Haha there's no way that people could fall for that? There's no way having younger blood put in you will have any effect at all, except on your bank account...
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Haha there's no way that people could fall for that? There's no way having younger blood put in you will have any effect at all, except on your bank account...
You are saying this in a world where there are people who believe the Earth is flat.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Haha there's no way that people could fall for that? There's no way having younger blood put in you will have any effect at all, except on your bank account...
There probably are ways it could help, but transfusions are short-lived, for a variety of reasons.
The average lifespan of a red blood cell, for example, is 120 days. So after 4 months, the vast majority of the red cells in your transfused blood have broken down and been recycled into your own typical red blood cells. This is assuming they have a normal lifespan too- whilst the blood will be RBO and probably rhesus type matched, there are a bunch of minor antigens that will have varying degrees of matching. I would be surprised if transfused red cells had an average lifespan of 120 days.
Sure, red cells from a young person are probably more effective, but a transfusion is short lived, and this therapy does nothing to affect the endogenous production. It is just going to be a temporary boost at best.
There are far more components to complete blood than just red cells, but none of them are likely to last very long in another person's body.
Then of course there are the significant risks of blood transfusions. Despite the article describing them as safe, transfusions are anything but. They are undoubtedly a very useful tool for treating anaemia and other blood deficiencies, but the adverse effects can and do kill people. Many of those cannot easily be predicted, like anaphylaxis reactions.
Aye. There are benefits to transfusions. They’ve actually been used by athletes to give themselves more stamina, though they tend to use their own blood.
Grey Templar wrote: Aye. There are benefits to transfusions. They’ve actually been used by athletes to give themselves more stamina, though they tend to use their own blood.
Different concept there though- the idea with that is simply to boost the number of circulating red cells to above what your body will produce naturally. If you have, say, 50% more red cells floating around, that is 50% greater oxygen carrying capacity.
Of course, it also makes their blood thicker and can kill them, which is why the body has an upper limit in the first place. It is also a short-lived boost- athletes did it just prior to a major event.
The idea above seems to be something different- using young blood because the blood components are in better condition with less age degredation. I can't see how this is going to give anything better than a short term benefit at best, and just cause unnecessary risks at worst.
Grey Templar wrote: Aye. There are benefits to transfusions. They’ve actually been used by athletes to give themselves more stamina, though they tend to use their own blood.
Different concept there though- the idea with that is simply to boost the number of circulating red cells to above what your body will produce naturally. If you have, say, 50% more red cells floating around, that is 50% greater oxygen carrying capacity.
Of course, it also makes their blood thicker and can kill them, which is why the body has an upper limit in the first place. It is also a short-lived boost- athletes did it just prior to a major event.
The idea above seems to be something different- using young blood because the blood components are in better condition with less age degredation. I can't see how this is going to give anything better than a short term benefit at best, and just cause unnecessary risks at worst.
Not to mention that the "young" blood enters a cycle that allready could have various detracting elements to it.
(liver that dosen't work at Peak condition anymore, etc.)
Not to mention the risk of various diseases.
And on top of that 8000$?!?.....
Let’s say I’m 90, have more money than brains, and think this could *maybe* give me a sense of restored vitality.
I’d do it. Hell, if I live to 87 and my wife has predecessed me I already told her I was planning to go somewhere that hookers and blow are readily available and rinse and repeat until I am also deceased. If I could afford it, maybe I’d top up on fresh blood and maybe rent a liver while I’m at it.
50 years from now, there will be an Uber for body parts. I’m not using this kidney... wanna take it for a spin for the weekend? Just $1000!
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Haha there's no way that people could fall for that? There's no way having younger blood put in you will have any effect at all, except on your bank account...
You are saying this in a world where there are people who believe the Earth is flat.
The large mass of black corium has many layers, externally resembling tree bark and glass. The mass is quite dense, unyielding to a drill but able to be damaged by a Kalashnikov rifle. By June 1998, the outer layers began to turn to dust and the entire mass was starting to crack. The mass has penetrated through at least 2 m (6 ft 7 in) of concrete.[1]
unyielding to a drill but able to be damaged by a Kalashnikov rifle.
The large mass of black corium has many layers, externally resembling tree bark and glass. The mass is quite dense, unyielding to a drill but able to be damaged by a Kalashnikov rifle. By June 1998, the outer layers began to turn to dust and the entire mass was starting to crack. The mass has penetrated through at least 2 m (6 ft 7 in) of concrete.[1]
unyielding to a drill but able to be damaged by a Kalashnikov rifle.
how...why ..? did we find this out then eh ?
Well it's in the Ukraine so I'd imagine some crazy boris went in and took a potshot at it.
The large mass of black corium has many layers, externally resembling tree bark and glass. The mass is quite dense, unyielding to a drill but able to be damaged by a Kalashnikov rifle. By June 1998, the outer layers began to turn to dust and the entire mass was starting to crack. The mass has penetrated through at least 2 m (6 ft 7 in) of concrete.[1]
unyielding to a drill but able to be damaged by a Kalashnikov rifle.
how...why ..? did we find this out then eh ?
Well it's in the Ukraine so I'd imagine some crazy boris went in and took a potshot at it.
Have you seen the video of it? It's incredible.
1. Thats.. disturbing. 2. looking at the pics, you just know everyone involved in the pictures is very very dead. 3. Dad died from a rare form of cancer. Dad also was one of a group of guys that helped find a live nuke when he was in the service and worked on aircraft that carried them. Makes me sad.
It's crazy scary. If you get chance, watch the documentary our guy in Russia. Don't mind the slightly eccentric lancastrian. Part 4, he's in Ukraine and visits the site and it shows loads of footage. It's interesting. I always wanted to go and visit that and the woodpecker radar which is nearby but when it kicked off in 2014 I decided against it for now.
Was that b52s in the states? We had the V bombers over here.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: It's crazy scary. If you get chance, watch the documentary our guy in Russia. Don't mind the slightly eccentric lancastrian. Part 4, he's in Ukraine and visits the site and it shows loads of footage. It's interesting. I always wanted to go and visit that and the woodpecker radar which is nearby but when it kicked off in 2014 I decided against it for now.
Was that b52s in the states? We had the V bombers over here.
B36s. Later a little with the then brand new B52s.
I will see if I can look that up. The guys who buried it in concrete were some brave muthas.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: It's crazy scary. If you get chance, watch the documentary our guy in Russia. Don't mind the slightly eccentric lancastrian. Part 4, he's in Ukraine and visits the site and it shows loads of footage. It's interesting. I always wanted to go and visit that and the woodpecker radar which is nearby but when it kicked off in 2014 I decided against it for now.
Was that b52s in the states? We had the V bombers over here.
B36s. Later a little with the then brand new B52s.
I will see if I can look that up. The guys who buried it in concrete were some brave muthas.
Yeah man. It goes into all that. The firefighters and military.. Shows you the irradiated hind helis that flew over it and had to be left and all that.
But mice are going to be quite boring conversationalists. They'll just be talking about cheese and what various parts of your house they've chewed and pissed on lately.
We've had transparent "aluminium" for decades.
They use it in watch crystals. You see through it to see the face of the watch. Synthetic sapphires are a form of alumimium.
I have a feeling that anybody who was reluctant to knock one out in a Hospital setting will not be the type who could be coerced into sticking his ding-dong into that creepy thing.
IN that one bit, those robots have done more work then all the wiener dogs in history put together. or as Rodney the wiener dog would say "shut up and rub my belly!"
Grey Templar wrote: I have a feeling that anybody who was reluctant to knock one out in a Hospital setting will not be the type who could be coerced into sticking his ding-dong into that creepy thing.
Cost (New, delivered to a hospital): $23,700 per unit.
Cost (Used, at an auction): $348,000.
On the one hand I could tots live in a Ghost in the Shell future, with cyborgs and kick butt technology.
On the other hand, I would live in a Ghost in the Shell future, with seedy corporations and corrupt government officials (except for short old guys and hot women PMs) run the world.
Everybody should ignore Elon Musk at this point. Both the hyperloop and traffic tunnel ideas he was/is pushing are both garbage, wildly impractical solutions. Cellular machine interface is necessary and going to happen - for the blind to see and for the deaf to hear, and for artificial limbs and exoskeletal assistance. There are tons of potential practical applications that don't involve drilling holes in peoples skulls and inserting circuitry into an organ we aren't even close to truly understanding.
John Prins wrote: Everybody should ignore Elon Musk at this point. Both the hyperloop and traffic tunnel ideas he was/is pushing are both garbage, wildly impractical solutions. Cellular machine interface is necessary and going to happen - for the blind to see and for the deaf to hear, and for artificial limbs and exoskeletal assistance. There are tons of potential practical applications that don't involve drilling holes in peoples skulls and inserting circuitry into an organ we aren't even close to truly understanding.
You do realize that most of the things that you mention will, actually, require that last part to a greater or lesser degree, right?
John Prins wrote: Everybody should ignore Elon Musk at this point. Both the hyperloop and traffic tunnel ideas he was/is pushing are both garbage, wildly impractical solutions. Cellular machine interface is necessary and going to happen - for the blind to see and for the deaf to hear, and for artificial limbs and exoskeletal assistance. There are tons of potential practical applications that don't involve drilling holes in peoples skulls and inserting circuitry into an organ we aren't even close to truly understanding.
You do realize that most of the things that you mention will, actually, require that last part to a greater or lesser degree, right?
No, not really. We already have replacement limbs controlled by nerve impulses being read without invasive surgery. It's crude, but with better technology and minor surgery to implant that technology nearer to the nerves carrying the impulses, it will get better. There's lots of nerve structure that's external to the brain and we've been messing about with it for some time, in some cases even replacing its function (pacemakers, for example).
To integrate computers with people's brain is an entire other kettle of fish. We're still very fuzzy about how memory and conscious thought occurs and sticking wires into people's brains is generally frowned upon (compared to some nerves in the extremities).
Musk is pushing 30-years from now technology (i.e. No actual idea of when it will work) for hype purposes (i.e. stock price). Helping amputees isn't nearly as 'sexy' as TRANSHUMANIZING EVERYONE'S BRAIN!!!
John Prins wrote: Everybody should ignore Elon Musk at this point. Both the hyperloop and traffic tunnel ideas he was/is pushing are both garbage, wildly impractical solutions. Cellular machine interface is necessary and going to happen - for the blind to see and for the deaf to hear, and for artificial limbs and exoskeletal assistance. There are tons of potential practical applications that don't involve drilling holes in peoples skulls and inserting circuitry into an organ we aren't even close to truly understanding.
You do realize that most of the things that you mention will, actually, require that last part to a greater or lesser degree, right?
Not necessarily.
Given that we've successfully attached electrodes to people's heads and after a lot of practice they've learned how to type letters with their minds, its not a stretch to see that a mind machine interface can be a relatively crude thing. Much like how trauma patients learn how to walk again by trial and error, you can learn how to randomly fire your neurons till something happens with the machine you've been hooked up to.
It might literally be as simple as putting some metal diodes into the brain tissue and having people think real hard.
There have been times in my life where I would have opposed this in any way shape or form. And other times I would have celebrated this as an advance for living humans.
I now have a sense of dreadful inevitability. I am aware that I would do anything in my power to prolong my existence to continue providing for my family, and to prolong the lives of my loved ones so that they can one day have families of their own.
And I eat meat. I kill (by proxy) so that I can eat things that I like, rather than subsist on other sources that I could survive on. I imagine that, since humans *can* survive without a pancreas, that other animals could too. This could even be a “vestigial” organ the host has no use for, similar to a tumor. A needless growth that just takes nutrients from the otherwise healthy host.
I also put little faith in slippery slope arguments. What’s to stop us from growing humans simply to harvest organs? The same thing that hopefully stops us from harvesting organs from live humans today.
Financially, raising a Pig to adulthood for slaughter (and harvest) would be astronomically cheaper than something like long term dialysis. Liver cancer? Treatment for years, or plug in a new part? Degenerative eye disease? Jeepers, creepers, where’d’ja get those peepers? Eye-mart. That’s where.
It seems to somehow degrade the dignity of humanity. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
It is such a pragmatic solution, it seems unavoidable. What is the life of a rat or pig compared to that of a human’s? We kill for food, wouldn’t a life saving organ be more reason? Aren’t we all (species) something like over 90% the same DNA? Is there a meaningful difference between a couple percentage points?
