DARPA Working On Arthur C. Clarke Weapon Idea

holy_calamity writes "DARPA is working on a weapon which is similar to one first described by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1955 novel Earthlight — firing jets of molten metal using strong electromagnetic fields. The Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) will function on a smaller scale than Clarke's fictional blaster. DARPA's write-up says it could be 'packaged into a missile, projectile or other platform and delivered close to target for final engagement and kill.' Clarke is also widely credited with suggesting geostationary communications satellites — what other ideas of his will come to pass?"

Comments

what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[trolltalk.com]

I for one welcome Arthur C. Clarke's Overlords (Childhoods' End)

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[sgbett]

sharks and laserbeams.... no wait

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[morgan_greywolf]

Based on this very appropros commentary from Arthur C. Clarke himself:

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

I'd have to say probably all of them. Even the far-fetched ones like the telekinesis you allude to.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[rthille]

Then where the hell is my flying car, and why do 80% of my countrymen still believe in bronze-age myths?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[morgan_greywolf]

Then where the hell is my flying car, and why do 80% of my countrymen still believe in bronze-age myths?

Would you people give it up on the flying car already? People have invented flying cars. Flying cars aren't the problem. The problem is that people are too stupid to navigate in 3D space, especially when you consider how "well" they seem to be coping with 2D space.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[powerlord]

I think its more a problem that people en-masse are too stupid to navigate flying cars.

If there are only a few of them, no problem (although the cost will be higher without that economy of scale), but once you get enough people using them, you need "roads" and people can't be counted on to learn enough to fly cars, or maintain them (if you have to pull over in a car, fine, if you have to pull over in a flying car, look out below?)

Without an "easy" control (semi-automated control/ATC?) and maintenance (outsourced rental?) system flying cars probably are not going to appear any time soon.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[who knows my name]

Nostradamus is also cited as having many of his predictions come true. The problem is, if you make enough predictions it is hard for some of them not to come true. Similarly it is hard to miss shooting a rabbit with a sawn-off shotgun...

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[inviolet]

Then where the hell is my flying car, and why do 80% of my countrymen still believe in bronze-age myths?

Your flying car is delayed while awaiting an engine with higher power-density and higher reliability at lower cost, and a smart enough flight/navigation computer to operate the vehicle in the traffic densities that would be encountered after widespread adoption.

The bronze-age myths persist because religions are ideological rootkits, most of your brethren have been rooted, and the rootkits all include strong imperatives to infect one's offspring. You can't put a stop to the rootkits because society depends on them and hence is patterned to persecute any cleanup effort. Nor can you design a more infectious rational alternative rootkit because you can't rationally answer the universe's many sources of cognitive dissonance, chief among them "you will end", "they'll get away with it", and "religions are rootkits".

In the end you just have to search for and then surround yourself with those occasional outliers, those people who are honest enough to look the universe's uncaring meaninglessness squarely in the eye without reaching for a scripture to anaesthetize themselves with.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[morgan_greywolf]

Nostradamus is also cited as having many of his predictions come true.

Nostramus said some extremely vague shit in code. It has been poorly translated and deciphered by people who either A) want to make a big name for themselves or B) have the aforementioned elsewhere in this thread religious rootkits installed and seem to have a vested interest in the world coming to an end just to prove that their religion is "right" and everyone else is "wrong."

Or both.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[ShadowMarth]

In the end you just have to search for and then surround yourself with those occasional outliers, those people who are honest enough to look the universe's uncaring meaninglessness squarely in the eye without reaching for a scripture to anaesthetize themselves with.

I don't get why people are so afraid of the universe being uncaring? It's not that shocking, nor does it affect your life to know this, since it's always been true and never been different. However, if people knew and accepted this they might actually behave more humane, because they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit for them.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part driving is nearly a one-dimensional activity, and a lot of people can't even get that right. Consider how dangerous it can be to slow down at an amber light, or cross a road in a marked crosswalk. The last thing that I want to see is flying cars. Personal vehicles are dangerous enough as it is.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

where the hell is my flying car Your flying car is delayed while awaiting an engine with higher power-density and higher reliability at lower cost, and a smart enough flight/navigation computer to operate the vehicle in the traffic densities that would be encountered after widespread adoption. So in other words, you're saying that the flying car isn't here because the flying car isn't here?

Seriously, the question was a response to "every prophecy is conservative".

If this was true, then the problems you describe would have been solved already.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Minwee]

Similarly it is hard to miss shooting a rabbit with a sawn-off shotgun...

You'd better not miss. If that rabbit is armed with a shotgun you may not get a second shot at him.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[s_p_oneil]

That's only one of the many reasons. Others would be legal and security issues. On the legal side, every time someone died because they ran out of gas, stalled the engine, or had a mid-air fender bender, someone would get sued. On the security side, how easy would it be for someone like Osama or Ted Kaczynski to load these up with home-made explosives and crash them into buildings? Even without explosives, think of the damage a dozen of these things could do smashing into a building at a few hundred miles per hour. It would be nearly impossible to stop them from doing it (even if you mounted AA guns on every sizable building in the US). Anyone could easily hit military bases, dams, bridges, nuclear power plants, and so on with these. They could even be rigged to fly by remote control so they wouldn't need to be suicide missions.

The only "safe" way to do it would be to make them all 100% computer controlled (i.e. humans would not be allowed to pilot them under any circumstance), and even then it would only safe until someone hacks the system (which is easy when you have direct access to the hardware).

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[ceoyoyo]

I think Cessna has made a very popular flying car for at least the last forty years or so.

If you want more power you can buy a variety of assemble-yourself kit flying cars and put any powerplant you want in them. Apparently people have used everything from turbofans to liquid rockets.

Personally I prefer a sail powered flying car. It's purely for recreation, of course, because of the unreliability of the power source.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

why do 80% of my countrymen still believe in bronze-age myths?

Because they are just as plausible as any other explaination?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Sta7ic]

...how many times have you read Snow Crash in the last week?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

A bit of truth to what you say and a great deal of ignorance or lack of thought at any rate.

Scientists (Christian ones at that....horror) long ago determined that spontaneous generation does not happen. A great big void of nothingness cannot suddenly (or slowly) create something. Regardless of if a big bang occurred or some other similar mechanism may have eventually lead to life, there still leaves the problem of a great bunch of matter coming from nothing.

A God of some sort is the most likely answer.
You have a choice of believing that God helped out and trying to figure out how He came to be OR you can believe that a big ball of stuff miraculously occurred spontaneously.

In either event, you are relying upon a BELIEF system. Not knowledge. Most people understand this implicitly and choose to believe in a more powerful being (or a group of beings). Those that choose to believe in spontaneous generation of matter from nothing have no better foundation for their beliefs than a primitive tribal shamanistic society has for its (or more advanced religious systems).

Personally, I think those that choose to believe in a void of emptiness suddenly becoming non-void
show a marked lack of intelligence.

ccd -- a believer in God and a believer in Science noting that both are mostly a belief system at this point in our evolutionary development.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[dpilot]

I liked the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter: Witch.

Only problem with hers was that you only figured out what the heck she meant after the fact. THEN it's obvious, but not before.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[dpilot]

Heck, our society needs a whole library of Nam-Shubs. Some religions would only be a start.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[SanityInAnarchy]

People have invented flying cars.

...Where?

All I see are a bunch of people trying to grab some funding and then disappear.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[a whoabot]

Why couldn't some things simply always have existed? There wouldn't be any spontaneous generation and there wouldn't be a creation by a god in that case.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... are you (or Clarke, FWIW) seriously suggesting that because some prophecies come true even though they looked like crackpottery when they were made, ALL prophecies that look like crackpottery now must necessarily (or even are likely to) come true later on?

Heavens.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Twinbee]

Yes, it's that, and not at all the fact that we're having trouble stabilizing the design (keeping it upright), or the fact that they're too noisy and fuel costly.

The problem you mentioned could easily be solved by incorporating an onboard computer so that it keeps a minimum distance from other dirvers and buildings. The driver could still actually drive the thing, but it would repel like a magnet from other vehicles thanks to the "3D radar" type equipment.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[badboy_tw2002]

Whatever happened to "I don't know?" Just because we don't know the answer doesn't mean we have to make one up. Your answer "God did it" is just a placeholder - we've used that placeholder a lot in previous history and we've found the answer before. So you can have that one for now (after all you've lost disease, weather, gravity, the stars, evolution, the soul, dinosaurs, and pretty much everything else attributed to a diety or the supernatural).

There is stuff we don't know about the universe. There is probably more stuff we don't know about the universe than we do know about the universe. But we don't need to fill in the gaps with "God did it" to make ourselves feel better. We can admit we don't know something and try to find the answer rather than make something up and move on. That's the difference in believing in made up fairy tails and "believing in science".

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[no_pets]

Armed jackalopes are even more ornery.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[lonasindi]

Because it wouldn't be annoying getting 'pushed' around by the jackasses who can't 'drive'.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I don't get why people are so afraid of the universe being uncaring? It's not that shocking, nor does it affect your life to know this, since it's always been true and never been different. However, if people knew and accepted this they might actually behave more humane, because they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit for them.

Or perhaps they'd behave LESS humanely, since they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit TO them.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Scientists (Christian ones at that....horror) long ago determined that spontaneous generation does not happen. A great big void of nothingness cannot suddenly (or slowly) create something."

Not true. See C field cosmology. Proposed by Hoyle no less.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[rbanffy]

I don't know. I found this book deeply sad. It's probably because I became a father for the second time just before reading the book and I identified with the rebellious folks who decided to live in an island.

It's a book about change and the inevitable loss that comes with it.

If anyone is reading this, it's highly recommended.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[dwye]

> ...Where?

Read Popular Mechanics from the late 1960s or 1970s. There was a flying car on the cover of one issue (the car was red, and looked like a Peuguot). The flying components folded up on a trailer that the car would then pull to its next takeoff site. It only cost about $75,000 in Nixon-era dollars.

Now what you really want is a VC-22 that you can drive on the highway, so if you get into a traffic jam, you can just pass people in the "upper lane" . And, of course, it has to cost no more than a VW Bug yet be so cool that you can get supermodels to have your children just be driving by them, like the refrigerator commercial with one of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition models and the (claimed) Nanotechnology Professor.

Good luck on that.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Similarly it is hard to miss shooting a rabbit with a sawn-off shotgun

I take it you've never actually tried that? It's really hard to hurt something with a sawed-off shotgun at much beyond 20 feet, and really hard to get that close to a rabbit (unless the rabbit is a pet). Try a .22 instead.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[wattrlz]

Maybe there are things that could be considered, " Flying cars", but, certainly nothing as cost effective, convenient, or safe as to be accessible to the common man. Let's face it: The flying cars are fail. Right now I'd be happy with a car that was cheaper than taking a commercial airline on a mile for mile basis.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Twinbee]

That's okay - count it like a game of bumper cars in 3D! =D

Seriously, space is really big, and also the 'repelling magnet' type action can start repelling from a far distance so you don't really notice the fact that your course has veered in another direction.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[lonasindi]

Space might be big. That certainly doesn't mean there's infinite room around commuter destinations. Vehicles like this would likely be converging on a few locations, much like vehicles now do.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Sponge Bath]

A local (Austin) driver was so stupid he managed to go 3D with his truck.
At high speed a pickup flipped over a concrete barrier on an elevated bridge and landed upside down killing the driver. Given the type of vehicle and the large size of the barrier it almost defies belief that doing so is physically possible. Never underestimate the awesome power of stupidity.

On the other hand, for a brief moment he got a 'flying car'.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for that wonderful summary of the situation. If I were the credulous type, I'd start a cult dedicated to you for that.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[GooberToo]

History shows you are likely correct.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[GooberToo]

Maybe there are things that could be considered, " Flying cars", but, certainly nothing as cost effective, convenient, or safe as to be accessible to the common man. Let's face it: The flying cars are fail. Right now I'd be happy with a car that was cheaper than taking a commercial airline on a mile for mile basis. That's already available in airplanes, so long as you ignore the initial investment in the plane.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[kavalec]

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/flying-car-m400.jpg Moller Skycar. Old news.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[bar-agent]

"Do we have to? I mean, they're monks. I'm sure their God will let them out
or at least give them more shoes to eat."

"Fat chance! You can't count on God for jack. He pretty much told me so himself. Now come on. If we don't save those monks no one will!"

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Thuktun]

The bronze-age myths persist because religions are ideological rootkits, most of your brethren have been rooted, and the rootkits all include strong imperatives to infect one's offspring. Anyone intrigued by this idea who hasn't read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, go read it.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[turgid]

3D!=D

So, D!=0?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Bwana Geek]

AFAIK, nothing Nostradamus wrote was ever used to successfully predict anything. It's only after something momentous has happened that people pore through his prophecies trying to sync one of them up with the event.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know...

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[pjt33]

In the specific case of GP you may be correct to claim that "God did it" is a placeholder, but in general you wouldn't be. When theology and science are placed in opposition it's usually because one is being asked questions which are more suited to the other. The question of mechanisms is scientific: the question of root cause is theological / philosophical, so the choice isn't between believing in a god to explain something currently unexplained or believing that there's a scientific explanation yet to be discovered, but rather between believing in a god and believing in an anthropic principle.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[who knows my name]

The best (IMHO), self-contained theologies (I'm thinking of those like C.S. Lewis), can be reasoned by the human condition. i.e. Lewis' Moral Law. The fact that science has theories that can (and I use the word loosely) 'explain' cosmology, ancient history, and just about every physical phenomenon, doesn't hinder ultimate cause; furthermore it can't discredit these theologies. It is also problematic to use science as an explanation because of radical theory change, and that ultimately science provides models that predict rather than give any ultimate truth. As scientists we know from experience that we shouldn't trust s.relativity, quantum theory or whatever, because we know that their predecessors are not true. If you come at religion from this perspective you can see that we do not need a design argument for proof of God, and we don't need God to give us primary cause. In fact what I have come to believe is that you can't "believe in science" since there is no ingrained truth in science (science describes, does not explain); but if you do construct a theology convincing enough, it is valid to believe in a God.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

You are overlooking the "safety Nazi" effect.

Imagine for a moment, that there were no cars.
Now imagine a meeting outlineing the features:

Uses a toxic explosive liquid to make it go.
Controlled by a human driver.
Mechanical linkage to a big wheel for steering.
Mechanical/Hydraulic system for slowing down.
Mechanical linkage for speed control.
Capable of speeds over 100 MPH.
Cheep enough that almost anyone can afford it.
Emits toxic fumes in use.

Can you imagine the reaction?
They would laugh you right out of the room.
If they didn't fire the person proposing this, they would probably tell them.
1. Find a safe fuel.
2. A person can't control a vehicle at those speeds.
3. Mechanical linkages can't be made reliable enough for travel at that speed.
4. Mechanical/Hydraulic Needlessly complicated.
5. Millions of people running around in these things? Imagine the mayhem. (They are right about that.)
6. Make it all computer controlled.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[ShadowMarth]

Hehe, yeah, that's what I was thinking about when I posted it. One of my favorite episodes.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[BungaDunga]

There's plenty of examples in history and today of people reckoning that the deity they subscribe to actually wants them to go out and kill innocent people. It works both ways: horrible things have been done in the name of atheistic _and_ religious ideologies.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[BungaDunga]

Well, if we can prove with science that the universe is infinitely cyclical, there is no beginning nor end and no need for a "creator", because there has always been a universe and always will be.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[ceoyoyo]

Would you like a passenger car that's cheaper than taking a bus or train, mile for mile, as well? (Once you actually account for all the costs there's no such thing).

That's why the "we don't have flying cars yet" myth keeps going. People don't actually know what a flying car is. They're thinking of the family station wagon that somehow flies and does it for the same cost as running along the highway. It can't be done. The Cessna probably has an adjusted cost that is similar to or cheaper than early automobiles, but it costs more than a CURRENT (ground) car. Of course it does. Plus there are added mass production / safety Nazi effects, as pointed out by others.

Technology makes things possible. It even makes things cheaper. But there's no reason why it should make flying cars cheaper at a greater rate than it makes flying buses or ground cars cheaper.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Whatanut]

Look at the bones!!!

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[kramulous]

Fun sponge. Way to spoil my dreams.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[rthille]

"plausible"
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means...

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[thomasw_lrd]

Hitting the rabbit ain't hard, but killing it is. Trust me I've tried. Third shot, and he was dead.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Samah]

> ...religions are ideological rootkits.
So, Sony uses religion to infect PCs? Of course! It all makes sense now!

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[RobinH]

Or perhaps they'd behave LESS humanely, since they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit TO them.

I think there are a lot of very smart and either atheist or agnostic people out there who behave very well because they can rationalize why behaving well results in a better world than the alternative. I think the "bronze age myths" persist to make sure that the stupid people in society, who are incapable of understanding a rational argument, feel like they have a reason to behave well (i.e. because if they don't, they'll burn in hell).

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

That assumes the only thing keeping people from acting humanely is the threat hanging over their head that they might be held responsible for their actions by some heavenly power. There may be some merit in that for some people, however, A) many people are altruistic all on their own, and B) I really do wonder if any benefits are outweighed by the bigots and radicals that are willing to kill or oppress people who believe differently from them, all in the name of their deity.

While religious belief has the possibility of uniting people and making them more accountable, it can also create deep and destructive divides. It's definitely a mixed bag for humanity.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Mattcelt]

Because, given what we "know" about the universe (which is precious little), entropy has existed for as far back as we can determine. But if you start with entropy in the current state, the further back you go in time, the larger the coherence the universe had to have. Infinitely far back (which is, by definition, a requirement for an ever-state universe) the universe must have been perfectly coherent, with its entire energy contained in a single spot. (Which, come to think of it, sounds an awful lot like some descriptions of gods, doesn't it?) And if it was perfectly coherent, what could possibly have made it become unstable enough to generate what we see today?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[jafac]

...that the deity they subscribe to actually wants them to go out and kill innocent people

by YOUR definition of "innocent".
Their belief-system has a different version of "innocent" - NOBODY kills an "innocent" in the name of their god.

It's all just quibbling over what the definition of "innocent" is.

If you look at a purely humanistic definition, even stone-cold mass murderers are "a product of society's ills" and are not responsible for their actions, and therefore, are "innocent" (and should not be punished, but rather, offered therapy, at society's expense).

I think that this is a feature of human beings, and a stark illustration of the fundamental weaknesses inherent in human language (it is not capable of what we believe it to be capable of) - as a tool for communicating ideas to one another. It is not really a feature of Religion. Rather - Tribalism (with Religion as a common "flag").

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[LadyLucky]

Your argument is known as "God of the Gaps". The problem with it is that as science advances, the gaps get smaller and then so does your God. It also unnecessarily puts religion at odds with science, when they can quite happily operate separately - Science in the land of reality, and religion everywhere else.

