science fiction technology you see possible in the future and others not

In My Humble Opinion
21

What I was getting at is conceptually that when I look at the space shuttle, it is similar in concept to the shuttlecraft

When I first saw the space shuttle, my initial thought was that is sure looked like the shuttlecraft. Of course, there are differences and similarities

Look at this

Star Trek Shuttlecraft - passenger capacity - 7
Space Shuttle - 7 or 8

Cargo capacity - both can carry cargo but the shuttle seems to have a larger capacity

And as other posters have mentioned, the Mars Craft would be even more similar to the Space Shuttle

I know that it is not an exact comparison but there are similarities and that is what I am getting at

22

That could largely be avoided if we built a space elevator (like in the David Gerrold series). This way, stuff going into space could be hauled up in the elevator while balanced with weight coming down (just like current building elevators), thus requiring much less energy to get into space. Because the motors are at the end(s) of the cable, so you don’t have to carry your fuel along with you.

And this seems like something that should be possible, without needing any great scientific breakthrough or ‘magic’. Just developing a cable material with the right strength-to-weight ratio. And researchers are working on this. I’ve seen statements that spiderwebs actually meet that ratio (if only we knew how to make them and upscale them a few thousand times).

of course, actually doing the building of such a thing would be really difficult to get started. Given the amounts involved, it would have to be a government project. And can you see trying to get a government to budget for such a thing? We only got to the moon in the first place because JFK scared Congress that “the Commies will get there first!” (Most huge, expensive projects have to be sold as ‘defending us from our enemies’. We got the Interstate Highway System funded originally as needed for troop movements in case we are ever invaded.) And all the legal issues involved – what laws apply in space? Does stuff made in space and sent down on the space elevator have to pay import duties? etc.

But technically, I think this may be feasible in a not too distant future.

23

In a way, modern bullpup rifles are weird and futuristic when compared to say, an old time battle rifle like an M1 or M14:

  • Much lighter
  • More ammo
  • Small fast bullets actually are more powerful than slower large ones (E=1/2 mv^2 )
  • Ergonomic design
  • Rails for optics and other accessories
    But sort of like the helicopter, it’s still based on incremental improvements on the same basic technology. In this case, propelling a projectile at high speed using chemical energy. Sure you can use materials to make them lighter, ergonomic shapes to make them easier to use, or special optics or electronics to make them more accurate. But at the end of the day, it’s still based on E=1/2 mv ^2 and the physical weight a soldier can carry.

It must have something to do with the aerodynamics of pushing a spinning helicopter blade through the air at jet speeds. Helicopters already use jet turbine engines to turn the blades (but not for forward propulsion).

My WAG is that the airflow past the propeller blades might be traveling at a speed close to the radial velocity of the blades, the backward traveling blade would stall while the forward travelling blade receives a lot more lift.

24

The problem is lot more than just going from one star system to other.

With out a warp drive you will need a generation space ship that could take tow or three generation to you get to a planet to start a colony. It would be a one way trip!! And this is traveling close to light speed!!!

A big space ship like the enterprise-D would cost trillions of trillions dollars.

Even if money was not a problem to build a enterprise-D and they had working warp drive such a spaceship could never land or take off on planet using chemical propulsion!! So what would you do if you got to such a planet?

25

Caseless ammo

I would assume with today’s day and age of CSI tech, not having to “police your brass” is a big plus.

26

I’m fond of brass-catchers (“ejection port condoms.”)

But I figure caseless ammo will have its own CSI complications: scrape a little residue off the wall, run it through a mass spectrometer, and identify the point of manufacture. Taggants would make this easier, but won’t be strictly necessary for very long.

(Meanwhile, drop as little as one eyelash, and they’ve got you by the DNA. These are not the best of times for stealth-based crimes.)

27

Planes and helicopters have hardly changed compared to computers and electronics in how they look.

It may have some to do with aerodynamics. A helicopter with jet engine may cause the helicopter rear rotor to spin out of control going too fast or too much air.

A small drone shape like a helicopter may not work well aerodynamics wise where a helicopter with lot of ducted rotors or helos like those pictures posted above and in video games and scfi movies may not work well aerodynamics wise.