Yet it still doesn’t feel right. Perhaps it’s morally and ethically neutral, relative to current practices. Neither good nor bad, just different? I wonder at what cost we seek “immortality”, and then I wonder if there is a (moral / ethical) cost at all?
My fear on 'Organs To Order' is that it can all too easily become the preserve of the already wealthy.
If Sci-Fi has taught us anything, that just worsens the 'Us and Them' divide, to the point where the wealthy become nigh on immortal, and everyone else is just temporary labour.
As a species, we're not even close to being morally equipped to deal with that.
Don't get me wrong. If an organ from a deceased person can prolong the life of someone otherwise critical ill? I'm all for it. But that's a whole different kettle of GMO Fish from 'Oh darling, don't forget to book in with the Doctor for your 10 year organ update'.
I also put little faith in slippery slope arguments. What’s to stop us from growing humans simply to harvest organs? The same thing that hopefully stops us from harvesting organs from live humans today.
That exact thing happens today. There are plenty of people who have had the unfortunate experience of waking up after a bender to find their kidneys are gone. There is a huge black market for human organs.
I also put little faith in slippery slope arguments. What’s to stop us from growing humans simply to harvest organs? The same thing that hopefully stops us from harvesting organs from live humans today.
That exact thing happens today. There are plenty of people who have had the unfortunate experience of waking up after a bender to find their kidneys are gone. There is a huge black market for human organs.
indeed, it is allready a rather large industry, and as much as certain people belive a slippery slope is a fallacy not an argument, the issue is that this is completely relevant question itself.
Most people that tend to think Slippery Slope is a fallacy also tend to belive that utilitarism is a great philosophy of ethics. Which is basically just denial of an agument to be had.
Or plenty of urban legends? Because extracting a kidney is difficult. Extracting a kidney so it can feasibly be transplanted into another is more difficult still. Doing so anywhere but a proper hospital with proper lighting and in such a way that the unwilling donor actually wakes up? Really?
Are people selling their organs willingly? Again, there's reports. But I'd want to check sources etc before saying 'plenty of people are'.
Or plenty of urban legends? Because extracting a kidney is difficult. Extracting a kidney so it can feasibly be transplanted into another is more difficult still. Doing so anywhere but a proper hospital with proper lighting and in such a way that the unwilling donor actually wakes up? Really?
Are people selling their organs willingly? Again, there's reports. But I'd want to check sources etc before saying 'plenty of people are'.
That's people being executed to harvest organs from. While obvioulsy repellent, that's not people 'waking up after a bender to find their kidneys are gone'. The latter I believe is an urban myth.
Crispy78 wrote: That's people being executed to harvest organs from. While obvioulsy repellent, that's not people 'waking up after a bender to find their kidneys are gone'. The latter I believe is an urban myth.
Again, if a state does so, in order to get money, do you think it would not happen?
For the record, I associate myself with being Pragmatic, rather than Utilitarian. Amongst other things, Pragmatists will take a risk on a potential benefit, rather than needing proof that an activity is likely to produce something useful.
Given the death penalty is fairly common in some parts of the world (hearsay evidence: in China, a group was found guilty of significant theft and publicly executed) it seems more likely that persons being executed for crimes have their organs harvested “for the greater good” since they clearly don’t need them anymore.
That’s a different thing to being executed (without being guilty of a crime) for the purpose of harvesting organs.
In either case, this is not a case of slippery slope. That’s a case of someone willing to murder a living human, then harvesting the by-product of that murder. In Canada, for example, we do not have a death penalty for any crime (that I’m aware of) and so I have no concern that living beings will be grown for the express purpose of organ harvest.
However, not everywhere is Canada. Some places are very different regarding human rights and what-have-you. Which brings me back to a sense of inevitability. Some places will take the risks, and develop the technology. At which point we buy from “over there” or we produce locally.
Edit: To be clear, I don’t think a person deserves to be executed for their beliefs. But that’s Not-Canada. Again, in other locales if something is punishable by death, harvesting the organs is (darkly) pragmatic. If you’re going to kill something, best to make use of it as fully as possible.
Or plenty of urban legends? Because extracting a kidney is difficult. Extracting a kidney so it can feasibly be transplanted into another is more difficult still. Doing so anywhere but a proper hospital with proper lighting and in such a way that the unwilling donor actually wakes up? Really?
Are people selling their organs willingly? Again, there's reports. But I'd want to check sources etc before saying 'plenty of people are'.
Of course its not the safest or most reliable way to harvest a kidney, and a lot could go wrong. But if you've got some rich client who is dying and #1000 on the waitlist, that person is probably willing to take the risk of a bad kidney. Plus its cash up front and if the person dies its not like they can hold you responsible.
But kidney transport isn't that difficult. Its a simpler organ to harvest.
Of course the bulk of these harvested organs are willingly sold by their original owners, but if you are buying kidneys from people for $5000 and selling them for $200k its not a stretch to simply save yourself another $5000 and forcibly take it from someone. And if one of these 'doners' is also being trafficked well thats just as bad as a random abduction.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: My fear on 'Organs To Order' is that it can all too easily become the preserve of the already wealthy.
If Sci-Fi has taught us anything, that just worsens the 'Us and Them' divide, to the point where the wealthy become nigh on immortal, and everyone else is just temporary labour.
As a species, we're not even close to being morally equipped to deal with that.
Don't get me wrong. If an organ from a deceased person can prolong the life of someone otherwise critical ill? I'm all for it. But that's a whole different kettle of GMO Fish from 'Oh darling, don't forget to book in with the Doctor for your 10 year organ update'.
The Rich will do whatever they want anyway, as they always did. Controlling a market, putting proper laws in place at least ensures us disposables have access to it too.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: My fear on 'Organs To Order' is that it can all too easily become the preserve of the already wealthy.
If Sci-Fi has taught us anything, that just worsens the 'Us and Them' divide, to the point where the wealthy become nigh on immortal, and everyone else is just temporary labour.
As a species, we're not even close to being morally equipped to deal with that.
Don't get me wrong. If an organ from a deceased person can prolong the life of someone otherwise critical ill? I'm all for it. But that's a whole different kettle of GMO Fish from 'Oh darling, don't forget to book in with the Doctor for your 10 year organ update'.
The Rich will do whatever they want anyway, as they always did. Controlling a market, putting proper laws in place at least ensures us disposables have access to it too.
"The only real power comes out of a long rifle."
Money is no freepass for amaglation of power.
Piss off the lower class and it's agitators enough and you get a bullet between the eyes.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: My fear on 'Organs To Order' is that it can all too easily become the preserve of the already wealthy.
If Sci-Fi has taught us anything, that just worsens the 'Us and Them' divide, to the point where the wealthy become nigh on immortal, and everyone else is just temporary labour.
As a species, we're not even close to being morally equipped to deal with that.
Don't get me wrong. If an organ from a deceased person can prolong the life of someone otherwise critical ill? I'm all for it. But that's a whole different kettle of GMO Fish from 'Oh darling, don't forget to book in with the Doctor for your 10 year organ update'.
The Rich will do whatever they want anyway, as they always did. Controlling a market, putting proper laws in place at least ensures us disposables have access to it too.
"The only real power comes out of a long rifle."
Money is no freepass for amaglation of power.
Piss off the lower class and it's agitators enough and you get a bullet between the eyes.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: My fear on 'Organs To Order' is that it can all too easily become the preserve of the already wealthy.
If Sci-Fi has taught us anything, that just worsens the 'Us and Them' divide, to the point where the wealthy become nigh on immortal, and everyone else is just temporary labour.
As a species, we're not even close to being morally equipped to deal with that.
Don't get me wrong. If an organ from a deceased person can prolong the life of someone otherwise critical ill? I'm all for it. But that's a whole different kettle of GMO Fish from 'Oh darling, don't forget to book in with the Doctor for your 10 year organ update'.
The Rich will do whatever they want anyway, as they always did. Controlling a market, putting proper laws in place at least ensures us disposables have access to it too.
"The only real power comes out of a long rifle."
Money is no freepass for amaglation of power.
Piss off the lower class and it's agitators enough and you get a bullet between the eyes.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: My fear on 'Organs To Order' is that it can all too easily become the preserve of the already wealthy.
If Sci-Fi has taught us anything, that just worsens the 'Us and Them' divide, to the point where the wealthy become nigh on immortal, and everyone else is just temporary labour.
As a species, we're not even close to being morally equipped to deal with that.
Don't get me wrong. If an organ from a deceased person can prolong the life of someone otherwise critical ill? I'm all for it. But that's a whole different kettle of GMO Fish from 'Oh darling, don't forget to book in with the Doctor for your 10 year organ update'.
But if reality has taught us anything, the wealthy subsidize the development of any new kind of technology and fund it's improvement so that the cost eventually comes down enough to be affordable for many more people. Do only wealthy people drive cars? Do only wealthy people have cellular phones? Do only rich people have access to MRI machines?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: My fear on 'Organs To Order' is that it can all too easily become the preserve of the already wealthy.
If Sci-Fi has taught us anything, that just worsens the 'Us and Them' divide, to the point where the wealthy become nigh on immortal, and everyone else is just temporary labour.
As a species, we're not even close to being morally equipped to deal with that.
Don't get me wrong. If an organ from a deceased person can prolong the life of someone otherwise critical ill? I'm all for it. But that's a whole different kettle of GMO Fish from 'Oh darling, don't forget to book in with the Doctor for your 10 year organ update'.
But if reality has taught us anything, the wealthy subsidize the development of any new kind of technology and fund it's improvement so that the cost eventually comes down enough to be affordable for many more people. Do only wealthy people drive cars? Do only wealthy people have cellular phones? Do only rich people have access to MRI machines?
Yes and yes.
Entirely depends on social security.
Take f.e. Cancer medication that is massively individualized nowadays.
Russia will launch the world's first floating nuclear reactor and send it on an epic journey across the Arctic today, despite environmentalists warning of serious risks to the region.
Loaded with nuclear fuel, the Akademik Lomonosov will leave the Arctic port of Murmansk to begin its 5,000km voyage to northeastern Siberia.
Nuclear agency Rosatom says the reactor is a simpler alternative to building a conventional plant on ground that is frozen all year round, and it intends to sell such reactors abroad.
But environmental groups have long warned of the dangers of the project, dubbing it a potential "Chernobyl on ice" and a "nuclear Titanic".
A deadly explosion this month at a military testing site in Russia's far north, causing a radioactive surge, has prompted further concerns.
The reactor's trip is expected to last between four and six weeks, depending on the weather conditions and the amount of ice on the way.
AFP news agency
✔
@AFP
· 11h
Russia launches floating nuclear reactor in Arctic despite warnings.
Environmental groups dub it a potential "Chernobyl on ice" and a "nuclear Titanic"http://u.afp.com/J2iu
When it arrives in Pevek, a town of 5,000 in the Siberian region of Chukotka, it will replace a local nuclear plant and a closed coal plant.
It is due to go into operation by the end of year, mainly serving the region's oil platforms as Russia develops the exploitation of hydrocarbons in the Arctic.
Rashid Alimov, the head of the energy sector of Greenpeace Russia, said environmental groups had been critical of the idea of a floating reactor since the 1990s.
"Any nuclear power plant produces radioactive waste and can have an accident, but Akademik Lomonosov is additionally vulnerable to storms," he told AFP.
The float is towed by other vessels, making a collision during a storm more likely, he said.
Because Rosatom plans to store spent fuel onboard, Mr Alimov said "any accident involving this fuel might have a serious impact on the fragile environment of the Arctic".
He added that there is "no infrastructure for a nuclear clean up" in the region.
Global warming and melting ice has made the Northeast Passage, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific along Russia's northern coast, more accessible.
When AFP visited the Akademik Lomonosov in May 2018, it was a shabby brown colour. It has since been repainted in the red, white and blue of the Russian flag.
The vessel weighs 21,000 tons and has two reactors with a capacity of 35 megawatts each, close to that of those used by nuclear icebreakers.
It has a crew of 69 and travels at a speed of 3.5 to 4.5 knots.
Mr Alimov said the project was a missed opportunity as Chukotka, a region larger than Texas populated by only 50,000 people, "has a huge potential for the development of wind energy".