Your claim that science is a belief system is to fundamentally misunderstand science. Science is a method of inquiry into the natural world, the only one we know of, that can identify objective truths. It takes zero faith or belief or anything like that to accept the outcomes of the scientific method.

Finally, you are also making an argument from ignorance in your discussion of the big bang. The bottom line is we don't know how it all happened. We don't know what there was before. We don't even know IF there was a "before" at all. If time began then then most of your assertions disappear. Just because you don't understand something isn't a reason to say "god did it".

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Geno Z Heinlein]

However, if people knew and accepted this they might actually behave more humane, because they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit for them.

If you haven't watched Angel, today is as good a time as any to start:

Angel: "Well, I guess I kinda - worked it out. If there is no great glorious end to all this, if - nothing we do matters, - then all that matters is what we do. 'cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today. - I fought for so long. For redemption, for a reward - finally just to beat the other guy, but... I never got it."
Kate: "And now you do?"
Angel: "Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because - I don't think people should suffer, as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness - is the greatest thing in the world."

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[sarge apone]

especially when you consider how "well" they seem to be coping with 2D space.

Ever see how drivers react on a 2 or 3 lane road who enter a newly paved area where the lines haven't been painted yet?

Now imagine that - but flying

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Nethemas the Great]

Actually the chief problem as I see it is the organization that has made it so near impossible to develop personal aircraft in the first place. The FAA has tailored all regulations to suit Boeing and kin who have the fat wallets and their similarly financed customers. Most Cessna pilots use $10 stop watches mounted to their yoke. Why would anyone do something that sounds so stupid? Because the $400+ FAA certified flight clock found in Cessnas like the plane itself was developed in the 50's and 60's is off by minutes per day and the cheap, made in China stop watch will run for months and still keep near perfect time. There hasn't been any real innovation and development in personal aircraft outside of the FAA experimental category in nearly half a century. You still have to control your own air/fuel mix because there aren't any modern "FAA certified" fuel injection systems. It simply costs too much to jump through the hoops. If it wasn't for the FAA that new plane that typically costs as much as a house to purchase would be as cheap if not cheaper than the average passenger car.

I also don't buy the "people are too dumb for 3D" argument either. Most pilots will tell you that learning to fly a small plane is easier than driving a car.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Dread_ed]

The texts that religions are based on do not use the claim "God did it" as an end to a conversation or as the answer to a scientific question. Generally, people making that statement as a catch all for the unknown have been using religion to control people rather than to free them. Condemning all religions on this basis is like condemning all scientists because of "cold fusion."

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[MorePower]

Cessnas are not "flying cars".

A flying car is something that can take off from a driveway (or at least a residential street) and land in the parking lot at work. Flying cars are supposed to fill the same role as regular cars, mainly for commuting to work. There's no point to a flying car if you still have to drive to the airport (on both ends of the trip, no less, I guess you have to rent a car at the work end). Many people would end up driving further to reach an airport than go to work. And most would have the same airport as closest to both work and their home (maybe they would be one or two airports over, there are a surprising number of GA airports).

The dream of "flying cars" is no more traffic congestion (since you have so much more volume to work with). Anything not usable for commuting isn't a "flying car".

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I think there are a lot of very smart and either atheist or agnostic people out there who behave very well because they can rationalize why behaving well results in a better world than the alternative.

I think there a lot of very smart and either atheist or agnostic people out there who can rationalize why behaving well results in a better world than the alternative. Alas, for some reason, their rationalizations all seem to look curiously like the standard Judeo-Christian Ethos. Which leaves me to wonder what they'd have come up with in complete isolation from Religion. Or, for that matter, if they'd grown up Aztec....

When a smart Atheist or Agnostic manages to come up with an ethos that doesn't sounds like the Ten Commandments, I'll start taking them a bit more seriously.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[jimmux]

...no deity or karmic force is going to do shit for them.

What?!

Then why the hell am I wasting all this time posting on Slashdot?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[RobinH]

There are many differences. For instance, the commandment is "thou shalt not kill", but most rational people believe it's ok to kill if necessary in self defense. (I do realize that earlier translations probably used the word murder rather than kill.) How about "You shall not commit adultery". The rational mind arrives at this only because marriage is a contract, and it would be wrong to break that contract, and this is because a society that enforces contracts is a stronger society.

But there's a deeper issue with your argument. You are assuming that the commandments were handed down by God, but it's actually quite likely that they were arrived at by one or more smart people (who, after all, would have to be smart if they could read and write at the time). So your argument is just begging the question (circular logic). The reason rational morality looks so much like the judeo-christian commandments is because it was created by rational people. Heck, even if it was created by God, are you saying He's not rational? If you happen to believe the judeo-christian mythos as fact, what's wrong with also trying to understand *why* God made those commandments?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[JaBob]

I think its more a problem that people en-masse are too stupid to even drive normal cars with any decent competence .

There, fixed that for ya.
Personally, I'll be relieved when we automate normal traffic. Boost road densities and you won't need 4 lanes highway in most of the places that the exist now. I think that'd be an easier and cheaper solution than flying cars. And you'd still need about the same amount of automation in systems checks as there would be in traffic control to make sure that things are working safely and efficiently. And they need to be hard set safety rules too... like systems don't check out, you don't leave (and on that note, make it easier to fix the damn thing than to bypass the safety systems). How many people do you know that just drive on and on an on with the check engine light on? I have had a buddy that used to work at a garage tell me how some customers with surprisingly high mileage cars (100+K ... wtf??) came in because their car was acting up, and then later find out that the car never had a single oil change. I for one, do not want those people flying - they scare me enough on the road. And about the pilots: I used to work at a small airport where they flew banners over the jersey shore, and many pilots are just as bad as some of the drivers I've dealt with - so don't say the extra training is all that worthwhile either. Check out how many nonfatal accidents are reported to the FAA each year, then remember that those are the ones that actually get reported.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[the phantom]

You do realize that something like a Cesna could hardly carry enough explosives to bring down a building, right? Do you remember the World Trade Center bombing in the 90s? That was a truck loaded with explosives, and it didn't bring down the building. A Cesna couldn't carry a fraction of the explosives in that truck, and doesn't run on jet fuel. The risk of a Cesna taking out a building, or even causing substantial damage, is somewhere between zero and nil.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you.

Say that you do not believe that your own life has any meaning. Sure, you'll say it to support your own "clever" argument. But you don't truly believe it. If you reach deep within your mind, within your precious scientific ego, you will find a little voice saying "I am special", which you dare not crush.

But your attempts, and those of many others like you who use what appears to be logical reason to scorn and belittle the human mind, are despicable attempts to elevate yourselves at the expense of all others.

The moment that you utterly convince another man that life is a pointless charade, you have ended that man's life.

But like so many other cowards, you will not take responsibility for that. "I was telling everybody the truth!". No, you were trying to prove how clever you were.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[DurendalMac]

I don't think Clarke is the one that came up with this. Wasn't Tesla's death ray concept very similar to this?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of gross ignorance, where did 'God' come from?

"It was always there!"

Then why cannot it be so for whatever preceded our universe and caused the big bang?

Stop trying to invent a reason for god to exist.

We don't know what caused the Big Bang, but any argument you say for why 'god did it' can *MORE EASILY* be applied to the Big Bang purely by virtue of we exist, so it must have happened. You cannot say that about gods of any form.

And science is far more than belief. It is understanding. Whether you believe in the things that we understand in science is utterly irrelevant as, unlike your god and religion, reality does not depend on your belief to exist.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[inviolet]

The best (IMHO), self-contained theologies (I'm thinking of those like C.S. Lewis), can be reasoned by the human condition. i.e. Lewis' Moral Law.

Lewis' theory says:

1. 1. I feel altruistic urges.
2. 2. Nature, self-interested whore that she is, would never give a mortal creature altruistic urges.
3. 3. Therefore God must have put the urges there.

A moderate objection to point one is that not everyone has altruistic urges.

A severe objection to point two is that altrui-social behavior is demonstrably beneficial to every member of a tribe, and therefore it will evolve in all social creatures.

An obvious objection to point three is that it's stupid. Of all the explanations for a seemingly inexplicable data point, saying "An invisible ghost in the sky did it!!!1!" is the least useful.

Lewis's theory is useless bunk. Its only function is to give religionists a feeling of rationality.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[ceoyoyo]

A car is not a "self-propelled horse." A self-propelled horse is something I can keep at my house and ride to work without needing special infrastructure like roads. There's no point to a self-propelled horse if I have to ride to the road (on both ends of the trip, no less... I guess you'd have to rent a horse at the work end). Many people would end up riding their horse further to reach a road than they would just riding to work!

You're talking about an infrastructure problem. There ARE places where you park your plane (or helicopter) within walking distance of your home, and you can land it within walking distance of work. No, it hasn't caught on. Could it, minus the Joe-average-can't-be-trusted-with-an-aircraft problem? Certainly. And it would require a lot less infrastructure than the car currently does.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

It's not simply "stupidity", it's also to do with basic safety, infrastructure, and economics.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[syousef]

Nostradamus is also cited as having many of his predictions come true. The problem is, if you make enough predictions it is hard for some of them not to come true. Similarly it is hard to miss shooting a rabbit with a sawn-off shotgun..

Better analogy: It's hard to fail to predict what you're going to hit with the sawn off shot gun, if you're sufficiently vague about what that something is beforehand.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

(after all you've lost disease, weather, gravity, the stars, evolution, the soul, dinosaurs, and pretty much everything else attributed to a diety or the supernatural).

Ok, you have my interest - where's the studies and papers indisputably disproving the existence of souls? Lots of theories have been dismissed over the years due to conflict with existing theory and principles - such as several of your examples. How can you contend that souls are non-existant without a testing methodology? What current theories does it conflict with? This one I gotta read...

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[pkphilip]

One does not choose to believe in something because they want to behave a certain way. It actually works the other way around. People behave a certain way *because* of their belief.

The truth is that if there is no supernatural benevolent being who we must all answer to, there is really no need to give a fig for anyone else's interest than our own.

Why would I give a damn for the folks in Dafur who are being killed by the hundreds right now - it doesn't affect me or my family. Actually, if I go purely on the basis of "intellect", it may actually be advantageous for me to have fewer humans on the planet.

The truth is morals are a byproduct of our beliefs. If we believe in our own preeminence and that we are all basically going to die one day and completely cease to exist and that we must always strive for our own gain, then there is really no need for being kind to our fellow man.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[a whoabot]

What if I were to propose that "infinitely far back" as a point exists only conceptually but never actually occurred: So prior to any state with some non-zero level of entropy there is another state with non-zero level of entropy. So entropy has existed eternally with the universe? And so there never was perfect coherence and so your problem doesn't occur?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

"plausible"

: superficially reasonable but often specious

Plausible implies only that it seems reasonable on face. Usually, making sense in within a closed belief system. For instance, movies are commonly considered plausible, although not probable.

I know what words mean...

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Froeschle]

Fuel injection has been available in small aircraft (e.g small Cessnas) for quite some time now. Ironically they can seem more "complicated" to start than normally aspirated engines equipped with a carburetors if you are not used to them. One such common engine is the Lycoming O-360: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycoming_O-360

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Samah]

Troll? Wow...
It was a dig at Sony, not at religion. The wonders of /. moderation.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[AdamHaun]

Well, the universe holds vast power over me (me being a part of it and all) and has demonstrated a willingness to severely hurt me. As a small mammal, that bothers me. Also, as far as I can tell, I'm either forced to endure it forever or doomed to escape through absolute extinction. They don't affect my day to day life much, but in the long run, issues like those are going to affect me more than anything else. Once I start pondering what I want my life to be about or what the point in continuing to live is, the big questions are pretty well inescapable.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[lusiphur69]

There is no evidence of souls, hence why would we assume something we have no evidence for?

You cannot disprove something that has no proofs to refute.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[who knows my name]

actually Lewis' theology (not a theory), says that all humans know morality (whether that is socially/genetically conditioned or not), but we inherently fail to live up to our own standards. He says that if human's are immoral, then it is a lack of morals (rather than believing good is evil etc..), this deals with point 1. I think point 2 misses the point; the theology is distinct from theories of social development, because it doesn't mind what the mechanism for development of those morals is. Now your best argument against Lewis shouldn't be trying to discredit it with science, as the theology itself is fairly distinct from any scientific theory. We could find the earth sitting on a turtle and it wouldn't matter to the theology of Lewis. The best objection to Lewis is that his theology is based on virtually nothing, and I don't think it really gets very much back. But the point I was trying to make was that the theology will remain consistent with itself even with a massive amount of scientific development.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why the "God did it" is over-ruled once you know how something came into being. Because you don't know how something came into being, it is easy to say "The Dude in the sky" did it. Once you know how something came into being, you still need the same amount of faith to say "The Dude in the sky" did it, but now you know _how_. If it contradicts some old book, maybe that old book needs revising, and maybe "The Dude in the sky", assumed author of said old book, couldn't convey the "how" message to the unknowing, ignorant minds that received the "inspiration", so he/she/it made it stupid-shit-simple for those guys to be able to properly relate.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is stuff we don't know about the universe. There is probably more stuff we don't know about the universe than we do know about the universe. But we don't need to fill in the gaps with "God did it" to make ourselves feel better. True, but by knowing something about the universe, does that take God out of the picture? Just because you know something, it doesn't mean you don't need faith to acknowledge "The Dude in the sky" did it. Faith tells you "who" did stuff, and science unveils "how" and what "stuff" have been made.

Because the "how" contradicts some old book, I think the old book needs updating. It contains the "how" answers as humans could perceive them several thousands of years ago. As our knowledge of the "how" increases, we should adapt the "how" we know, but the "who" usually remains the same, as you can't prove/disprove a "who". God is irrelevant to the scientific method.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Thanshin]

On the security side, how easy would it be for someone like Osama or Ted Kaczynski to load these up with home-made explosives and crash them into buildings? About as easy as loading a car with explosives and crashing it into a building.

It would be nearly impossible to stop them from doing it (even if you mounted AA guns on every sizable building in the US). It's nearly impossible to stop people to crash cars full of explosives into buildings. And yet, we haven't stopped building cars.

Anyone could easily hit military bases, dams, bridges, nuclear power plants, and so on with these. They could even be rigged to fly by remote control so they wouldn't need to be suicide missions. Anyone can easily hit dams, bridges, nuclear power plants and so on with a small airplane right now.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[gtall]

Yeah, and an ultralight being sucked into a jet engine would have exactly what effect on a 747 during takeoff? And if that doesn't take it down, how about one for each engine with a few sticks of dynamite for that added special effect.

Gerry

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[gtall]

Also, if you make a lot of vague and coded predictions, and wait long enough, society will generate enough idiots who will put together an argument that some of them have come to pass.

Gerry

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[JosKarith]

"by YOUR definition of "innocent". Their belief-system has a different version of "innocent" - NOBODY kills an "innocent" in the name of their god." Barring of course those religions that prefer their sacrificial victims of the innocent kind...

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Magada]

Well, the argument goes that if no-one cared, the world would be all a big Darfur (or a Bioshock-type place, if you will, which is about the same). It's in your self-interest that this doesn't happen.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Magada]

I hope you're joking. If not, you're a bad shot and an even worse hunter. Learn to shoot, but first learn to get close.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Twinbee]

Haha nice one =P

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Half a dent]

It's really hard to hurt something with a sawed-off shotgun at much beyond 20 feet, and really hard to get that close to a rabbit (unless the rabbit is a pet). Try a .22 instead.

Nuke the rabbit from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Jurily]

What they need is the Total Perspective Vortex

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[s_p_oneil]

BS.

1) A high curb or a few steps would be enough to stop a car from crashing into a building at high speed. There are any number of simple and cheap barriers like that one could use. Even the way downtown city streets are designed would keep cars from being able to come flying through the front door of a building at 100 MPH. Most tall buildings I've seen have thick concrete walls at the base (something a car wouldn't be able to break through), and most have at least a few steps leading up to the front door. An explosion happening on the outside of a building would do very little damage compared to one happening on the inside. A flying car could very easily pick a window it wanted to enter through, and come tearing in at top speed (which may be up to 200 or 300 MPH). A good bit of the damage would be caused by the weight and velocity, and any potential fires it might start.

2) Airplanes are more expensive, there are far fewer of them, and they are more tightly controlled than cars. Aircraft deviating from their flight plan are more easily spotted, and more easily intercepted if necessary because there are so few of them. It would be very different if there were millions of vehicles flying around every city, going pretty much anywhere they wanted (with soccer moms accidentally flying over a military base while putting on their makeup). They would also be cheaper and easier to obtain, and it would be possible for terrorist groups to use dozens of them in a single attack. It would make things 100 times easier for them than it would be for them to do the same with airplanes today, especially if they chose to go after military targets.

3) Kamikaze pilots were extremely effective in WWII. They were so effective that if they hadn't run out of planes and pilots, they might have sunk our naval fleet, causing us to lose on the Pacific front. If you don't think a dozen flying cars hitting a military base would be a problem, what about a hundred or a thousand? With planes today it would be unthinkable for anyone to try something that big. With everyone in a city using a flying car, it would seem a lot easier.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[s_p_oneil]

BS. They don't have to take down the building. The fire caused would presumably do more damage than the explosion. Perhaps they would load it up with something like napalm instead of explosives. And with millions of flying cars buzzing around a city, they could use dozens in one attack far more easily than they could use planes today. Read the response I made to the other guy's reply. It adds a lot more to the argument.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[electrictroy]

I'd like to know where the military is going to get "molten metal". The stuff isn't just laying around... you need lots of metal & lots of heat.

Perhaps the concept will be similar to the uranium-tipped anti-tank weapons that impact the external armor. The pressure of the impact instantly vaporizes the metal, and splatters the interior occupants with the resulting vapor (turning them into ash).

(shrug) Who knows. I've seen the military come-up with some whacky ideas like an airplane carrier that, instead of airplanes, was filled with 1000 tomahawk missiles, but most of these ideas never come to fruition.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[KeensMustard]

Then where the hell is my flying car, Well, the broad answer is that modernism failed to deliver on it's promises. Hence the reason we moved on to post-modernism. But feel free to carry on believing.

and why do 80% of my countrymen still believe in bronze-age myths? Sorry, but I fail to see why your belief is more impressive then the beliefs of these country(men). Modernists believe that FTL drives will be invented someday because
(a) that's what they WANT to believe and
(b) in their minds they make this idea rational.
Seems to me that this is the same as making a quick sacrifice to Vishnu(*) or burning feathers on a sacred fire.

