No need to get snippy, fella. That isn't good enough for me. Bust the myth with some real tests. Recreate the conditions and show your work. You point at buildings and say no, I point at building-sized animals and say yes. Show me some building-sized robots and say no. Till then, it's unproven.Charcharo said:
I hadn't considered the jarring movements a pilot would experience. Any chance you could compensate with internal suspension for the cockpit?ForumSafari said:
Eeeeehhhh...Yes I guess so but if you think about it you need space to dampen the impact and movement, that means massive suspension units, bulking the mech out considerably and still resulting in what would be a frankly nauseating constant soft bobbing of the cockpit. It wouldn't kill you but it'd add more weight and would still be nearly impossible to drive, you'd get so shaken up with each pace that you'd lose the ability to even stay pointed in the right direction, much less shoot on the move.FalloutJack said:
The square cube law is the reason we don't have giant bugs anymore, and why dinosaurs the size of buildings couldn't breathe in a present-day atmosphere (to be more specific, lung efficiency decreases as size increases past a certain point, bugs have it even worse because of even less efficient breathing; worked fine back when the atmosphere was richer in oxygen, not so much nowadays). There's also the unpleasant problem of structural integrity, which is harder to maintain the more size (and mass) increases.FalloutJack said:
Charcharo said:
Our knowledge of how the world works, even our understanding of physical law and limitation, changes with time and new discovery. If it takes a hundred years to design and build? Fine. If we have to invent new alloys along the way? Fine. If it requires a helluva generator? Fine. But I don't want to hear people going on about it if they'e not willing to pick up a wrench and get to work.
That's very interesting. Some people would still try it despite this possibility, I think. The innate desire to ride a robot as though a wild beast is very strong. Still, I have no doubts that using dinosaurs as soldiers IS bullshit. Hell, the MOVIE pointed that one out, no problem!ForumSafari said:
That's very cool and all, though I see it's largely a massive crane-based arm digging out the side of an entire hillscape, doing the job of a HUGE amount of people and/or explosives in presumably a short time. The treads are clearly due to it being WIDE as hell, not just heavy. That kind of thing just goes to prove that this technology is cool and should be pursued and ironed out unto its conclusion and perfection.Jack Action said:
The treads don't provide enough surface area to stop it from tipping over if it feels like it; that's why that huge counterweight arm is there on the opposite end of the digging arm and why most of the solid bits are concentrated near the center. That huge connection to the other machine in the background isn't part of the digger itself, it's attached by the machine in the background.FalloutJack said:
I'm not surprised by the counterweight. It's a crane! It has a different function than a crane, but it uses the same mechanisms. I think it's far more interesting that you lost a three-kilogram ball bearing. You must've had a VERY interesting childhood.Jack Action said:
And I suppose nuclear weapons will ignite the atmosphere and CERN is going to suck the world down a black hole, or that the speed of light is fixed when...we've managed to accelerate light particles many-times faster than they were before. That theory isn't good enough for counterpoints alone, not good enough for the large chunk of humanity that sit and wonder about this sort of thing. They'll only drop it when they pursue it until either it doesn't work or it does. Theory alone isn't going to solve this. If I asked Bill Nye about this, he'd mention Square-Cube Law too, but he'd ALSO say it should be followed to its conclusion to see whether it's right about it or not, since there are in fact MANY factors involved and so many unknowns to discover. Don't use science as a hurdle unless you're willing to jump.Charcharo said:
...erm, no, actually, I just moved around a lot. Easy to lose stuff.FalloutJack said:
It was a report in reference to lasers, tightening and confining the beam for a faster progression of the particles involved. It's very cool, though I already knew that light was actable upon by outside forces like gravity (such as the force of black holes) and so must have a means by which they move faster or slower, dependent upon the course taken. There may also be interaction with dark matter/energy that we don't entirely know about too, but that's just theory there.Dynast Brass said:
Uhhh, not really. I need some visual aid. Got a robot handy?Charcharo said:
I'm not actually concerned about what form it takes or what use it is, per se. I'm more interested in perfecting the science of it, the technology. And by that, I mean working upon the giant robot premise to see how it functions in real life physics, to walk perhaps in the dinosaur's footprints for a while and see what they had to deal with, maybe. When I originally saw previews for Jurassic Park, I hadn't read the book. I thought it WAS giant robots. It was still damn cool. We should build a dinosaur robot to explore their traction and mobility, the ultimate test of animatronics.Jack Action said:
I was just thinking incendiaries would work really well against dinosaurs. And if a couple of them happen to land on PETa who're currently protesting your use of napalm against dinosaurs... well, accidents happen.Dynast Brass said:
...the Zumwalt is really, REALLY ugly though.Dynast Brass said:
Well, that's not a robot, so... It would also not work with legs. At all. It's already an extremely complex piece of machinery, legs would just make everything worse. And yes, we could probably build robodinosaurs to figure out how they worked... or we could make do with much cheaper computer simulations.FalloutJack said:
I was kind of on board/mildly offended at being referred to as "the dumbest kind of adult" but I got lost in all the words that came after and realised just how far this explanation was going so I don't feel so bad anymore.rorychief said:
I don't know about the other people but I love hashing through what-if scenarios, it's really interesting and it's where you get good ideas from. It doesn't matter how stupid the scenario you start with as long as you chew through it with sincerity.TakerFoxx said:
Well there's the lack of fallout, and more importantly, if you use napalm instead of a nuke, you can gather up all the freshly roasted dinosaur, feed a few hundred thousand people delicious meat, and call it a humanitarian effort. Biggest grill party in history, if you will.Dynast Brass said:
I feel it is by cheating that we learn new and interesting things about the universe. If the cheat turns out to be the correct understanding instead, we've learned something very interesting. I think there have been some discoveries like that. Ahh...wasn't it the study of certain elements where a scientist was trying very hard to disprove something he found and that because he couldn't do it, he had to accept that he had founda very fundamental earth-shattering truth? I'll have to look that up again.Dynast Brass said:
