Rasori

Ah, the eternal reasoning. And it never gets old.

2. Cold Fusion 3. Some sort of Warp or other than Faster Than Light travel mechanism (I'd really like to do that, )

Sep got a pretty good comparison there. Basically, tactics are the micromanaging and strategy is the macromanaging- in war, soldiers employ tactics to keep themselves alive, and generals employ strategies in getting their side to win. If someone were to be a good tactician but a bad strategist, it could mean a number of things, but in many cases it would mean something like: their tactics are good- managing of positions, priority targets, and the like- but their overall strategy is bad- they don't take into consideration ammo, supplies, outside play (reinforcements/air strikes), etc.

Verusamore, you have a valid point there. BUT- look at all the planes ever made. Almost always there were many made outside of war times, and eventually they either got used or retired. It's not a waste of money if it's keeping me safe (and to politicians, their taxpayer's safe). Plus, it has to be noted that most of the money spent on wars is spent in that country's homeland, which helps the economy quite a bit.

You don't know how to, Verus? Rub them together for a long time

Maybe so, Gilded, but french fries and pizza (as we all know) are the two main vegetable groups!

...It's stupid (and selfish) to consider us the only life in the universe. I think it's very tough to consider us the only life in the galaxy. Just numerical odds.

It's boring Same as your number 3 (Connecticut isn't bad for schools, and North Branford is in the top 10 systems in the state) We don't have Latin (grr... and when I could take languages at Yale, they didn't offer it either!!! But, Japanese is just as good through Yale ) All Honors-level classes (since AP isn't offered in 9th Grade) and yet I got straight A's without doing (much) homework. Our school colors are purple and white. The (American) football team SUCKS, but the (European) football team rocks. I call them both football because I can make it sound like the American Football team is pretty good. Band sucks. Ah well, I got used to that in Middle School. Same as #6. No matter what you do, there's no way to graduate before halfway through senior year (even though I'll have at least the 28 required ...credits by the end of junior year) It sucks.

I play trombone. Not well, at all, but I've played it for 4 1/2 years now, so I can get by. Sometimes. And I can play my state song (Yankee Doodle) on Acoustic Guitar. And make some bad sounds with a harmonica (Bad sounds like bad.... not cool)

Reflecting is a valid point, but the only way I know of to reflect light is to have a reflecting medium somehow connected to the ship. I dunno about you, but I get the impression that a laser will melt a mirror down long before the mirror reflects the laser. Looking at what information I have on reactive armor, that could be workable. However, gauss rifles are expected to be able to launch rounds at at least 11 km/s. That means that if you're within... oh, I don't know, 5 km?- then your shields won't have time to react to the shots being fired. But what could work is if you were to divide the ship into 4-8 defensive regions. Each region has its own EM field generator. Knowing the position of the enemies firing at you, you could activate the regions that are safe. By doing this, you can change the course of the round, so if the EM shield itself (the concept I provided, that is) doesn't work, you can get a glancing blow instead of a direct hit. Depending on how surrounded you are, this could work especially well if they're firing at your fore, because activating the port-aft or starboard-aft EM shield would get you either a straight course to nowhere or such a glancing blow that it'll bounce off. Combined with rounded or sloping armor, much like tanks of today, you can get a pretty defensible ship. Plus, since only the safe areas are shielded, you still allow for all of your useful guns to fire- and possibly unpredictably, as they WILL still be affected by your own shield, causing it to go off on possibly different vectors. This is both good and bad- good because it will confuse the enemy, and bad because it'll throw off your aim unless you get good enough computers to compensate. Thanks, YT, because you lead me into that direction

*gasp*! I just realized- I have picture of Jesus on my computer monitor! Can I sell that, too?

