The Current State of Human Technology

Discussion regarding the Outsider webcomic, science, technology and science fiction.

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Arioch
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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Arioch »

Paragon wrote:Say Arioch, what's the view on transhumanism in the future? Do people try to do crazy shit like make human eyes see more of the EM spectrum, or make ourselves more tolerant of gasses (for example carbon dioxide vis a vis alligator genes like in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books)? Or maybe get implants that let us access the internet like in Ghost in the Shell?
As I mentioned in my post of the first page of the thread, the humans in Outsider have a specific role to play in the story as the reader's point of view, so for all practical purposes, they are essentially modern humans transported 150 years into the future. There are a number of ways to explain this, some of which may even make sense, but it's important to keep in mind that this is a story-mandated decision, not a prediction of the future.

As mentioned before, genetic manipulation of humans will still be heavily restricted if not totally banned in most Earth nations, so most genetic experiments will have been exported to the new colonies, where there is less restriction. Anything that you can imagine is probably being experimented with, from super-troopers to exotic "pleasure models"... but this is taking place on the Offworld frontier where it doesn't have that much impact on humanity as a whole. 100-200 years farther in the future, it will become a much bigger issue.

Increased longevity will have significant impact on our social systems, but perhaps not as much direct impact of the individual lives of younger people like Alex and the scout crews. Though it does mean that someone like Hamilton might be a lot older than he actually looks.

As I've mentioned before, I think Ghost in the Shell-type implants and prosthetics are not as near-future as many authors assume, but also for this story we want a human Alex that's easy to relate to, and not a weird cyborg with plugs in his head. So we infer that such things are not yet commonly available.

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Atomic »

Aygar wrote:
Atomic wrote:Is it me or the way hyperjumps are described allow for hyperspace "ballistic" shots?
They do allow for "ballistic" shots through hyperspace.

If that does not answer your question please rephrase your question.
So technically hyperspace may be abused to impunely drop any kind of crap in the next gravitational well (read: star system).

Oh the vandalism and the abuse...

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by NOMAD »

Atomic wrote:
Aygar wrote:
Atomic wrote:Is it me or the way hyperjumps are described allow for hyperspace "ballistic" shots?
They do allow for "ballistic" shots through hyperspace.

If that does not answer your question please rephrase your question.
So technically hyperspace may be abused to impunely drop any kind of crap in the next gravitational well (read: star system).

Oh the vandalism and the abuse...
not quiet, If you go to the extra sections of the outsider, under FTL, it's has been really updated. To give a bare-bones summary; hyperspace travel is ballistic is nature, but its still hazardous. Once a ships enters hyperspace, You had to make sure that your course was correct, since the ship must enter the entry point precisely and at the right distance from the target system sun ( and avoid any planets)

Imagine this ( might not be correct so bear with me), making a hyperspace jump is like trying to hit a 10 point target, some distance away, while aiming for the 6-7 point line, since 1-3 might end up hitting short and your lost in hyperspace. 4-5 is where a planet hit and you could hit the planet and go KA-BOOM, 8-9 is very close to the sun and will result is a nearly missing the sun or entering an inescapable orbital decent into the sun and 10 is the sun centre, no need to explain what would happen their.

now what stops a jump: a sun gravity well ( think of target butt, but with only covering the target ring) the larger the sun or planets for more larger the target and the better your able to stops. However, if the system is unknown, then a hyperspace jump is like shooting at a target with an unfocused telescope site, your not able to judge or detect where the shoot.

and finally, if your wondering about missing the target, your your ships is never heard from again or you enter negative-hyperspace

if this doesn't make sense Arioch ( and other on this forum) said it so much better :)
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Arioch
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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Arioch »

Hyperspace jumps are inherently "ballistic" in the sense that once you've lined up your vector and engaged the jump generator, it's like a cannon shot -- you either hit or miss your target, as there's no (current) way to alter your course once in hyperspace.

However, whatever is within the jump field goes into hyperspace. It's not (currently) possible to lob garbage into hyperspace without the lobbing ship going with it. If that was the question.

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Fotiadis_110 »

What really makes me curious is the materials we humans choose to construct our starships in this modern era.

Titanium is a expensive and small resource even with the entire surface of the earth on hand, so unless they develop means to identify deposits deep below the surface i don't believe the entire human fleet can be made of such materials.
Tungsten is another 'high tech' solution with an even smaller collection of viable deposits despite obscene prices regularly being paid.
So this suggests either lightweight alloys or heavy ones.
Lightweight ones come with high strength and low weight, but also are practically transparent to high energy particles, not a good look for exoplanetary transportation, while heavy alloys currently identified are more or less materials for the purpose of blocking high energy radiation from things like nuclear reactors... and come with high weight and low strength.

