Which of your favorite sci-fi tech seems achievable in a reasonable timeframe, say 100 years?
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You're implying venice ?
Where I grew up, there was a town that had been intentionally flooded to make a reservoir, or so my parents told me; they claimed that when the reservoir was low, you could see the top of the church steeple. At the time, I drove past the area nearly daily and would often survey the waters, but never found anything that was likely to be more than shadows or a trick of the eye. At the time, I had barely learned of climate change and so wasn't worried about it; I just liked the idea of a structurally intact, intentionally flooded city.
I just looked it up to make sure I was remembering the details correctly. It turns out that either I misremembered or my parents exaggerated. The town apparently existed and was flooded, but at the time of flooding consisted of foundations and one very tall flagpole. Apparently it's a common pastime of kayakers and the like to look for the top of the flagpole. This is probably what my parents were referring to.
Still pretty cool, though.
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You're implying venice ?
New Orleans circa Hurricane Katrina...?
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Suicide Machines on Street Corners.
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Okay I've had this astroid mining concept dining around my empty skull for a while now. The way I see it is that going up to space and mining an astroid for minerals and then bringing them back down to earth will never be a worthwhile endeavour. If you're mining them in space and using the material manufacturing in space then that seems more plausible. The only way I can think of planetary based astroid mining being worthwhile is if instead of mining the rock and sending it down in crafts, you just bump the astroid so it's on a collision course with earth and then mine whatever is left from impact. In anycase, I'd say we are far off being able to mine asteroids since imo, the only worthwhile way to do it is by having the entire process in space. And we're not even close to that level of infrastructure existing in space.
We can get a major shot in the arm if we can find a solid industrial use for iridium that sufficiently eclipses any other element. Or some alloy to the same effect.
Unfortunately, it's so rare that it's next to impossible to do any real amount of testing.
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This is so terrifying to me. I feel like it'll end up like the Black Mirror episode with the subscription model, getting more and more expensive with fewer features.
Common People
That episode made my wife and I really hope this tech never becomes a thing.
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Okay I've had this astroid mining concept dining around my empty skull for a while now. The way I see it is that going up to space and mining an astroid for minerals and then bringing them back down to earth will never be a worthwhile endeavour. If you're mining them in space and using the material manufacturing in space then that seems more plausible. The only way I can think of planetary based astroid mining being worthwhile is if instead of mining the rock and sending it down in crafts, you just bump the astroid so it's on a collision course with earth and then mine whatever is left from impact. In anycase, I'd say we are far off being able to mine asteroids since imo, the only worthwhile way to do it is by having the entire process in space. And we're not even close to that level of infrastructure existing in space.
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=asteroid+mining
Here's a link to some books on the subject. You're right, most people figure it would be putting our heavy industries in space and bring down what ever products are needed.
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I think we can make an oven with a tiny fire breathing dinosaur in it.
So the Flintstones was actually about the future?!
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Where I grew up, there was a town that had been intentionally flooded to make a reservoir, or so my parents told me; they claimed that when the reservoir was low, you could see the top of the church steeple. At the time, I drove past the area nearly daily and would often survey the waters, but never found anything that was likely to be more than shadows or a trick of the eye. At the time, I had barely learned of climate change and so wasn't worried about it; I just liked the idea of a structurally intact, intentionally flooded city.
I just looked it up to make sure I was remembering the details correctly. It turns out that either I misremembered or my parents exaggerated. The town apparently existed and was flooded, but at the time of flooding consisted of foundations and one very tall flagpole. Apparently it's a common pastime of kayakers and the like to look for the top of the flagpole. This is probably what my parents were referring to.
Still pretty cool, though.
https://tnmuseum.org/junior-curators/posts/underwater-ghost-towns-of-tennessee
Apparently, back in the day the government decided that some places weren't worth saving, and the benefits of building dams and flooding the towns outweighed other considerations.
The movie 'Deliverance' has a plot about something like this happening.
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So the Flintstones was actually about the future?!
The Flintstones and Jetsons happened at the same time on the same planet.
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A lot of black mirror stuff.
Apologies for the blanket pessimism but the last decades darkened my view.
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Fast-refresh ePaper. I just want a laptop I can use outside, man!
Look up Daylight DC-1 might be what you are looking for
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Suicide Machines on Street Corners.
I read that as Sucide Marines and was confused for a bit
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Exoskeletons like Ripley's in Alien. We've got smaller ones, but I want to pilot a walking fork lift.
Pipe dream - battlemechs aka mechwarrior (not pacific rim). Very impractical but I want one anyway. Yes, I saw the robot fighting league by Megabots. I have their poster.
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Artificial wombs are something that's often presented as dystopian, but I would imagine would actually be a very good thing. Beyond the obvious help it would be to infertile couples that desired children, they would if commonly adopted eliminate the danger of birth and pregnancy complications, and discomfort associated with the process. Probably not everyone would want to use it, but I'd bet even having the option would mean a lot to a lot of people.
The real downside to artificial wombs is that we may rapidly become dependent on them. Half of pregnancies result in spontaneous abortion. With external gestation that assumedly wouldn't happen. That's a hell of a lot of evolutionary pressure which could have all kinds of consequences.
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I feel like the bottleneck will be with smooth continuous motions. It's very easy to move a cursor in that way with a mouse but you can't do that motion with your eyes unless you are looking at something else that's moving.
Fair. Check this out. The existing stuff is pretty cool
https://youtu.be/CP3t8qMHcsM -
Look up Daylight DC-1 might be what you are looking for
Oooohhh, thank you
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I thought we already had rail guns on ships?
No. Well kinda.
The Ford class uses what is basically a rail gun to launch planes but big navy decided against continuing development on railguns as a weapon.
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Suicide Machines on Street Corners.
That'd be pretty expensive to run if you think anout it. And who'd do the cleanup?
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I'd really like to at least see humanity fully switch to clean energy in my lifetime but I'm losing hope.
I should already be able to take a self-driving flying taxi to work. I should already be able to vacation on the moon. We shouldn't be burning stuff to power all our modern tech.
I grew up on 80s/90s scifi. I hope humanity can get it's shit together and that the current anti-intellectualism phase we're in is just part of a larger cycle.
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Fast-refresh ePaper. I just want a laptop I can use outside, man!
They exist as monitors. In videos they kind of look like really early crappy LCD screens.
I'd just sit in the shade.