There may be shape form factor on scale size for it to work well aerodynamics wise. May be why Planes and helicopters don’t look like that or why every 20 year or so Planes and helicopters don’t look different.

28

Molecular assemblers - you are badly misinformed on that point. They already exist on a large and practical scale. Go open a molecular biology textbook - everything we want to do with molecular assemblers is basically already happening in living cells. We just want more control of the process and products using other elements.

Handheld energy weaponry - I agree. It’s a lot more than just a power source problem. One problem is that no matter what scheme you come up with for supplying the power, it is a lot lighter to use a chemical reaction to propel the projectile directly instead of indirectly via magnets, high voltage rails, or creating high intensity light. The reason for railguns/coilguns/laser is range - hundreds of miles or more. This makes them by definition a weapon that will be mounted on a vehicle and not useful to infantry.

Jet pack - you are badly misinformed. Practical jetpacks now exist - it’s a high bypass turbofan jet engine pointing downward. This gives you an hour or more of fuel life. By “practical” I mean it does the job, I guess in terms of actually needing it for something, it’s still just a toy.

Antigravity - yeah, it’s probably not even possible.

Wormholes - no known way to make them.

Teleportation of people - yet another thing you are badly misinformed on. It absolutely is possible to teleport people, even practical. Step 1 : mush their brain into a digital data file. Step 2 : send the multi-petabyte data file via a high speed communications link. If you have trouble with the “cloning” problem, have your brain transferred over a tiny piece at a time with no loss of continuity. (admittedly this is many orders of magnitudes harder than doing a transfer when your brain is “dead”, but physics allow it)

You wouldn’t be sending over the position of every atom in a person. Just the state variables in their brain - things like how strong a particular synapse is. In a real human brain, the strength of a synapse is determined by the collective action of millions of separate atoms - but your digital model would track just a single number about 64 bits long for that. This is why it would be practical - we can send large multi-petabyte files over optical links right now. With the fastest optical links available with today’s tech, you could send a person’s mind-state in a few minutes. Their body is a much smaller file - either a copy of a biological genetic code (about 6 gigs) or the blueprints for a robot they can control.

Star Trek tricorder - you could build a diagnostic instrument that small or smaller. It would release trillions of nanoscale robots that would crawl over or inside the object, and the handheld device would simply communicate and power the robots via microwaves or EM induction. This would give you the kind of information the tricorder is capable of giving - each tiny robot would have nanoscale molecular sensors, etc, and would be able to detect an enormous number of things.

Hologram - your post is not very good on accuracy. It is possible to have holograms that appear to be in mid air, with no glasses, and it works from any angle. The trick is that there would have to be a display panel that controls at each pixel the light emitted at each angle relative to the display panel. It’s a trick similar to what the nintendo 3ds does right now, except the 3ds only creates 2 images, and you’d create hundreds. No matter where you stand, as long as your eyes could see this display panel, you’d see an illusion of an object floating out in front of the display.

Holodeck - you would need an actual implant installed in a person’s spine or probably at the top of their brain at the motor and sensory homunculi. You would use signals from the motor regions for controlling a person’s avatar, and you would deliver the tactile information to the sensory homunculi. There would have to be another implant similar to a modern day cochlear implant, that would deliver the signals associated with both sound and your inner ear’s sense of orientation and acceleration. Finally, you’d beam the visual input directly onto the retina. With all these implants, installed via surgery, you could generate truly convincing virtual reality.

Not sure what you mean by “star wars landspeeder not possible”. You could absolutely build a VTOL aircraft about that size that would fly on jet exhaust. It wouldn’t be very practical - fuel consumption would limit it’s range and make it cost a fortune to operate. But it would fly.

29

The first problem to solve, even before worrying about how to get enough equipment into space to build a starship, is to solve the problem of human aging. Either figure out a series of genetic code changes so humans don’t age past young adulthood, or figure out a way to copy human brains to computers so they are basically immortal as long as one copy exists. Either way, your starship would arrive at the destination with the original crew who left on it. If aging isn’t a problem, you might have a way to put humans into a controlled coma so they don’t have to actually be bored for centuries. If you use computers, it’s trivial - just set the clock rate low enough that a few centuries long journey takes just a few minutes in perceptual time.