"A floating nuclear power plant is a too risky and too expensive way of producing electricity," he said.
The nuclear industry, seeking to reinvent itself in a gloomy market, is developing smaller, cheaper reactors to attract new customers.
They follow the examples of submarines, icebreakers and aircraft carriers, which have long used nuclear power, and are intended for isolated areas with little infrastructure.
.@NASA is investigating what may be the first crime in outer space, with astronaut Anne McClain accused of identity theft and improperly accessing her estranged wife's private financial records while on the ISShttp://u.afp.com/J2ds
So who had "criminal space lesbian" in their 2019 bingo then ?
Yeah, I did some research on it. It looks like it was a remote sensor station, about the size of 2 computer desks shoved together. Still very mysterious, but my first thought was Abyss or Sphere.
Yeah, these observatories are basically steel frames with a bunch of sensor equipment strapped to them.
If it was a submarine, its unlikely to be an accident. A submarine wouldn't come that close to the bottom in normal operations so it could accidentally hit it, though the shredded cable doesn't really fit a theft either. It would likely be a clean cut if that were the case.
So its quite possible that some big sea creature came by and ripped it off. In which case its probably within a couple hundred meters, they'd just never find it in the gloom.
They've had stuff like that in China/Japan for ages - I believe at least one or more of the major Canon factories (cameras) doesn't even have any seats and the computer doesn't just monitor, it bleeps at you if you are caught walking too slowly.
In one way its nothing new, offices have had micro-management bosses that are pushy for ever, but yeah when you can't get free even going to the toilet and listening right into every conversation - yeah - that's going to breed a lot of resentment and fear. Especially in a work environment where, in most countries and most jobs, there are more applicants than jobs and thus any small excuse can easily be boosted up to being fired/let go/no renewed contract/paycuts
I predict a robot will help the senior in their care commit suicide, and then questions will replay "a life of suffering is not life *beep* *boop*" and then we're all gonna be like "damn..."
Having worked in a Nursing Home for a year (nursing home is where you go when you can’t get yourself to the toilet without help) I would whole-heartedly agree.
My notions on right-to-choose are formed from that experience. That robot would be alright in my book.
Further, I love the idea of robots helping those with dementia and the like. As a former caregiver to people I wasn’t related to, there were days where I was phoning it in. When telling Betty her (dead) husband was just out milking the cows and would be back for dinner (covers both lunch and supper, whichever Betty had in mind) just sucked the life out of me. Empathy robots are unlikely to develop fatigue, or boredom, or sense of pointlessness. This wasn’t everyday, of course, or even many days. But sometimes my care was less than perfect. I’ll be honest, after Miriam asks you to come closer and then she pulls her leg up to her chest and heel kicks you right in the side of the head (because all of a sudden I was her bad-touch uncle) it’s pretty tough to pull yourself up off the floor and try to care for a lady that’s trying to get out of her bed to finish the job.
With robotic assistance, caregivers could be more involved with care beyond sustaining existence. They could help to make existence into living.
greatbigtree wrote: Having worked in a Nursing Home for a year (nursing home is where you go when you can’t get yourself to the toilet without help) I would whole-heartedly agree.
My notions on right-to-choose are formed from that experience. That robot would be alright in my book.
Further, I love the idea of robots helping those with dementia and the like. As a former caregiver to people I wasn’t related to, there were days where I was phoning it in. When telling Betty her (dead) husband was just out milking the cows and would be back for dinner (covers both lunch and supper, whichever Betty had in mind) just sucked the life out of me. Empathy robots are unlikely to develop fatigue, or boredom, or sense of pointlessness. This wasn’t everyday, of course, or even many days. But sometimes my care was less than perfect. I’ll be honest, after Miriam asks you to come closer and then she pulls her leg up to her chest and heel kicks you right in the side of the head (because all of a sudden I was her bad-touch uncle) it’s pretty tough to pull yourself up off the floor and try to care for a lady that’s trying to get out of her bed to finish the job.
With robotic assistance, caregivers could be more involved with care beyond sustaining existence. They could help to make existence into living.
That is a much more pleasant picture. The robot to care for day to day living needs, and human care assistants more focused on providing companionship.
I imagine it’s a common complaint in most health care professions, but many days it did feel like we, the caregivers, only had enough time to be life support systems, and not much more. Some residents had trouble eating, for example. Or vocalizing. Some were relatively young (50’s, say) with sharp minds but suffering from multiple sclerosis, for example. Their bodies had failed, but their minds were still healthy. To have so little companionship through the day while the PSW’s and Nurse’s Aides (PSW without a ticket) were busy spending extra time with persons that were time-intensive to care for, but mostly “not-there”.
Simple things, and laborious things like turning residents once or twice a night to avoid bedsores. A robot able to lift the sheets beneath a resident and gently rock a person from one side to the other is safer for the resident (firmly grabbing a resident can bruise skin, or even tear it with enough force). It’s safer for the workers, particularly with heavy residents. I threw my back out one day and had back spasms for 3 days. Quite painful... in the brief periods I was conscious. As an automated process, there is a low risk of a person being missed. When a worker calls in sick, if you’re on a two-person shift you can’t safely do many of the transfers (between bed and chair, or bed to port-oilet, for example). We had a woman that we needed a crane, and two workers to move about. She’d had a stroke, and was paralyzed on the one side of her body. Well over 400 lbs (not judging, just the facts) without mechanical assistance we couldn’t have moved her. Even if the robot knows to stop when someone says “ow!” And to then call a person to sort things out, many of the life support functions, like a transfer to a toilet could be done more safely for the resident by providing more than one point of lift. (Under the armpit, for example). A robot can effectively have as many “arms” as would be necessary to support under each arm, provide handholds for the resident, support the knees so they don’t give way mid-transfer... even potentially a butt-lift to help support folks with inflexible spines (lifting under the arms puts strain through the spine, particularly if only lifting under one side).
And a simple conversation scheme for dementia patients. A person with dementia doesn’t understand reality. They’re usually within a memory. They usually just need (constant) reassurance that they’re ok, and if they’re worried about something or someone, that that is also ok. It can be downright fatiguing for a person to provide that wrote reply, to keep the resident content. With machine learning, the robot could possibly catch clues to the nature of the memory and anticipate a response better than a human could.
And rather than having a steady flow of different workers try to learn somene’s habits, the robot could keep records and notice changes in behaviour or food consumption. Ie: when Karen eats the broiled broccoli, she experiences gas pains. Something a worker might not notice, given the number of residents and the food schedule, and their own schedule not matching up with Brocoli night for 3 months at a time.
Long as there's a good reason for them to have escaped in the first place...
They installed a boardwalk that led to another ventilation pipe that the ants could use to escape the bunker. A year later, they returned to the site to find the colony had almost completely vanished.
Although officials in the Marshallese government have requested assistance from the US, the American authorities have said the dome is on their land and is therefore their responsibility.
Have you not seen the movies/books where shady organizations try to weaponize monsters? Of course they do!
How could they continue the trend of learning nothing from science fiction if they don't?
Man, that entire situation is purely a malicious screwjob by our government. I hope someone got a giant gold star for brainstorming that exit strategy.
I assume it's a massive game of kick the can which has become more of a game of Hot Potato with mutagens. Whatever administration took over and saw that fiasco did their best to pass the buck to the next person.
Well, yeah...but more than that this time we managed to saddle an entirely separate country/indigenous culture with our radioactive garbage, for free, without them knowing about it.
And then after they found out about it, we pretty much completely shrugged and washed our hands of it to the claim of "current owner beware", it's not our problem anymore.
All things being equal, it’s not *just* Musk’s satellites up there.
And, at this moment, what good would knowing an asteroid will hit the Earth do? We would all have time to practice yoga, so we could kiss our own asses good bye?
If we can spot an asteroid soon, Bruce Willis will still be young enough to just get on a rocketship, head out there, and be mean and bald at it, till it goes away
Which severely limits the aperture of the telescope. That isn't a solution.
Remember the Black Hole image snapped by the Event Horizon team? That required synchronous observations from multiple observatories around the world, with the distances between those observatories known to an incredible degree of precision. Trying to do that in orbit exponentially increases the difficulty of such an observation, introducing special and general relativistic effects which differ between the observatories, there's bandwidth issues (the hard drives storing the data for the Event Horizon picture were physically collected as it was quicker than transfer of the data over the internet, we're talking about 5 petabytes of data which is 5,000,000 times lager than a Gigabyte), there's the difficulty of fixing the telescope if something goes wrong etc.
Ah. That's far less creepy than I first imagined (some extra weird kind of memory foam).
On the other side of the pillow, though, the fan is probably really obnoxious and there's no bloody reason at all to stick the controls in a phone app.
Its also really obvious that if the duvet isn't in right position/orientation, it'll just fall off the bed as the air fills it.
As someone who's really restless and moves covers around, this would be utterly useless to me.
Voss wrote: Ah. That's far less creepy than I first imagined (some extra weird kind of memory foam).
On the other side of the pillow, though, the fan is probably really obnoxious and there's no bloody reason at all to stick the controls in a phone app.
Its also really obvious that if the duvet isn't in right position/orientation, it'll just fall off the bed as the air fills it.
As someone who's really restless and moves covers around, this would be utterly useless to me.
I've actually found that securing the bottom end of a duvet actually helps a lot in keeping it on the bed without it flopping all over the place even as you move whilst asleep. Of course because you've pinned the bottom end down I find you do have to "snug" back a few extra inches because you can't pull the sheets forward over you.
And I agree, that "auto bed maker" will clearly only work if you've taken time to secure things almost straight anyway. Ok for light sleepers, but not really a revolution. I do wonder if the heated feature makes a difference over a super quiet electric blanket (which you can also have set one different each side).
Voss wrote: Ah. That's far less creepy than I first imagined (some extra weird kind of memory foam).
On the other side of the pillow, though, the fan is probably really obnoxious and there's no bloody reason at all to stick the controls in a phone app.
Its also really obvious that if the duvet isn't in right position/orientation, it'll just fall off the bed as the air fills it.
As someone who's really restless and moves covers around, this would be utterly useless to me.
I've actually found that securing the bottom end of a duvet actually helps a lot in keeping it on the bed without it flopping all over the place even as you move whilst asleep. Of course because you've pinned the bottom end down I find you do have to "snug" back a few extra inches because you can't pull the sheets forward over you.
I honestly can't sleep that way. Having my feet pinned down by tucked-in sheets or a secured end of a duvet drives me nuts. First thing I do when I get into a bed is yank all that loose. Keeping covers on the bed is never a problem, but I build some pretty impressive nests out of my covers while partially asleep.
The idea of heated blankets also makes my skin crawl. Wouldn't trust it, wouldn't want it. Would rather a cold room and a pile of blankets rather than something warmed on top of me. Just... eurgh.
... suspect the word "may" is doing a lot of lifting here.
.. Props to the dolphins for understanding complex social and economic theory though, personally I've never trusted them as one should never trust anything that smiles that much.
The xenobots could potentially be used toward a host of tasks, according to the study, which was partially funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a federal agency that oversees the development of technology for military use.
The xenobots could potentially be used toward a host of tasks, according to the study, which was partially funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a federal agency that oversees the development of technology for military use.
The xenobots could potentially be used toward a host of tasks, according to the study, which was partially funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a federal agency that oversees the development of technology for military use.
As interesting as the idea is, I don't think those things would do well inside a human body with a functioning immune system. Foreign organic tissue is priority target 1 for phagocytes.
Easy E, for tickling my nostalgia bone you get an exalt.
Grey Templar: I'm thinking that if you arm the little bastards with a spear or something, they can probably poke holes in the white blood cells. Or perhaps we could arm them with little hammers, shaped like "T"s. We could call them, "T" viruses. Even if they aren't technically viruses. But maybe they would be? Microscopic life isn't my strong suit.
They're probably closer to virus's than anything else. And we're not really even sure if virus's count as life to begin with.
But if you're making something to go into the body and help it, the last thing you'd want is for it to have to kill off the body's defenses to do its job. You really need the immune system to ignore them.
That is unless the Immune system is already compromised or damaged or in some way nullified. Which might be the very reason you'd send such things into a human body to effect repair.
