The Factory Floor - 2019-03-06

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1:44 AM

@AndyD273 In my opinion, even more interesting than possible life extensions of LEO satellites (which are pretty near-term possibilities), if you can manage to get an air-breathing thruster with an exhaust velocity higher than about 7.8 km/s (LEO orbital velocity), you can actually configure your satellite to gain air, and store it as fuel for other missions. It's basically ISRU right in LEO.

2:17 AM

@James How soon I forget!

@Green How could you forget about the eldritch abominations?

hey as well @Green

@Gryphon Especially since I identify as one.

@Shalvenay Hey!

@Green how're things going?

@Shalvenay New job is going really well. My boss and coworkers like me and like the work I'm doing. Even getting paid to do it!

2:38 AM

@Green nice

3:30 AM

@Shalvenay How goes it with you?

@Green alright here, wishing James was around so I could bounce the idea of using austempering for blades off of him

10 hours later…

1:27 PM

@Gryphon Definite possibility. I guess the problems there would be the excess drag from gathering air, and the hurdles to get it compressed and into tanks. Maybe can use the thruster mechanism to get a high enough pressure for a compressor to be able to function.

1:38 PM

@AndyD273 The idea would be to make all the drag from gathering air (e.g., all air producing drag is gathered), probably by using some kind of scoop to cover the entire prograde side of the satellite. At the point where you're gaining air, you actually want to increase drag produced by the scoop, because more drag = a higher rate of fuel collection. I will agree that compression and storage may be a little tricky at such low pressures.

@Gryphon Maybe have the scoop be like a flower, so that it can open and close. Then you can have it be aerodynamic when you want, and have the maximum amount of collection area when you want that.

@AndyD273 That would be an option, and the scoop would have to be foldable to get it in a rocket to launch it anyway, but I don't see a major reason to make it aerodynamic, other than possibly to reduce wear-and-tear on the thruster mechanism and other components.

@Gryphon Well, if you don't want to be thrusting continuously, and are able to get the tanks full, then you can maximize the boost by reducing drag when not collecting/thrusting. Either way, being able to widen and narrow the collection aperture would be one way to throttle thrust.

@AndyD273 That's true. I suppose there's no reason to continue thrusting after the tanks are full (besides the occasional boost to maintain orbit), so it'd be a good idea to be able to minimize thruster wear-and-tear. Especially since Oxygen, which is a fair proportion of the atmosphere, is really nasty on thrusters.

1:58 PM

And I'm pretty sure they could further increase performance by putting on racing stripes and a spoiler.

2

Maybe some spinny rims

2:14 PM

Spoilers, FWIW, actually do increase performance.

On the racetrack...

It basically acts as a wing pressing the car into the ground so it can maneuver at higher speeds.

@Hosch250 For some reason, I doubt pressing a satellite towards the ground will increase performance.

3

@AndyD273 Hi!

I'm just on for a little bit this morning but wanted to say Hi.

@Gryphon Andy's post was obviously a joke.

But I wasn't sure if he was joking about them not working on cars either.

@Hosch250 Oh, I know. Mine was too.

Oh, OK.

Not enough sarcasm, though.

2:29 PM

Sorry, I should have italicized it or something.

TBH, if something in here is starred, you can fairly safely assume it's either a joke or unintentionally funny (or possibly a post of something from outside the room).

2:50 PM

@Green Hey there, how has the fancy chemistry set been going?

Good morning.

@Hosch250 I know about that. I was more joking about the idea that just putting a spoiler on a crappy car can increase horse power.

user image

2

3:11 PM

Are you sure that's not just for a joke.

I mean, that car.

I bet anyone with the know-how to actually do that would know that it wouldn't help performance.

1 hour later…

4:36 PM

@Hosch250 You never know. The joke I heard was that a spoiler adds 50hp, and a racing stripe adds 20hp, or something like that. Maybe their car is just cosplaying?

user image

user image

4:54 PM

@AndyD273 So, cosplay is just a fancy word for "playing dress-up".

TIL.

There are people who make good money playing dress up, though most people just do it for fun and as an outlet for creativity.

@Hosch250 To be fair, acting is basically just playing dress-up, and they pay people millions of dollars for it, so...

@Gryphon Yeah, and other people lose millions (collectively) trying to get into it.

@Gryphon Actually! If I'm remembering my orbital mechanics right, you do go lower to go faster, so a spoiler might actually help with that.

@AndyD273 Yeah, but if you go too low, you stop going fast. Mostly because you smacked into a lot of air, and then smacked into the ground.

5:10 PM

@Gryphon I'm torn between "Satellites don't die. They simply burn away..." and "You'd be lucky to smack into the ground. Either way, you're going to be going pretty fast right up to the last second."

Worldbuilding Meta

0

Q: Promoting Community Ad Creation

Some people might immediately think this is a duplicate of A Promotion for the Community Promotion Ads, but i assure you it is not. That question was simply a promotion; my question is about making a promotion, which requires vastly different information. The point is, I have an ad idea for enco...

discussion site-promotion

In other words, there are two ways of killing heretics? One is by tying them up so they can't run when you burn them. The other is letting them try to escape and chasing them until they run so hard they spontaneously combust.

