Covering a tank with 99.99% reflective precision mirrors would get awfully expensive, and any bit of dust or grease on them would ruin the whole deal.
Which is why you would use ablative armour instead. Something with a wicked-high heat of vapourization. There's probably another group somewhere being funded by the American Department of "Defence Through Invading and Blowing Things Up" that's working on it as we speak.
Naw. Aerosol smoke would be better. It'd disburse the beam enough to give you a chance at surviving the laser strike if you can get it dense enough. Downside is, it wouldn't work so well on seriously windy days, but upside is, it'd be cheaper than plating the tank with mirrors or heavily ablative armour. And you could still drive it by radar/infrared.
Now we need an explanation for why it doesn't work at all!
Simple enough. Blasters aren't lasers, they're plasma blob lobbers, which is why we see the blobs heading toward their target. A millisecond laser pulse isn't easily visible unless you're bigtime lucky or watching with some serious electronics.
Causing blindness is not a combat function of this weaponry; it's a side-effect of the other side trying to subvert the weapon.
Sounds to me like you're trying to pass on the collateral damage to the 'other guy'. "Hey, he'd have 20-20 vision if he haddn't tried to block the laser" doesn't fly well.
but I still think the best spot for observational astronomy has to be the far side of the Moon. You've got several thousand miles of light and EM shielding, and a good couple weeks' seeing a month when the Sun goes down. Once the 'scopes cool off, there's no warping. What's not to love?
If somebody managed to reverse engineer and open-source the NK-33, a lot of people would be VERY happy indeed. Nearly 40 years old, and still the highest thrust-to-weight ratio chemical rocket engine ever created.
Especially if they can figure out how the Russians fixed the burnthrough problem on this type of engine. Gotta admit, the Russians knew what they were doing, even though a lot of time they weren't on the cutting edge...
And then a few of them decided to reverse engineer the Russian's rockets and distribute them as free and open source rocketry, starting a slow and powerful revolution for freer space travel?
I know you're joking, but if someone in the US did that, they'd be facing criminal sanctions under ITAR.
I was thinking that'd only apply for exporting the rockets, but when I looked up ITAR, it includes importing as well. Personally, though, I'd be more worried about zoning law violations & running afoul of the local tenants/homeowners association. The Feds got nothing on them!!!
There is no money to be made directly from space exploration.
Yet.
Bound to be plenty of stuff we can make that are just better when made in microgravity, like ultrapure crystals & medications, foamed metals, stuff like that...
This is no worse than the US Department of Homeland Security does on an ordinary weekday. So, why should I be concerned? I don't have anything to worry about, since I don't have anything I need to hide! We should trust the hackers to use their authority responsibly.
How about if you brag to your buddy on the fone how much you ripped the government off with that nifty tax dodge you found out about?
Howbout if you bitch about how much of your taxes go to support something the Powers That Be are totally for, and you're totally against?
What if a friend calls & says he's coming over to smoke a bowl with you and the cops just happen to need a few more showy arrests to get their next year's funding?
Concerned yet? Keep in mind that the most famous use of the USA PATRIOT Act to date was used to supress political enemies. Handing them a tool like this is like handing them a can of gasoline & a railroad flare and sayin, "Don't burn down the shed out back." How many laws do you break every day when you get out of bed?
Voice communications doesn't need 320kbs sampling. You can get away prolly with 64kbs or even 32kbs. Normal analog voice bandwidth is about 6KHz. At 32kbs, you can squeeze a 5 min conversation into about a meg of disk space.
Woudln't it make much more sense to just coat death valley with solar panels, rather that putting solar panels on the roads where they will be covered up half the time?
Or line Death Valley with aluminum panels and turn it into a enormous solar-thermal system. Any James Bond villains around, we can get them to finance it by claiming it's a death ray.
Not a bad idea there, especially for those of us just one lab accident away from becoming supervillians.
Halfasec while I check land prices in Death Valley for my new improved solar powered lair...
'Solar roads' sounds interesting, but how they gonna deal with the weight of cars and (especially) trucks driving over them constantly? Trucks have weight limits for a reason, to keep from tearing up the current roads. Every solar cell I've ever played with is orders of magnitude more fragile than rocks and concrete.
On the up side, though, it'd create more work for road crews to repair and replace the new solar cells...
Grow some balls, people. Kick them all out of Washington. Stop reelecting the same old party, and the same old people. Cut funding and cut personnel for every government agency in half, and stop paying pensions to elected officials. Then, we can sit down and start cutting the worthless crap out of the US Code.
Great idea, Lon-yid, but the way the system is these days, it's an Old Boys/Girls Club and we ain't invited. Any dissenting opinion is marginalised and pushed so far from center that they become irrelevant to Bizznizz As Usual. When was the last time there was a for-real 3rd Party/Indy who had a ghost of a chance? And no, not Perot. He was a statistical fluke, wasn't seriously running.
What you mean is, how did this stupid idea make it into the U.S. Senate?
Seems to me to be Yet Another Pushbutton Feel-Good Law that won't do a whole helluva lot by itself except make people think the politicians are Doing Something Dammit(TM). As has been pointed out several times in this thread, Arpanet (and its descendent, the Internet) was designed to be decentralised and somewhat immune to attacks that would bring it down in fragments. At present, there is no Big Red Switch that will shut down the net.
What this law can do is, force ISPs to install Big Red Switches that can be thrown to fragment the net. And if you control the flow of information, you control a people...
