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seryn wrote:
Saturday, December 31, 2005 04:18
go on then, call me an idiot!


ok, not my problem as such, but an interesting point -projectile weapons on board space craft.

Big no no - why? because you could blow a little hole in your bulkhead and learn to explore space the mushy way.

But would not lasers and the other mentioned weapons be just as damaging?

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Lasers work best on materials such as carbon steel or stainless steels. Metals such as aluminium and copper alloys are more difficult to cut due to their ability to reflect the light as well as absorb and conduct heat. This requires lasers that are more powerful.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
First of all, what does Jayne know about the science of structural materials? Jayne seems like the kind of guy who would believe that shooting a hole in a jet airliner’s porthole window would cause the bulkhead to blow out and everyone to be sucked through it. So I don’t know that we can really take Jayne seriously when he says that Vera could break the haul.

Why?

If a Firefly class spaceship is to be space worthy it must be able to withstand small meteors with relatively high velocities, since space is riddled with tinny pieced of ice, iron and rock that can travel at velocities well above those imparted by small arms. This goes for the glass as well. Furthermore, there is the pressure of reentry which is considerable. (Also I think Firefly maybe the first space opera type science fiction to ever attempt to accurately deal with the violent pressures of reentry.)

So, can Vera really breach the haul? We saw Vera do that in which Jayne shot out the windows of a space station. Maybe Vera just cracked the windows. That’s what it looked like. Is this a typical space station or just a Wal-Mart space station bad guys use to capture Fireflies? This is a fair indication that someone thought about this, because high tensile bullet proof glass cannot stop a high velocity bullet. Something like a 7.62 fired from Remington .308 rifle will go right through even very thick and dense bullet proof glass like it was butter.

Now AFRL may be designing transparent composite called ALON (Aluminum oxynitride, read: “transparent aluminum” for star trek fans) that can be resistant up to .50 caliber high velocity rounds, which is considerably larger then Vera’s caliber. That’s the kind gun that can turn an engine block into scrap mettle. So I’m inclined to believe that the issue is a little more complicated the Jayne makes it sound.




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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Originally posted by Finn Mac Cuhmal:
So, can Vera really breach the haul? We saw Vera do that in which Jayne shot out the windows of a space station. Maybe Vera just cracked the windows. That’s what it looked like. Is this a typical space station or just a Wal-Mart space station bad guys use to capture Fireflies? This is a fair indication that someone thought about this, because high tensile bullet proof glass cannot stop a high velocity bullet. Something like a 7.62 fired from Remington .308 rifle will go right through even very thick and dense bullet proof glass like it was butter.

Now AFRL may be designing transparent composite called ALON (Aluminum oxynitride, read: “transparent aluminum” for star trek fans) that can be resistant up to .50 caliber high velocity rounds, which is considerably larger then Vera’s caliber. That’s the kind gun that can turn an engine block into scrap mettle. So I’m inclined to believe that the issue is a little more complicated the Jayne makes it sound.

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Running into large objects is bad at any speed, but running into something as small as a grain of sand can be destructive for high-speed travelers. In 1983, a small paint flake struck the space shuttle Challenger with such force that it gouged a small crater in the front window4.1 (see the picture above). The damage was so great the window had to be replaced after the flight (costing $50,000). Many windows, in fact, have been replaced over the years because of this problem. It is the speed of the impact that makes these small objects so destructive. If the shuttle had been hit by an object 1/35th the weight (mass) of an aspirin, it would have struck with the impact of a .30 caliber bullet.

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Originally posted by spaceshiplover:
how can a 7.62 be fired from a Remington .308?
Aren't they different calibers?
Just thinking.

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Originally posted by spaceshiplover:
Well, let's go ahead and 'think this thing through'. Who is 'basically in charge' of public education? It is the Liberals. They have become entrenched in the education system. They are the ones who brought us 'outcome based' education where 2 + 2 can equal five, if you really felt like it, so yes, that is why we get so many people who confuse to, two and too, along with a handful of other contradictions, errors and miscalculations. But, it's okay, as long as you feel good about yourself. The Liberal mantra, "Whatever is good for you" apparently applies to writing errors.

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Originally posted by spaceshiplover:
I am sorry I have offended you. I just wanted clarification of what you had said. I know that the 'NATO' round of 7.62 can be used for the .308, but the most common reference to 7.62 is usually to the 7.62x.39 which is not interchangeable.
Can you see what I was referring to? I apologize once again, just seeking clarification for my own edification.

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Originally posted by spaceshiplover:
As to the science of firefly, I would like to ask about how they generate gravity. That is something which is often never discussed in science fiction. I notice there is a spinning ring on the ship. Is this the thing which produces gravity? If so, how does it do it when it is obvious that the living areas are not spinning.
Is this a good question?

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Originally posted by PsychicRiver:
Well, Mr Smarty Pants, if you're sooo smart, then explain to me, how River turned that stick into a gun in Objects in Space?!