My instinct is to say 'Oh they'd use ceramics' however I also recognise one of their material weaknesses, low tolerance for high energy radiation due to the types of bonds involved... frustrating really, but glass for example is degraded rapidly by alpha particles due to the collapse of Si-O bonds, and gamma and beta are the same but on a lesser scale.

Metal alloys 'heal' small damages due to radiation, while covalent bonds collapse and ionic bonds are destabilised :/

Has anyone given thought to this topic aside from me?

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Arioch »

Weight is going to be critical for a low-tech starship, especially for a long-range vessel like Bellarmine. So I would expect that heat-critical areas in the engines will be made of exotic, expensive metal alloys, but most of the rest of the structure of a scout will be lightweight composite materials analogous to fiberglass or carbon fiber.

Terran vessels designed for combat will no doubt have much heavier, more expesnive armor platings.

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by TrashMan »

I'd assuem starship plating to be layerd. Not a single material, but rather a composite...a sandwich if you will.

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Trantor »

Fotiadis_110 wrote:Titanium is a expensive and small resource even with the entire surface of the earth on hand,
Who says so? It´s rather the other way, titanium is cheap and ubiquitous, it´s the 9th most element on earth. At the top of it´s pork cycle titanium sheets were so cheap, cheaper than stainless steel, they used it for roofs and facades here in europe.
Last edited by Trantor on Thu Sep 15, 2011 2:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
sapere aude.

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Ktrain »

Question on jumps: In the Outsiderverse, has there ever been a recorded instance of a ship making a jump and then missing its target, and having it eventually found someplace else?
OUTSIDER UPDATE => HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED?

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Mjolnir »

Fotiadis_110 wrote:Titanium is a expensive and small resource even with the entire surface of the earth on hand, so unless they develop means to identify deposits deep below the surface i don't believe the entire human fleet can be made of such materials.
Titanium is extremely common, its relative lack of use is mainly due to it being difficult to work. 95% of the ore mined is actually currently used to produce titanium dioxide instead of titanium metal. Cost of the metal is largely due to the energy used to make it, and with the amounts of energy being thrown around to fly starships, there's plenty available to make titanium.

Fotiadis_110 wrote:Tungsten is another 'high tech' solution with an even smaller collection of viable deposits despite obscene prices regularly being paid.
So this suggests either lightweight alloys or heavy ones.
Lightweight ones come with high strength and low weight, but also are practically transparent to high energy particles, not a good look for exoplanetary transportation, while heavy alloys currently identified are more or less materials for the purpose of blocking high energy radiation from things like nuclear reactors... and come with high weight and low strength.
Nobody's going to use heavy alloys as any major structural component of a spacecraft. Heavy metals are an extremely poor way to shield against radiation on spacecraft, the best performing materials are actually low density hydrocarbons and light metals.

Dislocations due to absorption of radiation can be annealed out by simple heating in some cases...look up the Wigner effect. Other components may simply require periodic replacement, or be limited to non-structural roles...only a small part of the ship will be exposed to high intensity radiation.

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Karst45 »

why not go green and have wooden plated starship?

They would all laugh until we crash land on their capital

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by NOMAD »

Ktrain wrote:Question on jumps: In the Outsiderverse, has there ever been a recorded instance of a ship making a jump and then missing its target, and having it eventually found someplace else?
I believe the answer is no, but i might be wrong again
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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Paragon »

Karst45 wrote:why not go green and have wooden plated starship?

They would all laugh until we crash land on their capital
A yo ho ho, it's a space pirates life for me!

I'm sorry. I'll stop now.
"Optical computers, genetic catalogs, nanorepair modules--forget all of that. It's when you see a megaton of steel suspended over your head by a thread the thickness of a human hair that you really find God in technology."

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Paragon »

Arioch wrote:
Paragon wrote:Say Arioch, what's the view on transhumanism in the future? Do people try to do crazy shit like make human eyes see more of the EM spectrum, or make ourselves more tolerant of gasses (for example carbon dioxide vis a vis alligator genes like in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books)? Or maybe get implants that let us access the internet like in Ghost in the Shell?
As I mentioned in my post of the first page of the thread, the humans in Outsider have a specific role to play in the story as the reader's point of view, so for all practical purposes, they are essentially modern humans transported 150 years into the future. There are a number of ways to explain this, some of which may even make sense, but it's important to keep in mind that this is a story-mandated decision, not a prediction of the future.

As mentioned before, genetic manipulation of humans will still be heavily restricted if not totally banned in most Earth nations, so most genetic experiments will have been exported to the new colonies, where there is less restriction. Anything that you can imagine is probably being experimented with, from super-troopers to exotic "pleasure models"... but this is taking place on the Offworld frontier where it doesn't have that much impact on humanity as a whole. 100-200 years farther in the future, it will become a much bigger issue.

Increased longevity will have significant impact on our social systems, but perhaps not as much direct impact of the individual lives of younger people like Alex and the scout crews. Though it does mean that someone like Hamilton might be a lot older than he actually looks.