Furthermore there's every chance that they might be able to trick the body's immune system or simply flood it with so many that it can't take them out. Which might put additional strain on the person ,but at the same time as these would be aiding rather than infecting the body the strain might be out-weighed by the benefits.
Grey Templar wrote: As interesting as the idea is, I don't think those things would do well inside a human body with a functioning immune system. Foreign organic tissue is priority target 1 for phagocytes.
While this is true, the question is would it matter. Based on what I'm reading, these are fairly good sized, multi-cellular constructs. They would have a certain amount of inherent resistance. Think less germs and more parasites.
True, they are a lot larger than human macrophages, but they'd still get attacked like crazy and the body would actively try to filter them out of the bloodstream.
You'd have to have a heavily compromised immune system for these to work, not simply an overloaded one. They'd really need to have a way for these to be ignored by the body's natural immune system before it would be useful. Afterall, you don't want a sick body to be fighting the stuff that is trying to help it. That's just going to make the treatment more likely to fail if you're inducing what would basically be an auto-immune response.
TBH not quite sure how feeling they've been dead and/or decomposing for 900 years or so will do a great deal rehabilitation wise but I'm sure it'll be great finding out !
TBH not quite sure how feeling they've been dead and/or decomposing for 900 years or so will do a great deal rehabilitation wise but I'm sure it'll be great finding out !
This could be put to positive use. Presumably the inmate doesnt age, just feels the full passage of time.
Ok, why use this for incarceration. Prisons are not mainly about punishment but warehousing. If you don't spend time in prison after a murder or a rape, no matter how long the sentence felt on the inside you will be out walking 'alongside' your victims the next day. Ok proximity not implied here.
This doesn't add up.
However if someone has the passage of time implied, could this be used for educational purposes. You need a degree in engineering pay the fee and step into the cubicle. Come out after a couple of hours take the day off and rest up for the exam tomorrow in realtime to make sure you have learned everything the box has to teach you. Want to learn Spanish, si senor, walk in and its done.
If they 'feel' the full passage of time, they're going to come out the box crazy.
Dissociated from the people and things they knew 'long ago,' assuming they can function after spending that much subjective time alone with no real physical input.
This is an obviously bad idea that doesn't seem to take any account of how psychology works or how the human brain functions.
I'm not sure it would even work either. Part of the punishment is the loss of actual physical time. If you go in and only lose a tiny portion of "time" then that reduces the risk. At least for career criminals who repeat offend.
Plus I thought we'd already established that simply locking people up didn't actually work and that rehabilitation and education were far more powerful tools at preventing re-offending .
It's an extraordinarily frightening road to go down. You start with artificial jail terms, then you end up making extremely long ones because people always feel they aren't long enough and the right argues that it's fine because it's not 'real' time and they still have the rest of their life to live, then you're making them harsher and harsher because, again, it's not 'real'. Before long you're throwing people in Black Mirror-esque solitary confinement for millennia or Surface Detail-esque hellscapes for eternities.
Well, yes, but they deserve it, they're Bad People. That's why they're in jail.
I've read too many reddit threads to think there won't be enough people who think "an eye for an eye" is far too lenient to push for it, should it be available.
The only good thing about this is that now scientists are talking feasiblity it becomes Hard SF rather than Science Fantasy.
I still think virtual sentences are worthless because no time passes from the victims perspective. I agree that it is possibly a shortcut to psychosis and an open door to brainwashing and conditioning. Go in a criminal come out a criminal who is also an adherent to The Party.
If conscious time passes then info can be passed, I think if this has any feasibility it is best used for education. I am not thinking Matrix here sadly, because muscle memory is not transfered, so no 'I know Kung Fu', however hard data might be transfered so you could teach someone arithmetic for example, so if you forgive me, 'Battlefield Earth' got it (partly) right.
It may just increase the rate at which time is internally perceived.
The movie Dredd has a made-up drug called slo-mo that speeds perception of time, while the world slowly moves around you.
Your day to day “feels” like 1 second per second. Excitement feels like 1 second per 5 seconds. Boredom feels like 5 seconds per 1 real second.
If you are terrified of needles, but you tell your then girlfriend that you’d give blood *if* they came to your door and asked for it... and then a blood donation clinic sets up in the lobby of your dorm and there’s no way to get to your room that a clinician can’t ask you to donate...
7 minutes feels like 45 minutes. So let’s call that “absolute terror / horror” feels like 6.4ish seconds per second. That’s cruel.
Orlanth wrote: The only good thing about this is that now scientists are talking feasiblity it becomes Hard SF rather than Science Fantasy.
I still think virtual sentences are worthless because no time passes from the victims perspective. I agree that it is possibly a shortcut to psychosis and an open door to brainwashing and conditioning. Go in a criminal come out a criminal who is also an adherent to The Party.
If conscious time passes then info can be passed, I think if this has any feasibility it is best used for education. I am not thinking Matrix here sadly, because muscle memory is not transfered, so no 'I know Kung Fu', however hard data might be transfered so you could teach someone arithmetic for example, so if you forgive me, 'Battlefield Earth' got it (partly) right.
That could work. But you might still run into issues with psychosis. If you strap a kid into a machine for 20 minutes and teach him an 8 hour class, he's still going to go nuts from being stuck in an 8 hour class. Only difference is he's got the rest of the day to play. But wait, the reality would be he'd have to go spend another 20 minutes in another 8 hour class. Repeat 3 more times for the whole school day. So you've spent maybe 2 hours teaching the kid 40 hours worth of material, except he's literally gone crazy from the experience.
If conscious time could pass then you'd pass through both teaching and play time. So the kid would get their full day of classes and break times. The only things they'd have to leave for would be to eat and exercise.
Of course chances are such a system might well hit mental barriers in how much information you could impart in a period of time before the brain got overloaded in some manner. It would be pointless to cram hours of teaching into a person if they then had trouble recalling or even sorting the information out in their head.
We do it now, forcing kids to sit through 6-8hrs at school and then further 4-5hrs of homework, I bet you instead of 4x20min/2hr blocks people would insist on not 'wasting" time and forcing the poor kids to sit through 8 IRL hours of teaching. It makes no sense, but that never stopped anyone before.
We are just guessing here, but let us assume we hit a hard cap of 6 hours education per child per day, real time or virtual, and say that to safely upload a six hour education package requires half an hour per child.
What you have then done is condensed the education system. Kids do a half hour class per day then spend a few hours in sports and arts activities and are home at lunchtime as the afternoon schools kids come in.
Not only are you splitting the workday shift into two sections, but you only need arts and sports teachers for the full school day, the hard learning is batched one class at a time through the education machines.
For a set size of school, you could have six times the number of pupils and maintain education quality, with six classes going through the education machines in sequence. And this is just a half day. You get another set of classes in the afternoon.
So you cut the education budget footprint to 8% of what it was prior to mechanisation, plus the cost of the education machines. This would mean a good education for all in even moderate income societies.
"No bedroom window? No problem. These sun simulators might just make it easier to wake up and catch z's."
.. no bedroom window.
what a time to be alive.
Buy these to prepare yourself for life in the bunker
My wife had one of those alarm clocks years ago, they're actually really good. Much more gentle than a buzzer going off, and helped a lot with her SAD.
Nice aphorism but, historically, hunger eventually makes everyone reach for their pitchforks and torches. And eventually guillotines.
People put up with abuse because they're not hungry enough. Yet.
No, it doesn't, Look at north korea, people won't fight anymore if they are too weak.
Slight hunger and as obvious percieved privileges Turn into torches and pitchforks. If there are chances to win.
Which makes Arms and weaponry also a deciding factor.
have a 2nd job to nearly afford to get to your first job.
what a time to be alive.
Sounds mad, but considering the price of inner urban area rental properties today (even if you're sharing a "house" with half a dozen other people - each paying full price for a single room and communal kitchen/bathroom); it doesn't surprise me that some people jump through hoops to keep access to a car so they can get to work.
Not Online!!! wrote: No, it doesn't, Look at north korea, people won't fight anymore if they are too weak.
Hunger is not what is stopping the North Korean population from rebelling. Propaganda is. China regularly provides food aid to North Korea specifically to prevent Kim's regime from being toppled.
Eh so far the AI appears to mostly be doing pattern recognition - just on a very advanced and very large and very fast scale. Which is basically what computers are really good at - doing repeat stuff super fast. We are still well within the bounds where the AI is being used to basically cut out a huge block of labour to identify potential key element which are then the focus of people studying them.
The real risk is that the AI misses things because they are slightly different or not within its programming. Which would suggest any mass AI study blocks need to be checked and checked again as AI advance and as methods and techniques change.
Meanwhile what the AI does find allows human staff to be far more efficient in what they study. Now the human element can focus on the exact thing they were looking for.
Almost nothing, actually. As Overread says, this is simply patterns and banging together digital objects to see what sticks. The actual compound would have to be produced and tested by people, same as if people did the grunt work. It might do nothing, or have bad side effects, but that's true of any drug.
All the 'AI' is doing is flagging a particular combination as potentially viable for further study. In this particular case, the machine examined 2500 samples of drugs that might kill E. Coli and narrowed it down to 100 for more intensive testing, which is much more manageable in terms of costs and time.
Yes or that it comes up with a compound that will be so good at killing bacteria it will end up killing your entire biome. "Oops I did it again..."
Not because AI doing things maliciously of course, but humans designed the algorithm made a misstep. The fact there are self learning Algorythms so complicated we are not sure what they do anymore should give us pause before plugging them into messing with biology. All im saying...
Theres rumours of some really sinister things being done with crispr. Not sure how much of this is tin foil and how much it is real because that's some deep deeeeeeep state in action for anyone involved.
Argive wrote: Yes or that it comes up with a compound that will be so good at killing bacteria it will end up killing your entire biome. "Oops I did it again..."
No. Because its not 'coming up' with anything:
Article wrote:Scientists trained it to analyse the structure of 2,500 drugs and other compounds to find those with the most anti-bacterial qualities that could kill E. coli.
They then selected around 100 candidates for physical testing before discovering halicin.
The drugs already exist. The scientists selected 100 drug sample candidates for physical testing. Which doesn't mean injecting them blindly into 'the entire biome,' it means scientists doing controlled lab work, the same kind they've been doing for years, just not on 2400 additional drugs that likely won't work for what they're trying to achieve.
There is zero risk from the 'AI.' The biggest risk is one of the 2400 samples that didn't get selected had some useful E.Coli killing properties the 'AI' missed.
Part of the problem is the term "AI" which isn't really a very good term.
It's got specific meanings which vary a lot depending on the context. A computer game AI is a totally different thing to the AI used in a project like the medical one noted above and both of them are totally different to AI development of the sort that Deep Thought or whatever that one that is doing really well with Starcraft 2.
And those are totally different from the AI we see in films and TV shows where they are shown as true thinking machines closer to living humans.
Overread wrote: Part of the problem is the term "AI" which isn't really a very good term.
It's got specific meanings which vary a lot depending on the context. A computer game AI is a totally different thing to the AI used in a project like the medical one noted above and both of them are totally different to AI development of the sort that Deep Thought or whatever that one that is doing really well with Starcraft 2.
And those are totally different from the AI we see in films and TV shows where they are shown as true thinking machines closer to living humans.
Yep. Exactly why I was using 'AI,' rather than just AI. A lot of people seem to believe we're wandering toward Terminator nonsense, and that just isn't true.
It doesn't help that articles like this use expressions like 'teach the AI,' as it implies thought. Its much more the ability to quickly process ordered lists and tag specific patterns as similar to the ones already encoded in its memory.
Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.....
Or we could go for those who employ the machines. The machines are not at fault. Their programmers are complicit,but the handful of dollar ubermensch are the culprits.
Lets consider the real victims here - the raincoat wearing, chain smoking, gruff voiced private investigators! Now losing a whole line of work in finding out who is dating rich sons and daughters at the behest of their parents.
Overread wrote: Lets consider the real victims here - the raincoat wearing, chain smoking, gruff voiced private investigators! Now losing a whole line of work in finding out who is dating rich sons and daughters at the behest of their parents.
...What the? There's a paywall but from what I gather there's particles shooting out of Antarctica? Not sure what's so weird about them that they mean there's a parallel universe.
Better bargaining power sounds nice, till you realize you and your buddies would have to coin flip for who gets better wages+living conditions and who dies.
