I am having some problems coming up with a hard mil sci-fi setting. Here are some topics for thought. Graphene tipped penetrators Graphene jacketed projectiles Graphene mesh armor Infantry whipple shields Graphene whipple shields Material or metamaterial which absorbs electromagnetic field Materials with high energy particle scattering properties Materials that absorb or block cosmic rays Feasibility of any kind of infantry energy weapon (weapon would need to be adjustable for environments with different atmospheres).
Essentially my problem is this: You have a sword so you make armor. You make a gun that defeats armor, armor is now useless so you wear clothes. Now you invent ballistic armor, so you need small caliber high velocity weapons. Now you have high velocity weapons, so once again armor is useless because even though your armor survives the hit the person dies from the shockwave. Now you have extreme performance shock absorbing material so armor is back in the game. Meanwhile energy sources become small, materials become lighter. Eventually you get to an interesting point. Small caliber hypervelocity rounds can be stopped with simple whipple shields, the whipple shields can be destroyed by lower velocity rounds but armor is good enough to stop those rounds and absorb the shock wave. Assume infantry and the human(biological/partial biological) element is always in use due to philosophical or religious reasons or because fighting occurs in environments like temples which no side is willing to damage. Weapons like radiation, poison gas, and energy weapons wouldn't be forbidden by law. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
/k/ is actually my main board. That being said, I'd never trust them for anything science related considering "deflagration" is only in the vocabulary of 1% of the posters.
Xavier Rodriguez
A lot of what you seem to be saying is independent from the science though. You laid out an arms race that would also have an impact on small scale tactics, equipment and other things that /k/ would very much have more insight on than anyone here.
Brandon Sullivan
I can't really tell what your question is.
Also, this may be Veeky Forums but if your question is beyond undergrad mathematics or mechanics questions (i.e. idealized, physically unrealizable and irrelevant systems) we won't be able to help you. It's not like you're going to run into some senior engineer at a defense firm. There are probably some materials engineering grads hanging around but the likelyhood of one seeing this who has also researched those specific topics seems like a serious long shot.
/k/ may be full of idiots but will probably be more helpful than Veeky Forums for what you're asking, IMO
Luis Allen
Alright, don't worry about my problem but lets focus on feasibility. Is it plausible that Graphene could be used for armor? I don't know how brittle it is but maybe it can be combined into a composite like boron nitride. Also, materials that absorb EMF?
I see why you came to Veeky Forums now, you want your homework done for you.
Oliver Wood
Here is a different idea then. I'm thinking of the "cheapest" way for an intergalactic trip. Cheap as in "with the least possible amount of technological advancement. The destination is 3 million light years away, but at relativistic speeds in won't take that long for the crew. However it will take a long time. Does anyone have any thoughts on whether it'd be easier to keep a body or brain functioning over a computer? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading A computer that could satisfactorily contain a mind could be feasible in the year 2111. So is it better to upload your mind to the ship computer or to preserve a body? Whether or not any biological material is along for the ride, the mind could be operating inside a computer program which elapses the time of the journey even further. If the 2111 date is feasible for computers of this type, do you think there would be anything better than rockets/bussard ramjet for space travel? If fuel was needed than the ship would be huge and the payload kept small as possible, which is why I think the computer is better for bringing along "crew". Any thoughts on this concept?
Zachary Cook
As a follow up does anyone have any thoughts on the likeliness that the "trip will fail" due to being bombarded with cosmic rays and radiation for such a long time. Will particles that make up parts of the ship, computer, or fuel source, decay in that time?
Dylan Cook
What do you need help with in science? The setting is sci-fi so you can change the game of physics if you want. What is this even for?
Sebastian Reed
You aren't going to find these answers on Veeky Forums as I doubt anyone is capable of answering these. This is all theoretical. Like I asked in my other post, waht is this for? If you're making a game or something then you will probably need to go against the laws of physics as it is a sci-fi...
