so that if you're in an environment that has an atmosphere with oxygen (such as what we have on Earth) when you let the hydrogen out it bonds with the oxygen in the air and makes water. The idea is that it's supposed to enable you to have access to water when you need it without having to lug around lots of water. Such a can would be smaller than a canteen and would certainly be smaller than a whole water tank, and yet it would contain enough hydrogen to be able to produce tubs full of water by bonding with oxygen. Anyway, Im wondering what the possibility of having something like that can be in real life. We have been able to duplicate some stuff from science fiction such as the communicators from Star Trek that we now have in the form of smart phones, so how about something like this? What are the possibilities?

A pull of gravity that is produced artificially as opposed to naturally. Not if the gravity is increased gradually. If you increase the gravity too quickly yes, that would be a problem.

I've heard of the idea of building a spacecraft that produces an artificial gravity well in front of it. As the spacecraft falls forward the artificial gravity well moves forward with it so that the spacecraft will be continually chasing the gravity well as it moves forward with the spacecraft creating a carrot and stick effect. We might even be able to break the light speed barrier with this concept.

I believe that body parts can be preserved in certain condition, such as if placed in ice, so that in some cases severed limbs can even be reattached. I did once hear a story about a boy who got his finger chopped off in an accident involving an axe. They were able to reattach the finger which involved the use of leeches. I would imagine that they had to put his finger in ice to preserve it while they brought it to the hospital though. I was thinking though, what about body parts in space? Let's say you lose a finger for instance in space, would the environment of outer space be able to preserve it so that it could be reattached?

Wow looks really cool. Anyway, Im talking about conventional firearms that use gunpowder. We haven't seen much in the way of major advances with that particular technology in the last twenty years or so. With other types of guns such as gaus guns, railguns, laser guns, ect, it would be a different story.

Well within the last 50 years or at least within the last 20 years we haven't seen much advances with the technology of guns. We might've seen little advances but nothing big like with computers. Twenty years ago a computer that would fit on a desk will now fit in your pocket. That may very well be so, we might someday have computers that size, and the fact that we don't have them today, not yet, goes to show how computer technology has not yet stabilized and is still rapidly advancing. But that will eventually stabilize too.

This is the rudest response I've heard. This is the rudest response I've heard.

Sometimes your browser might not remember your username if you've been signed out for a long time. I think you should at least have the option of signing in with your e-mail address instead of your username.

Because sometimes I forget my display name. Im on other forums too and I use different display names on different forums so display names can be confusing and easy to forget in such a situation. An email address is much easier to remember since I've got only one.

So technology seems to stabilize after awhile where it won't advance much further and there are examples of that. First I will start out with an example of a technology that has more or less stabilized, the gun. The first guns were these big cannons from the 12th century. Then as they got more advanced they were able to shrink guns down to the size where they could be used and carried by a single person and we had matchlocks which were long guns that were fired by a burning wick that was lowered into the flash pan with a lever, setting the powder off. Then we had wheel locks which used friction wheels instead of matches that produced sparks which set off the powder. Then we had flintlocks in which a piece of flint was struck to make the spark to fire the gun and guns also shrunk down further where they could be held and fired with one hand and we had handguns. Then we had percussion cap lock guns in which a cap was struck to fire the gun. Then we came out with repeating guns that could be fired repeatedly without reloading unlike the earlier guns that were single shot. From there we came out with brass cartridges that replaced the paper cartridges and made reloading guns much faster and much easier. After that we made further advancements with guns when we came out with semi automatics and full automatics. Since then however, we haven't seen much advancement with guns. I would say that for the last 50 years or even for the last 100 years guns have not advanced or changed much, the technology has stabilized. Now for an example of a technology that has not yet stabilized, the personal computer. If Im correct some of the first personal computers came out in the 1940s and 1950s and were so big they took up an entire room. Then as they got more advanced they were able to make smaller computers that could fit on top of a desk and that could do just as much if not more than their bigger counterparts. Then they came out with computers that could fit on your lap called laptops and now they have computers that fit in your pocket called smartphones that can do far more than the earlier larger desktop computers. Laptops and smartphones are still getting more and more advanced with computers getting both smaller and more powerful. The technology has not yet stabilized. So, the bottom line is that technology stabilizes after a certain point where it doesn't get any more advanced.

Unlike other sciences, physics can be hard to define. For instance, if we want to give other sciences definitions or short descriptions we could say this, biology is the study of squishy stuff that might smell bad, chemistry is the study of stuff that goes boom, geology is the study of rocks and stuff from the ground, astronomy is the study of the stuff that dots the sky, but what exactly is physics?

When you sign in to the forum you're asked for your display name and your password. Obviously you have to be asked for your password but instead of having to provide your display name, it might be easier to be able to sign in with your email address.

My dad was a tenure professor and he did teach science at a graduate school although he taught political science so its probably not the kind of science that would be talked about much on this forum, and he had more than enough family time. If you don't want students to select your class because they think they can get good grades with minimal effort than don't hand out As. The thing about teaching is that's how you learn the most, and there's always something new. You're not doing the same old thing over and over again like my friend who is coating microchips. And when you do work for a company, if you make a discovery or invention you don't get credit for it, not the least being financial credit. An example would be when the chemist Spencer Ferguson Silver III invented post-it notes he didn't get a penny for his invention, it all went to 3M, the company he worked for. If you're teaching at a university or graduate school and you discover or invent something Im not sure if it belongs to the university, or if you can make your own profit from it. Im in the USA and professors do quite well here, or at least they make decent livings. Research is fun as that's where all the action is, its not like you're just doing procedural stuff as you could be if you're working for a company. Professors do need good teaching expertise, what they don't need is babysitting expertise as schoolteachers do, particularly elementary school teachers.

That depends on what kind of teacher you are and who you're teaching. Im thinking along the lines of being a college professor. When you're a college professor you're teaching grown up students so you can do actual teaching instead of babysitting. And professors make good salaries too, a good professor can make over 100G a year and some professors make over a million a year so if I were to teach science I would want to be a college or graduate school professor.

I was thinking, if you really enjoy science and you want a science career that you might really enjoy, you could teach. All too often people who go into science careers get boring jobs. A good friend of mine whose really smart and whose got a doctorate in chemical engineering is working for a technology company where he's coating microchips. He makes really good money doing that but its just the same thing over and over again day in and day out, coating chips, so he is a bit bored with his job. I was thinking though, teaching can be a really fun job where you actually learn something every day because, after all, you learn the most from teaching. So I would think, teaching science is a really good career that you can really enjoy if you enjoy science.