Is saving a minuite or so per support call and/or trimming down the cost per call a little by allowing yourself (or your contractor) to hire idiots really worth pissing off your already pissed off customer even more?
Not getting it, are you? The script was provided by the client and given to us by our bosses. It wasn't developed inhouse, oh, no. Our bosses didn't have the authority to change the script, either. And when the client says "Do it like this or don't get paid', believe me, you do everything in your power to get it done their way.
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Naw. Aerosol smoke would be better. It'd disburse the beam enough to give you a chance at surviving the laser strike if you can get it dense enough. Downside is, it wouldn't work so well on seriously windy days, but upside is, it'd be cheaper than plating the tank with mirrors or heavily ablative armour. And you could still drive it by radar/infrared.
Simple enough. Blasters aren't lasers, they're plasma blob lobbers, which is why we see the blobs heading toward their target. A millisecond laser pulse isn't easily visible unless you're bigtime lucky or watching with some serious electronics.
Sounds to me like you're trying to pass on the collateral damage to the 'other guy'. "Hey, he'd have 20-20 vision if he haddn't tried to block the laser" doesn't fly well.
Yup, but the Americans have yet to figure it out.
I said Far Side, not Dark Side. Dark Side Of The Moon is a Pink Floyd album.
but I still think the best spot for observational astronomy has to be the far side of the Moon. You've got several thousand miles of light and EM shielding, and a good couple weeks' seeing a month when the Sun goes down. Once the 'scopes cool off, there's no warping. What's not to love?
Cause the Shuttle is goin bye-bye Real Soon Now. That leaves the Russians with the only resupply/ISS orbital capable gear.
Especially if they can figure out how the Russians fixed the burnthrough problem on this type of engine. Gotta admit, the Russians knew what they were doing, even though a lot of time they weren't on the cutting edge...
I was thinking that'd only apply for exporting the rockets, but when I looked up ITAR, it includes importing as well. Personally, though, I'd be more worried about zoning law violations & running afoul of the local tenants/homeowners association. The Feds got nothing on them!!!
Yet.
Bound to be plenty of stuff we can make that are just better when made in microgravity, like ultrapure crystals & medications, foamed metals, stuff like that...
And are they carrying coconuts?
How about if you brag to your buddy on the fone how much you ripped the government off with that nifty tax dodge you found out about?
Howbout if you bitch about how much of your taxes go to support something the Powers That Be are totally for, and you're totally against?
What if a friend calls & says he's coming over to smoke a bowl with you and the cops just happen to need a few more showy arrests to get their next year's funding?
Concerned yet? Keep in mind that the most famous use of the USA PATRIOT Act to date was used to supress political enemies. Handing them a tool like this is like handing them a can of gasoline & a railroad flare and sayin, "Don't burn down the shed out back." How many laws do you break every day when you get out of bed?
Voice communications doesn't need 320kbs sampling. You can get away prolly with 64kbs or even 32kbs. Normal analog voice bandwidth is about 6KHz. At 32kbs, you can squeeze a 5 min conversation into about a meg of disk space.
Prior art I think. Though the Snopes article is funnier.
Not a bad idea there, especially for those of us just one lab accident away from becoming supervillians.
Halfasec while I check land prices in Death Valley for my new improved solar powered lair...
Nope. It's fairly tough tho...
'Solar roads' sounds interesting, but how they gonna deal with the weight of cars and (especially) trucks driving over them constantly? Trucks have weight limits for a reason, to keep from tearing up the current roads. Every solar cell I've ever played with is orders of magnitude more fragile than rocks and concrete.
On the up side, though, it'd create more work for road crews to repair and replace the new solar cells...
Last couple times I left the US, I didn't need a passport either. Twice to Canada & once to Mexico, all before 1999.
I imagine I'll get in serious trouble with the State when I tell my as-yet unborn grandkids about how we never used to need a passport...
Whoosh.
As The Who would say, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
Great idea, Lon-yid, but the way the system is these days, it's an Old Boys/Girls Club and we ain't invited. Any dissenting opinion is marginalised and pushed so far from center that they become irrelevant to Bizznizz As Usual. When was the last time there was a for-real 3rd Party/Indy who had a ghost of a chance? And no, not Perot. He was a statistical fluke, wasn't seriously running.
Damn, I forgot about that. So this is an obvious attempt to hijack the world supply of Cherry Garcia, right?
Seems to me to be Yet Another Pushbutton Feel-Good Law that won't do a whole helluva lot by itself except make people think the politicians are Doing Something Dammit(TM). As has been pointed out several times in this thread, Arpanet (and its descendent, the Internet) was designed to be decentralised and somewhat immune to attacks that would bring it down in fragments. At present, there is no Big Red Switch that will shut down the net.
What this law can do is, force ISPs to install Big Red Switches that can be thrown to fragment the net. And if you control the flow of information, you control a people...
Coal in West Virginia, oil shale in Wyoming. Not sure what energy related resource is in Vermont tho.
Hey, these superpogo sticks'll get them off my lawn just that much quicker...
Not getting it, are you? The script was provided by the client and given to us by our bosses. It wasn't developed inhouse, oh, no. Our bosses didn't have the authority to change the script, either. And when the client says "Do it like this or don't get paid', believe me, you do everything in your power to get it done their way.
Know of any good cellular providers that don't have scripted Tier 1 support? I don't.