Luke Ward
I'm not looking for answers I'm looking for discussion as to the feasibility and plausibility. If sci-fi just violates the laws of physics without having good reasonable, plausible mechanics, then it's just magic and that is fantasy. The setting is for my own personal work.
Isaac Flores
Sci-fi=science fiction meaning they can come up with bullshit technology and ideas that violate the laws of physics. As for the feasibility and plausibility, like I said you won't find the answers here. There are probably documentaries and publications on this kind of shit. The only one I can really answer is the relativisic speeds. I think the idea would be that humans would develop and AI to maintain the ship while the humans are in cryo (if they need to be). If they are in cryo then little supplies would be needed and energy could be obtained in multiple ways. Again this is assumign there is an AI that canrun the ship and keep everything under control.
Levi Cox
I'm not going to argue genre definitions, the thread subject is hard sci-fi so you can look up what that means and determine why I don't want "bullshit technology". I think having consciousness inside a computer makes much more sense than cryo, which would require lots of extra mass for cooling and and recycling chemicals and maintaining biological life support. I personally think cryo for living organisms is not going to happen for the long duration of time needed for space travel. Also, what do you not understand about discussing a theories/plausibility? I'm not looking for "answers", I'm trying to bounce ideas off people to see what they think.
Uploading a brain into a computer would make the payload lighter and more durable. This can be shown without having to invent any 'bullshit' technology and so is probably a good bet.
However, why intergalactic? At those distances anything less than superluminal is going to need to operate for more time than the human species has been around. Relativity makes this a lot better but you still will have a huge number of opportunities to fail. A much closer target may not be what you are going for but may be easier to swallow with what we know today.
As for speed I am quite taken with the Kugelblitz drive personally, but it is my 'pet' technology so take my opinion with a grain of salt. What is does is convert mass into black hole mass into Hawking Radiation into thrust. Bretty good imho. Also lasers are cool and graphene is known for its incredible tensile strength cubic zirconia is know for its hardness and would make a better perpetrator.
And finally I think you are not getting many good replies because your original post was worded similarly to to a shit post and reading it I felt you were going to pull the rug out from under me and hit me with some stupid concept. Not sure if that is helpful or not just my gut feeling.
Ethan Robinson
Children of a Dead Earth.
You're welcome.
Luis Nguyen
tbf, unless you stumble upon one of the few decent namefags in there, the best you will get is memes, planes shaped like woman and nowhere-hidden racism and impressive paranoia. 'tis a funny place
Jonathan Cooper
giga-ton nuclear bombs capable of blowing a hole in the ocean.
Henry Lee
Well there are galaxies much closer to each other than 3 mil light years, I just wanted it to be far. I wanted to avoid anything with the word "black hole" in it because I remember this board being plagued with "black hole" threads when a certain "through the wormhole" was on tv. Do you have any estimates on the power for your drive and how it would be put into practice? Wikipedia says, cubic zirconia is 8 mohs and diamond is 10. I don't know how hard graphene is.
Nolan Turner
It sounds like a pretty cool setting, so far. You're much more likely to receive assistance if you have a draft of some sort and ask for someone to proofread it for idiocy, though. It's not just the tech stuff that matters, it's about how you intend the characters to use it, how it relates to the plot, and so on and so forth.
As a writer it's natural to be nervous about whether or not your work is going to make some astrophysicist in an ivory tower laugh. Try not to let that get in the way of actually writing it. Even if you decide to change something later, don't feel pressured. None of what you proposed strikes me as being outlandish. Fact-check later, write now.