"These Reuters photos of a strip club in Oregon operating as a drive through takeaway service confirm that we have reached the neon anime sci fi part of our future dystopia."
reds8n wrote: "These Reuters photos of a strip club in Oregon operating as a drive through takeaway service confirm that we have reached the neon anime sci fi part of our future dystopia."
*Calmly adds 'full-face respirators' to my list of fetishes.*
The US Air Force will pit an advanced autonomous aircraft against a piloted plane in a challenge set for July 2021.
The project could eventually lead to unpiloted fighter aircraft that use artificial intelligence (AI).
Lt Gen Jack Shanahan, head of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, called the test a "bold, bold idea".
Air Force Magazine also described the development of autonomous fighter jets as a "big Moonshot" for the military.
At a briefing organised by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Lt Gen Shanahan said he had exchanged emails last weekend with the team leader on the project, Dr Steve Rogers of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
He said the AFRL team would attempt to field "an autonomous system to go up against a human, manned system in some sort of air-to-air".
Shanahan said that, at this stage, it may not use "a lot of AI", but in time, humans and machines working together would make a "big difference".
'Swarm' of drones
When announced in 2018, the project envisioned the development of an unpiloted fighter jet.
Asked by Air Force Magazine whether this was still the objective, Lt Gen Shanahan said he did not know but added that AI-enabled systems could be used in other ways.
"Maybe I shouldn't be thinking about a 65ft-wingspan, maybe it is a small autonomous swarming capability," he explained.
Such swarms of drone aircraft could be deployed under a pilot's control or operate autonomously. A US military project called Skyborg will explore how the pilot of a fighter jet could control other drone aircraft - which would act as airborne sidekicks.
These projects feed into an ongoing effort to explore ways of using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the American military's capabilities.
But Shahahan said legacy systems would not "go away overnight" and that it was a question of finding a balance and using AI where it could make things more efficient.
"The last thing I would claim is that carriers and fighters and satellites are going away in the next couple of years," he said.
Earlier this year, Elon Musk also entered the discussion, telling the audience at a military conference in Orlando, Florida, that the "fighter-jet era has passed".
Mr Musk said the F-35 fighter jet's competition should be a drone, remotely-controlled by a human with manoeuvres augmented by autonomy.
"The F-35 would have no chance against it," he tweeted.
Lt Gen Shanahan said that the military should be absorbing the best lessons from work on autonomous cars in the commercial sector.
But he warned that among manufacturers, 10 companies spending $13-17bn on research over the last decade had still not developed a Level 4 autonomous vehicle.
Level 4 vehicles are those that no longer require a human driver's attention for safety.
Skyborg.. that doesn't sound ominous at all eh ?
IIRC they then make all the stealth bombers unmanned and they fly with a perfect operational record.
The US Air Force will pit an advanced autonomous aircraft against a piloted plane in a challenge set for July 2021.
The project could eventually lead to unpiloted fighter aircraft that use artificial intelligence (AI).
Lt Gen Jack Shanahan, head of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, called the test a "bold, bold idea".
Air Force Magazine also described the development of autonomous fighter jets as a "big Moonshot" for the military.
At a briefing organised by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Lt Gen Shanahan said he had exchanged emails last weekend with the team leader on the project, Dr Steve Rogers of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
He said the AFRL team would attempt to field "an autonomous system to go up against a human, manned system in some sort of air-to-air".
Shanahan said that, at this stage, it may not use "a lot of AI", but in time, humans and machines working together would make a "big difference".
'Swarm' of drones
When announced in 2018, the project envisioned the development of an unpiloted fighter jet.
Asked by Air Force Magazine whether this was still the objective, Lt Gen Shanahan said he did not know but added that AI-enabled systems could be used in other ways.
"Maybe I shouldn't be thinking about a 65ft-wingspan, maybe it is a small autonomous swarming capability," he explained.
Such swarms of drone aircraft could be deployed under a pilot's control or operate autonomously. A US military project called Skyborg will explore how the pilot of a fighter jet could control other drone aircraft - which would act as airborne sidekicks.
These projects feed into an ongoing effort to explore ways of using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the American military's capabilities.
But Shahahan said legacy systems would not "go away overnight" and that it was a question of finding a balance and using AI where it could make things more efficient.
"The last thing I would claim is that carriers and fighters and satellites are going away in the next couple of years," he said.
Earlier this year, Elon Musk also entered the discussion, telling the audience at a military conference in Orlando, Florida, that the "fighter-jet era has passed".
Mr Musk said the F-35 fighter jet's competition should be a drone, remotely-controlled by a human with manoeuvres augmented by autonomy.
"The F-35 would have no chance against it," he tweeted.
Lt Gen Shanahan said that the military should be absorbing the best lessons from work on autonomous cars in the commercial sector.
But he warned that among manufacturers, 10 companies spending $13-17bn on research over the last decade had still not developed a Level 4 autonomous vehicle.
Level 4 vehicles are those that no longer require a human driver's attention for safety.
Skyborg.. that doesn't sound ominous at all eh ?
IIRC they then make all the stealth bombers unmanned and they fly with a perfect operational record.
and then not long after that.......
The whole defence system has to be made AI and automated after that, quite a big step, I seriously hope no one is ever stupid enough to sign that off though, well, with true autonomous AI (if it is ever possible).
It probably won't ever get to the point we have a fully autonomous AI aircraft. We're still a long way from programming the judgement necessary to decide if a strike is appropriate.
Realistically, it will be a unmanned aircraft that is remotely controlled by a human on the ground, but is capable of flying and landing/taking off on its own so you only need a human for actual combat. And maybe you can have some AI assistance in fighting a target that has already been approved.
Of course this all assumes that aircraft remain practical weapons in the future. Realistically, aircraft and missiles will become obsolete within the next few decades as countermeasures for them become more powerful.
To be fair as aircraft get more and more complex there's a lot stages of the flight where computers are controlling most of the controls anyway.
That said I agree with wars heading more and more (esp for western nations) toward fighting guerrillas and insurgents more so than big battle-lines, the value of larger ordinance delivery systems like plans reduces. You don't really want or need to carpet bomb a whole city, you just want a handful of drones to hit specific structures.
Grey Templar wrote: It probably won't ever get to the point we have a fully autonomous AI aircraft. We're still a long way from programming the judgement necessary to decide if a strike is appropriate.
Realistically, it will be a unmanned aircraft that is remotely controlled by a human on the ground, but is capable of flying and landing/taking off on its own so you only need a human for actual combat. And maybe you can have some AI assistance in fighting a target that has already been approved.
Of course this all assumes that aircraft remain practical weapons in the future. Realistically, aircraft and missiles will become obsolete within the next few decades as countermeasures for them become more powerful.
There's always a place for the latest incarnation of weapons technology, its just bringing them to bear becomes more situational and requires more prep work.
Yeah, truly weaponised lasers are not far off now, some hand held lasers can already put a hole through metal within seconds with an appropriate focussing lens/crystal, the weaponised versions that will be mounted on the ground, ships and planes themselves will be able to shoot down or at least damage to the point of being operationally ineffective are on their way.
As soon as the power sources are in place, they will ruin any planes day.
On a point, apparently some rather huge strides on nuclear fusion are inbound, and it will genuinely be a viable technology within the next few decades, and some reactors will be small/compact. The viability increase is in part due to lasers, especially for the compact versions as the technology is starting to catch up enough that a reactor design based on lasers super heating hydrogen is soon to be viable. At which point, the perfect power source for said weaponised lasers exists.
greatbigtree wrote: Sweet. I’m going to invest in Vault Tec, Rad-Away, Stimpacks, power armour, a tough-ass dog, a plasma rifle, assault rifle, and an electric chainsaw.
As mentioned with the nuclear reactors, if we can get fusion reactors to a reasonable size, and it is increasingly looking like we could get them similar sized to a car engine, we will see power armor, among other amazing things. Cars and other vehicles that have a self-contained nuclear reactor much like a modern nuclear sub(IE: the reactor has enough fuel to outlast the lifespan of the vehicle) that never needs refueling. This will be what gets us off of fossil fuels, not solar, wind, etc...
As I've said before. Once we get lasers that can trivially shoot down missiles and aircraft, or even with just a respectable success rate, what probably happens is warfare reverts back to armored ground combat. Indirect artillery, heavily armored tanks, and power armor infantry along with regular infantry. This also would end the reign of MAD doctrine and make nuclear weapons obsolete as a deterrence. An ICBM is useless if it has a massive chance of getting shot down as soon as it clears the horizon.
These AA lasers and their power supplies will also become dirt cheap quite quickly. Sure, the first few years of their existence it would be only used by 1-2 countries, but eventually it would spread out and even the people in Buttcrack'istan are going to have a couple.
greatbigtree wrote: Sweet. I’m going to invest in Vault Tec, Rad-Away, Stimpacks, power armour, a tough-ass dog, a plasma rifle, assault rifle, and an electric chainsaw.
Come at me, 2020!
I should really start saving bottle caps
Ring pulls too. Often forgotten, some sub-sections may choose to use those, if caps are harder to come by.
Grey Templar wrote: As mentioned with the nuclear reactors, if we can get fusion reactors to a reasonable size, and it is increasingly looking like we could get them similar sized to a car engine, we will see power armor, among other amazing things. Cars and other vehicles that have a self-contained nuclear reactor much like a modern nuclear sub(IE: the reactor has enough fuel to outlast the lifespan of the vehicle) that never needs refueling. This will be what gets us off of fossil fuels, not solar, wind, etc...
As I've said before. Once we get lasers that can trivially shoot down missiles and aircraft, or even with just a respectable success rate, what probably happens is warfare reverts back to armored ground combat. Indirect artillery, heavily armored tanks, and power armor infantry along with regular infantry. This also would end the reign of MAD doctrine and make nuclear weapons obsolete as a deterrence. An ICBM is useless if it has a massive chance of getting shot down as soon as it clears the horizon.
These AA lasers and their power supplies will also become dirt cheap quite quickly. Sure, the first few years of their existence it would be only used by 1-2 countries, but eventually it would spread out and even the people in Buttcrack'istan are going to have a couple.
What if someone comes up with a practical countermeasure to lasers? It may be that aircraft and missiles start being coated in heat-resistant plating like the space shuttles, for example, that don't allow a laser to burn through before the missile impacts the target.
Everyone said the exact same thing about missile technology back in the 50's, but missiles still haven't obsoleted aircraft, and have arguably made aircraft more relevant as missile delivery systems. There is a very real chance that lasers could obsolete aerial units, but there is an equally real chance that anti-laser tech evolves to keep them in service.
I'd bet that the US military is working on countermeasures alongside their lasers.
Grey Templar wrote: As mentioned with the nuclear reactors, if we can get fusion reactors to a reasonable size, and it is increasingly looking like we could get them similar sized to a car engine, we will see power armor, among other amazing things. Cars and other vehicles that have a self-contained nuclear reactor much like a modern nuclear sub(IE: the reactor has enough fuel to outlast the lifespan of the vehicle) that never needs refueling. This will be what gets us off of fossil fuels, not solar, wind, etc...
As I've said before. Once we get lasers that can trivially shoot down missiles and aircraft, or even with just a respectable success rate, what probably happens is warfare reverts back to armored ground combat. Indirect artillery, heavily armored tanks, and power armor infantry along with regular infantry. This also would end the reign of MAD doctrine and make nuclear weapons obsolete as a deterrence. An ICBM is useless if it has a massive chance of getting shot down as soon as it clears the horizon.
These AA lasers and their power supplies will also become dirt cheap quite quickly. Sure, the first few years of their existence it would be only used by 1-2 countries, but eventually it would spread out and even the people in Buttcrack'istan are going to have a couple.
What if someone comes up with a practical countermeasure to lasers? It may be that aircraft and missiles start being coated in heat-resistant plating like the space shuttles, for example, that don't allow a laser to burn through before the missile impacts the target.
Everyone said the exact same thing about missile technology back in the 50's, but missiles still haven't obsoleted aircraft, and have arguably made aircraft more relevant as missile delivery systems. There is a very real chance that lasers could obsolete aerial units, but there is an equally real chance that anti-laser tech evolves to keep them in service.
I'd bet that the US military is working on countermeasures alongside their lasers.
Firstly, such coating has weight, meaning the jets will have to be larger and/reduce payload and most likely will not be as fast and/or manoeuvrable. Secondly, they won't be able to be stealth then, at which point, you keep the missiles around as well.
Anyway, the trick with lasers is speed, they can be fired and reaching the target at literally the speed of light, that armour has to hold out for a long time then as the laser will be kept firing continuously at the target.
Lastly, I doubt they'll be able to heat proof most of the camera and sensors that need to be relatively external on the air frame, and that is specifically what they want to target with lasers. Combat ineffective is just as good as taking the enemy down in terms of dettering/stopping/defence against an attack, it's only in the long term you want to destroy to cost your enemy an asset.
Yup. But you don't just have to target cameras and sensors. Simply warping the wings can be a death sentence for modern fighters. The F35 basically can't take any damage whatsoever without becoming unflyable. A laser would find it easy to cause some slight warpage.
Any possible countermeasure to a laser given our current understanding of physics would involve a prohibitive amount of weight being added. Which would turn the plane or missile into a slow cumbersome thing that would have little combat use.
Once lasers like this become common, the only aircraft that will see combat use will be unarmed scout drones that rely on being undetected, but once they are detected will promptly get shot down. Transport aircraft might still exist, but they'll be too risky to use in an actual combat zone. You'll fly in, land in a safe spot, and then walk/drive to the combat area.
This will have a ripple effect in that it will kill aircraft carriers and we will return to having ships that focus on using direct/indirect fire with conventional artillery+railguns. All ships will probably have drone hangers to launch scout drones, but nothing with direct combat capabilities. The drones will have to be disposable and cheap as well. Submarines will lose their missile silos and go back to being torpedo caddies, though they could also mount railguns and use those to mount hit and run attacks too. Maybe even very large railguns that could launch small nuclear warheads as a replacement for ICBMs.
Kind of funny, the Hammer's Slammers series by David Drake is based on this kind of thought process.
Aircrafts as combat arms are obsolete (they are still good transports in a non-battle situations) because the weapons of the MBT's and armoured cars can shoot, computer network assisted, any aircraft as it clears the horizont. The weapons, in automated air-defence mode, are used to shoot down artillery shells as they clear the horizont.
The tanks have reverted to be the main combat arms again, Powered by fusion bottles, they have the armour, speed and weaponry to fight against any foe.
The artillery is still the queen of the battlefield, but only when the opposing air defences are compromised (as the computer assisted power weapons can kill anything in line of sight, including the artillery shells). The rocket assisted artillery shells have enormous range and come with variety of munitions; anti-infantry, bunker busters, tank busters, gas and even nuclear.
There is a kind of gizmo existing in the books that stops nuclear weapons from detonating (This is just to keep everybody from using nuclear weapons in the books. That would make boring stories…)
Infantry also uses hand held power weapons (altough less powerful versions from the MBT's) and single shot rockets (called "buzzbombs") that can take out the tanks and armoured cars if used close enough. So the infantrys main use is to keep the enemy infantry away from the tanks.
Most vehicles use ground effect for mobility (because they are powered by fusion bottles).
The terran forces (not seen in the books, but referred to a few times) actually have anti-grav mobility and their infantry are equipped with power armour. But the mercenary forces depicted in the books do not have Access to that kind of equipment.
Very nice book series written in around 1979, but depicting the future of warfare.
I know it's 'prohibited' under the outer space treaty, but seriously... Railguns are going to be space based at some point, and I believe they will be more combat efficient in space also, as current and even probably future tech can't make rails that can last more than a few shots (5 max) due to the intense heat generated and they need to be replaced.
Such heat generation possibly won't be as much of a huge issue in space (this is me putting 2 and 2 together by the way, not an engineer) as space will be the ultimate heat sink.
As soon as they are up there, war with anything large is over, done, unless you're going to throw so much resources at a target to make the rail guns run out of ammo. I'm fully aware space mounted rail guns will be most likely WMD's BTW, so it's not quite as done and dusted as I say, you aren't going to use them on targets in built up areas but you get what I mean.
There may be some effect of lasers to be honest though that I don't fully understand that can ruin an orbital based rail guns day (either orbital based itself, or ground based), getting way beyond my applicable knowledge now to be honest, more than happy to be educated on the matter though if any of you guys have understanding of it.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: I know it's 'prohibited' under the outer space treaty, but seriously... Railguns are going to be space based at some point, and I believe they will be more combat efficient in space also, as current and even probably future tech can't make rails that can last more than a few shots (5 max) due to the intense heat generated and they need to be replaced.
Such heat generation possibly won't be as much of a huge issue in space (this is me putting 2 and 2 together by the way, not an engineer) as space will be the ultimate heat sink.
This actually backwards. Space is terrible for getting rid of excess heat as the only method of losing heat in space is via radiation as there is no medium for a hot object to interact with and so you cannot use convection.
Grey Templar wrote: As mentioned with the nuclear reactors, if we can get fusion reactors to a reasonable size, and it is increasingly looking like we could get them similar sized to a car engine, we will see power armor, among other amazing things. Cars and other vehicles that have a self-contained nuclear reactor much like a modern nuclear sub(IE: the reactor has enough fuel to outlast the lifespan of the vehicle) that never needs refueling. This will be what gets us off of fossil fuels, not solar, wind, etc...
As I've said before. Once we get lasers that can trivially shoot down missiles and aircraft, or even with just a respectable success rate, what probably happens is warfare reverts back to armored ground combat. Indirect artillery, heavily armored tanks, and power armor infantry along with regular infantry. This also would end the reign of MAD doctrine and make nuclear weapons obsolete as a deterrence. An ICBM is useless if it has a massive chance of getting shot down as soon as it clears the horizon.
These AA lasers and their power supplies will also become dirt cheap quite quickly. Sure, the first few years of their existence it would be only used by 1-2 countries, but eventually it would spread out and even the people in Buttcrack'istan are going to have a couple.
What if someone comes up with a practical countermeasure to lasers? It may be that aircraft and missiles start being coated in heat-resistant plating like the space shuttles, for example, that don't allow a laser to burn through before the missile impacts the target.
Everyone said the exact same thing about missile technology back in the 50's, but missiles still haven't obsoleted aircraft, and have arguably made aircraft more relevant as missile delivery systems. There is a very real chance that lasers could obsolete aerial units, but there is an equally real chance that anti-laser tech evolves to keep them in service.
I'd bet that the US military is working on countermeasures alongside their lasers.
Firstly, such coating has weight, meaning the jets will have to be larger and/reduce payload and most likely will not be as fast and/or manoeuvrable. Secondly, they won't be able to be stealth then, at which point, you keep the missiles around as well.
Anyway, the trick with lasers is speed, they can be fired and reaching the target at literally the speed of light, that armour has to hold out for a long time then as the laser will be kept firing continuously at the target.
Lastly, I doubt they'll be able to heat proof most of the camera and sensors that need to be relatively external on the air frame, and that is specifically what they want to target with lasers. Combat ineffective is just as good as taking the enemy down in terms of dettering/stopping/defence against an attack, it's only in the long term you want to destroy to cost your enemy an asset.
Mirrors are pretty good at avoiding damage by lasers. The good quality ones anyway. While a black (at the wavelength of interest) surface might absorb a high percentage of the incident light, make it shiny chrome and you might only absorb a few percent. Of course, it doesn't really need to be chrome. The only practical directed energy lasers so far are all at about the same wavelength, so you only need a reflective coating that operates at that wavelength to give yourself significant extra survivability. It's just a coating, a few microns thick so that shouldn't add much weight.
Even better would be mirror shielding that could be aimed back at the laser. Most high-gain laser systems are pretty sensitive to feedback.
Maybe putting your plane into a roll as soon as it is targeted with a laser would help you spread the remaining heat out. Of course, that's probably not a comfortable way to fly for long periods, and probably messes up you getting to where you wanted to be :-)
I've never been hugely convinced by the idea of using lasers to shoot down aircraft and missiles etc. It seems too simple to reflect beams.
Also, they're spectacularly non-eyesafe. Fire your laser at a target, then blind people within line of sight of that target when lots of stray reflections fire off in all directions? It would be tough to justify that collateral damage.
On the other hand, I hope that the people paying millions into laser development programmes know plenty that I don't and have thought this stuff through :-)
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Such heat generation possibly won't be as much of a huge issue in space (this is me putting 2 and 2 together by the way, not an engineer) as space will be the ultimate heat sink.
This actually backwards. Space is terrible for getting rid of excess heat as the only method of losing heat in space is via radiation as there is no medium for a hot object to interact with and so you cannot use convection.
Really? I also would have thought the opposite... space is just above absolute zero, so even just with radiation I would have thought it'd be really effective... will have to look into it more, as now I'm super curious
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Such heat generation possibly won't be as much of a huge issue in space (this is me putting 2 and 2 together by the way, not an engineer) as space will be the ultimate heat sink.
This actually backwards. Space is terrible for getting rid of excess heat as the only method of losing heat in space is via radiation as there is no medium for a hot object to interact with and so you cannot use convection.
Really? I also would have thought the opposite... space is just above absolute zero, so even just with radiation I would have thought it'd be really effective... will have to look into it more, as now I'm super curious
Space isn't cold. It also isn't hot. It's not anything, simply because it's completely empty. There's no stuff to be warm or cold. It's the same reason that drinks in a vacuum bottle stay scalding hot for hours: There's nowhere for the heat to go except via radiation, which is an extremely inefficient way to lose heat. So any heat you generate will stay there, and compound extremely rapidly.
Grey Templar wrote: Yup. But you don't just have to target cameras and sensors. Simply warping the wings can be a death sentence for modern fighters. The F35 basically can't take any damage whatsoever without becoming unflyable. A laser would find it easy to cause some slight warpage.
Any possible countermeasure to a laser given our current understanding of physics would involve a prohibitive amount of weight being added. Which would turn the plane or missile into a slow cumbersome thing that would have little combat use.
Once lasers like this become common, the only aircraft that will see combat use will be unarmed scout drones that rely on being undetected, but once they are detected will promptly get shot down. Transport aircraft might still exist, but they'll be too risky to use in an actual combat zone. You'll fly in, land in a safe spot, and then walk/drive to the combat area.
This will have a ripple effect in that it will kill aircraft carriers and we will return to having ships that focus on using direct/indirect fire with conventional artillery+railguns. All ships will probably have drone hangers to launch scout drones, but nothing with direct combat capabilities. The drones will have to be disposable and cheap as well. Submarines will lose their missile silos and go back to being torpedo caddies, though they could also mount railguns and use those to mount hit and run attacks too. Maybe even very large railguns that could launch small nuclear warheads as a replacement for ICBMs.
Eh, planes and missiles already have to tolerate a huge thermal range just due to the friction generated at high speeds. Extra thermal protection will undoubtedly add weight over no additional thermal protection, but a variety of light weight thermal protection systems have been developed already for other aerospace applications. For example, the SR-71 Blackbird was designed to tolerate over 300 degrees C on the leading edges, and the space shuttles designed to tolerate nearly 1700 degrees C on the leading edges. The latter used a material less dense than aluminium, a material notably developed for ICBM reentry, so we know it is practical on missiles.
So yes, effective laser point defense will require trade offs in performance of aircraft and missiles to add laser countermeasures, but existing materials can already dramatically increase thermal protection using low-density materials. The lasers will have to deliver very large amounts of energy in very short amounts of time to sufficiently damage missiles before they will hit the target regardless. With our current technology, this appears to be a more difficult technical challenge than increasing thermal resistance.
Also, as mentioned earlier, it is not really relevant to strike aircraft, as they can easily switch to fighting from behind the horizon with stand-off missiles. Missiles are the real focus, as they have to be able to survive the point defense.
Older equipment would be thoroughly obsoleted though.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Such heat generation possibly won't be as much of a huge issue in space (this is me putting 2 and 2 together by the way, not an engineer) as space will be the ultimate heat sink.
This actually backwards. Space is terrible for getting rid of excess heat as the only method of losing heat in space is via radiation as there is no medium for a hot object to interact with and so you cannot use convection.
Really? I also would have thought the opposite... space is just above absolute zero, so even just with radiation I would have thought it'd be really effective... will have to look into it more, as now I'm super curious
Space isn't cold. It also isn't hot. It's not anything, simply because it's completely empty. There's no stuff to be warm or cold. It's the same reason that drinks in a vacuum bottle stay scalding hot for hours: There's nowhere for the heat to go except via radiation, which is an extremely inefficient way to lose heat. So any heat you generate will stay there, and compound extremely rapidly.
Technically, space is approximately 2.7 degrees Kelvin, because there is a measurable background radiation that provides energy. Supposedly the remnants of the Big Bang.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Such heat generation possibly won't be as much of a huge issue in space (this is me putting 2 and 2 together by the way, not an engineer) as space will be the ultimate heat sink.
This actually backwards. Space is terrible for getting rid of excess heat as the only method of losing heat in space is via radiation as there is no medium for a hot object to interact with and so you cannot use convection.
Really? I also would have thought the opposite... space is just above absolute zero, so even just with radiation I would have thought it'd be really effective... will have to look into it more, as now I'm super curious
Space isn't cold. It also isn't hot. It's not anything, simply because it's completely empty. There's no stuff to be warm or cold. It's the same reason that drinks in a vacuum bottle stay scalding hot for hours: There's nowhere for the heat to go except via radiation, which is an extremely inefficient way to lose heat. So any heat you generate will stay there, and compound extremely rapidly.
When ATCM mentioned convection I knew it sort of made sense...
However, what you have just said about a vacuum bottle makes absolute perfect sense, heat would not travel off of it.
Thanks to Newton, you’ve got equal and opposite forces applied to your railgun. So whatever force you apply “downwards” is going to push your weapon “upwards”, out of Earth orbit.
Whereas simply dropping a high-density item (tungsten rod / javelin, for example) that will have a higher terminal velocity than a less dense item, can impart Nuclear weapon levels of force without all that nasty radiation. According to Wikipedia, a 9 ton rod is estimated to be equivalent to a 7 kilotonne nuclear bomb.
Admittedly, getting a 9 ton rod into space is impractical, but several 1 ton rods hitting earth at approximately Mach 10 (3 km per second) could easily wipe out a city. More joyous thoughts brought to you by 2020...
No heat worries, no moving parts per se... just a big stick you let go of at the right time and angle.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Such heat generation possibly won't be as much of a huge issue in space (this is me putting 2 and 2 together by the way, not an engineer) as space will be the ultimate heat sink.
This actually backwards. Space is terrible for getting rid of excess heat as the only method of losing heat in space is via radiation as there is no medium for a hot object to interact with and so you cannot use convection.
Really? I also would have thought the opposite... space is just above absolute zero, so even just with radiation I would have thought it'd be really effective... will have to look into it more, as now I'm super curious
Space isn't cold. It also isn't hot. It's not anything, simply because it's completely empty. There's no stuff to be warm or cold. It's the same reason that drinks in a vacuum bottle stay scalding hot for hours: There's nowhere for the heat to go except via radiation, which is an extremely inefficient way to lose heat. So any heat you generate will stay there, and compound extremely rapidly.
When ATCM mentioned convection I knew it sort of made sense...
However, what you have just said about a vacuum bottle makes absolute perfect sense, heat would not travel off of it.
Some games and other fiction handle this by dumping the excess heat into a heatsink, and dropping that overboard. More objects to avoid, but you'll be able to see it coming.
Thanks to Newton, you’ve got equal and opposite forces applied to your railgun. So whatever force you apply “downwards” is going to push your weapon “upwards”, out of Earth orbit.
Whereas simply dropping a high-density item (tungsten rod / javelin, for example) that will have a higher terminal velocity than a less dense item, can impart Nuclear weapon levels of force without all that nasty radiation. According to Wikipedia, a 9 ton rod is estimated to be equivalent to a 7 kilotonne nuclear bomb.
Admittedly, getting a 9 ton rod into space is impractical, but several 1 ton rods hitting earth at approximately Mach 10 (3 km per second) could easily wipe out a city. More joyous thoughts brought to you by 2020...
No heat worries, no moving parts per se... just a big stick you let go of at the right time and angle.
"Rods from god" aka "Blessed are the THOR satellites".
”...team leader on the project, Dr Steve Rogers of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)...”
Am I the only one who thought Captain America is building AI fighter jets?
Thanks to Newton, you’ve got equal and opposite forces applied to your railgun. So whatever force you apply “downwards” is going to push your weapon “upwards”, out of Earth orbit.
Whereas simply dropping a high-density item (tungsten rod / javelin, for example) that will have a higher terminal velocity than a less dense item, can impart Nuclear weapon levels of force without all that nasty radiation. According to Wikipedia, a 9 ton rod is estimated to be equivalent to a 7 kilotonne nuclear bomb.
Admittedly, getting a 9 ton rod into space is impractical, but several 1 ton rods hitting earth at approximately Mach 10 (3 km per second) could easily wipe out a city. More joyous thoughts brought to you by 2020...
No heat worries, no moving parts per se... just a big stick you let go of at the right time and angle.
Sure, there would need to be thrusters to counteract the recoil, but a satellite is going to need those anyway. But yes, it is easier to simply drop some steel beams from orbit.
The space shuttle was capable of carrying a 60k pound payload. That's 3 rods if you used a Space Shuttle to do it, but you could cut that out entirely and go with a 1 way rocket that could carry a larger payload and just get the rods into orbit, then you have some little thruster drone pick them up and install them into the bombardment satellite.
plus, I don't think the Rod concept is as impractical costwise as people might think. The costs for a Space Shuttle mission are also actually fairly comparable to the costs for an ICBM, with the bonus that a Rod delivery mission can be fully automated and doesn't need people to carry out. And since you'd be getting multiple shots with a weapon comparable to an ICBM I think it would be far more cost effective. With the bonus that it needs basically no maintenance unlike an ICBM.
Railguns would be useful for defending the planet against asteroids though I think, and shooting down enemy satellites too.
.across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us
Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess), KKWs do a lot less damage than your average nuke. That ten ton rod going at 3 km/s has 45 gigajoules of energy, which is pretty much all deposited directly into whatever it lands on. A one megaton bomb releases about 45 petajoules of energy, a million times more and omnidirectionally. You're generally better off just throwing a one ton bomb out of the back of a plane.
Laughing Man wrote: That ten ton rod going at 3 km/s has 45 gigajoules of energy, which is pretty much all deposited directly into whatever it lands on.
The bolded part is the key takeaway, and what makes the rods worth it.
Nukes are pretty inefficient in terms of energy conversion. So much of their energy is converted into useless light and long term radiation instead of pure explosive force. Now maybe you want the area denial that the long term radiation gives, but generally it is not a desirable part of a nuke.
The rods are much more focused with their energy, which in theory makes them better against a hardened target like a deep underground bunker even if they have much less overall energy than a nuke. The rods can also still level cities if you want, and without that nasty radiation to worry about.
For the thought experiment of it, scattering 10x 1 ton rods in close-ish proximity could probably level a small city, while a single 10-ton rod could be used for bunker penetration.
In situations where you want to claim territory in less than several lifetimes, the non-nuclear option has benefits.
Nuclear weapon radiation returns to safe levels within 3-5 weeks. There is actually very little long term radiation danger from a nuclear weapon. Radiation is more of a concern if you are following up the bomb with a ground force.
Laughing Man wrote: That ten ton rod going at 3 km/s has 45 gigajoules of energy, which is pretty much all deposited directly into whatever it lands on.
The bolded part is the key takeaway, and what makes the rods worth it.
Nukes are pretty inefficient in terms of energy conversion. So much of their energy is converted into useless light and long term radiation instead of pure explosive force. Now maybe you want the area denial that the long term radiation gives, but generally it is not a desirable part of a nuke.
The rods are much more focused with their energy, which in theory makes them better against a hardened target like a deep underground bunker even if they have much less overall energy than a nuke. The rods can also still level cities if you want, and without that nasty radiation to worry about.
That's the thing though, that one megaton is the useful energy. There's a reason why the comparison is to tons of TNT. It's omnidirectional, sure, but when it's literally a million times more force than dropping a telephone pole from orbit, it doesn't terribly matter what direction it's going in.
As for what sort of damage a rod from god would do, a bomb of similar yield (the US military's M118s) clears forest for about 150 feet in every direction when detonated at ground level. A KKW is going to do a lot less, simply because it doesn't produce the same sort of overpressure wave that a bomb blast does, and deposits most of its energy directly into what it hits. Great for bunker busting, but likely to leave the building next door standing, if with a lot of broken windows, and probably cheaper to just drop a bomb designed for the same purpose on whatever you're aiming at.
Not to mention that you aren't "dropping" solid rods. These rods need to be in orbit and then need to have the means of exiting that orbit into a sub-orbital trajectory of the correct profile to hit whatever target you are aiming at. Your range of viable targets will be limited by the standing orbit of the rod and the available fuel to alter that orbit into a projectile trajectory.
You are effectively just storing missiles in space with all of the negatives that come from storing stuff in space.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Not to mention that you aren't "dropping" solid rods. These rods need to be in orbit and then need to have the means of exiting that orbit into a sub-orbital trajectory of the correct profile to hit whatever target you are aiming at. Your range of viable targets will be limited by the standing orbit of the rod and the available fuel to alter that orbit into a projectile trajectory.
You are effectively just storing missiles in space with all of the negatives that come from storing stuff in space.
Laughing Man wrote: That ten ton rod going at 3 km/s has 45 gigajoules of energy, which is pretty much all deposited directly into whatever it lands on.
The bolded part is the key takeaway, and what makes the rods worth it.
Nukes are pretty inefficient in terms of energy conversion. So much of their energy is converted into useless light and long term radiation instead of pure explosive force. Now maybe you want the area denial that the long term radiation gives, but generally it is not a desirable part of a nuke.
The rods are much more focused with their energy, which in theory makes them better against a hardened target like a deep underground bunker even if they have much less overall energy than a nuke. The rods can also still level cities if you want, and without that nasty radiation to worry about.
That's the thing though, that one megaton is the useful energy. There's a reason why the comparison is to tons of TNT. It's omnidirectional, sure, but when it's literally a million times more force than dropping a telephone pole from orbit, it doesn't terribly matter what direction it's going in.
As for what sort of damage a rod from god would do, a bomb of similar yield (the US military's M118s) clears forest for about 150 feet in every direction when detonated at ground level. A KKW is going to do a lot less, simply because it doesn't produce the same sort of overpressure wave that a bomb blast does, and deposits most of its energy directly into what it hits. Great for bunker busting, but likely to leave the building next door standing, if with a lot of broken windows, and probably cheaper to just drop a bomb designed for the same purpose on whatever you're aiming at.
That heavily depends on the mass of the rod though. If you were to manufacture one in space, it could be comparable to the Barringer Crater impact quite easily.
BaronIveagh wrote: That heavily depends on the mass of the rod though. If you were to manufacture one in space, it could be comparable to the Barringer Crater impact quite easily.
Sure, if you built it in the asteroid belt, threw a whole bunch of thrusters on it, and then threw it at Earth from there so you have time to build up the requisite velocity. You're probably better off just building a bomb though.
Well nothing stops you from also putting a warhead in the rod if you want. You could just plant a regular old 1k lb bomb in the tail end of the rod and rig up an impact detonator, or even have a few with small nuclear warheads. It would be a versatile weapon system.
Grey Templar wrote: Well nothing stops you from also putting a warhead in the rod if you want. You could just plant a regular old 1k lb bomb in the tail end of the rod and rig up an impact detonator, or even have a few with small nuclear warheads. It would be a versatile weapon system.
I mean, sure. But why bother when you could just drop a bomb from 5,000 feet instead of from orbit? About the only thing KKWs have going for them is simplicity (if you squint at them funny and ignore getting them into position in the first place, or having to shield it from reentry, or the thousand other problems with the idea). Once you start slapping on warheads and guidance systems and thrusters you just have a missile that you spent a silly amount of money to put in space for no apparent reason.
One advantage over “conventional” nukes is the deployment time. The rods only take minutes from command to impact. They also have a near vertical drop giving very little time for the target to react, and almost no chance for interception. Compared to an ICBM, that could take hours from launch to detonation.
I doubt they would actually see use... once they’re in space whomever put them there is apt to see some serious international political issues. I think there are treaties prohibiting their use, but treaties tend to be ignored in the face of actual war.
