50 replies to this topic

[MuonNeutrino]

Torqueware, on 17 December 2012 - 07:17 PM, said:

Actually no. Radiation is a one time thing.

When radioactive decay occurs the change only happens one way - entropy favors the decayed / more stable state.

When radioactive decay occurs alpha particles, beta particles (electrons, sometimes positrons), and gamma rays (electromagnetic rays with great amounts of energy) are expelled - or, radiates, if you prefer - into the surrounding environment. This is a per-particle occurrence, and it only occurs once. This decay is what causes radiation sickness, and the alpha particles decay sometimes further.

So long as radioactive particles do not escape the weapon, the radiation kill-zone is only 'temporary'.

Yes and no. It is true that a release of radiation, in isolation, is a one time thing unless you actually release some quantity of radioactive material. However, large amounts of ionizing radiation doesn't just vanish - when it is absorbed, in some cases it can either split an atom through fission or cause an atom to gain one or more nucleons through the absorption of neutrons, alphas, or whatnot. And in some of *those* cases, the resulting atom(s) is/are radioactive themselves. So, while the release of radiation itself may be a one time event, it may leave behind radioactive atoms in the environment even if it doesn't release any radioactive particles itself. Now, that takes a heck of a radiation flux, but still possible.

[SpiralRazor]

dude..you realize that the technology is in its infancy right? Come back in 15 years..

[Lightfoot]

Quote

Kristov Kerensky, on 17 December 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

Exoskeletons are already in the works in the United States, DARPA has been working on them for quite a few years, along with gauss and rail weapons, various laser weapons, and probably trying to figure how to get a PPC style weapon to actually work without killing everyone around the weapon as well as the target(seriously, they create massive radiation bursts that will kill anyone in the area of the actual device, big issue to overcome).

Mechs..not so much a big area of research, since they are actually a really horrible platform for weapons and the bipedal humanoid form isn't the best for covering varied terrain, legged vehicles in general are horrible design choices due to the inherent weakness of the legs themselves.

The reason for a Mech-type platform is to extend the range of laser/beam weapons which can't use trajectories to fire like ballistic weapons can. How else would you do it with a land based vehicle?

[Rex Budman]

SpiralRazor, on 17 December 2012 - 12:43 PM, said:

http://www.scientifi...tificial-muscle




http://www.theblaze....-sip-of-coffee/





Just the beginning, but it had to start somewhere.


Given moores law and applying the concept to technology in general well...i can see 20 ton powered armors in about 40 years, if not less.

Why do people take Moores law as Gospel? It is not a LAW. Technology will not follow this "law" or system ad infinitum. Man make machine. Machine innovated over time due to new discovery, innovations, new energy sources and new science. These are driven by men, purely coincidentally and put forward at the rate of which it is put forward, which is no set system of time.

Moores "law" has already failed so I don't understnad why this is so commonly used in technology discussions.

Edited by Rex Budman, 17 December 2012 - 08:18 PM.

[Torqueware]

MuonNeutrino, on 17 December 2012 - 08:05 PM, said:

Yes and no. It is true that a release of radiation, in isolation, is a one time thing unless you actually release some quantity of radioactive material. However, large amounts of ionizing radiation doesn't just vanish - when it is absorbed, in some cases it can either split an atom through fission or cause an atom to gain one or more nucleons through the absorption of neutrons, alphas, or whatnot. And in some of *those* cases, the resulting atom(s) is/are radioactive themselves. So, while the release of radiation itself may be a one time event, it may leave behind radioactive atoms in the environment even if it doesn't release any radioactive particles itself. Now, that takes a heck of a radiation flux, but still possible.

One of the assumptions I made was that the radioactive particles were contained. Apologies in advance if I wasn't clear on this assumption. I was under the impression that when the 'weapon' was fired it would expel radiation through an internal mechanism.

Alpha decay emits high velocity particles (He²⁺), and they can be blocked by a sheet of paper.
Beta particles emit e^- or e⁺, and they can be blocked by a sheet of tin foil.

I was assuming that our weapon was made of sturdier stuff than tinfoil and paper, thus my conclusion was that radiation was a one-time thing in this circumstance due to only gamma rays escaping.

Another assumption I made was that we weren't using absolutely silly amounts of nuclear power, reducing the likelihood of crazy amounts of ionization (and other bad things) in a given area where the 'weapon' is fired.