OK, sorry for the bad joke :(

If they can run fast enough that air friction is a problem, you probably have other problems.

If they can run fast enough that spontaneous combustion is an issue, how on earth did you catch the guy in the first place?

@Gryphon drug the bait food.

5:15 PM

@Gryphon They were sleeping.

@AndyD273 I'm pretty sure that a guy who could run down a cheetah isn't going to have much of a problem catching his own food.

@Hosch250 Fair point.

How do you catch The Flash? laudanum pizza sauce.

I imagine if I could run that fast, I'd have to spend about 99% of my time eating and sleeping.

@Gryphon Maybe he doesn't like it raw.

TBH, though, if I had someone that awesome, I'd just put them to work as an assassin.

@Hosch250 He can run fast enough to spontaneously combust. Run slightly slower than that, holding meat in front of you. Meat is no longer raw.

Heck, they could run in, stab the enemy king, and run away again before they could even lift their rifles.

5:16 PM

@Gryphon It's a meat heat shield

2

And once they were running away, they could outrun bullets.

They could step on a land mine and be well out of range before it explodes.

I imagine bursting eardrums may be a problem as you cross the sound barrier, but I'm sure there are solutions.

@Gryphon wouldn't you outrun your own sonic boom?

I mean, it would be a problem for everyone else

And yes, the clergy hate him because they think he got his powers from the devil.

@AndyD273 Oh yeah, I suppose you would.

5:18 PM

@AndyD273 Only once you are above the barrier.

The transition would be rough.

Just like aircraft flight is rough as they cross it, but smooth again afterward.

@Hosch250 I mean, there aren't a lot of other sources for those kinds of abilities. It's a fair assumption.

True.

6:16 PM

@Shalvenay You had a question for me?

6:35 PM

Neurologically speaking, the LEFT hand is actually the one at the end of the RIGHT arm.

6:51 PM

1

Q: A research facility, spanning hundreds of kilometers, in a Pentagon-sized building: How can it construct its rooms?

After I reached the net worth of Steve Jobs in collateral damage, during my most recent battle, the rest of the world decided to suppress me for obvious reasons. My only request was a small land, the size of the Pentagon, where I'd spend the rest of eternity slurping tea with Glarnak. Yeah, I was...

science-based construction

I hope it's clearer now.

7:10 PM

Let's see if it works

@Frostfyre Don't bring up concerns that can be addressed in one word: Siberia — Mephistopheles 2 mins ago

So, that's how it works

7:23 PM

@Mephistopheles Is that a question about the Aperture Research Facility?

7:38 PM

@AndyD273 Is that a Jojo reference?

No. It's more like game mechanics in IRL like how maps load.

@Mephistopheles It's actually a Portal reference. The Aperture Science Enrichment Facility is a giant building/space where the rooms are created, reconfigured, and taken apart on the fly as needed.

@AndyD273 Yeah, that, but with less space and somewhere out in Siberia. Essentially a hybrid between a labor camp and the playground of an autistic god.

@Mephistopheles Have you seen the (manga/anime) "Blame!"?

Blame! | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

TL;DR humans create giant city building robots, then lose control, and the robots just go on building for countless years

While other robots hunt the remaining humans. I think The Matrix took some inspiration from it.

@AndyD273 Matrix took some inspiration from everywhere.

Even the Bible

7:55 PM

Sure. Anyway, those are the two things that come to mind with your question

@AndyD273 I thought of it as a stage, that's taken apart and put back together while the door is slooowlyyy opening.

Huh, and that kind of makes me picture the facility from Cabin in the Woods, with thousands of modules that can be moved around, except instead of cages they could be whole rooms, reconfigured at will.

@Mephistopheles Curious why you say "even" the Bible?

@AndyD273 Actually, my initial idea was that everything would form from a smart liquid, and have a pretty low density, and could change color.

@Hosch250 I only reference that for creative CS:GO insults

"I will make you a perpetual desolation, and your cities will not be inhabited. Then you will know that I am the LORD"

"When My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, then it will come down upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction."

At least I'm not screaming "Blyat" or "KURWAAA!"

Well, to me, if it was a work of fiction, it's still as valid a source of inspiration as other fiction books. And if it's not a work of fiction, it's an even better source of inspiration.

But yeah, if you want quotes for war games, it has some really good ones.

It has some pretty good ones for making love too.

8:10 PM

@Hosch250 Well you could make halfway-decent hentai out of it with all the rape and inbreeding.

FWIW, that's not that much rape compared to other books of old-testament times. I can think of 3 cases off-hand (Dinah, Bathsheba, and Tamar). And inbreeding is the rule of the day for small tribes.

Because there's nobody else to breed with.

I mean, inbreeding is a (sometimes serious) problem in small US towns too.

When I drove through farm country ND last June, there'd be a town of maybe 20 people. Then 10-20 miles farther, another town of maybe 20 people. Or maybe 5. Not more than 50, and probably not more than 25. It was like that for over 200 miles.