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Originally posted by PsychicRiver:
Well, Mr Smarty Pants, if you're sooo smart, then explain to me, how River turned that stick into a gun in Objects in Space?!

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Originally posted by spaceshiplover:
I would like to ask about how they generate gravity. That is something which is often never discussed in science fiction. I notice there is a spinning ring on the ship. Is this the thing which produces gravity? If so, how does it do it when it is obvious that the living areas are not spinning.

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Orignally posted by Spaceshiplover:
Do they ever speak to how they travel faster than light?

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Originally posted by citizen:
As ScorpionRegent said, the bullet is travelling at a much greater velocity due to the speed of the platform it was fired from.

This site has information on the effects of very high velocity impacts, including an image of a crater in the Space shuttles front window caused by a flake of paint:

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Running into large objects is bad at any speed, but running into something as small as a grain of sand can be destructive for high-speed travelers. In 1983, a small paint flake struck the space shuttle Challenger with such force that it gouged a small crater in the front window4.1 (see the picture above). The damage was so great the window had to be replaced after the flight (costing $50,000). Many windows, in fact, have been replaced over the years because of this problem. It is the speed of the impact that makes these small objects so destructive. If the shuttle had been hit by an object 1/35th the weight (mass) of an aspirin, it would have struck with the impact of a .30 caliber bullet.

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http://www.biblehelp.org/ufo4.htm

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Originally posted by citizen:

It was always a gun, River was hallucinating, and saw the gun as a stick. Deep down she knew it was a gun, hence the line:
"It's only an object; it's not what you think."

Simple, really, you clod

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Originally posted by spaceshiplover:
So, to answer another post, there is no FTL travel in the Firefly universe, how then did they get to another solar system? Are all the planets in the shows in the same solar system? Are they in different solar systems?

It is these things that interest me.

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Originally posted by spaceshiplover:
So, to answer another post, there is no FTL travel in the Firefly universe, how then did they get to another solar system? Are all the planets in the shows in the same solar system? Are they in different solar systems?

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Originally posted by citizen:
Why do people still die?

Nanotechnology. The great fix all answer.

Or not. We can't build cogs that don't wear out in less than a second on the nano scale at the moment. Also we can't build particularly intelligent macro robots, so nano-tech robots seem pretty far off.

Most current nanotech has nothing to do with miniature robots; it's to do with advanced engineering of materials, for instance. Robots are a very small part of it.

On top of that even if they do have tiny super robots, how are they to prevent people dying? Where do the resources come from to repair the damage to the body?

Even given that there's many instances where Nanobots would be unable to help. If you're kicked out an airlock even a nanobot can do nothing.

On the subject of brain computers. Moore's law also predicts that one day computers will not be enhanced any further. We are actually reaching that postulate now with conventional electronic computers.

Further how does one download their brain? We have very little knowledge of how the brain works, and that doesn't seem to have advanced greatly by the era of Firefly. How would these computer brains simulate the Quantum interactions that also work with in the Human brain to generate consciousness?

This immortal human tech is far further off than the 26th century.

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Originally posted by Karnejj:
No way any sane galactic civilization would be able to "direct gravitons" and not prioritize nanotech research higher than the theoretical physics behind gravitational manipulation.

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if we know all of the inputs.

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Originally posted by DonCoat:
Moron.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by Karnejj:
No way any sane galactic civilization would be able to "direct gravitons" and not prioritize nanotech research higher than the theoretical physics behind gravitational manipulation.

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We can direct electricity yet we cannot stop lightning. You're assuming it's harder to direct Graviton's than it is to create Nanobots.
Nanobots are incredibly sophisticated machinery, more sophisticated than anything we can make now, on a scale far far far smaller than even the simplest nano tech we can make now. Nanobots of the type you speak of are incredibly advanced tech, so advanced that they would appear to be like magic too us now.

Much of what I spoke of for Gravity is being theorised NOW and even being developed by companies such as BAE and Boeing and looked at by organisations such as NASA.

Look at Star Trek. They have warp drive but the Federation can't build Nanobots...

As for brains:
Beyond the fact that it is possible to predict people's reactions to a degree, with increasing divergence with time, if quantum interactions are involved then there is a certain level of uncertainty that may give rise to our consciousness. The human brain is not just a meat computer, there's far more too it, the computing aspect is minor. I'm saying that computers won't be capable of consciousness until we have biological computers, in other words you can’t fake consciousness. Once we have biological computers it would be easier to hook up the brain directly, as a module of the main computing unit, than too download the structure.

The brain is more than just a hard drive.

Also there is demonstrable evidence that quantum interactions have an effect on the Brain .

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if we know all of the inputs.

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erm, yeah, that’s the telling thing. If we knew all the inputs we’d be able to predict the weather for any amount of time in the future. The problem is, you can’t know all the variables, that’s a big part of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

When you or anyone else, has written a computer program that accurately models the reactions and interactions of any Human being under any circumstances, come back to me

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