Firefreak on 28/9/2010 at 06:10
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIg6pWwezEU) VASIMIR plasma rocket.
Actually, I'm less interested in the science here, more the cool sound the whole machinery makes - finally a tech that sounds like in the movies :p
Although, camera shots like (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvuNUNqW6Sc) this disappoint a bit, compared to similar setups like from Doom 3 or causing a resonance cascade...
(I'm not doing it right, right? ;) )
Sulphur on 28/9/2010 at 08:07
Quote Posted by Mortal Monkey
They're not holographic. It's a combination between stereo separation (like with red/green glasses) and lenticular lenses (like those silly cardboard pieces covered with bumpy plastic). Also, nobody bothered inventing cameras that can film from every angle at once, so you'll have to make do with polygon dicks.
Sure, if you want to get
technical about it, holographic projection requires images to be formed in plain old air, which is just about next to practically impossible.
I'm also fine with polygonal dicks and bicubic patch vaginas. If it means a Pixar film only takes ~12 years to render with the tech, what the hey, that's the price of motherfucking progress. :mad:
That explains why I sound like I do when I wake up in the morning! :thumb:
Sulphur on 28/9/2010 at 08:44
Quote Posted by Queue
I'd brush my teeth with it. Nothing says "fresh and whitening" quite like Sulphur.
Flattery will get you everywhere, Queue.
(And you kind of are. But not there. No, don't even.)
Also, MM: 3D laser scanning technology, dagnabbit! Since we already get depth data, all we need is to read surface texture information at a high enough resolution and get a couple ingenious code monkeys to automate the capture process and a couple dozen render farms to process the geometry and render the results and and and... IT'S POSSIBLE.
Kolya on 28/9/2010 at 09:15
Not that I doubted their claims of dynamic trajectory generation but from the video alone you cannot tell if the heli is flying through the falling hoop or the hoop is falling around the flying heli.
Vivian on 28/9/2010 at 11:39
Quote Posted by Kolya
Not that I doubted their claims of dynamic trajectory generation but from the video alone you cannot tell if the heli is flying through the falling hoop or the hoop is falling around the flying heli.
Seeing as the hoop is vertical, not horizontal, the helicopter is flying through the hoop.
catbarf on 28/9/2010 at 13:12
Quote Posted by Firefreak
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIg6pWwezEU) VASIMIR plasma rocket.
Actually, I'm less interested in the science here, more the cool sound the whole machinery makes - finally a tech that sounds like in the movies :p
What's really fucking cool about the VASIMR is that it essentially has gears like a car. In 'low gear' it has high thrust, but poor specific impulse (read: fuel efficiency), and at 'high gear' it has low thrust but high specific impulse. The reason this is important is any Earth-to-space vehicle needs very high thrust to reach orbit, but moving between celestial bodies requires lots of thrust but can be applied over a long period of time, necessitating high specific impulse so you have enough reaction mass to make it.
To put it simply, the VASIMR is the first method of spacecraft propulsion besides the Orion drive (which has some big problems, namely that it requires you to detonate a nuclear bomb) that is feasible for both Earth-to-orbit and orbit-to-orbit transitions, making it possible to get to Mars without needing a massive, expensive, ungainly multiple-stage monstrosity.
Vivian on 28/9/2010 at 15:00
Dude, there is no way that vasimir thing could produce enough thrust for its weight to achieve orbit from the surface of the earth. The best version pushes 5N, but is about 300 Kg! (e.g. weighs about 3000N in Earth g, and so can lift less than 0.01% of its own weight!). Even if it didn't require a vacuum to be able to work at all, its not going to be much use for Earth to orbit.
To put that in perspective, a hard human punch is around 1000N (
http://www.bepress.com/jqas/vol2/iss2/3/) (source). Vasimir could just about lift a half-kilo pigeon.
catbarf on 28/9/2010 at 17:17
No, it can not simply turn on the engine and fly to space. But the high thrust mode does provide enough thrust for suborbital maneuvering with very reasonable reaction mass consumption, which current chemical rockets are pathetically bad at- once the booster rockets are gone, vehicles like the Space Shuttle are extremely limited in their ability to move from point A to point B in orbit, which is unacceptable if part of your spacecraft's mission is transit between, say, a space station and a satellite. And once you're in space, a Hohmann transfer orbit becomes more efficient the more rapidly you can apply thrust at the transfer points, which makes the VASIMR a better choice than other proposed electric drives in this role.
On another note, the thrust of the VASIMR is limited by the amount of power you can dump into it- the engine itself can produce far more than 5N. A 200Mw nuclear reactor (pretty small) could supply enough power for 5,000N of thrust, likely spread across several engines.
Vivian on 28/9/2010 at 17:31
Unless your spacecraft weighs less than half a tonne, even 5000N is useless for Earth-to-orbit. Space Shuttle engine, which is I guess fairly representative, does something like 2 million newtons.