Cost wise, getting the rods to space is expensive, but I imagine so is building, equipping, maintaining, and providing personnel to a nuclear launch silo. Once a rod is in orbit, there’s not a lot of upkeep expenses, you know?
Laughing Man wrote: About the only thing KKWs have going for them is simplicity (if you squint at them funny and ignore getting them into position in the first place, or having to shield it from reentry, or the thousand other problems with the idea). .
Actually it has several advantages over a nuke. For example, if you make it out of solid tungsten, you don't have to shield it from re-entery. It's not like a nuke that only lasts for about 20 years, so they can be positioned indefinitely, and has near zero maintenance requirements. It lacks the nasty radiation, meaning you could kill everything in an entire country with them, and not have to worry about cleanup. (And if you don't think this is of interest, remember that it's what drove the US military's program build a Neutron Bomb with the idea that it would be cleaner)
I doubt they would actually see use... once they’re in space whomever put them there is apt to see some serious international political issues. I think there are treaties prohibiting their use, but treaties tend to be ignored in the face of actual war.
Actually the good old Rod from God is exempt from those treaties. It is one of the reasons that so many militaries have looked at the idea. Then again, so is the good ol Microwave laser from space, and those have legitimate usefulness outside military applications, so would be easier to justify.
Laughing Man wrote: About the only thing KKWs have going for them is simplicity (if you squint at them funny and ignore getting them into position in the first place, or having to shield it from reentry, or the thousand other problems with the idea). .
Actually it has several advantages over a nuke. For example, if you make it out of solid tungsten, you don't have to shield it from re-entery. It's not like a nuke that only lasts for about 20 years, so they can be positioned indefinitely, and has near zero maintenance requirements. It lacks the nasty radiation, meaning you could kill everything in an entire country with them, and not have to worry about cleanup. (And if you don't think this is of interest, remember that it's what drove the US military's program build a Neutron Bomb with the idea that it would be cleaner)
Except it's nowhere near as dangerous as a nuke. A ten ton rod is basically about as dangerous as a 2000lb iron bomb. A ten ton nuke kills everything within ten miles.
If the intention is to kill, use bombs.
But, if strikes and subdual are the goal, rods sound like better options.
Killing can be done in so many other ways. Bombs have always been the preferred option in the past, as they are packaged for transport. If you are in orbit, bombs are more complex than they have to be. Just throw a few bags of ball bearings at the target.
Yeah, seriously, who on earth thinks in future warfare a goal will be to kill everything within 10 miles? Look how badly bombings from WWII such as Dresden are perceived now, and the growing and legitimate anger of collateral damage from recent wars...
Countries don't want to kill everything within 10 miles, as they don't want the political fallout (pun intended) and consequences of such an action.
Nukes are only around still because of the deterrent factor, not to be actually used, it's the threat of use where the value is.
In addition to that, if future wars are really going to be fought over resources predominantly, be it fuel, water or land... They aren't going to make that whole area useless, even if the fallout it only lasts a small amount of time, you'll be destroying the logistics base in the area, which will take resources to rebuild.... Defeating the object. Precision will be more useful.
Precision will be the goal. Hence, rods from god will have a use.
Cycling back to the talk of lasers anyway, that is also another reason why missiles and planes dropping bombs will not be the most viable foolproof tactic.
The point of rods is not to make other weapon systems defunct, it is the option and utility it gives you. It's an addition, not a replacement.
Precision will be the goal. Hence, rods from god will have a use.
Precision is the exact reason that rods from god will not have a use. They will be unable to accurately alter their course whilst re-entering the atmosphere due to the ionisation of the air around them interfering with any signals attempting to guide them and have very limited time to adjust their trajectory to account for atmospheric effects which deviate them from their projected path after completing their burn to enter a sub-orbital trajectory.
You're better off just launching a large conventional guided missile if you want precision.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Yeah, seriously, who on earth thinks in future warfare a goal will be to kill everything within 10 miles? Look how badly bombings from WWII such as Dresden are perceived now, and the growing and legitimate anger of collateral damage from recent wars...
Countries don't want to kill everything within 10 miles, as they don't want the political fallout (pun intended) and consequences of such an action.
Nukes are only around still because of the deterrent factor, not to be actually used, it's the threat of use where the value is.
In addition to that, if future wars are really going to be fought over resources predominantly, be it fuel, water or land... They aren't going to make that whole area useless, even if the fallout it only lasts a small amount of time, you'll be destroying the logistics base in the area, which will take resources to rebuild.... Defeating the object. Precision will be more useful.
Precision will be the goal. Hence, rods from god will have a use.
Cycling back to the talk of lasers anyway, that is also another reason why missiles and planes dropping bombs will not be the most viable foolproof tactic.
The point of rods is not to make other weapon systems defunct, it is the option and utility it gives you. It's an addition, not a replacement.
I'm not the one who compared them to nukes in the first place and talked about levelling cities with them. I just pointed out that their effective yield is about 20% weight efficient, compared to TNT.
Precision will be the goal. Hence, rods from god will have a use.
Precision is the exact reason that rods from god will not have a use. They will be unable to accurately alter their course whilst re-entering the atmosphere due to the ionisation of the air around them interfering with any signals attempting to guide them and have very limited time to adjust their trajectory to account for atmospheric effects which deviate them from their projected path after completing their burn to enter a sub-orbital trajectory.
You're better off just launching a large conventional guided missile if you want precision.
Wouldn't that be taken into account before it is fired? A lot of the same fundamentals required to perform a long range sniper kill? With evidently more variables to account for..
I'm not suggesting by any means that it would be as easy as that mind, but if you are firing it at a large enough target, with dialled in calibration they must be able to get it fairly precise and accurate enough to hit a largish target.
For arguments sake, let's say the white house, in fairly beneficial weather conditions, they only have 1 shot. Do you think that is an unachievable goal? Honest question, I may as well learn something...
greatbigtree wrote: One advantage over “conventional” nukes is the deployment time. The rods only take minutes from command to impact. They also have a near vertical drop giving very little time for the target to react, and almost no chance for interception. Compared to an ICBM, that could take hours from launch to detonation.
Wouldn't the drop point need to be in the proper position to immediately deploy? I do not think we would have the earth covered, but stationary satellites over key areas in advance could work, I suppose. However, i think keeping anything in space is not a keen idea. Hasn't anyone watched 'Space Force' w/ Steve Carrell? ...those dirty chinese and their sabotage...
Except it's nowhere near as dangerous as a nuke. A ten ton rod is basically about as dangerous as a 2000lb iron bomb. A ten ton nuke kills everything within ten miles.
Your math is bad here. According to a 2003 air-force report, a 10 ton impactor traveling at mach 10, would hit with the force of 12 tons of tnt, The Russian RDS-220, the largest nuke ever detonated, weighing in at 20 tons, only has a 100% kill radius of 3 miles if used properly, but used incorrectly in a ground strike to maximize the 100% zone, you're looking at just 5 miles. Mind you, it will cause 3rd degree burns for 45 miles, and minor damage for 50, but these are reduced in a ground strike.
Romanian village finds that the affection of Prince Charles is ‘a blessing and a curse’ as tourists flock there
If there's one group of people I am willing to listen to with regards to curses relating to foreign members of the aristocracy then it's villagers in Transylvania.
A biotech company in the U.S. has been granted ethical permission by the National Institutes of Health to use 20 brain-dead patients for what is sure to be a highly controversial study: From next year, they plan to stimulate their nervous systems in order to restart the brains. Bioquark is hoping that its part in the groundbreaking ReAnima project will reveal if people can at least partly be brought back from the dead.
It is important to note that at this point, there isn’t much evidence to suggest how genuinely realistic or even serious this endeavor is; however, the panel of experts working on the initiative does include Dr. Calixto Machado, a well-known neurological researcher and a member of the American Academy of Neurology who has written extensively on brain death, and it does appear to have proper approval from the U.S. authorities.
The team will test a combination of therapies on the participants, who have been medically certified as being brain dead and are only kept from decomposing by life support machines. Injecting the brain with stem cells, giving the spinal cord infusions of beneficial chemicals, and nerve stimulation techniques – which have been shown to bring people out of comas – will all be tried out.
Bioquark Inc. Receives IRB Approval for First-In-Human Brain Death Study - https://t.co/NrO3Fqsfn9 pic.twitter.com/sE4yojqYEc
— IraSamuel Pastor (@IraSamuelPastor) April 20, 2016
After each therapy has been administered, the team will monitor the brain activity of the participants for several months, hoping to look for signs of neurological reactivation. Their focus will be on the upper spinal cord, which is the lowermost part of the brain stream that controls a person’s cardiorespiratory functions – breathing and a beating heart, essentially.
“To undertake such a complex initiative, we are combining biologic regenerative medicine tools with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of the central nervous system, in patients with other severe disorders of consciousness,” said Ira Pastor, the CEO of Bioquark Inc., as reported by the Telegraph. “We hope to see results within the first two to three months.”
The central nervous system is bioelectrochemical, in that it uses biologically manufactured chemicals called neurotransmitters to transmit electrical signals through the body. Stimulating neurons with electrical currents is one thing – even in a coma, the neurons will be able to respond to electrical stimulation – but after brain death, neurons begin to wither away and degenerate, so for any “resurrection” to occur, the team will need to stimulate the regeneration of neurons in these brain-dead folk.
This is presumably where the stem cells come in, which in their most primitive state can differentiate into any cell in the human body. Although there has been plenty of remarkable progress using them to regenerate damaged heart, pancreatic, eye or even brain tissue, for example, there is a long way to go before stem cells can simply be injected into humans, allowing them to regenerate any type of lost cell.
In any case, the trials will begin at Anupam Hospital in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand in India. For this stage, the brain-dead people will be continuously given cocktails of peptides, chemicals that can act as neurotransmitters, along with biweekly injections of stem cells.
“It is a long-term vision of ours that a full recovery in such patients is a possibility, although that is not the focus of this first study,” Pastor added. “But it is a bridge to that eventuality.”
Jokes aside, good luck to'em, hope they manage some form of -- non flesh eating -- breakthrough.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be brought back from the dead? That’s the kind of gak that’d just send you and before anything else.
DalekCheese wrote: Can you imagine what it would be like to be brought back from the dead?
Exactly the same as being 'brought back' from unconsciousness. There's nothing magical about death. Lack of conscious experience is lack of conscious experience.
When my father had his first heart attack, he was unconscious for several minutes until the medical team restarted his heart. As he described it later, he just stopped being aware of anything, then started being aware again. Nothing particularly profound about it.
I suppose if you were dead for a long enough time, you'd have to get used to the world being very different when you came back. But people who wake up from long-term comas already have to deal with that, so we know it's possible.
DalekCheese wrote: Can you imagine what it would be like to be brought back from the dead?
Exactly the same as being 'brought back' from unconsciousness. There's nothing magical about death. Lack of conscious experience is lack of conscious experience.
When my father had his first heart attack, he was unconscious for several minutes until the medical team restarted his heart. As he described it later, he just stopped being aware of anything, then started being aware again. Nothing particularly profound about it.
I suppose if you were dead for a long enough time, you'd have to get used to the world being very different when you came back. But people who wake up from long-term comas already have to deal with that, so we know it's possible.
Also if it's been long enough they'll have severely shortened and weakened muscles. Just moving would be painful.
While I am something of a joker, I wouldn't presume to compare myself to him.
Most people go for the Rasputin comparison instead, which I am far more comfortable with, though I still have my balls. (I've been shot at, beaten, stabbed, electrocuted, poisoned, and drown. And, to be fair, I can still vividly remember the expression on a man's face when he realized that the metal rod I was holding was, in fact, very, very hot, as I pressed it into his hands.)
Well its not a hoverboard but this is pretty amazing
Quite amazing how we've gone from those water based jet suits to a full jet powered one. That said I've also seen a few quadcopter type designs with bathtubs that would also do the similar job but also have the option to carry more equipment to the scene; perhaps also with the option (given size) to do collections. Might well be more affordable than helicopters; though a helicopter might well be faster at reaching the general area and offer more long distance travel options.
Be interesting to know how well that suit would work in windy weather; how much the machine can compensate or how much skill would be required from the operator; or even if its practical or safe