Rex Budman, on 17 December 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Why do people take Moores law as Gospel? It is not a LAW. Technology will not follow this "law" or system ad infinitum. Man make machine. Machine innovated over time due to new discovery, innovations, new energy sources and new science. These are driven by men, purely coincidentally and put forward at the rate of which it is put forward, which is no set system of time.

Moores "law" has already failed so I don't understnad why this is so commonly used in technology discussions.

Moore's law fails when it's interpreted to the letter (that is, as it was written then).

People in the computer science community often argue to no end about this, but one popular interpretation of Moore's law is to look at computers in terms of raw performance (I.E. operations per second).

If you plot the increasing speed of computer processing over time, then an interesting correlation similar to Moore's law can be seen.

Though Moore's law is dead I would say the spirit of the law is still present in the advancement of computers (especially since the boom of parallel co-processors).

Keep in mind this is just my opinion.

I agree with you, though, on the reckless worship of Moore's law. It isn't really a natural law. It was just a clever observation made at the right time.

(Edits: for clarity, and to address another point)

Edited by Torqueware, 18 December 2012 - 01:03 PM.

[Eisenhorne]

Picatinny Arsenal's progress towards PPC's (Called LIPC) -

http://www.army.mil/article/82262/

From what I understand, fire a guide laser, then send a bolt of lighting down that laser, because its the path of least resistance through the air.

[Daiichidoku]

[Revolver Kirin]

A note about about one of the advantages of the bipedal mech configuration, it is very intimidating when properly sized and designed. Which would be more frightening? An M1 Abrams, or a Zues? Assume the same technological base.

[Torqueware]

Revolver Kirin, on 18 December 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

A note about about one of the advantages of the bipedal mech configuration, it is very intimidating when properly sized and designed. Which would be more frightening? An M1 Abrams, or a Zues? Assume the same technological base.

I would rather liquefy my enemies with missiles, than intimidate them.

Edited by Torqueware, 18 December 2012 - 01:01 PM.

[TANTE EMMA]

Moonsavage, on 17 December 2012 - 01:12 PM, said:

Power - always comes down to them absent fusion generators!!

Actually there is some pretty promissing research on them. Just read an article about some projects.

[Hesketh Vernon Hesketh Prichard]

Rex Budman, on 17 December 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Why do people take Moores law as Gospel? It is not a LAW. Technology will not follow this "law" or system ad infinitum. Man make machine. Machine innovated over time due to new discovery, innovations, new energy sources and new science. These are driven by men, purely coincidentally and put forward at the rate of which it is put forward, which is no set system of time.

Moores "law" has already failed so I don't understnad why this is so commonly used in technology discussions.

TTTHHHANANNNNKKKKKKK YOU!

I been saying this for YEARS! Moores law AT BEST is a prediction. Soon as we master graphine were going see at least a 100x improvement on our best with silicon (or Gallium arsenide for 'the powers that be'). SO what to moores law then?

Intel have working 12nm which is pretty impressive as we should have abandoned silicon at 40nm really. Everything we've done below that as not brought great gains although INTEL advertising would like to tell you different. Graphene will bring back the 'enthusiest' market thats now been killed off dead by intel. Discrete GPU's are next to be killed off in 2014/2015 if intel as there way. Same as there 2014 cpu will HAVE NO SOCKET, On board ONLY! You do know AMD have abandoned there top end x86 chips? SO no compition for intel! But like M$, It's doomed to be a company of the past. ANd good ridunce. Funny its the mobilke market thats killing these giants.

As 21st December 2012 brings a new Eon (Age) from pises to aquarius hopefully we will see a change of power :-)

Off topic but full of information ;-)

Edited by Hesketh Vernon Hesketh Prichard, 18 December 2012 - 01:18 PM.

[CaptainNapalm]

A bipedal armored vehicle, given the same mobility as a human body and a direct neural conection of some sort along with a simulated sence of touch would be extremely useful in urban environments. More so if those environments are rubled as a human can climb by slinging its weapon and using hands to aid balance and grip. Historicaly armored vehicles are at a disadvantage in built up areas. Not so a humanoid war machine. Also in the case of leg fragility and balance, yes curent and near future tech. will not over come this but the tracks and tires are a notorious weak spot on current AFVs and tracks especialy are surprisingly fragile and maintenence heavy. Also a vehichle hovering 100m in the air is pretty hard not to notice, where as a 4m humanoid AFV with camo in the bush or ruins of a city is not so much. The OP did say this looks like the start of bigger things not mechs should be out and about any day now.