As I've mentioned before, I think Ghost in the Shell-type implants and prosthetics are not as near-future as many authors assume, but also for this story we want a human Alex that's easy to relate to, and not a weird cyborg with plugs in his head. So we infer that such things are not yet commonly available.
So it'd be safe to assume, for the purpose of the story, that any technology not related to space flight or space ships in some manner (which have all been covered rather thoroughly in Insider and other threads) that humans don't posses much more technologically than we do now?
"Optical computers, genetic catalogs, nanorepair modules--forget all of that. It's when you see a megaton of steel suspended over your head by a thread the thickness of a human hair that you really find God in technology."

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Arioch »

Paragon wrote: So it'd be safe to assume, for the purpose of the story, that any technology not related to space flight or space ships in some manner (which have all been covered rather thoroughly in Insider and other threads) that humans don't posses much more technologically than we do now?
Not really. I'm just saying that the 2160 humans in general (and Alex specifically) are not substantively different from the people of today, regardless of what technology they might have.

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by bunnyboy »

Paragon wrote:what's the view on transhumanism in the future?
Paragon wrote:
Karst45 wrote:why not go green and have wooden plated starship?
A yo ho ho, it's a space pirates life for me!
Image Yo ho ho indeed.
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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Karst45 »

Paragon wrote:
Karst45 wrote:why not go green and have wooden plated starship?

They would all laugh until we crash land on their capital
A yo ho ho, it's a space pirates life for me!

I'm sorry. I'll stop now.
Forest: We receiving a transmistion from a strange ship
ship: Shiver my timber! there be some hearty on yé ship!

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by NOMAD »

drink up me heartys yo oh
I am a wander, going from place to place without a home I am a NOMAD

Paragon
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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by Paragon »

oh god what have I done
But serously
Arioch wrote:
Paragon wrote: So it'd be safe to assume, for the purpose of the story, that any technology not related to space flight or space ships in some manner (which have all been covered rather thoroughly in Insider and other threads) that humans don't posses much more technologically than we do now?
Not really. I'm just saying that the 2160 humans in general (and Alex specifically) are not substantively different from the people of today, regardless of what technology they might have.
Well, that's just kind of really silly too me. I understand why you're going about it that way, most sci-fi does, so I guess what follows are really my problems with the genre in general more than anything you've written).

I'm hard pressed to think of something that changes people and life more than technology.

Agriculture and animal domestication allowed us to have civilization in the first place. Roads and ships allowed those civilizations to connect with each other. The industrial revolution allowed 90% of people to have a career other than "farmer". The internet allows us to have this conversation in the first place (in more ways than one). If I had been born just 30 years ago I probably would have never had a conversation with someone from another country. Hell, fucking Facebook and Twitter helped make the revolutions that have happened or are ongoing in North Africa and the Middle East right now possible. So I guess that's why the idea of humans in 2160 being pretty much identical to us bothers me.

But, eh, I'm still going to read Outsider and enjoy it to death anyway. Just thought I'd share my thoughts on that.
"Optical computers, genetic catalogs, nanorepair modules--forget all of that. It's when you see a megaton of steel suspended over your head by a thread the thickness of a human hair that you really find God in technology."

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Re: The Current State of Human Technology

Post by LegioCI »

There could be factors for why much of Outsider-Humanity hasn't embraced trans-humanism. Perhaps cyborg bodies are expensive to make, buy and upkeep. (Keep in mind that the human body is capable of amazing feats of self-repair. If you break a meet leg, you can slap a cast on it and it'll be fine in a few months; break a cyborg leg and you have to replace expensive components.)

Another problem may be the uncanny valley factor; how realistically can we reproduce the human body? Can we reproduce things like body odor. (Sure, B.O. might seem to be a bad thing to us now, but imagine someone who didn't have any smell at all, or worse yet, smelled like artificial materials; this could be quite off-putting.) Will a cyborg's hair still grow like real hair? Will their flesh be soft and warm like a real person's? There are numerous things we can't predict when it comes to artificially replicating the human body, things that we take for granted that, if forgotten, could make people very uncomfortable with converted people.

Another problem is that while a cyborg or digital existence would get rid of a lot human frailties, it can get rid of a lot of things that are great about being human. A full conversion cyborg can't have children of it's own and may even have trouble with sexual gratification of any kind, doesn't get to eat and, depending on how far technology has progressed on this front, may have deadened "non-critical" senses like smell and taste.

If anything, younger people like Jardin may eschew trans-humanism in their youth, allowing them to experience the world as a human until their bodies start to break down with age.
SpoilerShow
Wouldn't it be one of hell of a plot twist to find out that Hamilton survived the decompression of the bridge and the destruction of the Bell simply because he was a full-conversion cyborg?
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