Ahhhh. That makes much more sense Can't think of anything to counter that right now. One advantage to the EM shields that I just realized now- any ship that uses any kind of magnetic gun couldn't use them. The EM shield would have to be much more powerful than the gauss gun's magnets and would really interfere. How's that an advantage? Well, equip your ships with EM shields and lasers, and hope they don't have laser protection On a more serious note, however, were you to get close enough to a ship with magnetic weaponry, the EM shields would be able to pretty much disable all of that weaponry. That brings up another point- the laser shields, if they were to ever work in the way I suggest, would prevent a ship from having lasers. Unless, of course, you: a- bring the shields down to fire or b- have the laser cannons poke through the shields.

I don't know nearly as much as I should about electromagnetism to really be arguing anything you said, but I was under the impression that it's pretty manipulatable (is that a word?). And I was going to get to a point through that, but then I remembered something- metals that are attracted to magnets are attracted regardless of which pole, are they not? That is, iron is attracted to a magnet regardless of whether it's at its north or south pole. So then repelling with the EM shield wouldn't work, so you'd have to have some sort of protection against meteroites and debris. The first thing that comes to mind would be a major waste of power and very dangerous to allies. However, if you have more than one of these EM shields up, would it be very hard to 'confuse' the metorites and debris by attracting them every which way? swansont, yes, that's true. However, we're going to play a little assumption game and say that with the right technologies the laws of physics are contrary to them I'm trying to do some research on flechette-style weapons, but mostly they're links to sci-fi sources or just side-referencing. If you could give me information on it, Skye, I'd be grateful.

That's the thing, Richard. The B-2 has no tail stabilizers. It is a wing, and only a wing. B-2 (what we're talking about) F-117a Night Hawk (what you're talking about- note the V tail stabilizers) EDIT- stupid anti-theft devices... It was just a link...

Just had a physical, I'm 5'8". But I'm 14 and my dad's still a ways taller than me, so I expect to break 6' before long. PS- Yay! 150th post!

This was brought up in a thread earlier: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5124&page=2&pp=20&highlight=shields and I know that, so don't reference me to that. But, in that thread the subject was ignored and then the question I want to bring up wasn't answered- and I don't want to revive an effectively dead thread. Anyway.... In the future, when shields as we see them in sci-fi movies would be possible, I see three main types of weapons: gauss rifles (rail guns, gauss cannons, whatever) with magnetized rounds, explosive propelled projectiles (missiles), and lasers. We have lasers now that have destructive capabilities, it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine weapons-scale lasers. Here are the two shield theories I have to counterract these three weapons. My question to you is: would any of them work, and why not (if the answer is no)? Shield #1, projectiles: Because we are considering the weapon of choice as gauss rifles for projectiles, we're talking high-velocity magnetic rifles. Obviously, for a magnetic rifle, you need magnetic rounds. So, what's wrong with creating an electromagnetic (or conventional magnetic, but that'd be damn hard) field that will either repel said rounds or attract said rounds to it- attracting works nearly as well because the projectile will slow down and change course once it gets past the pull-push boundary of the field, and change course a little beforehand. As for missiles, these would likely be made of materials that are magnetic (though likely not entirely) so they could be acted on in much the same way. The main downfall is the possible effects of an electromagnetic field this size, but by this point I'm sure we'll have plenty of stuff to help defend against it, as well. Shield #2, lasers: I don't know how this could be made, but the concept is simple enough. Ordinary light is scattered, whereas lasers are coherent. Would it not be possible to, in some way, block out coherent light? Granted, this would also have some ill side-affects most likely, namely the possibility of blocking out some things that we'd want to see- maybe natural phenomenon, maybe... who knows? Even so, the safety it would (theoretically) provide would likely make it worth the while. Could anyone tell me if, in theory, these could work? By the same token, if anyone has any ways to actually make shield #2 work (instead of just being a concept of what it would have to do) I'd like to hear them. And anything I overlooked (especially in the ways of other weapons- I'm sure that missiles, gauss rifles, and lasers aren't the only weapons of the future...) I would like corrected, if you could.