(*) Had trouble working out what bronze age religion is so prevalent among males in your country. Hinduism may not be right, since it has female adherents, nor even shamanism, but never mind.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[emaname]

I have to agree about people being too limited intellectually to navigate 3D. I personally have come close to several head-on collisions because of another driver being a cell-phone addicted, yammering idiot too dense to know what is going on around them. It would be total chaos and mayhem with these texting, chattering, morons moving about in 3D. And I know that we've all seen incredibly stupid moves by drivers with our current modes of transportation. Like crossing 3 lanes of heavy traffic at 70mph to make an exit ramp that's only a few hundred feet ahead. Or right turns from the left lane across 3 lanes of traffic. On the other hand, there is a chance for that thinning-the-herd thing to work its way through the driving public.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[street struttin']

The answer to this is to have "flying trains". Something like a metro rail system that flies. People get on and just sit there and the train does all the work. Of course, airplanes are supposed to be like that, but the security is so tight that it isn't worthwhile.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[darkfire5252]

disclaimer: I'm an atheist. (Possibly leaning towards unconventional theism, but I digress...)

My favorite writing on the matter has to be the stuff that came from Kant himself. He very eloquently addresses this problem: Does morality have an abstract basis because of some deity or because of rational logic? His solution was to try to examine where logic 'came from'. I'm of the opinion that logic doesn't come from any divine inspiration, and that it's just an intellectual ability we have. But, that only answers the HOW and not the WHY; what is it precisely that makes 2+2=4? It would seem that logic is a consequence of the underlying structure and rules governing reality (as we know it). So, if one then treats those underlying rules as if it was a deity in itself then one can see how rational morality can be said to be grounded in the 'rules of the universe' aka 'God's will', while at the same time being a product of mankind's intellect and intuition.

Kant was of the opinion that the rules of logic represent the will of the creator of the universe, as they seem to be the only things that exist simply because they have to.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[T.E.D.]

For instance, the commandment is "thou shalt not kill", but most rational people believe

Actually, no. Its "thou shall not commit murder". Some old translations used the word "kill", but few modern ones do. The hebrew word used in most of our originals is the word for murder. I'm not precisely certian how they defined "murder" at the time, but I'd bet it was at least as loose as "most rational people" feel about it. Probably a bit too loose. I wouldn't be suprised if killing a non-Jew, or perhaps even a badly misbehaving family member, was considered not to count.

Actually, its a bit of a misnomer to talk about "The 10 Commandments" anyway. The "The" is wrong, because they appear slightly differently in two different places in the bible. Also, different sects translate them differently. Even within the translations, the words are interpreted very differently by different groups.

The "10" is arguable too, as the Exodus version actually has 14 or 15 imperitive statements. Different sects divide these up into 10s differently, so there's no agreement on what numbers go with which statements either.

Many Christians also feel that Jesus essentially obsoleted them with his own two commandments.

All this of course means that anyone who wants to post "The 10 Commandments" somewhere is nessecarily taking sides in a religous dispute and promoting their version over the others.

The Wikipedia's entry on this is pretty good, but for all its length it doesn't begin to cover everything.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[OSUBeav]

Avionics for small aircraft have taken a quantum leap and are still progressing pretty strongly. Looks at the glass panel stuff and portable GPS systems from garmin.

Also, there is research and goals in the personal air vehicle arena:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_air_vehicle

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[complete loony]

Our legal system expects any random sampling of 12 people to be able to rationally determine if someone actually did what they are accused of. And also if what they did is actually "wrong". They are expected to be able to do this without any formal training, without necessarily being able to tell you what they based their decision on.

If there is no rational God, where did this unwavering, absolute and consistent sense of right and wrong come from?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[CrimsonAvenger]

The rational mind arrives at this only because marriage is a contract, and it would be wrong to break that contract, and this is because a society that enforces contracts is a stronger society.

Please prove this. Historical evidence doesn't support it, really. Unless the only parts of history you're using are the Judeo-Christian parts.

Note, by the way, that marriage is only a sacrament by tradition - Martin Luther recognized that marriages were a product of the State, not of God, but since we'd been doing it with religious ceremonies for 1500 years (at the time), it wasn't worth changing it, since the people wouldn't accept the change.

For instance, the commandment is "thou shalt not kill", but most rational people believe it's ok to kill if necessary in self defense. (I do realize that earlier translations probably used the word murder rather than kill.)

You shall not commit murder is the correct phrasing. Note that "murder" is "unlawful killing". And so the definition changes from society to society, from time to time. A Shogunate Samurai would NOT consider it murder to kill a rice farmer, though we would. A Shaker would consider it murder to kill ANYONE, for ANY REASON. Which of the many options is correct, from a "rational" point of view.

So, once again, demonstrate a rational basis for society that doesn't follow the Judeo-Christian Ethos, and I might believe the lads who claim to be able to come up with a rational basis for society had something.

As is, looks to me like they're not rational, but rationalizing - they are justifying their childhood training as laws of nature, without using the G-word.

one or more smart people (who, after all, would have to be smart if they could read and write at the time). So your argument is just begging the question (circular logic). The reason rational morality looks so much like the judeo-christian commandments is because it was created by rational people.

It doesn't follow that literate people in that time were smart. Just well-educated. There is a difference, even today.

Again, you are stating that the Judeo-Christian beliefs are "rational". Prove this. I know I won't go so far as to say that they're the only rational system on which a society could be based, yet the so-called rational people keep coming up with rationalizations for this form of society, and no other. Are you suggesting that ALL other religious beliefs were irrational?

Note, by the way, that placing a special value on human life is intrinsically irrational, absent the so-called "soul" - we're just another animal, after all.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Mattcelt]

Hypothetically, I'm all for it; it's a great thought exercise and leads to wonderful discussions. (Can you really call a universe that changes its rules 'static' or 'ever-state', and how does that change the theological argument?)

And if there were any sort of scientific evidence that this was the case, I would even be willing to discuss it on a practical level. But unfortunately, until something rather drastic happens, it remains just that - a proposal, a hypothetical, a thought experiment - which is exactly the same thing a theological belief is. And the thing about thought experiments is that without any sort of empirical evidence, every single one is as valid and likely as another. Which means that the possibility of God is every bit as real as the possibility of an ever-state, entropy-neutral universe.

Entropy is real and can be measured scientifically by any kid with a chemistry set. And all empirical evidence to date (as far as we can read it, anyway) points back to a singular event from a (perhaps asymptotically infinitely) lower-entropy source. So as enticing an idea is of a cyclic, ever-state universe, I think most people might get more benefit from believing in a god. But that's just my take.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[T.E.D.]

The problem with it is that as science advances, the gaps get smaller and then so does your God. It also unnecessarily puts religion at odds with science, when they can quite happily operate separately - Science in the land of reality, and religion everywhere else.

I mostly agree with the second sentence (minus the word "reality"), but the first is flat out wrong. As science advances, the "gaps" acually get bigger and more numerous. The more we learn, the more we realise there is that we don't know. For instance, there used to be a point where we pretty much thought we knew what the smallest particles were. Now we're beginning to realise that every time we look hard enough at a particle, we see smaller ones composing it. There's no reason whatsoever to believe this process won't continue indefinitely. However, there *is* probably a limit to our ability to look inside.

The same goes for Physics in general. Every law or theory we look hard enough at has turned out to be meerly an approximation for a set of deeper laws. Math too, for that matter. They've proven there are infinite *types* of numbers that cannot be described by our mathematics. We are limited beings, and thus there are limits to how far we will ever be able to delve into this universe of limitless complexity.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[wattrlz]

The average general aviation plane in the US:

• Gets 20mpg or less.
• Runs on 100 octane leaded fuel that goes for around $10 a gallon where spending $4 a gallon for the automotive stuff is front-page news.
• Requires 40-60 hours of training just to be eligible for a license in a country where anyone off the street who can parallel park, recognize road signs, and answer a couple questions about local regulations can drive a car.
• Has a ground-roll of about a quarter-mile (400m) if you're planning on clearing the trees at the end of the runway.
• Requires ground transportation for not only the, "last mile", but also the, "first mile".
• Requires maintenance well beyond the standard automobile's oil change every three to five thousand miles in both price and complexity.

That is far from what I'd call convenient or cost effective. Not that there aren't good reasons for these additional complexities, but it's by no means a, " flying car". What I, and I believe most people, think of when they hear the term, " flying car" is something that will fit in a garage, be airborne by the end of the driveway, land in a regular parking spot, run on pump regular, and a reasonably responsible sane parent could buy for his or her high-schooler bringing home a good report card without having to spend $30K on lessons.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try driving in most of the developing countries... you'll find that people can/are doing it. Go to India!! It's not that people can't, it's just that they aren't used to it.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Doggabone]

I assume you're absolutely correct on the economics. But I'm very uncertain that enough people are smart enough for 3D.

The hardest part about driving a car isn't operating the vehicle - it's avoiding all the yabbos on road who aren't paying attention. On an open, unoccupied road or a gentle off-road, driving is dead simple.

To steal a line from No Exit, "Driving is other people". But at least in 2D, I can track them all. In 3D, it's going to be a lot harder to monitor drivers where I can see 50 to 100 vehicles at a time. Which is not a lot of cars in my view on an 8 lane highway! The third dimension is going to exponentially add to the variables that other drivers can introduce into my drive.

Assuming that all the people that I can see on a multi-lane divided highway are in the air, all of them of course to different destinations. They're going to want to travel as the crow flies. Isn't that the significant advantage of flying? That means that instead of being protected from half of my fellow travellers and being parallel to the other half, I'm avoiding vectors from all directions.

There may be currently possible or technically imaginable solutions, but I very much believe that "people are too dumb for 3D". Not all people, and not inherently, but enough of them and by their willingness to be (or unwillingness to learn better). I think there are people to dumb for shoes! 3D adds significant complexity, and I've seen and met drivers who are clearly too unaware and stupid to drive well. I shudder to think of them all in the air. And although I haven't met many pilots, I haven't met many who are morons - I'm not surprised that they find it easier to drive than a car. I believe that point, too (on your authority), but I don't think it's the operation of the vehicle but maneuvering it among other drivers that is the challenge in either case. You can't take the sky from me, but for now, at least, it's fairly empty up there.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[jafac]

Yeah, but the concept of "innocent" is really conflated here, because the concept of "right" and "wrong" are messed-up in this kind of world-view.

A person who is "innocent" and is sacrificed, makes up for the "wrongs" in an ideological economy of right and wrong. So, the innocent person really is not innocent, because they are indirectly responsible for wrongs (having nothing to do with the individual concept of "free will") - and therefore, must die to correct the global inbalance.

My statement stands, for a more modern, common view of the definition of "innocent"

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Doggabone]

A wizard did it.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[FrozenFOXX]

In Soviet Slashdot Arthur C. Clarke's Overlords welcome you!

Sorry, had to do it.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[clint999]

One does not choose to believe in something because they want to behave a certain way. It actually works the other way around. People behave a certain way *because* of their belief. The truth is that if there is no supernatural benevolent being who we must

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Doggabone]

I assume you're absolutely correct on the economics. But I'm very uncertain that enough people are smart enough for 3D.

The hardest part about driving a car isn't operating the vehicle - it's avoiding all the yabbos on road who aren't paying attention. On an open, unoccupied road or a gentle off-road, driving is dead simple.

To steal a line from No Exit, "Driving is other people". But at least in 2D, I can track them all. In 3D, it's going to be a lot harder to monitor drivers where I can see 50 to 100 vehicles at a time. Which is not a lot of cars in my view on an 8 lane highway! The third dimension is going to exponentially add to the variables that other drivers can introduce into my drive.

Assuming that all the people that I can see on a multi-lane divided highway are in the air, all of them of course to different destinations. They're going to want to travel as the crow flies. Isn't that the significant advantage of flying? That means that instead of being protected from half of my fellow travellers and being parallel to the other half, I'm avoiding vectors from all directions.

3D adds significant complexity, and I've seen and met drivers who are clearly too unaware and stupid to drive well. I shudder to think of them all in the air. And although I haven't met many pilots, I haven't met many who are morons - I'm not surprised that they find it easier to drive than a car. I believe that point, too (on your authority), but I don't think it's the operation of the vehicle but maneuvering it among other drivers that is the challenge in either case. You can't take the sky from me, but for now, at least, it's fairly empty up there.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[RobinH]

Note, by the way, that placing a special value on human life is intrinsically irrational, absent the so-called "soul" - we're just another animal, after all.

The best idea I've seen regarding this is put forward by Robert M. Pirsig in his metaphysics of quality. Basically, an animal's life has value because it has better quality alive than dead. However, given the choice of an animal living vs. a human living, a human is of a higher quality (to us, obviously), so we would kill an animal to save a human. Similarly, we would kill off viruses to save ourselves, even though we don't think viruses are "evil" or anything.

He places the highest "quality" on intellectualism. Therefore, he would be ok with a society that protects intellectual freedom in defending itself, even violently, against a society that restricts intellectual freedom.

Yet he places the quality of a society above that of a single human, so he's ok with a society punishing criminals because a smooth running society has higher quality than the alternative. But when that society tries to punish someone for a thought crime, it's interfering with the higher quality of intellectualism, so he's not ok with that.

Anyway, I highly suggest it - his books are quite rational.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[srvivn21]

Your claim that science is a belief system is to fundamentally misunderstand science. Science is a method of inquiry into the natural world, the only one we know of, that can identify objective truths. It takes zero faith or belief or anything like that to accept the outcomes of the scientific method. Not my claim, I'm just jumping in the middle here, but I have to take exception to this statement.

The "fact" that we can find those objective truths takes faith AND belief.

For those who are not talented enough to perform the experiments themselves, you have to have faith that those who are doing the experiments are, for lack of a better term, doing it right. We all have to believe that there is no grand conspiracy between those performing the experiments. So you want to test the results? See the next point.

Those who have the ability to perform the experiments, have to believe in the method and have faith that the tools they are using are not defective in some fashion that is skewing the results. They have to have faith that the perceptions we use are in some fashion tied to the way the universe works (perception is reality, after all).

Personally I believe in the scientific method. I have faith in the people who practice it. I attempt to hold an open mind. If it turns out there is some supernatural power who is nudging the results of our experiments outside our ability to detect it, I'll shrug my shoulders and continue trying to enjoy what I perceive as consciousness. Same story if it turns out the scientific method is also a ruse intended to prevent the majority of us from poking at the fabric of the universe.

But to say that faith is not needed for science... That's delusional.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[ArsonSmith]

"thou shalt not kill" is actually somewhat of a miss translation. The original Hebrew word translates better to murder. Where it should read "thou shalt not murder"

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[ArsonSmith]

"If there is no rational God, where did this unwavering, absolute and consistent sense of right and wrong come from?"

If that were the question why is a jury 12 people required? Shouldn't we only need one?

Really the only doubt you're placing in me is in the legal, specifically jury, system.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the far-fetched ones like the telekinesis

Do you have any hypothesis at all how that would work, or are you just thinking something like "Well, they said you couldn't do X, and now you can, so dude, telekinesis must be possible too!" ?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Paradise Pete]

Of course, airplanes are supposed to be like that, but the security is so tight that it isn't worthwhile.

So you're thinking that if we called them trains instead then we wouldn't have tight security? I like it. It worked for the "patriot" act. If they'd have called it the "trample your so-called rights however we damn well please" act, I think fewer people would have supported it.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[badboy_tw2002]

To the GP: I was talking more about "ghost in the machine" and the separation of consciousness from our biological brains as opposed to the classic "immortal soul". But the above is correct: burden of proof falls upon the person making the assertion "I, you, we have a soul".

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[badboy_tw2002]

Right, they explain in terms of the religion and the science of the time. Genesis has floodgates sitting over the Earth that opened to cause the flood Noah lived through. Same with creation, the direct decendancy of man from God, etc. Once those claims have been refuted by scientists, the fall back to "well, its all an interpretation that people had of the time - could have mean a billion years = 1 day, etc" - and anything else that science doesn't have a good answer for is "oh, well, that, now that is what God really did!" You're totally correct though that that kind of dogma are inventions of the religion's followers and not the founders.

I actually have much more respect for fundamentalists that take the book at its absolute word than those that try some song and dance to make the religion fit their own world view. Either its all true or its all not and you believe it or you don't. Other than that you're either lying to yourself or someone is lying to you.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[GooberToo]

Ya, I started to provide a little more detail but was rushed.

History shows the original comment is correct until religion it self becomes the reason for violence.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[GooberToo]

In the US, 100LL is closer to $4/g. Training under the FAA tends to require 70-hours on average (expect $3K-6K in training costs). Many airports have curtesy cars and others have rentals. From a maintenance perspective, that mostly depends on the type of aircraft but your point is legitimate.

Nonetheless, it is possible to fly your own plane for less than commercial travel, which was the original point. Other factors will largely determine if you believe it is worth it.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Read Popular Mechanics from the late 1960s or 1970s. There was a flying car on the cover of one issue (the car was red, and looked like a Peuguot). Did it actually work, though? Did they actually fly a prototype around? Or was it just a concept?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[thomasw_lrd]

It was my first time, and I was very nervous. The second one went down on the first shot.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[Dread_ed]

Let's be realistic. Your interpretation of an english translation of a thousands of years old document is not sufficient to criticise it. From your description of "floodgates" it is obvious you read some paraphrased and bastardized english translation and took that as the autograph. In addition, the creation story is a bit more complex and suprising than you are presenting it to be, though you would know that if you had an inkling if what the original languages state about it. Therefore you are either being deliberately misleading or you don't posess authoratative knowledge on this subject. Either way your ability to sit in jugement of the text's content is completely compromised.

"Either its all true or its all not and you believe it or you don't."

However, what was never said can never be true or false. What I mean is many of the things people take issue with in the bible do not actually exist therein. They are products of misinformation, mistranslation, or misunderstanding. No offence, but you seem to have fallen prey to these pitfalls yourself. Don't feel lonely though, many of the fundamentalist people you respect so much believe in things that do not exist in the original manuscripts of the bible.

As for someone lying to you, there is no better way to avoid this than by going directly to the source. Fortunately, the bible is the most prolific ancient manuscript humanity has, easily dwarfing the other ancient documents we revere many hundreds of times to one in volume of manuscript evidence. Also, the languages it was written in are constantly under the scrutiny of scholars the world over and have been for hundreds of years. In short, there is no shortage of easy to access authoratative information about the bible. In addition you can even see the manuscripts themselves, whether scanned digitally or in person, and judge for yourself what the words are and therefore mean.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[badboy_tw2002]

Ah, so the ancient greek translation actually talks about a big bang and evolution! Cool! :) I'm kidding of course, but you're somehow suggesting the original Hebrew (?) (greek for new testament?) somehow doesn't mention a flood that covers the earth or an ark that holds every species of animal currently in existence? (Or the jist at least). I had read that the New Testament had been grossly edited but didn't thing the old one had been that far compromised. Or does the creation tale (where people live hundreds of years) just not count in your book?

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[bandmassa]

...and why do 80% of my countrymen still believe in bronze-age myths? Or worse, "new age" mythology!

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[dwye]

> Did it actually work, though?

If you can believe the pictures. They included in-air shots, from a more conventional plane (Cesna, I believe) that flew along with it.

As I said, the only problem was that most people don't WANT flying cars, especially at more than the price of a Cesna, which is designed as a flying *flying machine* instead of a flying ground-based car, and thus is better at flying. You could buy the base car, and the Cesna, and have 2 purpose-built vehicles working magnificantly in their particular environments, or have a racing camel of a carplane.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[LadyLucky]

You've confused faith with trust. Faith is belief without evidence; trust is built up over time and has become a reasonable position.

Also you don't need faith in individual scientists, because that's not what you are trusting - you're trusting the method, and when repeated over again and giving consistency, you build trust.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[SanityInAnarchy]

512k should be enough for anybody!

My favorite quote was from Orson Scott Card's Lost Boys, in which some character counters statements like that by saying that within a year, nobody will think of selling a computer without at least a megabyte of storage!

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[srvivn21]

And what do you base your trust on? Where's the foundation? You state that faith is belief without evidence, and trust is build up over time (with supporting evidence, I assume).

You need to believe in the evidence, don't you? You need to believe in the method that garners the evidence, (and in the tests you perform on that method to make sure the method is valid, and the checks that you place on those test, etc.)? Further, it seems to me that you need to have faith that your perception and interpretation of the evidence (after all, it's minute electrical impulses that are being processed by a massively parallel organic computer) isn't causing you to misplace your trust. How can you be sure that your self-diagnostic isn't broken? I think I'm a sane consciousness in a physical body, but what reassurances do I have that my physical body isn't tied down in a mental institution (or that I'm a brain in a jar or a construct in a computer simulation, etc.)?

To me, it's a matter of where you put your faith. Do you:
1) Believe in the ability of man to interpret, understand and explain his environment
2) Believe that "it is what it is and has always been*"
3) Spread your belief between the camps**?

I don't see how you can deny faith and claim difference from those who simplemindedly follow theism, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility.

* The universe sprung fully formed 4,000 years ago created for our benefit or to test us, or whatever. Given the possibility that it was formed with features pre-aged (fossils laid in bedrock, light from distant stars "placed" enroute, etc.), how do you prove this is not the case?

** There was a guiding hand that formed the rules that allowed our existence. Or within the rules of physics, a being (or race) of sufficient power and knowledge crafted the beginnings of life as we know it. Or something else along those lines.

Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass?

[pkphilip]

Laws are in place to protect the weak from being completely overrun by the strong. If there weren't minimum wage laws, the rich would still get people to work for them - but they will be paying them very little; and even then people would land up for work.

Similarly, if rape wasn't a crime, the strong would rape the poor; the rich will have the means to protect themselves.

So if you weren't already born rich and strong, your chance at life is actually far lower without these laws to protect you.

The belief that even the weak should be allowed to life a happy life is what prompts these laws in society and it is not because the society feels that it is in the interest of society to protect the weak.

This belief that the weak must be protected comes from the understanding that there must be a greater power who is benevolent even to the weak and that we must in a sense align ourselves with this greater power.

If we didn't have any such belief, then we we are free to oppress the weak.

The Mark V Computer

[TimHunter]

I understand that the monks are up to about 8 and 1/2 billion. http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/9billion_clarke.html/

Re:The Mark V Computer

[Anonymous Coward]

Slight correction to posted URL, dropped trailing slash.

Link is here.

Posted as AC to prevent karma whoring. :-P

Re:The Mark V Computer

[evanbd]

That's one of my all time favorite short stories. Up there with Asimov's The Last Question.

Re:The Mark V Computer

[Anonymous Coward]

Your link has an extra slash. Let me fix that for you:

9 Billion Names of God

Hmmm

[Uncle Focker]

Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) They should have thrown in a Y so the system could have been called MAYHEM.

Re:Hmmm

[HTH NE1]

Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) They should have thrown in a Y so the system could have been called MAYHEM. But by spelling it correctly they would have a harder time getting a trademark.

Re:Hmmm

[megaditto]

But if this is done with taxpayers' money, won't the copyright/trademark belong to the taxpayers (i.e. public domain in US of A)?

Re:Hmmm

[Intron]

Good idea. I just opened "The United States Patent Office" [theunitedstatespatentoffice.com]. I expect to be rich soon.

Re:Hmmm

[Narpak]

I expect they would probably let an independent contractor do the actual development of the weapon and thus all the consequent research and patents would belong to that contractor.

Re:Hmmm

[robertjw]

Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) They should have thrown in a Y so the system could have been called MAYHEM. Yes, but they couldn't have told the press about it. We all know what the first rule of Project Mayhem is...

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. Work done for DARPA may be owned by the contractor.

I know that was the case with a few of the projects I worked on.

Re:Hmmm

[Ironsides]

No. In the U.S., the government can file for trademarks and patents and the only way they can be used by the general public is if they are licensed. The money then (currently) goes into the general fund. It is not public domain.

Re:Hmmm

[jacquesm]

the first rule of project MAYHEM...

Re:Hmmm

[kalirion]

http://vsvaeroom.prod.netsol.com/eRoom/verisign/Engineering/0_4508d

Exactly. I recommend "Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Yomama Munition"

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition means never having to apologize for your spelling.

Re:Hmmm

[GHynson]

But if this is done with taxpayers' money, won't the copyright/trademark belong to the taxpayers (i.e. public domain in US of A)? G-Men don't go by rules and regulations. They will just classify you as a patent terrorist and take away your patent.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia M4H3M 9900 GTS Pro 1337 gamerz edition

Sound Blaster M4H3M X-Fi Uber edition

Asus M4H3M Extreme Motherboard

And This Concludes

[Anonymous Coward]

And this concludes another lesson in "Why the hell didn't I file for patents on all my Sci-fi novels in the 60s?"

Tomorrow we'll be looking at Stanislaw Lem and Isaac Asimov, their recent deaths mean litigation free use of their ideas!

Re:And This Concludes

[HTH NE1]

And this concludes another lesson in "Why the hell didn't I file for patents on all my Sci-fi novels in the 60s?" Because they would have expired in the 80s, long before they would become viable for implementation. Patents only last 20 years.

Bring the marshmallows

[evil_aar0n]

Being scorched by molten metal at high velocity is not how I'd want to go.

I wonder if this would be ruled inhumane. As if it's any worse than a nuke, just on a smaller scale.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Tanman]

You seem to be under the impression that they are referring to molten as in faucet hot metal.

My guess is that if you were hit by this stuff, you'd be dead almost before the nerves could send the signal to your brain telling you, "hey bub, I think you're about to die, so here's some pain for the road."

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[AHumbleOpinion]

Being scorched by molten metal at high velocity is not how I'd want to go. I wonder if this would be ruled inhumane. As if it's any worse than a nuke, just on a smaller scale.

Have flamethrowers and napalm been ruled inhumane?

In any case, molten high velocity metal is already widely in use in anti-armor weapons. In the case of spalling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spall, the molten metal is from your own vehicle not the weapon.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[andareil]

Currently we have much more deadly weapons being used against people(cluster bombs, chemical weapons, depleted uranium etc)I wonder when they will be declared inhumane. This is something which is being developed as an armour piercing anti-tank weapon and the projectile path can be controlled much more precisely using magnetic forces unlike an explosive weapon.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[TerranFury]

A tired but true argument: Doesn't that go for most weapons? I'd think basically any incendiary weapon would make for an agonizing death.

Besides, this particular device sounds much more along the lines of shaped-charge munitions which have been used for a long time; it just throws some electromagnetics into the mix.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Rand Race]

HEAT rounds have worked this way since before WWII, they just use a shaped charge to create the jet rather than magnetism.

So, basically, it would be no worse than being hit with a bazooka. That is to say, it would suck.

"My man Tasty was shot with a BAZOOKA! Look at him! He used to be six foot four before he got capped!!!"

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[goodben]

This seems to be very similar to an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) or a shaped charge, only using a magnetic field instead of a conventional explosive. These are used in most anti-armor (tank) weapons. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_formed_penetrator
EFPs are not actually molten though, the explosive charge just hammers it so much that the metal becomes ductile. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case here.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[PolarBearFire]

Molten metal as a weapon is not new, in fact most modern anti-tank weapons have this except using explosives. Only the electromagnetic part of this is new. Being scorched with metal would probably kill you faster than a bullet.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing humane about war. Anyway, this weapon is for penetrating tanks (and probably bunkers). When it works, the bodies inside would be devastated instantly. There would be no suffering, just death.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[dreamchaser]

It's an anti tank weapon and it's just an evolution of current HEAT rounds. It was not Clarke's idea; his conception merely scaled it up quite a bit.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Zeek40]

We've been using molten metal as a weapon since World War II. The most prevalant example is probably the shaped charge rocked fired by RPG-7's.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than using electromagnetism to throw the metal jet, this isn't really much different from explosively formed penetrator devices currently in use, as well as the High Explosive Anti-Tank rounds mentioned in the article. In an EFP, shaped charges superheat and compress a metal disc into a molten jet capable of piercing armor, and doing awful things to anyone it touches. Given the simplicity and effectiveness of the design, it has become very popular in IEDs in Iraq. As horrible as this type of weapon can be, compare the depleted uranium kinetic energy penetrators fired from the main battle tanks of many nations' armies: if the dart punches through the armor, the cabin of the target vehicle becomes an inferno of burning uranium.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Narpak]

I still think Napalm (or Mark 77 Firebombs if you want to avoid the Geneva Convention); rules the day when it comes to inhuman active weapons (as opposed to anti personnel mines that are inhuman passive weapons). Of course, just because something is inhuman doesn't mean it isn't effective. If it works and they have it, you can be certain that the Army will use it; inhuman or not. Besides it isn't like the population shows any real interest in debating the use of inhuman weapons.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Chris Mattern]

There are no international treaties outlawing flamethrowers, however, the US Military gave them up voluntarily in 1978, at least partially for public image reasons.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[spun]

Explosively Formed Penetrators are different from regular High Explosive Anti Tank rounds, which do form a molten jet. In the EFP, the charge is in the shape of a shallow dish, and it forms the lining into a solid penetrator. It works at a much greater standoff distance than a regular HEAT, and is not as much subject to disruption by reactive armor. It is not as good at penetrating the armor of a main battle tank, but is quite good at destroying vehicles and emplacements with lighter armor.

In a conventional HEAT, the charge is in the form of a narrow cone, and the liner is projected as a narrow jet of molten metal. It must explode at the correct standoff distance and the correct angle to be effective, but when it works it works quite well against even heavily armored vehicles.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[u-235-sentinel]

Being scorched by molten metal at high velocity is not how I'd want to go.

I wonder if this would be ruled inhumane. As if it's any worse than a nuke, just on a smaller scale.

I agree.

If I'm going to go... they need to invent Photon Torpedoes or missiles or whatever

Then I would die happy ;D

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Planesdragon]

I still think Napalm (or Mark 77 Firebombs if you want to avoid the Geneva Convention); rules the day when it comes to inhuman active weapon If you're only judging by the inhumanity of it, then you can't beat a knife.

There's very little that's as bad as being hacked to death by a rusty foot of steel.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[dedalus2000]

don't know about flamethrowers but the use of napalm against civilian targets is viewed by the international courts as being a war crime.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Digi-John]

Wouldn't a literal photon torpedo simply be a nuclear weapon designed to emit extremely high amounts of light and heat, i.e. photons? If being sunburned to death is your idea of a humane weapon then go for it :)

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Peter La Casse]

If you're only judging by the inhumanity of it, then you can't beat a knife.

There's very little that's as bad as being hacked to death by a rusty foot of steel.

What about being hacked to death by a spoon? Or shovel? Or being hacked to death twice? Or being claustrophobic and trapped in a dark closet as you're nibbled to death by zombie babies, only to respawn and be nibbled to death again, over and over again until the heat death of the universe?

There's lots worse than being knifed.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[lgw]

Modern tank armor is as resistant to HEAT as it is to HESH and simple large explosives. Kinetic penetrators are the only remaining effective weapons for killing a modern tank (besides *really* large explosives, of course - a 2000lb bomb will do nicely), and even kinetic penetrators need to be harder than the armor. DU rounds were used because they were both very hard and very dense, but I hear we've changed to a mostly-tungsten penetrator now.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[goodben]

Nope, shaped charges produce metal jets by hammering them so hard that they're ductile. They aren't molten. If they were molten, they would splash off the armor. The difference between an EFP and a shaped charge jet is, as you say the the shape of the liner and the shape of the projectile, but the physics is the same. Shaped charge jets penetrate further because of their shape not because they are "molten."

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[spun]

The fact that the penetrator needs to be harder than the armor illustrates why the penetrators formed by EFP are ineffective. You can't line the cavity with a hard material and expect it to form into a penetrator.

You bring up another type of round, which is not so common any more, HESH or High Explosive Squash Head. Basically, the round consists of a plastic explosive and detonator. The plastic explosive squashes into a pancake when it hits the armor and then explodes. It does not penetrate the armor at all, but rather transmits a tremendous shock wave into the vehicle, creating spalling at the armor-air interface inside. But modern chobham armor has many different layers which disrupt the shockwave, as well as Kevlar spall-liners which protect against any metal fragments that do spall off the inside.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[jollyreaper]

If you're only judging by the inhumanity of it, then you can't beat a knife.

There's very little that's as bad as being hacked to death by a rusty foot of steel. Sure there is. Imagine a rusty penis of steel.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[spun]

Well, you are technically correct, but, from the wiki page on shaped charges: "At typical velocities, the penetration process generates such enormous pressures that it may be considered hydrodynamic; to a good approximation, the jet and armor may be treated as incompressible fluids, with their material strengths ignored."

The jet and the armor both behave pretty much like liquids at the pressures involved.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Narpak]

I was more thinking about the fact that Napalm, unlike a knife, is a wide area of attack none-discriminating weapon. It makes no distinction between friend, foe or civilian. Also it is a weapon capable inflicting severe burn damage without actually killing the victim (at least not immediately). While a knife on the other hand is a very direct weapon where the wielder is given every opportunity to pick his target.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[GooberToo]

Being scorched by molten metal at high velocity is not how I'd want to go. Then you are fully qualified to be a tank driver. About the only way you die is blow up, have molten copper go through you, get splatted against the inside from an over pressure strong enough to throw tens of tons hundreds of feet into the air, or a secondary explosion (your ammo) set off from one of the above.

I wonder if this would be ruled inhumane. As if it's any worse than a nuke, just on a smaller scale. Nope. Doubtful. Such deaths already happen on the battlefield.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[LurkerXXX]

I've had bad cuts, and I've had bad burns. I'll take the cuts anytime. Burns are about as painful as it gets.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[PotatoFarmer]

My guess is that if you were hit by this stuff, you'd be dead almost before the nerves could send the signal to your brain telling you, "hey bub, I think you're about to die, so here's some pain for the road."

Yeah, it's the "almost" part that's the problem :-)

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget the rusty spoon

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[couchslug]

"I still think Napalm (or Mark 77 Firebombs if you want to avoid the Geneva Convention); rules the day when it comes to inhuman active weapon"

Napalm is not, repeat NOT, illegal under the Geneva Convention! Certain uses of "incendiary weapons" are prohibited:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/int/convention_conventional-wpns_prot-iii.htm

Nape is also an outstanding way to stop enemy troops from overrunning your position, and to destroy troops without blowing up things like the bridgehead they are sitting on.

"If you're only judging by the inhumanity of it, then you can't beat a knife."

I'd take bleeding out over a fatal or severe dose of Blister Agent!

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Anonymous Coward]

I am fairly sure that Superman is not the type of person to rape someone to death.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[jafac]

getting some splash or spatter would be pretty nasty - but no worse than splash or splatter from shrapnel from a bomb going off nearby.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[the_raptor]

And air-bursting artillery rounds have fragments that fly themselves around friendlies and civilians, and never leave amputee's.

Bullshit. Napalm is no worse then any other area of effect weapon. It just got a bad name in Vietnam because they dumped it on civilians so much.

The only AOE weapon you can begin to argue is inhumane is cluster bombs, simply because they leave so many unexploded bomblets around. Napalm doesn't sit around waiting for some civvie to come by and trigger it ten years later.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[ozmanjusri]

in the EFP, the charge is in the shape of a shallow dish, and it forms the lining into a solid penetrator.

A similar device has civilian use.

I've used ballistic disks in underground mines several times. They're basically an 11kg shaped TNT charge that fires a 6kg slug of steel into an area you want to fracture. The resulting jet of metal has a range of about 30m.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[Kagura]

I wish I had a mouth with which to scream.

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[ScaryMonkey]

Bah, crucifixion is much better than being stabbed. Gets you out in the open air!

Re:Bring the marshmallows

[u-235-sentinel]

Wouldn't a literal photon torpedo simply be a nuclear weapon designed to emit extremely high amounts of light and heat, i.e. photons? If being sunburned to death is your idea of a humane weapon then go for it :)

Oh you wanted a humane weapon? Well why didn't you guys say so ;-)

I'm voting for .... ummm... Lawyers? ;-)

Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard his name, but don't know much about it. Unfortunately, I am one of those handicapped people who can not search Google or lookup on Wikipedia answers to my own questions. So if anyone would kindly please post a short biography or even a link, I would most grateful.

Re:Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[Uncle Focker]

He's most famous for his work with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Re:Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard his name, but don't know much about it. Unfortunately, I am one of those handicapped people who can not search Google or lookup on Wikipedia answers to my own questions. So if anyone would kindly please post a short biography or even a link, I would most grateful. Here's a good explanation of who he is to many of us.

Re:Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[Dripdry]

I unofficially mod this Funny.

Yes, even at the expense of getting hit with an "Off Topic" tag or multiple Idiot Sticks.

Thank you.

Re:Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[Uncle Focker]

Well it's true. The average person you meet, if they've ever heard of Clarke, is only really going to know him for 2001.

Re:Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[Colonel Korn]

I just asked four people who he was, all four said sci-fi author. I then said he wrote 2001, and everyone was surprised.

Re:Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[Uncle Focker]

Notice how I said "the average person" and not "4 of the friends of a slashdot poster".

Re:Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[rbanffy]

"I am one of those handicapped people who can not search Google or lookup on Wikipedia"

Funny. Very funny.

Re:Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[Uncle Focker]

And just to further add, I'm sure you weren't going around asking random people, right? That sort of would invalidate your attempt at showing me wrong. This would be like saying: "Hardly anyone is an atheist because I just asked 4 people and they all said they were Christian." Your sample size is lacking and your choices were probably hardly random.

Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[starglider29a]

One of these days, a guy will be looking at the TV remote on the coffee table and try to pull it to him with his mind... AND IT WILL WORK!

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[dgatwood]

And one day when the Sun starts to die, we will collapse Jupiter into a star and set up a new Earth on Europa....

Just saying.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[xj]

What is the need for a remote if you can use telekinesis? Does superman fly southwest?

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[LWATCDR]

Yea like I am going to make the effort to think all the way across the room when I could just think at the remote next to me.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Anonymous Coward]

and then the remote flies into his skull, instantly ending human telekinesis. The end of the chapter is written...

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Europa orbits Jupiter with an orbital radius of about 670,900 km.
Mercury's minimum distance from Sun is 46.0 million km.

Turn Jupiter into a star, and Europa is the last place I would want to live.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[geobeck]

Does superman fly southwest?

I did a mental double-take before mentally inserting the capital letter on "Southwest". Like, wha? He hates California or something? :p

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Digi-John]

Well, assuming telekinesis obeys the inverse square law, it would be much easier to control the remote beside you than the TV across the room.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Lumpy]

ON that same day his wife will mentally smack him in the head and say," Change the channel with your mind you idiot. And turn that down."

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never lost the TV.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Hatta]

Superman flies in any direction he wants.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Jonathan_S]

What is the need for a remote if you can use telekinesis? Does superman fly southwest?

Please, you know that three quarters of the functions can only be done with the remote. At this point you're lucky if you can even change the station without the remote.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[LWATCDR]

I bet you have also calculated the thrust to weight ration of a TIE fighter.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[bar-agent]

I bet you have also calculated the thrust to weight ration of a TIE fighter.

Approximately 3000:1.

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/tie.html#propulsion
http://www.stardestroyer.net/mrwong/wiki/index.php/Acceleration

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[dgatwood]

It would be a relatively small star if compressed to a sufficient density to self-fuse...

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Grygus]

ON that same day his wife will mentally smack him in the head and say," Change the channel with your mind you idiot. And turn that down." "...and didn't I ask you to think out the trash?"

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Anonymous Coward]

you haven't seen my TV. There are 3 buttons: Power, volume up, volume down.
Without the remote I get exactly one channel.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[fyoder]

Yea like I am going to make the effort to think all the way across the room when I could just think at the remote next to me.

Have you actually tried thinking? It's one the last things I want to do when I'm relaxing in front of the tube. I'll use the remote the good old fashioned way, thank you very much, and save the telekinesis for something worth the effort, like making women's clothes fall off.

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[zxscooby]

How many times have you combed the living room for 10 minutes trying to find the remote , when you could have just changed the channel by hand and sat back down?

Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Superman flies only if Chuck Norris kicks him in the butt....

Jets of molten metal method around since WW2

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't use electromagnetic fields, but good old explosives.

You could even say Clark got his ideas from existing munitions.

Not saying anything bad about Clark, but the write-up is a stretch.

Re:Jets of molten metal method around since WW2

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't use electromagnetic fields, but good old explosives.

My thoughts exactly ... how is this "improvement" over classical cumulative charge justified at all? Perhaps even greater speeds of the molten metal jet could be attained. But what kind of target requires that? Generally, we can trade mass for (square root of) velocity in kinetic energy formula, but this whole accelerator "thingy" is probably very heavy to begin with and it requires a power source as well, which probably won't be as much packed with energy as an explosive charge is.

Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[ahoehn]

The Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) will function on a smaller scale than Clarke's fictional blaster. Best. Acronym. Ever.

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[Anonymous Coward]

You could even say that use of a MAHEM will cause a lot of significant activity.

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[xRizen]

I wonder if the project to make it is called Project MAHEM.

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[Chris Mattern]

Magnet Yielding Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition would've been better :-)

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think anti-tank missiles already fire a jet of molten metal at their target.

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[moteyalpha]

I liked High Energy Laser Strategic Test Facility HELSTF pronounced (HellStaff) which was a real one.

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Hydrodynamic Magnetic Explosive Munition is even better. It would give a new meaning to "having your cherry popped"...

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[Chris Mattern]

You mean Hydrodynamic Magnetic Explosive Neutralizer.

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[infolation]

In death, a member of project mahem HAS a name

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[Kifoth]

You'd never find out if it was. The first rule of Project MAHEM is...

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[jafac]

Wow.

That's even better than:
Failure Reporting And Corrective Action System(FRACAS)!

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[philspear]

I don't know a lot about physics, does the "hydrodynamic" part refer to the fluidity of the molten metal? Just confused about the "hydro" part of that.

Also, what's the advantage of making it molten? Wouldn't a sharp, solid hunk of metal that is aerodynamic be better for, say, piercing a tank or spaceship?

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the best ever was Doctor Evil's Preparation "H". Not E, F, or G - "H".

Re:Magneto Hydrodynamic...

[T.E.D.]

Best. Acronym. Ever.

Back when I was doing gum'mit work, I used to have FRACAS on my resume.

Um...

[kabocox]

Isn't it DARPA's job to be working on every sci-fi weapon tech that might work?

Re:Um...

[powerlord]

... and those that might not ... as long as they can get funding. ;)

Re:Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey... it worked for the Internet.

I'm a god dman walking Internet of mass destruction ever since someone sent ME an Internet.

Clarke is also widely credited with sucking dicks

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what other faggotry of his slashdot will write about?

Shaped charge + magnets. woohoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

A magnetically propelled version of the shaped charge.

I don't understand how it would be useful as active armor - can they make them small and cheap enough to cover a warship?

Questionable.

Clarke died in March 2008

[RobBebop]

It is too bad that Clarke passed away a month ago. I'm sure he would have loved to see that the military was making a death ray based on his design. article here

In other news...

[brunokummel]

The US NAVY has increased the funding on the Sharks with frikin' lasers attached to their heads project.

sci-fi comes from science

[sayfawa]

I'm not trying to take any credit from Clarke or anything, but many sci-fi writers who seem to "predict" what technology will come to pass are really just up on current blue-sky research. So it's not as if they came up with the idea, they often just found out about some cool research while it was in it's very early stages, decades before anything comes to fruition, and wrote about it.

Re:sci-fi comes from science

[hidden]

I'll agree that you are correct in *some* cases...

But Earthlight was written in 1955. Now granted, I don't know when DARPA started this project, but...

traveller

[cats-paw]

Getting closer to PGMP-11 ?

Re:traveller

[crawling_chaos]

Well, except for the "Man Portable" part.

Re:traveller

[synth7]

Well then, at the minimum we're approaching Spinal Mount Plasma Cannon (Factor 1).

Lord, do I miss dying in character creation...

mo3 3own

[Anonymous Coward]

Whole has lost my calling. Now I hand...3on't ink splashes across developers become obsessed I have a life to

Rail Gun

[Thelasko]

From what I have seen, a side effect of some electromagnetic railguns is that they melt the projectile upon firing.

At what point does electrically charged molten metal become plasma?

Re:Rail Gun

[Tsuki_no_Hikari]

A few thousand more degrees, I'd reckon.

space elevator

[j1m 5n0w]

what other ideas of his will come to pass?

The space elevator, we hope. (Not that he was the first one to think of it, but he popularized the idea in his book "The Foundations of Paradise.")

Re:space elevator

[dlelash]

"The Foundations of Paradise"....

I thought we had worked out the whole Asimov/Clarke thing last time, but I guess not.

Re:space elevator

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Foundations of Paradise."

Fountains

Re:space elevator

[j1m 5n0w]

Yes, my mistake.

Re:space elevator

[CrimsonAvenger]

The space elevator [wikipedia.org], we hope. (Not that he was the first one to think of it, but he popularized the idea in his book "The Foundations of Paradise.")

"Fountains of Paradise".

a few more...

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Clarke is also widely credited with suggesting geostationary communications satellites â" what other ideas of his will come to pass?"

An Obelisk that sends out a brain splitting shriek on all radio frequencies?

Or, perhaps the the mind of HAL itself which is what DARPA wants to become by way of Skynet?

Mebbe, mebbe not.

RS

Re:a few more...

[ceoyoyo]

That's not an obelisk. It's a rectangular prism (well, the part that exists in our three dimensions is). According to the book it actually has more than three dimensions and, IIRC, it's size in each dimension is related to prime numbers.

Re:a few more...

[wattrlz]

...squares of prime numbers.

Re:a few more...

[ceoyoyo]

Right. Which makes it awfully big in some of those additional dimensions.

What about the old fashined way

[the eric conspiracy]

Sounds sketchy to me. This is already how many types of armor penetrating munitions work. The jet of molten metal is created by a shaped charge. No need to carry around a few tons of foo-foo magnets, batteries, heaters, a vat of annoyingly hot molten metal and so on. While you are setting all that up I'll have blown off the target with a nice simple RPG and escaped.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[e2d2]

Yes but what if a chemical explosion was used to power the device? It would be the same as any gun, fairly inert and lightweight with the explosive charge being used to heat the metal and fire the projectile down range?

The same could be said for lasers, using conventional explosives to generate a lot of power in a very small time period and then project that power down range.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[bluemonq]

...and while you're getting ready to fire the RPG, a sniper takes you out. That's not the point. There's no setup. The entire package is supposed to fit in a missile or the like. MAHEM is supposed to be - judging from the FA and press release - an upgraded version of your standard HEAT round. The listed benefits are better control over the jet; multiple, quasi-aimable jets; and more energy on target.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[Zeek40]

You beat me to it. Using molten metal as a weapon isn't really Clark's idea. The only thing that Clark added to the equation was using magnets to propel the molten metal. We've been using molten metal created by shaped charges as a penetrator in rockets and missiles since World War II. Replacing the slug with a warhead is the next logical step when you get a working railgun.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the second link?

"Current technology uses chemical explosive energy to form the jets and fragments. This is highly inefficient and requires precise machining of the metal liners from which the fragments and jets are formed. Generating multiple jets or fragments from a single explosive is difficult, and the timing of the multiple jets or fragments cannot be controlled. MAHEM offers the potential for higher efficiency, greater control, the ability to generate and accurately time multiple jets and fragments from a single charge..."

Re:What about the old fashined way

[goodben]

Shaped charges don't propel molten metal. They work by using enough force to make the metal ductile. If they were really molten, they would splatter when they hit the tank. I wouldn't be surprized to find out that MAHEM was not acually using molten metal either.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you are ignorant and cannot comprehend the article for lack of background.

Shaped charges consist of metal and an explosive. The explosive deforms the metal in such a way that it is a molten jet, and the liquid jet penetrates your target better than a solid would.

MAHEM, I'd imagine, uses an explosive to generate a large amount of electricity. This electricity is stored in an capacitor, and then released into what amounts to an on board rail gun.

While you lose energy converting from explosive to electricity, you gain in speed. Although an explosive is fast to you, a capacitor discharge can be an order of magnitude faster. This high speed discharge liquefies and propels the metal in more manageable and higher velocity ways.

Thus an improvement on existing shaped charge warheads.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Shaped charges can heat the metal (usually copper) jet up to 30 000 K. A 3.5 kg, 135 mm calibre warhead with pentolite / hexolite shaped charge can break through 90 cm of steel armor or 200 cm concrete wall. I don't think any electromagnetic device of similar weight and size could deliver higher energy to the molten metal jet in near future.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[cowscows]

I don't know if the jet of material that does the penetrating is really a liquid or not, but even if it were, that doesn't mean it would just splatter when it hit the tank. When you get to speeds high enough, it doesn't really matter what you're shooting. There are machines that use extremely high pressure water jets to cut through steel. I have no problem believing that an explosion can create the sorts of pressures and energy necessary to push liquid metal through steel.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[Fweeky]

As I recall, Clarke used the intense pressure from the moon's mantle/core to propel the molten metal; the magnets were just to aim it. Somehow I don't see DARPA replicating the exact nature of the design for quite some time.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[the eric conspiracy]

If I was firing one of these things I'd much prefer it if the hot metal and explosion were at the target rather than the launching point.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have read the two articles in the original post before replying, your questions are already answered:

"Unlike Clarke's Stiletto, they will come from a device that generates a powerful electromagnetic field from an explosion, not giant capacitors."

The other difference is that current rounds don't turn to molten metal until impact, whereas this type of projectile would be molten in flight.

And it's meant for target with reactive or other advanced armor, the kind that you can't really hurt with an RPG. (because the projectile bounces off or otherwise expends its energy without penetration.)

All in all, it's a nice theory, but I think it would be more useful in a space battle between two massive ships at long ranges; kind of exactly like he had original written it.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[goodben]

You can cut through thin sheets of metal with a high pressure, sustained liquid, but to punch through tank armor an explosively launched nail is more effective. Liquid cutting works by erosion. It depends on sustined action to make it through. A shaped charge is a small, thin jet.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[dunkelfalke]

the old fashioned way was already defeated in ww2, just put lots of barbed wire on the top of the armour, that is often sufficient enough to substantially weaken the shaped charge.

that is the reason why modern tanks use apfsds as antitank weapons.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[goodben]

Liquids do not penetrate better than solids do. Solids tend to be harder and have a higher density and penetrate better. The advantage that liquids have in cutting is the fact that you ccan more easily set up a continuous stream of liquid and so they can have better erosive action. Shaped charge jets on the other hand are solids that only look like liquids because they are produced at high enough pressures that the metal becomes ductile. They are below the melting point of the metal. Shaped charge jets are essentially explosively forged nails propelled at high velocities.

Re:What about the old fashined way

[LurkerXXX]

If you have an explosion large enough to drive an electromagnet to shape a flow of liquid metal, the explosion itself would have been plenty powerful enough to shape the flow of the liquid metal itself.

Automated memes

[Bovius]

Maybe this is an idea for the in-progress tagging system: Every time a Slashdot article comes up discussing anything resembling a weapon or serious technological advancement, we could have a comment automatically posted that scrapes keywords from the article's summary and says "Let me be the first to welcome our [keywords here] overlords." Here's some recent examples!

* Let me be the first to welcome our molten metal jet wielding overlords.
* Let me be the first to welcome our parallel internet grid overlords.
* Let me be the first to welcome our Triple-Core Phenom X3 overlords.
* Let me be the first to welcome our national security letter slinging overlords.

Ouch.

Re:Automated memes

[spun]

Let me be the first to welcome our overlord joke repeating overlords.

Re:Automated memes

[trolltalk.com]

Let me be the first to welcome our molten metal jet wielding overlords.

Better you than me, mate!

Re:Automated memes

[DaedalusHKX]

This seems to work on the SAME exact principle as the Depleted Uranium Penetrator. Regular missile with a core of DU, when it strikes, the regular projectile cannot penetrate, but the friction that is created as the DU core moves forward through weapon metal as well as armor metal, heats it up to the point where it doesn't just punch through armor, but ignites and melts its way through. Generally it is presumed that the poor bastards inside the tank or armored emplacement are usually quite unhappy with the results (for about half a second it takes for them to be converted into meat and blood vapors.)

Therefore, it seems DARPA in usual fashion is looking at the best way to help keep raising the national debt level. If anything, the military industrial complex has been the bankers best friend, it has managed to keep spending at insane levels, without really producing any new ways of killing people... not even those who are defenseless and easy to kill in the many innovative ways militaries and governments have devised for the last few centuries.

I mean hell, the missile, bullet, DU Penetrator, APFSDF rounds, all of it, its still the same principle of a hurled projectile, spear, sling stone or arrow. New methods of slinging shit, but still the same old idea. Pretty sad if you think of it. They keep reinventing the wheel, but the wars aren't even fought for land or gold anymore, they're fought so the idiot masses can feel good about themselves. That, there is the worst part of it, as far as I am concerned. Its one thing to fight evil bastards who want to take what is yours, whether it be, life liberty or property, but most of the wars today are fought merely to keep the cattle spending their hard earned income without asking questions. What is not as much sad as it is remarkable is the bovine imbecility present in the vast masses of humanity. THAT amazes me.

Re:Automated memes

[Rev Saxon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium Some info about depleted uranium. Interesting stuff.

Re:Automated memes

[DaedalusHKX]

Something they failed to mention is that the endpoint of uranium decay seems to be lead, at least as far as I've researched. Still, I can't feel sorry for anyone that uses this shit and comes back sick. Regardless for their excuses. No different than the assholes who passed diseased blankets to the natives and caught a touch of small pox themselves. That does not excuse the natives for being stupid, silly and gullible fools, so all in all just deserts all around the table, it would seem. Hell, I've friends who served in vietnam, and I don't really feel any bad for them for their encounter with Agent Orange. They chose to show up for the draft, and chose to abide by what they, to this day admit were orders that amounted to nothing more than doing some politician's dirty laundry. Others feel that they served to 'fight communism' which I find humorous since today, Vietnam is STILL communist AND a big exporter of trade goods to the USA, that's right, those EVIL commies are now our trading partners. In fact, they make Jeans, Shirts, Socks... etc. Seen a couple of pretty decent jackets made in Vietnam lately too.

If someone fails to see the irony of all this, then I have little left to say :)

Re:Automated memes

[dpilot]

The guys who are using it are following orders, and may not even be aware of the implications of their weapons.
The people who suffer more are the ones who have to live in the place, after it's been peppered with DU.

The ones who DON'T have to live with the consequences are the ones who gave the orders to use the stuff, in the first place.

Re:Automated memes

[megaditto]

It's only ironic if you believe the stated reasons for these conflicts. Also, two wrongs don't make right (regarding your hate of the blanket/agent orange soldier).

Re:Automated memes

[trolltalk.com]

What's interesting is what's NOT said ... that, shrunken down to the point where it is man-portable, this makes one really NASTY rifle.

Re:Automated memes

[rbanffy]

I for one welcome our overlord-joke-generator overlord-bots.

Re:Automated memes

[Watson Ladd]

The men who served at Auschwitz were also following orders.

Re:Automated memes

[jameskojiro]

So what if our debt goes up with outher countries, as long as you can shoot your creditors it's all good.

Re:Automated memes

[DaedalusHKX]

Its not hate. He's one of my better friends in this world. We go shooting at the range regularly.

He's suffering, and while I feel for his pain, I find it hard to identify with him, since both, he, and I, are in agreement that he followed orders without thinking. He was a willing tool, and he agrees that he's paying the price for his ignorance.

Lets put it like this. If he didn't need his disability veterans benefits (he's among the few who actually GOT it in full) he would be speaking out. However, others of his buddies have spoken out and had their services cut back. He's not willing to take that hit with his issues.

Thus again. I don't hate the man. I don't pity him either. He contracted with the government and is now receiving the end results. Sad but true, it seems.

Re:Automated memes

[dpilot]

Won't argue, but I'd rather see the ones who gave the orders get theirs.

