Slashdot Mirror
Boeing Patents Star Wars Style Force Field Technology
An anonymous reader was one of many to point out that Boeing doesn't want to rely on a sad devotion to an ancient religion to protect aircraft and conjure up the stolen data tapes, but plans on using force fields instead. "Boeing's new patent may let the force be with you even in real life. The aircraft and defense company has taken a cue from science fiction with its plan to develop a Star Wars style force field that would use energy to deflect any potential damage. Just liking the luminescent shields seen in the film, Boeing's "Method and system for shock wave attenuation via electromagnetic arc" could provide a real-life layer of protection from nearby impacts to targets. The downside: It won't protect from direct hits."
So really more like deflector shields.
Shouldn't they need a working prototype to patent this? Oh well, I guess at least the patent will be expired before these devices actually exist.
direct hit: That's where everybody moves side to side in unison and then falls to the floor.
Then some panel blows and sparks fly everywhere - why they stopped using fuses in the future is anyone's guess.
And the guy in he red shirt will be dead. All others will be just unconscious.
Shit! Wrong franchise!
This isn't a force field it's a point defense system.
The system can sense when a shock wave generating explosion occurs near a target. An arc generator then determines the small area where protection is needed from the shock waves.It then springs into action by by emitting laser pulses that ionize the air, providing a laser-induced plasma field of protection from the shock waves.
This is Sci-Fi because somebody in marketing thought they could get more buzz if they called it that. It deflects shockwaves, not projectiles. Then again who knows; maybe the blasters in Star Wars just make photon shockwaves? But this just looks like trademark infringement to me.
The sad thing is their clickbait worked. But a shockwave deflector shield is pretty neat tech anyway.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
Star Wars features force fields that can, for example, hold the air in a spacecraft hangar even while a spacecraft flies out.
Boeing has developed a technology where lasers fire a burst of energy to turn air into plasma, causing a shock wave. When sensors detect an incoming pressure wave (from an explosion or whatever) this system creates a counter-wave.
Even when I squint and wave my hands a lot, those two things don't look much alike.
The prior art on this is not Star Wars, but reactive tank armor.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
In the prequels, we saw them on the Naboo fighter ships. Also, don't forget the destroyer droids with their bubble shields, and the Gungans with their animal-mounted battlefield shields, and even hand-held shields. There are plenty more examples from the next two movies as well.
In the original trilogy, I don't recall seeing the shields themselves, but both the rebels (on Hoth) and the empire (on Endor) protected their assets with large, ground-based shield generators. There are also references in the dialogue as well ("Switch your deflectors on - double front!").
You really blocked out a lot, didn't you...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Don't they mean Star Trek?
What 'reporter' says it's like "Star" anything? The claimed invention is dependent upon a shock wave traveling through air (by laser beam-induced plasma local heating). . . No one can hear you scream in space, y'know.
Oh, I see, it's the same 'reporter' that can't tell the difference between a preposition and a gerund. FTA: "Just liking the luminescent shields seen in the film...
Last time I heard about force fields and deflector shields, we created a wormhole, made the USS Eldridge disappear, and caused a bunch of navy personnel to get embedded in the bulkhead of the ship
Yeah, in this case all the guys in the white plastic uniforms will die instead as the reactor core blows due to a direct hit on the one small weakness in the design...
The lack of seatbelts makes sense. If you're on a spaceship that can accelerate quickly enough to turn everyone into a fine paste and relies on inertial dampeners (adjustments of the artificial gravity) to prevent this, then there aren't many situations where you'll need a seatbelt: either the inertial dampeners are preventing you from needing them, or you're dead. The problem is that the drama needed the ship to seem to shake. It's the same issue as feeling the ship warm up as you get close to a star: it makes for good drama, but the difference between 'humans are comfortable' and 'humans are on fire' is tiny compared to the difference between 'humans are comfortable' and 'nuclear fusion is happening' - it's far more likely that the shields would work fine and no one would be discomforted right up until the point where much of the ship vaporised.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News