# Stone age to space age in record time **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 13, 2006, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-to-space-age-in-record-time/348147 "2006-03-13T07:34:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2006, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-to-space-age-in-record-time/348147/41 "2006-03-14T23:55:49Z")
I think you could manage a smooth drive all the way to the late 19th century stage of technological advance (even the begining of the 20th). The big stumble will come with electronics, you need a large technical social base for that, there are thousands of little, independent steps needed to end up with a pocket calculator and each step needs people with the know-how and resources to perform it. You´ve got the know how in your handy Omnipedia, but training would take generations, you alone couldn´t possible teach everyone in each separate field. As for the resources that´s a tough one, until the 19th century stage you just need a few metals and natural resources, when you hit the electronics stage you´ll need a huge number of new metals and ores that are not found in any single place on Earth, so you´ll need a global economy going on or many expeditions and colonies scouring the world for you. > [@matt](#): > > Plus, the space route involves grandiose constructions out in the desert, with thousands of grateful slaves hauling monstrous rockets about on rollers for their God-king. Then that begs the question of **why would you like to leave that and go back to your utterly boring life as a chrononaut watching cavemen scratching their butts?**. Just relax on your palm-leaf ventilated throne and launch neolitic folk into orbit just for the hell of it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-to-space-age-in-record-time/348147/42 "2006-03-14T23:59:55Z")
My first thought was to forgo the USB port altogether, and manually get out the signal and feed it back into my transmitter. Even if it’s a very long non-binary string of some sort, it has to be expressible in some manner, and I would hope that the 'Pedia would include some means of displaying the code on the screen (which I can read). For my transmitter, I would need some sort of conductive metal, probably some sort of natural permanent magnets, and possibly some pottery or wood for structural components. For the conductors, I’d go with copper, silver, and/or gold, whichever I got enough of first. Fortunately, the best conductors are also the easiest metals to find and process. The magnets I’d need to build a generator: I could also go the battery route, but that would require a variety of metals, and I’m personally more comfortable with mechanics than chemistry. I don’t know how to find natural magnets, though: I’m hoping the E. G. will have information on that. And I know I can handle the pottery and/or woodworking: I’ve personally sculpted things out of clay I found in its natural state next to a river, and flint tools (which I presume that Bob and Ogg have already; if not, give me a bit of time to practice knapping them myself) will suffice for working the wood. My design will not be anything complicated: I’m just going to use a spark transmitter to generate a lot of electromagnetic white noise, and modulate it by touching the wires together myself. Even with my crude engineering, it should be by far the loudest radio signal on the planet (certainly if I do it the right time of day and year, so that the Sun, Jupiter, and SagA\* are all below the horizon), so the satellite will pick it up, and once it picks it up, the onboard AI should be sufficient to recognize it as the Intertemporal Standard Stranded Chrononaut Distress Signal, even as slowed-down as it needs to be from my improvised beacon. ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-to-space-age-in-record-time/348147/43 "2006-03-15T08:53:01Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > Then that begs the question of **why would you like to leave that and go back to your utterly boring life as a chrononaut watching cavemen scratching their butts?**. Just relax on your palm-leaf ventilated throne and launch neolitic folk into orbit just for the hell of it. Works for me, but it’s good to have a goal! I did think of answering the OP in terms of making the grateful slaves re-enact Series Five, or re-dub it, or duplicate the artwork and voices and re-create it on celluloid, but I felt that wasn’t getting into the spirit of the thing. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-to-space-age-in-record-time/348147/44 "2006-03-15T13:14:08Z")
[tempermental director]Duh-oh? _ **Duh-oh???!!** _ It’s _D’oh_! _D’OH!!!_ That’s it. I can’t work with these people.[/tempermental director] ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-to-space-age-in-record-time/348147/45 "2006-03-15T13:20:46Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > Alan Smithee writes: > > \> In the Star Trek episode where Kirk has to push an annoying Salvation Army > \> woman in front of a Mac truck . . . > > He doesn’t push her toward the truck; rather, he just has to not attempt to save her and to prevent Spock from saving her either. That’s cause the accident happened in Cupertino, California. Hence, the **Mac** truck. If it’d happened anywhere else on the planet, why it would have been a simple case of dirty Windows. 😉 ( she wasn’t annoying, she was luminescent and highly intelligent. Plus, her sister writes trashy novels for a living, so what’s not to like? ) **matt** , that little bit was the real deal. Dad knew some astronauts. They were pilots, engineers and scientists. They knew how to use a slide rule, and I’d be shocked if they didn’t carry them on board of all flights. Knowing the crunch power available back then, a slide rule licked em but good. Cartooniverse [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-to-space-age-in-record-time/348147.md?page=2)