There weren't any facilities. No restaurants, no gas stations, no hotels.

@Hosch250

The Torah | Mumkey's Anime Reviews #39

...

He sounds like someone going on a rant about climate change (either for or against).

Mostly swear words and just enough research to confirm their pre-decided stance.

8:26 PM

@Hosch250 C'mon he's pretty funny though.

Yeah.

"...just enough research to confirm their pre-decided stance."

Hey look, it's 70% of the human population!

LOL, agreed.

@NexTerren Yep. This.

Let's shamble back to worldbuilding. Are there any equations for calculating the required power for a bird or a bat to fly?

8:36 PM

https://chem.libretexts.org/Ancillary_Materials/Exemplars_and_Case_Studies/Exemplars/Biology/The_Energy_of_Bird_Flight

http://ib.oregonstate.edu/~warrickd/dialetal97.pdf

@Mephistopheles pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a0f5/…

Try those three. They look promising.

@NexTerren Which one would be the most applicable for a dragon?

@StephenG One, two, Freddie's coming for you. Three, four, better lock the door. Five, six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, gonna stay up late. Nine, ten, never sleep again. — VLAZ 6 mins ago

@Mephistopheles Did not read any of them. I assume "none of them are really applicable for a dragon." Typically for trying to research real life to apply to non-real things you have to consume multiple sources and multiple takes to expand your knowledge to make an educated guess.

@Hosch250 And in each of those three cases the judgement was pretty severe. Dinah's rapist got the most fitting punishment.

If you're building a fictional bronze age military, it's not enough, normally, to research a single bronze age military from a single source. I find a few bronze age militaries, and find a few sources on each (a couple websites, a documentary, something else) and consume all of that and then think on what I read/watched/listened to.

8:41 PM

@NexTerren Yeah I think it would be safe to say that an alternate name for a world builder would be "dabbler"

2

Ammon got killed pretty good too. David just had his son die, but then, God himself stepped in to make sure he got punished.

@NexTerren So all three. Well, do you think a roughly 440 kg creature could fly?

@James I wrote a Worldbuilding meta answer along those lines... I think it's my highest voted meta answer, actually.

@Mephistopheles Like, a 747?

If it had a jet engine or two, sure.

@Hosch250 Did you see Thor: Ragnarok?

8:42 PM

My brothers did.

I don't watch movies, they bore me something aweful.

@Mephistopheles Largest known (long since extinct) flying animal was the Quetzalcoatlus. To quote Wikipedia:

"Weight estimates for giant azhdarchids are extremely problematic because no existing species share a similar size or body plan, and in consequence, published results vary widely.[4] Generalized weight, based on some studies that have historically found extremely low weight estimates for Quetzalcoatlus, was as low as 70 kg (150 lb) for a 10 m (32 ft 10 in) individual. A majority of estimates published since the 2000s have been substantially higher, around 200–250 kg (440–550 lb)."

There is a strait up jet powered dragon chasing thor on muspelheim at the beginning.

I can process the story faster than they can play it, so I get bored, then I start missing things.

@Hosch250 Wait, any movie or just Superhero movies?

Any movie.

I watch LotR sometimes.

And the Hobbit.

But, that's it, really.

And no more than 1 of the trilogies a year, +/- a few months.

8:45 PM

@Hosch250 What?

Conceptually that's so alien to me.

9:03 PM

@Hosch250 I can see why LotR might bore you. Good movies, but long stretches of walking.

Not just that.

It's any move longer than about 30 minutes.

I was getting bored by the end of Tucker and Dale.

You should look for the ones that the story doesn't work out like you'd expect.

Cabin in the Woods might fit that bill

Plus, it's almost 2 movies that they are switching between until close to the end

I'm pretty good at predicting story paths too, but so far it's not a huge problem.

Biggest hurdle is foreshadowing. I hate foreshadowing

9:43 PM

I wonder if an electron just randomly pops in and out of existence at various places around the atom.

10:25 PM

@AndyD273 Game of Thrones.

@Hosch250 Welcome to quantum physics. We hope you enjoy your stay until you suddenly teleport somewhere else. You can forget about normal physics concepts like laws of motion for now, you won't be needing them here.

2

Relevant xkcd:

Science should be exactly as cool as the headlines sound. Like the 'RUSSIANS CUT APART AND REASSEMBLE DOGS' thing.

11:04 PM

2

A: PTIJ: When will the Purim story take place?

You left out the next word, which is a compound word that answers the question: ויהי בימי אחש-וראש And it will be in the days that I get a headache (the ב רפה got mixed up for a ו, as the עיטור (quoted in בית יוסף אבן העזר לד) explains can happen sometimes) So, when the author of the...

Best. Answer. Ever.

Mithrandir24601

11:18 PM

@Hosch250 Wrong way of thinking about it :P

Does a particle exist if it's not being/just been measured?

With that, I'll bid you all g'night!

11:42 PM

@James I was wondering if you saw my answer to the question about quenching swords in dragon's blood

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Mar '196

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