Yes, I meant targets who shoot back, since we were discussing the idea in the context of the Die Hard movies. I didn’t make that clear, so I’m sorry. I never doubted that you can shoot antelopes or whatever from a helicopter and everything else you said, I just never thought of that as being the same thing.
So to clarify, I don’t think that darting an antelope from a helicopter is the same thing as using a rifle effectively on an armed human opponent on the ground, because a helicopter can get quite close to an antelope, since the antelope cannot outrun the chopper, where as trying to get so close to an armed human in a flying go-kart would be very dangerous. If the helicopter if forced to stay some distance away from the target, say 2 or 3 hundred meters as was the case in Die Hard (I think, it’s been a while since I saw that movie), I don’t think the policeman on the helicopter with the rifle would have done much good.
Let me try to illustrate with an example: The opening scene in Black Hawk Down, where the sniper on the helicopter is asking for permission to fire upon the enemy on the ground. If he meant that he was going to open fire from where he was, that is, about 200 meters away with the helicopter circling around the scene, I find it difficult to believe that he could bring fire accurately on the enemy, especially not after the first shot when the ground fire will force the helicopter to start doing some fancy flying. However I have no difficulty believing the next scene, where the guy on the helicopter (presumably) shoots a wilderbeast fron a low flying helicopter, since the helicopter, flying much faster than the wilderbeast, can approach the animal quite handily even when the animal was in full gallop. In fact the movie shows the chopper doing just that. Do you see what I mean now?
Maybe there’s a kind of de-replicator recycling machine where you put the matter converted from energy (i.e. your empty cup which once held a nice hot earl grey) and it then converts it back into its original energy state. Granted you lose some matter after you drink it, but you can throw some old socks you don’t need any more in with it to make up the difference.
The Canon references talk about that kind of recycling, they also talk about the ship being fueled using Hydrogen and anti-hydrogen, and that the hydrogen was also used as a building block to more complex molecules with the replicators. IIRC, the Bussard collectors are collecting hydrogen for further use.
The Canon references talk about that kind of recycling, they also talk about the ship being fueled using Hydrogen and anti-hydrogen, and that the hydrogen was also used as a building block to more complex molecules with the replicators. IIRC, the Bussard collectors are collecting hydrogen for further use.
And I’m pretty sure that replicators don’t just convert raw energy to matter, they have a stored mass that they use to create whatever you need. So you’re not creating a cup of coffee out of photons, you’re creating it out of stored protons, neutrons and electrons.
Anyway, if you’ve got the ability to contruct matter out of energy, you’ve also got the ability to construct energy out of matter. E=mc^2 goes both ways. So if it takes the entire energy output of 21st century America to make a cup of coffee, that cup of coffee can also provide the entire energy output of 21st century America.
Note that ubiquitous replicators explain the minimalist aesthetic we see in Star Trek. No one sees the need to collect the tons of near-useless junk that clutter up a typical 21st century American home, because there’s no need to keep 12 pickle forks in the back cabinet that you bring out once a year on Thanksgiving. If you want pickle forks you just order them, and when you’re done you don’t bother cleaning them you just dump them back in the replicator for dematerialization. The only objects that people bother to keep are intensely personal ones, or ones they use literally every day. But there’s no closet full of Grandma’s china, because Grandma didn’t HAVE any china to unload onto her grandkids, she didn’t bother. People aren’t attached to objects because they believe objects are ephemeral, they don’t keep them any more than people today keep yesterday’s newspapers. And so “greed” for material objects is obsolete, in the same way that people today aren’t greedy for air or water, and only obsessive compulsive people feel the desire to accumulate objects.
I take it that, in this case, “I don’t believe it!” is not so much a rational analysis as an expression of irritation (e.g. “My lottery ticket was one number off from winning a million bucks! I don’t believe it!”).
Don’t spend much time in the boonies, do you? I had friends who’d charter a helicopter for the day to take out coyotes–sheep ranchers don’t like coyotes much, more’s the pity. Standard thirty ought six rifles, chasing them down with the helicopter and shooting them from 75-100 foot elevation. I’ve seen three guys come home with ten-fifteen coyote carcasses after a day. There’s just nowhere for 'em to go, no way to dodge, y’know?
As for shooting humans from choppers, in Vietnam door gunners did just that and pretty ably, too. Yes, they did have mounted .50 cals to do it with, but the other guys just sitting there would pot enemy troops with their M-16s and there’s no end of confirmed kills shot from helicopters. The door gunner was mostly there for covering fire, sure, but some of those guys got wicked accurate with their equipment–I guess skills increase some with self preservation as an incentive.
Anybody else see the episode of “Top Gear” with the Apache helicopter trying to get a missile fix on a Lotus Elige? Couldn’t do it as long as they had the same ground footprint to maneuver in, but let the helicopter get back a quarter mile and BOOM! Car is toast! Damn, I love that show–curse you basic cable!
Go with “Screwup Squad”–it’s alliterative, and probably censor friendly.
Anyway, during “The Two Towers,” when Gandalf was falling after the Balrog, they were falling at different speeds. No way. Everything falls at the same pace.
They may not have considered a person brought into his world by C-Section as “of woman born.” When you’re dealing with people of a different culture they sometimes have ideas that aren’t the same as ours. MacBeth wasn’t born so much as ripped out of the womb and although I don’t see the distinction I can see how other groups might.
It isn’t as if they were going to carry entire trees up the hill they were going to use branches to conceal their numbers. It seems quite sound to me.
Well…everything accelerates downward due to gravity at the same pace. Acceleration != velocity (speed). And if other downward forces are at work in a non-equal way, that could affect things too. Haven’t seen the movie, though.
Not quite true. Two objects fall at the same speed, in vacuo, as long as the net forces on them are the same. The net forces on Gandalf and the Balrog are NOT the same; we’re clearly meant to think that Gandalf telekinetically calls Glamdring (his sword) to his side, then telekinetically speeds up his fall to catch up with the Balrog. (Just because his TK isn’t strong enough to let him levitate doesn’t mean it couldn’t give gravity a helping hand.)
I believe manually aimed .50cal machine guns on helicopters are very rare. Wikipedia lists only 4 ACH-47 helicopters in Vietnam, that had these on the back cargo ramps. I have also seen recent pictures of a similar setup on more modern CH-47s, but as I understand they are not generally used. But of course, if you are saying that you’ve actually done it yourself, I have no reason to doubt you.
I do have some idea of how helicopter door gunners operate, one of my friends did that for a year or two and I’ve seen him at work. The usual drill is to start firing and then walk the tracers onto the target. Usually this required a burst of around 20-30 rounds, and this is from a fixed mount. Although I did not try it then and there, I am very doubtful that single shots of hand held 5.56mm would have impressed any enemy on the ground very much.