The problem of aging - or uploading to computers - is orders of magnitude easier than the problem of building a starship. We’re probably centuries at the current rate of progress from being able to harness the antimatter you would need to fuel a starship engine with adequate performance. We’re probably mere decades from having AI or human uploading.

30

There is a much simpler and practical method to fix this problem. You use a very large array of lasers and your rocket is the payload with a block of solid propellant on the bottom. Laser beams vaporize the propellant, you get thrust at several thousand ISP. Your payload ratio would be much, much higher - 60% or more of the mass you started with.

You do have to have this massive pile of equipment on the ground to do this. If you were exploring a new planet like Earth, you’d do it differently. Or, you might send a probe down to the planet with enough equipment onboard to build a self replicating factory (using molecular assemblers of course), and have it eventually build a large enough industrial base to launch stuff back into orbit.

31

What I was getting at is so many people get hung up on distance from one star system to an other star system and talk about may be putting the person in a hibernation state ,warp drive ,generation ship or some other exotic discovery but do not understand that going into space is prohibited expensive with today’s technology and know how. Not to say space radiation or damage by space debris.

There are number of private commercial space companies researching to bring space cost down but nothing awesome that a average middle class or upper middle class can can afford. Only the very wealthy millionaires can go into space with today’s technology.

Going to moon or mars would be even more costly.

32

You mean Hologram like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G10bzatpuFc or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZhjEQuR_fo or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V03-lIUc3Ho

All these Holograms are in a inclosed device for it to work. Not like star trek or star wars where it does not have to be in a inclosed device.

A laser propulsion rocket would require gigawatts of power. How could such a battery hold that much power. The lasers would have to be extremely powerful.

A laser propulsion rocket like any type of nuclear propulsion system to get payload into space would cost more than chemical propulsion. Sure you could take up more payload into space but it would cost more.

In space there is no air so good luck to get your rocket to work in space.

33

??? Joking?

Rockets do fine without air.

34

Paper thin TV/monitor screens that can be put on anything from newspapers to milk cartons.

35

I’m mixed on people being in long term hibernation or suspended animation as a way to manage space voyages of many years.

While I could see how a person could be fed intravenously and have waste taken away by catheters, wouldn’t there muscles atrophy without some sort of exercise?

36

There is research into micro-electric stimulation of muscle fibers to keep the muscles twitching, to give them the exercise they need. (Useful in the real world to maintain muscle tone in paralysis patients.)

37

Could a person really sleep for weeks or months at a time with that going on?

38

out there now:

star trek tricorder: “Through its sensor, and in a matter of seconds, the Scanadu measures heart rate, temperature, blood pressure, oxygen level and provides a complete ECG reading.”

Possible:

Cloning people. I think we can do it, we’re just choosing not to, so I’m putting this in the “possible” category. Note that I’m not talking about copying memories, but just creating a genetic duplicate which would have to grow naturally from infancy.

Not:

Fusion. We’ve been 10 years from this for too long for me to take it seriously.
Flying cars. Way too high of a power requirement for way too little benefit, plus that business of having to take off & land at an airport negates most of the bonus.
Man-portable laser weapons of the “punch a hole through somebody and kill him” variety.
Fully believable androids or robots. We are nowhere near the ability to make something that can walk, talk and move like a human being.

39

Hibernation technology goes a long, long way beyond ordinary sleep. More like an induced coma…and that’s still only the beginning.

Look at the Hibernacula in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001. Breathing and heartbeat are slowed, digestion is all but halted, and cognitive awareness is annihilated. Do Hibernauts even dream?

“All intelligent beings dream. Nobody knows why.” :wink:

40

  1. No. I mean something like the nintendo 3DS except less ghosting and it would work no matter which way you hold the display or which angle you look at it.

  2. With a laser propulsion rocket (google for “ablative laser propulsion”), the lasers stay on the ground. The gas turbines and solar panels powering them also stay on the ground. You would draw the gigawatts of power needed from the same electricity grid that powers entire nations, doing the launches at “off peak” periods when there is enough spare generation capacity. Depending on the country doing the launches, and the time of year, and where your substations were, you might need to purchase additional generators - you’d buy gas turbines. Yes, it would cost money per launch, but a lot less money - the cost of the fuel for existing rockets is 1% or less of the cost.