Hudson Mitchell
Well my main issue is keeping a level of technological consistency across many fields of tech energy to biotech. I'm more or less "war gaming" in my head and in notepad for this. For example our M16 M4 carbines and spin off variants HK416 are based on the AR-15 which was designed in 1956, that's a 60yr old design. Firearms themselves may go back further than 1250 AD. So firearms are a technology that progresses slowly compared to computers and electronics. So would an army in year 3000 have guns not much different from 2500? Well this where the topic of energy comes in. I've pretty much determined that lasers are shit but aside from lasers, weapons that have high energy requirements might become common. As higher energy densities are achieved the allowance for "convenient usage" increases. So, looking at the history of energy technology to see if there is a predictable pattern is what I'm looking at. Also in the 50-60's hunting in the US with optics and rifle scopes was rare. Now everyone has a scope and a lot of people and military have electronic optics! So optics is a technology that increased quickly (after the proliferation of computers).
Noah Long
If you had a high tech projectile launcher you wouldn't use it to fire a rock. If could manufacture miniature nuclear warheads, you wouldn't fire them from a crossbow. These examples may look absurd but that's how a lot of sci-fi looks. "We'll have flying cars and laser guns in 2000". If I say that a spaceship uses antimatter rockets and infantry uses lasers. That may seem correct but one of these technologies could be 1000 years difference from the other, and in the context of feasible realism there would be an inconsistency with the tech. So primarily I'm coming up with key elements or indispensable elements in my setting and then trying to estimate what technology would be consistent with the key elements.
Noah Wood
Seems like a good plan. The usage of graphene in defensive and offensive technology appears to be your main interest in this proposed setting, so by all means, dig deeply into that set of concepts.
The rest of the particulars of the setting should be arranged so that they make your vision an inevitability. Essentially, the core idea is the idea you expect your readers to take on faith/the one that demands their suspension of disbelief. Think of what you're doing as building a pyramid from the top down - your goal isn't just to toss up some scaffolding to hold the crown of the pyramid up in midair, but to produce a stable structure.
If something is out of date in comparison to the rest of the tech, your job is to find reasons for that to be the case. >only rocks are immune from being hacked by a foreign entity >due to cultural reasons, everyone has a sword >only people with a certain blood type can survive prolonged contact with the materials needed to produce the weapon >for economic reasons/due to resource depletion, particukar metals are too rare to use >thanks to that microbe some nerd bred that eats trash and shits crude oil, fuel is cheap as fuck & everyone can run a lab, so there is no standard armor/its all custom made
etc.
Parker Foster
>/k/ is actually my main board. That was obvious.
>That being said, I'd never trust them for anything science related That is painfully obvious to anyone who has studies science and also served.
Anyway your problems is unclear. Also horses-for-courses will remain true for the foreseeable future. That is why there is no one silver bullet.
Zachary Perry
>Small caliber hypervelocity rounds can be stopped with simple whipple shields, the whipple shields can be destroyed by lower velocity rounds but armor is good enough to stop those rounds and absorb the shock wave.
If you're just looking for a weapon to destroy hypothetical energy shields and most man portable armor then look no further than High explosives. No amount of material that's man portable will be enough buffer against small contained explosions. The armor might be fine but the dude wearing the armor would be turned to paste. If your armor can withstand the explosion then just use a faster explosive like a fuel air explosive until the point that the material breaks. If you can't break the material with explosives and it can somehow dissipate the energy from the explosive not to paste the dude inside then just use kinetics. Very large fast moving rounds. Imagine master-chief vs a navy railgun.
Joseph Cook
Project Rho
Kayden Lewis
microwave cannons would be the new flamethrower
Adrian Thompson
>hypothetical energy shields
Lucas Williams
Graphene vibrators at 10 MHz Graphene onaholes Graphene dildos with buckyball lubricant
Gavin Peterson
I did come to the conclusion that even indestructible infantry armor would cause fatal shock waves and 10 psi over-pressure on the human body is something like 99% fatal.
Jayden Torres
Lasers can cut anything, even diamond.
Second even if you have armor that's literally indestructible, if you make the person inside experience enough acceleration they ded
>> materials that block cosmic rays Are required to be thick, there is no way around this