Re:Automated memes

[Chrontius]

While true in the strict sense, I defy you to find a man-portable power source to run this that doesn't explode (not like gunpowder explodes, like a grenade explodes) as a standard part of its operation.

Re:Automated memes

[toddhisattva]

This seems to work on the SAME exact principle as the Depleted Uranium Penetrator. Regular missile with a core of DU, when it strikes, the regular projectile cannot penetrate, but the friction that is created as the DU core moves forward through weapon metal as well as armor metal, heats it up to the point where it doesn't just punch through armor, but ignites and melts its way through. The kinetic energy of the penetrator is what gets converted to thermal energy. Not friction.

Geez, people these days, never used a hammer on a nail....

Therefore, it seems DARPA in usual fashion is looking at the best way to help keep raising the national debt level. If anything, the military industrial complex has been the bankers best friend, it has managed to keep spending at insane levels, This part of your analysis is as flawed as your knowledge of the physics of the subject.

Re:Automated memes

[DaedalusHKX]

Yep, glad you were there to tell me. Please show me when the military has declined to spend billions of other people's money. I would love to see that.

Re:Automated memes

[Weedlekin]

"This seems to work on the SAME exact principle as the Depleted Uranium Penetrator."

As the articles in the summary links correctly say, it's actually far closer to the way HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) projectiles work. HEAT warheads use the Neumann effect to project a hypersonic jet of molten metal up to 2 metres, so unlike kinetic energy rounds such as APFSDS, they can be carried by low-velocity projectiles. They've been around since WWII, and have the advantage of being extremely simple and cheap to manufacture, hence the common sight of "insurgents" carrying shoulder launched rocket propelled grenades (RPG) in news reports.

The problem HEAT warheads have is that armour designers found various cheap and easy ways of defeating them almost as soon as they appeared. Simple measure such as attaching stand-off plates or cages to the outside of vehicles will result in the jet being used up before it reaches the main hull, and some German tanks were fitted with these during WWII. Spaced armour and explosive-reactive armour also effectively defeat HEAT, and I doubt that this new system will be more effective against countermeasures that can be easily added to any medium or heavy AFV in a field workshop.

Re:Automated memes

[Kaukomieli]

I mean hell, the missile, bullet, DU Penetrator, APFSDF rounds, all of it, its still the same principle of a hurled projectile, spear, sling stone or arrow.

This is not even true if you take an extremely wide approach regarding weaponry based on kinetic energy. What about thermobaric bombs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon, flamethrowers, tasers, ...

There are numeral ways to feed more energy to a body then it can handle.

Re:Automated memes

[DaedalusHKX]

Exactly what I was thinking actually is that like the proposed "futuristic" weapon, the DU penetrators have a fun tendency to liquefy the poor government worshippers inside the armored vehicle.

Now that I think about it, military wars, where militaries are fighting on both sides, rather than just one military butchering civilians, is a good thing, in a way. Its a whole bunch of government worshippers reducing their own numbers. Its like the antidote to collectivism. Reducing the breeding numbers of collectivists.

You know, each day, the more I research this, the more I realize there really is little reason to argue against war. Hobbes' Leviathan has one fantastic trait in favor of those who would preserve their freedom.

The Leviathan State is self destructive. Those who value freedom have to merely side step it and let it run off the cliff.

Besides, I seem to be under the impression from my reading of the available literature on tanks, that most modern military tanks (with the exception of Israeli tanks which are remarkably reliable) tend to use several parts per mile. Without massive manufacturing support, most military units of non Israeli nationality would quickly be forced to cannibalize units. Thus, insurgents with RPGs are probably aiming at the easily destroyed, hard to armor parts. You know... treads, etc? Those are probably still the weakest part of a tank. But then again I'm not a tanker, so I can't say.

Anyone here with experience in armored combat against EFFECTIVE enemies care to comment? (No, insurgents with AK's don't count. Insurgents with RPG's do.)

I'm curious, has the US Army actually FOUGHT anything that actually was capable of putting up a fight with all that hardware they have? Fleeing Iraqis and unarmed Katrina victims don't count. Ever since the M1A1 has been around, has it actually seen action against REAL tangible, equally equipped tanks and well trained tank crews? I can think of Merkava 4, Leopards, that screwy green french tank and those lovely legions of commie tanks parked out in Russia. Have the militaries of the world actually collided or have they been woggling their dicks at each other while stomping small tribal people flat to prove their "might" ? (And as we saw from the economic folly of fucking with the tribals, the Soviet Empire bought the financial farm doing that, and our beloved American Empire is in the process of buying the financial farm fucking with the tribals. You'd think people learn from history, but then again, history isn't really taught in school history classes. Just a bit of sloganeering and some bullshit dates, without any actual background history or data other than the feel good crap.)

Re:Automated memes

[DaedalusHKX]

Flame throwers and napalm are a new take on Greek Fire. Remember, greek fire even came with those lovely projection devices that the greeks used to good effect in naval battles... hell this was before the roman empire...

Other than nuclear weapons and explosives, fire weapons, kinetic / projectile weapons, ballistic weapons, all this stuff has been around for centuries, if not millenia. The propulsion methods for most of this is rehashed, but hell, compressed gas was used to propel projectiles millenia ago. Take the blowgun, for example. Rear loaded, piercing projectile, propelled by pressurized gas (in this case lung power of the tribal guy in question).

Explosives are about the only "new" things, though I'm sure I just haven't looked hard enough yet.

Considering how "advanced" our society proclaims itself, we haven't even advanced in the fields of barbarism, we're still playing out the same old agenda... enslave the populace, strengthen the rulers... steal from Peter to pay Paul. This crap in different embodiments has been around since before the vaunted Biblical times.

Seriously, am I the only one who notices that basically "nothing changes" in the grand scheme? Tyranny by the few, replaced by the tyranny of the many. If not, its this group or that group manipulating the many. Same old same old. Again, there's a reason why I'll talk about it, but I sure as hell won't lift a finger to oppose it. It isn't my problem. Look around. Everything is as it is because the idiot next door keeps voting to "not throw away his vote". They want tyrants to enforce some minor point. They got it.

And as L.Neil Smith put it, "every election, the results are predictable with a solid victory to the Boot On Your Neck Party." I did digress, but its all patterns, and they're all predictable.

Re:Automated memes

[Weedlekin]

"Exactly what I was thinking actually is that like the proposed "futuristic" weapon, the DU penetrators have a fun tendency to liquefy the poor government worshippers inside the armored vehicle."

All battlefield anti-tank weapons tend to do nasty things to the crew because it's the best way of ensuring that the thing stops shooting at you.

"Now that I think about it, military wars, where militaries are fighting on both sides, rather than just one military butchering civilians, is a good thing, in a way."

Wars have to be fought somewhere, and it's usually a place where at least some people live, so civilians inevitably suffer irrespective of whether either side is actively trying to kill them or not.

"Its a whole bunch of government worshippers reducing their own numbers."

Forcing others to fill their ranks hasn't been a problem for governments in the past, and it won't be in the future.

"The Leviathan State is self destructive. Those who value freedom have to merely side step it and let it run off the cliff."

History teaches us that (a) Leviathan States can take a very long time to destroy themselves; (b) they take a lot of people with them, the majority of which did nothing to deserve their fate; and (c) that which arises from the aftermath is usually significantly worse than the old Leviathan.

"I seem to be under the impression from my reading of the available literature on tanks, that most modern military tanks (with the exception of Israeli tanks which are remarkably reliable) tend to use several parts per mile."

They don't approach the reliability figures for civilian vehicles, but it's by no means as bad as you suggest. The standard endurance test that Western main battle tanks (i.e. the big, heavy ones) have to pass before being accepted for military use is 11 hours without a major systems failure, but it should be noted that these tests are usually performed on prototypes, which are far less reliable than production versions.

"Without massive manufacturing support, most military units of non Israeli nationality would quickly be forced to cannibalize units."

They would indeed have to cannibalise vehicles, but it would be over periods of weeks rather than days. Most of the components that fail during normal use are non-critical systems that aren't required for normal operation, or things that can be repaired without the need for replacement parts. A far more critical logistical requirement is keeping them supplied with the huge amounts of fuel they consume and ammunition for their weapons systems, none of which can be reclaimed after use.

"Thus, insurgents with RPGs are probably aiming at the easily destroyed, hard to armor parts. You know... treads, etc?"

Treads have carried stand-off plates to protect them from RPGs since WWII, so the main threat to drive trains is anti-tank mines. Infantry armed with RPGs who know what they're doing will therefore tend to aim for the vehicle's rear (or if they have a suitable vantage point, its top), both of which are much more thinly armoured than the massively reinforced front or lesser but often still formidable side armour.

"I'm curious, has the US Army actually FOUGHT anything that actually was capable of putting up a fight with all that hardware they have? "

Yes. The Battle Of 73 Easting in the 1991 Gulf War had US and British armoured groups against the Iraqi Republican Guard, professional soldiers who knew how to use their tanks properly, and fought with determination and courage. There are plenty of details on the Web if you Google for them.

Re:Automated memes

[IndustrialComplex]

That does not excuse the natives for being stupid, silly and gullible fools, so all in all just deserts all around the table, it would seem

I've seen that attitude around slashdot quite often. If you are gullible, you deserve it when someone takes advantage of you?

Re:Automated memes

[trolltalk.com]

The device doesn't have to run on electricity - the slag can be created after the projectile leaves the rifle barrel, by another charge, same general idea as some current tank-busters.

Re:Automated memes

[DaedalusHKX]

So lets see... we all believe in evolution, yes?

Then I must ask. If you kick a dog, the second time he sees you approach he keeps clear.

If you kick a human, poison his food, beat him senseless and teach him that he must wait for his day in court, and he does... and you outmaneuver him (stay with me, pretend you're plain evil here, think Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller type evil.)

What would you call that human? Exactly. That exact human makes up 99% of socialists (the other 1% is the ones who run the show and are only socialists because that's what gets the 99% of suckers to keep them living for free) and 90% of humanity at large.

People are STUPID... INCREDIBLY STUPID. And what is worse, they see the error of their ways and they REFUSE, they CONSCIOUSLY make excuses and refuse to learn!

What the hell can you say to them, other than "Just deserts!" ??

Re:Automated memes

[IndustrialComplex]

Oh, I get it now!

Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller gave smallpox blankets to American Indians because they deserved it?

I must have been asleep during that history class.

Re:Automated memes

[DaedalusHKX]

Nah, I was trying to find two individuals, cruel enough to fit "evil" within the socialist mindsets common to slashdot. Those two definitely fit the bill. They didn't pay much, treated their workers worse than slaves. Figured they'd fit the bill and be recognizable names.

I figured with such highly schooled guys like you around, I wouldn't have to specify where every piece of info came from. Thought perhaps your far superior scholarship would be able to take everything I've said and piece them properly together and draw the existent connections.

Guess, maybe, I expected too much.

Re:Automated memes

[IndustrialComplex]

I admit, I have no clue how you managed to end up following that line of thought when all I did was take a crack at someone who implied that the people who were given smallpox contaminated blankets somehow deserved it.

Re:Automated memes

[DaedalusHKX]

I have a question. How many people, faced with dishonest unfriendlies, yet decide to take "gifts" from them?

I seem to recall that there were some guys who didn't look a certain gift horse in the mouth... and the only thing left of their city today, is that someone decided to name a brand of condoms after them. And told a tale of what NOT to do when you are given an impregnable city to defend... i.e. trust gifts from strangers.

I'm surprised you think that people deserve to survive when they make every tactical and stupid mistake in the book. When someone eats tainted food without cooking it, or drinks tainted water without boiling or distilling it first (or even filtering it) do you not think they have it coming? Why did the natives trust the whiteman? Look at the difference. The arabs did not. And they're still around, they even have their own countries. Neither did the Asians. The Africans did not, and they're still around (being massacred even today, but they have no delusions that the great lords of the world are their friends)... yet the native Americans were somehow to be spared when they did business with the very devils of Europe, and they were even stupid enough to try to cheat those who mastered the art of double dealing? The fiercest, most vicious and profiteering types came over here. And the natives TRUSTED them? Now I call that just plain stupid.

That's like having a batch of strangers show up at your door with "food and clothes" for free, and you're the title holder to some remarkable hunting and farming land. They eye you with contempt, and your wife with desire, yet you accept their gifts? I would think you might think it over.

Re:Automated memes

[Kaukomieli]

Explosives are about the only "new" things, though I'm sure I just haven't looked hard enough yet.

That could be seen as a concussion weapon using air instead of a club or a stone or whatever was used thousands of years ago.

The methods of depriving a body of something it needs to function are finite. Even bombs that use up all oxygen leading to suffocation would only be a rehash of the hands-around-the-neck.

Its just a matter of how far you broaden your point of view.

how about the idea of civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

and the reign of common sense over mindless militarism and arms races that don't even effectively stop known enemies and only exist so tht congress people can bring home the fat contracts to their districts ?

Re:how about the idea of civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the idea of Civilization? Man, I haven't played Civ4 in forever! Thanks for reminding me, man!

Re:how about the idea of civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... Our military is EXTREMELY effective. Any guerilla type war is difficult to combat. A buried mortar shell with a commmand wire is very difficult to spot. Crude but effective. Let loose a couple thousand blind squirrels they'll eventually find a nut.

Don't forget that in conventional war we removed a government in about 3 weeks.

I won't argue that pork needs to be limited, but don't forget that a lot of military research makes it to the civilian world or gets applied to other applications. Like... oh the internet for example.

for a start

[93 Escort Wagon]

Clarke is also widely credited with suggesting geostationary communications satellites â" what other ideas of his will come to pass? I don't know for sure, but maybe we'd better just keep away from Europa.

Waiting

[arotenbe]

Sounds cool... but I'm still waiting for my water balloon railgun. It was supposed to come in last we

FOOSH!!

And if it be backfire, may him be cause

[davidsyes]

the mayhem...

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

While this is cool, I really don't understand why DARPA is developing this. It doesn't seem to fill any current need. The enemies that we currently are facing or might reasonably expect to face are not using heavy armor. We, however, and our allies, are fielding lots of tanks and other armored units. So... DARPA is basically developing a weapon that would be most useful against the US, and not very useful for the US?

We've seen time and again weapons designed and built in the US being used against our forces. (Stinger missiles, anyone?) Does DARPA *really* need to be Al Qaida's R&D division?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

We could use this waepon against the 1.2 billion chinese that are poised to invade Taiwan.

Re:Why?

[genner]

It's simple once we have this weapon out there it means we will need to replace our current tanks to defend against it. And when the new armour rolls out we'll need a new weapson that can get through the new armour. Repeat indefinately. Guess who profits from this....

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

China

Re:Why?

[DerekLyons]

While this is cool, I really don't understand why DARPA is developing this. It doesn't seem to fill any current need.

DARPA isn't in the habit of developing weapons for yesterday's war, or even today's. Generally they are developing stuff for five, ten, or even twenty five years or more down the pike.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their job is not to develop technologies for current needs, their job is to develop technologies for future needs. It is how we (the USA) has maintained its supremacy over other lesser nations.

Re:Why?

[sd_diamond]

While this is cool, I really don't understand why DARPA is developing this. It doesn't seem to fill any current need.

I agree. They should conduct themselves in a more efficient and useful manner.

Re:Why?

[geobeck]

...the 1.2 billion chinese that are poised to invade Taiwan.

They're all going? That's easy, then. Just find out when they're planning to stop by, then have all 23 million Taiwanese people slip out the back door and occupy the mainland while no one is home.

Since everyone in mainland China ia politically conditioned to believe that Taiwan = China, the Chinese invaders will never figure out that the Taiwanese are gone, and will continue fighting amongst themselves while the Taiwanese population sets up shop in their new, roomier lodgings.

Re:Why?

[Hatta]

If only they spent as much avoiding future wars as preparing for them.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as Al Qaida buys them, there will be a market, hence this is nothing more that capitalism at its finest.

Re:Why?

[infalliable]

DARPAs job is to fund wild-ass, crazy military tech ideas. Stuff with ah high risk of failure, but with good payoffs. "Wouldn't it be cool if..." sorts of things. Historically, most of the things they fund don't really go anywhere. They have had some GREAT successes though. This type of tech is a pretty low-priority sort of work. You can tell by the amount of overall funding it has received over the last couple years. When is the last time the US faced a "modern" armored military force?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the military machine in Washington doesn't plan for the enemy we have today in one small engagement (and yes, Iraq and Afghanistan are small engagements compared to the real wars of our history), they plan for the enemy we might have tomorrow.

That could be one of any number of countries including an increasingly militant and abrasive Russia and China. Last time I checked, they both had more than a few tanks and heavily armored targets.

The US stays ahead of the world in military technology by using this paradigm.

Re:Why?

[DerekLyons]

When they do, they get slammed for 'cultural imperialism' etc... etc... It sometimes seems the only for the US to not get slammed is to eternally pay Danegeld.

Re:Why?

[Hatta]

No, that's when they go sticking their noses where they don't belong. I don't know what they get called for minding their own business. They'd have to try it first.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm? Russia makes heavy armor and is willing to sell it. France and Germany make heavy armor and sometimes makes poor choices about who to sell their equipment to. China is currently working on heavy armor. While we're unlikely to fight any of those countries directly, we may very well end up fighting whoever they sell tanks to.

Tank design can change fairly quickly, and go into mass production fairly quickly, and by then it's a bit late to be just starting on developing countermeasures.

Re:Why?

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

your country may have to fight saudi arabia or iran sooner or later (sooner if a bush-like candidate like mccain gets elected).

saudi arabia is full of US made m1 abrams, iran is producing their own main battle tanks...

Re:Why?

[DerekLyons]

I imagine you live in some fantasy world then if think that's even possible.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like Chobham Armor (invented by the Brits). Explosive reactive armor (invented by a German in Israel). Or maybe you are thinking of APDS (also invented by the brits).

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We've seen time and again weapons designed and built in the US being used against our forces. (Stinger missiles, anyone?) Does DARPA *really* need to be Al Qaida's R&D division?"

Do anyone *really* believe Al Qaida to be a true enemy of the US? Hasn't Al Qaida been more of a boon for the administrations occult plans, more than anything else?
Isn't it pretty obvious who this is being designed for?

"it could be 'packaged into a missile, projectile or other platform and delivered close to target for final engagement and kill.'"

Yes, because killing people more efficiently have always brought good solutions to problems.

Like you, I have to ask why too.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand the problem. The problem is that DARPA needs funds.DARPA employs a lot of intelligent people with access to US federal grants.

So they make good cases to use our money to develop new weapons. Then these weapons are turned against us. So there is a case to develop even newer weapons.

This is a recipe for continuing employment at DARPA (and the rest of the military-industrial complex).

Fuck humanity's requirements - the Cold War needs to be kept alive, at whatever cost....