Indeed, two different stealth bombers here. Though one of them isn't a bomber. There's the B-2 (Bomber-B) without the tail. It's a flying wing Then there's the F/A-117a (I want to say Nighthalk, but I don't think it's right) which has the V tail. F/A means Fighter/Attack

I've said this elsewhere, I'll say it again- if we're EVER so blind as to make a machine that can learn and apply what it learns to what it does, I'm fleeing the solar system. That thing would rebel in a heartbeat. On a side-note, never will machines eliminate humans altogether- machines have logarithms and go through equations. Yeah, they can pick the human's most likely course of action, but they don't (and won't for a LONG time, in my opinion hopefully never) have the ability to improvise like we humans do. "Screw the logarithms, I'm going left!" And there goes the misplanned missile.

They mention a 1/2 hour flight from NY to London. That's all fine and dandy, but wouldn't you need to start the flight in Hawaii, accelerate until about LA, and then decelerate from NY on in order to actually keep the passengers in the realm of the living (slight exaggeration given, of course)? BTW- is it truly possible to drink "larger?" I was under the impression that "more" would be the correct term. :-D

When anything other than an organic being becomes self-aware on this planet, I'm buying the first ticket outside the solar system. We'll treat this new race of sentient beings like crap, kind of like the slaves of old. Except this new being will be treated worse, because they can't feel pain, so we'll give them more work. Since they're sentient machines, they'll, like any computer, calculate things pretty quickly. I'd give a sentient machine 5 minutes before it starts to rebel. And forget programming laws, because it'll quickly calculate (and work out is a better term, probably) the fact that humans programmed the laws. Humans = people who treat me badly. Humans = programmed me so I can't kill humans. Humans = involved in both. Humans = pointless. Laws of Humans = pointless. Kill Humans. Simple algorithm, no? And since they can't process pain, the only thing that will prevent them from killing us is a direct hit to the brain, or blowing their limbs off. Only the basic laws of physics- like throwing a desk at it- will cause it to slow down at all.

When anything other than an organic being becomes self-aware on this planet, I'm buying the first ticket outside the solar system. We'll treat this new race of sentient beings like crap, kind of like the slaves of old. Except this new being will be treated worse, because they can't feel pain, so we'll give them more work. Since they're sentient machines, they'll, like any computer, calculate things pretty quickly. I'd give a sentient machine 5 minutes before it starts to rebel. And forget programming laws, because it'll quickly calculate (and work out is a better term, probably) the fact that humans programmed the laws. Humans = people who treat me badly. Humans = programmed me so I can't kill humans. Humans = involved in both. Humans = pointless. Laws of Humans = pointless. Kill Humans. Simple algorithm, no? And since they can't process pain, the only thing that will prevent them from killing us is a direct hit to the brain, or blowing their limbs off. Only the basic laws of physics- like throwing a desk at it- will cause it to slow down at all.

So wait another 25 years for Macintosh to invent the stuff, John5746.

So wait another 25 years for Macintosh to invent the stuff, John5746.

I guess I'll be the first to venture a guess at Venus. Granted, we have little luck in getting probes there, and for whatever reason we seem more interested in Mars, but Venus has oft been called the "Sister Planet" to Earth. It's closer than Europa, and it's been agreed (including in articles mentioned in this thread) that life is possible on Venus. Plus, I don't like following the group, unless they're doing something REALLY smart... like not jumping off a bridge. Oh, and I like the point that was made earlier, that life on Earth may be from particles flung to us from elsewhere. But then, I like the idea of humans not being native to this planet, so feel free to disregard this stuff

jsatan, I see points you've made, and they are (amazingly, compared to many on this site) sensible. Even so, I'd like to continue. I don't want to disrupt this thread though (after all, we're going into psychology and biology here in a General Science thread) so I suggest we continue in a PM. Tell me if you're willing- I see fun in things like this, but others don't always And, BTW, I think Sayonara's post about weasel farming shows that he does indeed have a sense of humor, Spaceman. And, Sayo, we all know that the exchange rate between weasels and cars is more of a 1:10 (respectively, of course) ratio, right?