Edited by CaptianNapalm, 18 December 2012 - 01:17 PM.

[L A guns]

[JebusGeist]

http://www.cyberdyne...h/robotsuithal/

Their current prototype models can boost your lifting capacity by upwards of 80kg apparently. Not quite enough to mount some heavy duty armor and weapons, but a step in the right direction.

[SpiralRazor]

Rex Budman, on 17 December 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Why do people take Moores law as Gospel? It is not a LAW. Technology will not follow this "law" or system ad infinitum. Man make machine. Machine innovated over time due to new discovery, innovations, new energy sources and new science. These are driven by men, purely coincidentally and put forward at the rate of which it is put forward, which is no set system of time.

Moores "law" has already failed so I don't understnad why this is so commonly used in technology discussions.

because its mostly true..just like newtonian physics. Engineers are still taught some things in school that are complete artifice, but they will get you the right answers...

Moores Law is like that and weve a LONG way to go before it peters itself out bro...a long long way.

[Torqueware]

SpiralRazor, on 18 December 2012 - 02:10 PM, said:

because its mostly true..just like newtonian physics. Engineers are still taught some things in school that are complete artifice, but they will get you the right answers...

Moores Law is like that and weve a LONG way to go before it peters itself out bro...a long long way.

Actually, this depends on the interpretation of Moore's Law.

Strictly speaking, Moore's Law stopped working a long time ago (at about the time we hit the 'power wall' in the 2000s).

It was originally an observation on the increasing transistor count per microprocessor over a given time period.

Said a different way, Moore's law was originally written to apply to single-core microprocessors.

A modern desktop computer microprocessor is a multi-core device (utilizing parallelism to achieve higher speeds). It's for this reason that people often insist that Moore's Law does not apply to the modern microprocessor (and thus, has not held true).

It's a valid argument, but I feel that it is not being 'true' to the 'spirit' of Moore's Law.

It's important to remember that Moore's Law was an observation originally created to predict increases in computing performance.

Now, the hard part is defining 'performance'.

[Merky Merc]

Revolver Kirin, on 18 December 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

Which would be more frightening? An M1 Abrams, or a Zues? Assume the same technological base.

The Abrams, when it puts a 120mm DU shell through the Zues cockpit at 2.5 km out while hauling *** at 45 kph.

Power armor/exoskeletons? Yeah we'll probably see those within the next 20 years. Mechs? What's the point? Their legs alone make them more vulnerable than traditional platforms, plus the costs would be ridiculous. Maybe we get some little automated walkers to carry gear in terrible terrain, but not much else.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Torqueware, on 17 December 2012 - 12:57 PM, said:

We don't need people to carry PPCs, silly. Just put them in orbit and have soldiers on the ground use laser painters.

Also I disagree about mechs being a horrible design choice - they are just more apt in another role than 'walking tank' in reality. We currently use legged robots to clean minefields (they work pretty well, or so I hear).

Why not a walking quadruped? When one leg is lifted, the mech would become a tripod - fairly stable, right? (albeit, walking would be slow)

What legged robots are we effectively using to clear minefields? Just curious. Is this a different country than the US? I've been in the US Army going on 20 years, worked with multiple NATO partners and have yet to see an effective walking mine clearer bot of some kind in a combat zone. So if there's a prototype I'm all eyes.

Also there is the exoskeleton HULC system in development.

[Kaspirikay]

I just want my powered armor. I already saved tons of bottlecaps.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Merky Merc, on 29 December 2012 - 02:45 PM, said:

The Abrams, when it puts a 120mm DU shell through the Zues cockpit at 2.5 km out while hauling *** at 45 kph.

Power armor/exoskeletons? Yeah we'll probably see those within the next 20 years. Mechs? What's the point? Their legs alone make them more vulnerable than traditional platforms, plus the costs would be ridiculous. Maybe we get some little automated walkers to carry gear in terrible terrain, but not much else.

Folks have to remember this "Tech" is based on 80's and very early 90's perceptions of what awesome might look like....clearly we've outpaced Stackpole's novels and the original TT/MW canon. Not a biggie...just needs an upgrade