Re:Why?

[Rich0]

He might have been thinking more along the lines of the Internet that you're posting this using... :)

Not that military spending isn't a valid point for debate, but you really can't question that the US hasn't come up with a lot of innovative weapon systems. The fact that the US isn't the ONLY source of innovation doesn't really change the fact that for the most part US equipment sets the standard to beat.

Re:Why?

[rts008]

A large scale Chinese Fire Drill?!?!?

Hmmm....could work...

It's not about defense

[PingXao]

It's about the politicians and the media convincing the people that it's worth it every month to put $15 billion into their friends' pockets. They're retiring the stealth F117 Blackbird. How much did that thing cost? What was it ever used for? Bombing Panama and Iraq? Are you kidding me?

Re:It's not about defense

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the end of World War 2, USA never used an weapon in defensive manner. Panama was mistake, as Vietnam was, because there was no oil. I'm not quite sure about Iraq.
This new weapon clearly has an offensive implication. It is an munition. It will be used against the armored targets. Maybe not in Iraq, but it might be used against some other ( oil rich ) country. I'm not saying that because I think that USA will attack some other country soon, but because the history teaches me that every 6-10 years USA has to have some weapon testing ( war ) in some part of the world.

Re:It's not about defense

[Anonymous Coward]

Nighthawk

Re:It's not about defense

[Anonymous Coward]

The F-117's name was Nighthawk. The SR-71 was the Blackbird.

Re:It's not about defense

[Anonymous Coward]

F117 Night hawk -- Stealth fighter (Really a precision bomber)
SR-71 Blackbird -- Edge-of-Space Spyplane

Re:It's not about defense

[Anonymous Coward]

The F-117 is the Nighthawk. The Blackbird was the SR-71.

Re:It's not about defense

[Anonymous Coward]

The now free residents of Kosovo would disagree with your position.

Re:It's not about defense

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks AC. To free someone form someone else, You'll have to drive someone away from his/hers home or to kill it.

I live in an town that gained 40% of population in last refugee surge form Kosovo you idiot.
No one profits from the weapons or war more than weapon industry, but there is always more than it.
You should look for "Im Mining International April 2008" subscriber version. It has more on Kosovo independence than human rights. In fact it is mostly about ore richness and new-formed companies. Got the clue ?

Re:It's not about defense

[Big Grizzle]

They're retiring the stealth F117 Blackbird. The F117 is actually a Nighthawk. The blackbird was a Lockheed SR71.

Re:It's not about defense

[Richard_at_work]

Actually the F-117 had a relatively low cost as it was mostly built from off the shelf components with a custom airframe - only the airframe itself was designed from scratch. The USAF lists the F-117 as having a unit price of about $45m a piece, compared with $142m a piece for the F-22 Raptor. And thats with a very short production run (less than 50 F-117s were built).

The F-117 was also used in Kosovo, not just Iraq and Panama.

Re:It's not about defense

[Rich0]

Well, in the case of the F-117 it does make sense. Why do you need them? If you want air-superiority or light strike you have the F-22 and the F-35. If you want to do heavier bombing you have the B-2.

The F117 was basically a poor aircraft by almost all standards of the day, except for having stealth (which made it a great aircraft). The F-22 was already in R&D when it was fielded - but the US needed improved capabilities to defeat the Soviets ASAP.

Both the F-117 and the F-22 were basically invented to counter the leading Soviet aircraft of their day. The long R&D cycle means that we're only seeing F-22s now, but the early R&D started under Regan. Arguably the F-22 is still needed since the F-15 isn't really all that much better than some of the best Russian designs (such as the Su-27). The F-35 is designed as a lower-cost replacement for less capable fighters - you won't save much getting rid of that one since the alternative is more expensive fighters (or keeping around dated ones).

There are really two issues with the US military:

1. The cost required to be the best of the best.
2. The cost required to use it so often.

#2 is pretty controversial since you could argue that the US doesn't really need to intervene as often as it does. What you're mostly complaining about is #1 - the cost of staying modern. If you want to be the best you're going to pay more than anybody else just for that privilege, and everybody else will copy you for far less - you'll only have lead time as an advantage. On the other hand, would the world be as peaceful as it is if more nations felt they could challenge US firepower?

Another post pointed out that nobody else fields armor heavy enough to even withstand the current general of weapons the US has, so why do we need a new one? The counter-argument would be that the reason nobody else is building tanks is precisely because the US is strong in countering them. If the US stops advancing on this front then perhaps the US might start facing more conventional wars (which are potentially a lot more devestating than the insurgencies the US currently deals with).

congress and george bush are fucking retards

[Anonymous Coward]

gas is at 4.00 a gallon now, food prices are through the roof, and all they can think of is making MORE weapons, our so called 'leaders' need to be lined up for gunfire, hung from a tree, or decapitated for the treasons they have caused to our great country. I hate, despise, loathe them all.. may some foreign country drop a nuke directly on washington to save us from anymore damage; trust me, it is for the betterment of society.

signed,
pissed patriot

Re:congress and george bush are fucking retards

[wattrlz]

Yeah, real retards. Take a look at their paychecks, why don'tcha?

err.. not Blackbird

[PingXao]

That was a differnt story about the SR71. The F117 is the Nighthawk.

OT - It's way past time that /. have a way to edit posts.

Re:err.. not Blackbird

[Kagura]

The last flight of the F-117 was scheduled for the 22nd of this month. They're retired. F-117 Nighthawk Retirement

Fight Club Reference?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

The first rule of Project MAHEM is you don't talk about Project MAHEM!

Re:Fight Club Reference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting to wipe an accidental mod down. Stupid AJAXy system.

Gamma ray bursts caused by industrial accidents

[RoverDaddy]

... unless the LHC wipes us out first ;)

In the DARPA lab...

[oodaloop]

First engineer: You've got your flamethrower in my railgun!
Second engineer: You've got your railgun in my flamethrower!
Both: Two great tastes that taste great together!

Gibraltar Bridge

[ishmalius]

From Fountains of Paradise. It would be high enough in the center that people would feel like they are flying. As the story went, the bridge more than paid for itself from tourist fees alone, rather than needing tolls from commerce.

First Rule

[Junior J. Junior III]

The First Rule of Project MAHEM is:  Do not talk about Project MAHEM!

What's the definition of a 'humane' weapon?

[acheron12]

One that murders efficiently and painlessly?

Re:What's the definition of a 'humane' weapon?

[spun]

A really humane weapon is one that sits you down for a spot of tea, explains the situation to you, gives you a brief time to put your affairs in order, notifies your next of kin of your impending doom, and then kills you efficiently and painlessly.

Re:What's the definition of a 'humane' weapon?

[osu-neko]

Ha, yeah that was my question. Pardon me for thinking there's no such thing as a weapon that's both lethal and humane. Killing people in inhumane no matter how you slice it.

Re:What's the definition of a 'humane' weapon?

[Peter La Casse]

Killing people in inhumane no matter how you slice it.

Man's inhumanity to man will never be excised from humanity. Alas.

Re:What's the definition of a 'humane' weapon?

[Neo_piper]

Yes... Yes it is.
Or at least so says the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons AKA
"Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects"
Protocol #1 would be the main reason Flechette Shotgun rounds were never implemented, the Aluminum darts didn't show up enough on X-Rays and Protocol #3, That's the one that outlaws anti-personnel weapons that act primarily through heat or fire, will be the reason this dies in it's crib. BTW Protocol #2 is the anti-land mine bit, #4 is the anti-blinding lasers bit and #5 is about unexploded ordnance and bomblets but the USA didn't sign those parts.

Now stop being a pretentious smart ass, you aren't any good at it, you need to be smart first.

Re:What's the definition of a 'humane' weapon?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know most people will agree, it's not murder if the other guy is trying to kill you as well.

Just food for thought.

Re:What's the definition of a 'humane' weapon?

[Magada]

Oh, yes it will. As soon as we start getting really oppressed by some other race.

Not really.

[kamapuaa]

For what it's worth, Clarke wasn't the first science fiction writer to briefly outline the idea of geostationary satellites - Herman Potonik did so, much earlier. The realized version was much different than his scheme of large manned outer-space outposts. Additionally, the creators of geostationary satellites did not reference Clarke's outline, nor were they even aware of it. Clarke was merely in a position to effectively self-promote his half-similar sci-fi concepts.

Re:Not really.

[khendron]

ACC's contribution was the idea of geostation *communication* satellites, not geostationary orbit.

hopefully this one won't come to pass...

[avi33]

The one where Earth can no longer recycle its carbon dioxide into oxygen fast enough, and we all suffocate.

moron blowing up yOUR 'enemies'...

[Anonymous Coward]

whilst the corepirate nazi domestic terrorists continue to hold most of US hostage. it would be pathetically laughable if it weren't for the long term far reaching consequences of our apathy towards/acceptance of bs in place of reality. let yOUR conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/ts_alt_afp/ushealthfrancemortality;_ylt=A9G_RngbRIVHsYAAfCas0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A

is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying

dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html

the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.

corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7

as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi glowbull warmongering execrable. some of US should consider ourselves somewhat fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate. it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc.... as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, &

Other ideas?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I'm hoping that one day we'll put a black cuboid with sides in the ratio 1:4:9 on the Moon.

Re:Other ideas?

[Dr Caleb]

Hey! Those are the dimensions of my DLP TV!

Center of Telekinetic Force?

[starglider29a]

This raises an interesting physics question (thus, not offtopic, per se)

Where does the telekinetic force vector emanate from? I would presume that an attraction on an object would act on its center of mass, but where is the center of attraction? Is it center of mass? A spot in the brain? Or some specific antenna of psychic energy. If that's the case, the remote wouldn't hit him in the 'head', per se.

So what? That's what a shaped charge does.

[BForrester]

Shaped charges have been using explosively formed jets for ages. Why remove ourselves from the simplicity the old way (and muck with electromagnets to do the same task)?

So I read TFA:

"MAHEM offers the potential for higher efficiency, greater control, the ability to generate and accurately time multiple jets and fragments from a single charge, and the potential for aimable, multiple warheads with a much higher EFJ velocity, hence increased lethality and kill precision, than conventional EFJ/SFP."

Quake's Railgun?

[TristanGrimaux]

Isn't that the same weapon? I think ID3 should patent the BFG9000!

Solve the energy crisis

[sir_eccles]

Don't know if it's inhumane, but we could solve the energy crisis by strapping magnets to Arthur C Clarke's body as it spins in his grave.

The Arthur C. Clarke Weapon Idea

[holyspidoo]

Throw a huge black rock at them.

Mod -1 off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Kill them and another set of evil bastards will simply use their deaths as a springboard into power and an excuse to commit more crimes. A change in our culture/society is the only thing that can stop this mess for real.

Abbreviations

[the_arrow]

How does it really work, do they first come up with a cool sounding abbreviation, and then try to find out what it can stand for? Or do they make a list of names, and try to make an abbreviation from that?

Of Two Minds

[BigBlueOx]

First of all, reading TFA is like porno for technerds: "The Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM)" ... "compressed magnetic flux generator (CMFG)-driven magneto hydrodynamically formed metal jets and self-forging penetrators (SFP)". I'm getting wood.

Ah but then reality intrudes and again I have to wonder what Ftard has his stars riding on this turkey.

AL GORE INVENTED 2001

[snsh]

Crediting a science fiction writer with predicting scientific accomplishments, seems to me like crediting Al Gore for inventing the internet, Sam Lemelson for inventing using robots on assembly lines, and Amazon.com as the father of one-click checkout.

Prior art

[White Yeti]

This is just a Lava Cannon with metal in the hopper instead of rock.

(Armchair)Generals Always Prepare for the Last War

[manekineko2]

There's a phrase that's often bandied about on Slashdot by people with your viewpoint, that generals always prepare to fight the last war.

However, this really applies equally well to the arm chair generals on Slashdot that tend to bring the phrase out.

In the case of research into advanced weaponry, obviously we shouldn't just be doing research (such as this) that would only come in handy in the types of war we saw in the past (i.e. in the Cold War).

However, just as true is that we shouldn't be doing only research into advanced weaponry that is useful for "current needs" as you put. The enemy we currently are facing or might reasonably expect to face at the moment is not using heavy armor, therefore you argue we should discontinue research into weapons useful against heavy armor. That seems like a smart investment until an enemy that isn't exactly like the one we face now comes up.

Given the long development time behind advanced military hardware, and the fact that the US's time as the sole superpower in the world seems to be rapidly approaching its end, maybe it's not such a bad idea to be putting at least some of our research money into preparing for future, as well as current threats.

Global Warming weapon

[caywen]

I want to see a weapon that allows us to unleash some serious Global Warming on our enemies. It would keep the warming localized by transferring the excess CO2 we generate over the poor country that messes with us. Then the terrorists wouldn't be able to organize because there'd be too many flash floods and food supply problems. Damn I'm smart.

Re:Global Warming weapon

[greyhueofdoubt]

I want to see a weapon that allows us to unleash some serious Global Warming on our enemies. It would keep the warming localized...

Good stuff.

stealth F117 Blackbird.

[wiredog]

There never was a F117 Blackbird.

There was an F-117 Nighthawk, and an SR-71 Blackbird. Two very different aircraft.

cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.. cool.. unless you are the victim.

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Then it's extremely hot.

Sad

[DoofusOfDeath]

I don't mean to get all hippy liberal here, but I'm sad that we get so excited about new ways to kill each other. I guess having kids changed the way I look at things.

Re:Sad

[Dunbal]

wen u get pwned can I haz ur lewt?

Re:Sad

[DoofusOfDeath]

No, that's not it. I actually build weapons for a living. I just wish people wouldn't get so excited about it.

Oh boy!

[sexybomber]

I've always wanted my own Flak Cannon! Since when has DARPA been playing Unreal Tournament? It is a great source for crazy-ass weapon ideas, though...

Re:Oh boy!

[dpx420]

More likely its actually that campers favorite from Half-Life the tau cannon..

What Will And Won't

[DynaSoar]

"what other ideas of his will come to pass?"

Already done: lunar expeditions using a separate lander and translunar go-and-return module which stays in lunar orbit (from his first novel, Prelude to Space, 1951). Probably not his idea originally, as Von Braun was working on his 'lunar flotilla' design by that time, which included separate crew-return vehicles.

Also come to pass: A 'civilian' wins a ticket to space (though from a game show, not a contest; Islands In The Sky, 1952). In 2005, Doug Ramsburg won a Virgin Galactic ticket in a contest sponsored by Volvo. Not a scientific development, but a social one, and Clarke's handling of those was just as forward thinking.

His idea for geosynch satellites was a good start, even though the original idea was floated by Oberth more than two decades earlier. But the idea, as expanding upon in his fiction, included human crews aboard the three stations performing other functions also. Most of that work is now done with automated satellites, but such stations could be staging areas for translunar and interplanetary flights. These could be largely automated, but probably not entirely, as crew preparation would probably occur there.

Using replenishable ablative shielding made of ice to protect the crew of high speed spacecraft from the bombardment of dust and radiation (Songs of Distant Earth) has always been one of my favorite hacks. So much the better if heavy water could be concentrated out from the source to make it more effective. Capturing cometary or other ice water material and melting it with solar energy for recasting on site would make raising it from the ground unnecessary.

I don't believe space elevators will ever make the cut. The amount of energy and engineering required are just too high. There are many other ways to space that would be easier, faster, and unless and until a space elevator could operate to near the break-even point if that even exists, cheaper. By the time an elevator could be built, we could already have mile-wide high altitude (100k ft.) balloon platforms operating as staging areas for ground-to-station and station-to-station shuttles, making global transportation as well as staging to orbit and beyond quite easy. Such a system could operate at the regularity of today's mass transportation systems. I don't dispute a space elevator's design or intent, I simply maintain that evolution of existing designs via technological improvements will be more efficient and make such a gargantuan feat unnecessary.

The H in HAL: It stands for "Heuristically" ("programmed ALgorithmic computer"). The human mind work largely using heuristics, which are fastest, best-guess rules of thumb producing a (usually) good-enough result. These are subject to the same sort of errors human minds are. But if one can be built, many operating in parallel can also, and many best guesses arrived at by consensus could out perform a single human. I believe this will prove to be at least one workable model for artificial intelligence (as in true novel problem solving, not simply fooling humans in conversation a la Turing). Fuzzy logic has lost its one time star status, but that serves as a good model for single stage heuristic processing. Many such in parallel, with a comparative 'executive process' would be the next step.

Re:What Will And Won't

[Lumpy]

Ice in a vacuum sublimates incredibly fast (compared to dry air in earth pressures at below 0F). you need to have it protected by dirt, grunge or rock to keep it from sublimating. or even paint.

Re:What Will And Won't

[DynaSoar]

Ice in a vacuum sublimates incredibly fast (compared to dry air in earth pressures at below 0F). you need to have it protected by dirt, grunge or rock to keep it from sublimating. or even paint. I'm sure you're correct. Such impurities will likely be found in the source ice. Filter that out, freeze the water, and cover it with its own impurities.

Also, there are many forms of ice, about 18 it seems. Some ice polymorphs may be more resistant to vacuum exposure. Some of them appear to be downright polymerish. http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/phase.html

Arthur proposed solar sailing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read "Wind from the Sun"
, published ~1972.

Happens to be another of today's /. topics.

Not sure Clarke would like this

[TooTechy]

I don't think that Mr. Clarke would like to be remembered for inventing a weapon.

Re:Not sure Clarke would like this

[infalliable]

He didn't invent anything. Magnetic fields and jets of metal are the only real similarities.

Re:Not sure Clarke would like this

[Dunbal]

I don't think that Mr. Clarke would like to be remembered for inventing a weapon.

      Neither do I. His last couple books were bad enough. My eyes STILL hurt, that shit was worse than pepper spray.

grits?

[PhasmatisApparatus]

How about jets of hot grits?

against civilian targets, yes.

[ClioCJS]

Napalm is not "legal" to use in war against civilian targets. Not anymore. That's why we use white phosphorous now! It's basically the same thing, but with a different name. Kind of like "Prisoner Of War" vs "enemy combatant".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm#Usage_in_warfare

RAMA

[Jaysyn]

Hopefully RAMA will show up & we'll stop killing each other for at least a little while.

Re:(Armchair)Generals Always Prepare for the Last

[Anonymous Coward]

the US's time as the sole superpower in the world seems to be rapidly approaching its end Why do you say that? Do you see another superpower rising, or the USA falling? Based on what facts?

Seems awfully complicated

[tsotha]

The article says "enhanced lethality", but I'm wondering if you couldn't get the same enhanced lethality from long rod penetrators with far less money using the "bigger hammer" philosophy. For example, LOSAT:

The key attraction of LOSAT is the tremendous overmatch lethality of the KEM that defeats all future predicted armored combat vehicles.

Granted, MAHEM would be a bit more compact, but the more complicated something is, the more likely it is to fail. Not only is the development of LOSAT completed, but the missile itself is so fast there's really nothing the target can do to intercept or evade.

Robotic Abraham Lincolns

[Anonymous Coward]

"what other ideas of his will come to pass?"

I was going to say robotic Abraham Lincolns... but it seems Disney beat Rama by a few years (1964 vs 1972). Oh well.

Smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

In I thinkThe Ghost from the Grand Banks, Clarke included some characters who were digitally editing classic movies to remove references to smoking and tobacco. The idea was that smoking had become so unacceptable that nobody wanted to watch films with such imagery.

Blows holes in reactive armor.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

And a big part of the point of this new MAHEM technology seems to be defeating reactive armor.

Reactive armor uses a small explosive on the outer layer, triggered by the incoming jet of metal, to defocus the jet before it penetrates the inner layer. Using electric currents and magnetic fields generated mostly by an explosive gives them the control to send multiple jets with precise spacing down the same path, so the second jet arrives after the first triggered the explosive and the shock wave has propagated away and thus doesn't get disrupted. (And potentially more than two jets: One more than layers of armor/explosive.)

The other stated advantage is that the energy of the explosive can be used more efficiently than forming jets by direct action of the explosive pressure wave. More jet(s) for less bang. Then you can tune that to go for more powerful and/or lighter warhead designs.

Another example of the adage: In a war between armor and weapons, weapons eventually win. Bye-bye reactive armor.

Re:Blows holes in reactive armor.

[spun]

Yes, this 'hit them twice in the same place' technique seems to be common to a number of new weapons systems. And the counter seems to be a renewed interest in Close In Weapons Systems (CIWS) or other Active Protection Systems that can destroy, disrupt, jam, or deflect an incoming projectile before it gets to the armor.

I think i get the idea

[Frozen Void]

An electromagnetic flux capacitor explodes inside a missle, compressing and heating the metal in the main tube to the direction of small exit tube.

Re:I think i get the idea

[Dunbal]

Yes because shooting an Iraqi car that has 2 people inside with AK-47s with a $100,000 Javelin missile is not enough. Bring on the $30,000,000 pick up truck killer!

Re:I think i get the idea

[ekgringo]

An electromagnetic flux capacitor explodes inside a missle, compressing and heating the metal in the main tube to the direction of small exit tube.

And I suppose it requires 1.21 jigawatts of electricity to fire.

HMM, Arthur C Clark... as a weapon...

[Anonymous Coward]

It sort of makes sense. Hurl dead bodies at your enemies. Much better than hurling live ones...

And sometimes they inspire it.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... many sci-fi writers who seem to "predict" what technology will come to pass are really just up on current blue-sky research.

And sometimes they're the ones that DO the blue-sky research. (Examples: Clarke's work on the instrument landing system - which he later fictionalized as _Glide Path_. Ian Fleming and Eric Frank Russel being two of the brain trust in the WWII British "department of dirty tricks" - again later recycled into a number of stories by each.)

And sometimes they're the ones that inspire the research or design. (Example: The clamshell communicator in Star Trek - inspiring Motorola's Star Tak cellphone.)

the real question about M.A.H.E.M.

[prgrmr]

from TFA:

The Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) program will demonstrate compressed magnetic flux generator (CMFG)-driven magneto hydrodynamically formed metal jets and self-forging penetrators

Does it have a Flux Capacitor?

Re:the real question about M.A.H.E.M.

[syrinx]

If so, hope they are paying royalties to the patent-holder:

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6084285.html

Actually, most are wrong

[Moraelin]

Actually, IMHO most prophecies are wrong, or too uninteresting to make good SF. The real future doesn't just exceed the expectations of SF, it leapfrogs and changes the very premises for it. The future doesn't just turn out to be beyond your wildest dreams, it turns out to be fundamentally incompatible with your dreams, because you base those dreams on the present.

Pretty much, think all the myths about angels (or similar creatures) with swords. Maybe flaming magical swords, but swords nevertheless. Roll that around in your head: flying units with melee weapons. Way to get aerial combat all wrong. They just based it on their own present-day where the sword was a weapon of the nobles and elites, so it made sense that uber-elite angels would get such elite weapons.

What I'm saying is that reality didn't just overshoot their prediction. That prediction was just wrong and based on a flawed premise.

Or think of it this way: think you're in the year 8 AD, arguably near the apex of Roman power, and with the society being what it was. Now think you're writing SF.

Would those romans even be interested at all in an accurate depiction of life in the 20'th or 21'st century? E.g.,

- Would they be interested in something like the issues around minority emancipation, and, say, the fact that some people are treated badly just because of where or who they were born? Heh. Those guys practiced chattel slavery. The slaves in Rome often had easier jobs as, pretty much, janitors and servants and such, but even there they saw nothing wrong with making them fight to death in the Colosseum. Outside Rome, ooer, it often made the Nazi slave labour camps look tame and humane. In the cereal-rich Sicily, a slave revolt was based on the fact that the owners starved the slaves, so they can export more grain to Rome. Or things like mining or processing asbestos were known to be a slow death sentence, and pretty much the cost of keeping buying new slaves was factored into the cost of business.

- Would they see a point in our whining about attacking Iraq on trumped charges? Those guys didn't even need that to start a war. They started a war just because they could. They considered themselves the Sons Of Mars. Their whole history and origin was traced to a fratricide (Romulus killed Remus), the Rape Of The Sabines, and razing Carthage after using, yes, trumped charges to break the peace treaty and attack Carthage again. They were _proud_ of doing that kind of thing. The legions killed at least one emperor, off the top of my head, for trying to make peace with the Germans instead of attacking them. That was seen as being weak and thus unfit to rule.

- Issues surrounding religious intolerance, separation of the church and the state, etc? Now generally they were more religiously tolerant than the Christians that followed them, but they still threw you to the lions if you denied the official gods. That's what they killed Jews and later Christians for: those guys came and said, "your gods are false." Would they think twice about killing Muslims just because they're Muslims, for example? Nope.

Etc.

Now don't take that as an apology of their ways, it's not. I'm just saying that if they wrote some SF play that happens 2000 years in the future (starting at their time, so around present day), they'd get everything wrong. They wouldn't foresee life and technology as it is today, they'd just put their own society and their own legions and triremes in the year 2008, with some props that are probably wrong too. _Maybe_ they'd be flying triremes with wings, but they'd probably still try to ram each other in the air, and/or they'd each have a cohort of marines with swords trying to board and capture the enemy flying trireme.

Arthur C Clarke's prophecies are feasible _because_ they are conservative and were almost feasible when he made them. Sorta like Jules Verne's prophecy of guns using guncotton, which was already possible when he made it. Not practical until someone stabilized the guncotton so it wouldn't auto-ignite, to be sure, but otherwise didn't need much of a technological leap.

But when you try to predict too far ahead, it often turns out that you're not just undershooting, but shoot in the completely wrong direction too.

Re:Actually, most are wrong

[Iamthecheese]

In fact, many of the prophesies of the Christian bible are science fiction. the Revelation was one book of a genre, closest thing to Science fiction around.

What about winning the war we are currently losing

[bamwham]

before we spend to much time and money winning the next one? Personally I'm all for just leaving Iraq and letting our military go back to what they do best, buying bigger badder guns, and expensive toilette seats. But if the majority consensus is that we need to stay in Iraq until we "win", I sure would like to see DARPA working on technology to bring that idea to fruition.

I don't hear of to many combatants in Iraq using armored vehicles (for Gods sake the Iraqi army goes out there in pickup trucks), so why don't we set the magneto molten tank slayer aside and pick up one of those projects on detecting and destroying IEDs or armoring our vehicles against them. While we are at it how about a device which stops car engines from a distance. Next it would be nice to address the reason we need to be there to begin with, Oil dependence, maybe DARPA should work on some alternatives; someday our airforce is going to need a way to fly fighter jets without oil, regardless of what war we are fighting; seems like we might as well start working on that problem.

Then let's address the problem our military has recruiting, maybe DARPA should work on developing techniques for bringing soldiers without high school diplomas back up to speed, or ideas for getting soldiers with Felony waivers to avoid a life of crime after being trained for killing by the military.

And finally something warm and cuddly like super cute genetically engineered puppies we could air drop all over the middle east to try and get those folks to relax.

What a marvelous idea!

[Nullav]

Shooting molten metal up into the sky? Let's all get our umbrellas out and get ready to dance and sing as the possibly solidifying, molten metal safely comes crashing down on our heads!
That doesn't sound dangerous or wasteful at all. You go, DARPA! :D

Re:What a marvelous idea!

[greyhueofdoubt]

The metal would be cool long before it hit the ground. What would you rather have: A fine mist of tiny metal droplets, or intact 20mm cannon rounds?

And this completely ignores the fact that there will be large portions of dead airplane crashing down around you as well (if by 'around you' you mean 'infinitesimally tiny chance of coming near you').

Really, there are better things to get worked up about.

-b

Re:What a marvelous idea!

[Dunbal]

Let's all get our umbrellas out and get ready to dance and sing as the possibly solidifying, molten metal safely comes crashing down on our heads!

      This is going to call for a radical new design of our tinfoil hats.

Re:What a marvelous idea!

[Nullav]

Oh yes, but I hear the 'heavy duty' stuff just acts as an antenna. Perhaps we should use lead?

Re:(Armchair)Generals Always Prepare for the Last

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. The EU and china both are in positions to become superpowers, even if they aren't nearly there yet, and the US is certainly losing its tech edge and strong economy.

Wrong Story

[harlows_monkeys]

The Clarke story they should be looking at is Superiority.

Uncaring universe

[Translation Error]

I care, and I'm part of the universe.

Re:Uncaring universe

[ShadowMarth]

Exactly what I was saying. You know that the universe itself is not caring, so you try to make it so.

Re:Uncaring universe

[Translation Error]

But my point is that I am a piece of the universe itself. It's true I'm not the entire universe, but this means that at least parts of the universe do care.

Thank god it wasn't the H wave!!

[QX-Mat]

I loved Trigger, but that book was coauthored, and his successive coauthorships weren't quite as good, diminishing his name :(

Clarke's Weapon will answer this question for us

[RexDevious]

Yes, all of this cosmological curiosity and moral introspection *could* be solved by both accepting that we don't know everything and then doing the hard work necessary to find out more; but it's far easier to build a weapon that shoots molten metal at people to finally answer that age-old question:

What happens after we die?

Of all the countless millions who have killed each other over disagreements over what happens after you die, we've so far narrowed it down to one of two possibilities:

1. It's so amazing that, once you find out, you refuse to share the answer with anyone alive.
2. It's so totally boring that, once you find out, you're too embarrassed to admit to the living that you once waisted so much as a single second of actual life thinking about it.

The third possibility, that it's just on par with anything we've already guessed at, but too heavily DRM'd to share, can be ruled out. Because you just know that some dead 16 year old hacker from Norway would have cracked the DRM and posted the results on Slashdot.

Clarke invented satellites but George O. Smith ...

[mrmeval]

was the one who said what you could DO with them. ;)

His stories are not much mentioned anymore and I hope the copyright has gone copyleft so all of you can enjoy them. George would take an idea and stretch it till it snapped, pick up the pieces and make you gasp. The only recent author I've had do that is James P. Hogan who is still sucking wind unless his last email was a turing device and Charles Sheffield who they claim is dead but we all know is being downloaded to his clone in India.

Tesla Describes His Beam of Destructive Energy

[Scrameustache]

Arthur C. Clarke in his 1955 novel Earthlight â" firing jets of molten metal using strong electromagnetic fields. New York Sun
July 10, 1934

INVENTS PEACE RAY

Tesla Describes His Beam of Destructive Energy

Invention of a "beam of matter moving at high velocity" which would act as a "beam of destructive energy" was announced today by Dr. Nikola Tesla, the inventor, in his annual birthday interview. Dr. Tesla is 78, and for the past several years has made his anniversary the occasion for announcement of scientific discoveries.

The beam, as described by the inventor to rather bewildered reporters, would be projected on land from power houses set 200 miles or so apart and would provide an impenetrable wall for a country in time of war. Anything with which the ray came in contact would be destroyed, the inventor indicated. Planes would fall, armies would be wiped out and even the smallest country might so insure "security. against which nothing could avail.

Dr. Tesla announced that he plans to suggest his method at Geneva as an insurance of peace.

That war wasn't about oil - it was about dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest you don't accept the party line and look a bit wider for the cause - unproven WMD would have been too thin an argument to start a war that substantially enlarged the global US deficit.

Yes, oil was a factor, but not access to oil. Sadam switched to selling oil in currencies other than dollar which had the potential to show the Euro as the strong currency it has become - a truth published as early as 2003 but no media would touch it.

See http://www.thinkandask.com/news/thedollar.html and http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Iraq_dollar_vs_euro.html. Unlike a Hollywood movie, the US is NOT the hero here..

Clarke Invention - Noise Cancelling Headphones

[Anonymous Coward]

In "Silence, Please", a short story from his Tales from the White Hart (1953-1957), Clarke writes about phase-reversal as a technique for noise cancellation. This, of course, is exactly the principle used by Bose and others for noise-cancelling headphones.

Fight Club Reference Too

[Anonymous Coward]

The Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) will function on a smaller scale than Clarke's fictional blaster. Best. Acronym. Ever. Especially because everyone working on it gets to use the phrase I'm Working on Project Mahem

What's the advantage?

[ridgecritter]

...of using explosive-driven MHD effects to launch a jet of molten metal compared with the current ways of achieving the same thing with explosive-driven shaped charge technology? The latter generates jets that stay pretty coherent over significant distances, and when coupled with various seeker technology is pretty good at killing tanks from the air or low-flying aircraft from the ground. Would the MHD tech be more efficient in coupling explosive energy to the metal, which could make the weapons smaller or load more K.E. into the metal? Anybody care to speculate? Inquiring minds want to know....

Re:(Armchair)Generals Always Prepare for the Last

[jafac]

If we're falling behind, it's because we've bankrupted ourselves by catering TOO MUCH to the Military Industrial Complex, and not enough to our own Infrastructure, and Education, Training, and Health and Welfare of, well, you know, the PEOPLE who actually spend money and work jobs and make our economy operate.

Yes, it's nice to invest in staying on top of our own self-defense. But if you go too far on that path (and if you also spend a lot of effort trying to dominate the rest of the world out of paranoid fear) - then you're basically shooting yourself in the foot.

Just like the Romans did.

Just like the British Empire did.

Just like the 3rd Reich did.

Just like the Soviet Union did.

Re:(Armchair)Generals Always Prepare for the Last

[khallow]

Yes, it's nice to invest in staying on top of our own self-defense. But if you go too far on that path (and if you also spend a lot of effort trying to dominate the rest of the world out of paranoid fear) - then you're basically shooting yourself in the foot. The US is heavily dependent on global trade. The military supports the trade network and treaties. I agree that there's deep problems with both the way that the military is supplied and how it is used. But there are valid reasons to have such a large military.

seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

they're calling it MAHEM???

are they working on a cone of silence too?

as long as we're talking about flying cars...

[big_paul76]

Somebody should say something about how when you're driving a wheeled vehicle then the weight of the vehicle rests on the ground, but if you're talking aircraft, some force needs to keep you in the air, contrary to what gravity would prefer.

So barring some sort of energy storage system that's orders of magnitude better than what we got now, and orders of magnitude cheaper, it's not gonna be practical.

thermal demagnetization?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is from a fuzzy memory from a physics class far too many years ago: iron (and magnets in general) demagnetize when they get hot. IIRC, that point is below the point of incandescence and thus below the point where iron liquifies. In fact, I believe this is how we figured out the magnetic North Pole floats, because iron content in cooling lava oriented to the North Pole.

Nifty, but...

[vegiVamp]

The basic idea of using molten metal jets is not that new - it's already used as an armour-penetrating projectile: a copper core and surrounding explosives that explode on impact, liquifying the copper and pushing it out at several km per second. Goes through 10cm of plating no problem, and personnel aboard hit tanks are said to have reported 'some inconvenience' at being sprayed with liquid copper.

railgun

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a railgun, isnt it?

Half century?

[hulye]

So, it took them a half century just to start thinking about the idea.... I am getting pessimist if I can ever see a shark with a laser attached to its head in my life....

Re:So what? That's what a shaped charge does.

[Weedlekin]

The key phrase here is "offers the potential", which is not the same thing as "will be able to do so". Many weapons technologies have offered the potential to do all sorts of wonderful things, but the history of arms development is littered with examples of ones which failed to live up to the promises that were made for them, fulfilled those promises in ways that were either impractical or too expensive, or were a solution to problem that no longer existed by the time they were deployed.

With the above in mind, I will believe that this weapon actually fulfils its claimed _potential_ when they can demonstrate a version with all the advertised characteristics that doesn't cost an order of magnitude more for each round than the crappy tanks that America's enemies are fielding.

You are wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Design

Re:(Armchair)Generals Always Prepare for the Last

[jafac]

The US is heavily dependent on global trade.

If it costs a third of our economic output to fund the SECURITY component of supporting this global trade - and if that money has to come from public funds (rather than privately funded by the specific entities who directly benefit from global trade) - then there's a word for that, and that word is SUBSIDY, and there's another description for that: UNSUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC MODEL.

Global trade is fine and dandy.

But to say we're "dependent" on it - exposes the real problem.

PDAs

[Anonymous Coward]

He predicted PDAs in his 1975 book, Imperial Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Earth

Pretty good extrapolation of the pocket calculator!

Re:(Armchair)Generals Always Prepare for the Last

[ittybad]

This reminds me of a little bit of history (you know, the part we don't want to be doomed to repeat?). To start off, here is a question: are military snipers valuable? The answer should come back as a resounding "Yes." To catch some people up on the history of this "weapon:" we have used snipers in all the major wars here in the US. Even during the revolution. However, for all the wars previous to Vietnam, we had to reinvent a sniper training program and hash it out from ol' timers and antiquated reference texts. Finally, post Vietnam, we realized that it would be more prudent to have a sniper program and continually train snipers and have them available in our arsenal at any time. I feel that the same could be true with advancements in military technology. It is better to keep a program open and have its use available than to have to recreate the program when its need arises again.

Re:What about winning the war we are currently los

[rts008]

"And finally something warm and cuddly like super cute genetically engineered puppies we could air drop all over the middle east to try and get those folks to relax."

Drop off dogs...in the Middle East...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unclean_animals#Dogs....

You might want to switch to lolcats, or at least make sure the dogs are Saluki pups.

Re:(Armchair)Generals Always Prepare for the Last

[khallow]

It doesn't cost a third of our economic output. More like 3% and that's including the Iraq occupation.