Blogs - RisingSun_TBR

The title of this article is a sentence fragment. And the contents of this blog is a continuation of my first blog, i.e., im going to explain some more misconceptions about spaceships. The intro this second time around is short.

The first two problems boil down to the fact that spaceships travel in space, and space is different from an atmosphere, or the ocean. For example, the only way a spaceship can travel is using a jet engine, or burning small amounts of fuel to shoot large amounts of stuff, or "propellant", in the direction it wants to go. Unfortunately, spaceships can't use the air as propellant like jet fighters do. So they need to carry there propellant with them. A lot of it. In fact for a spaceship to have enough delta-v (delta velocity, or how much a spacecraft can change its velocity before it runs out of propellant) to get around the solar system, two-thirds of its mass should be propellant; the remaining one-third is everything else. On a related note, tanks of propellant would be either spherical, because they have the least surface area for the most volume, or cylindrical, because they also have a decent surface area to volume ratio, but are much easier to build than spheres. In fact the whole spacecraft would probably be one of these two shapes.

The second problem pertaining to spaceships travelling in space, also is directly related to the fact that there isn't much stuff in space. I know that many of you have heard all about the "cold void of space" and junk, but in reality, that's not quite relevant. In fact the temperature problem with space is that things heat up too quickly, because unlike earth-based vehicles, where we can harness the power of conduction to carry our heat away, in space there's nothing to conduct our heat into. In fact the only way to get rid of the heat is through radiation, which is a terribly slow process. This implies huge sheets of metal that we dump the waste heat into, so it can slowly fly away in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Like the kind your computer is now beaming into your eyes. Or you could use coolant, and shoot the coolant away when it gets too hot, but that just adds to the already-difficult-to-make-good propellant mass to everything else mass ratio.

I would do more but this got really big, really fast (that's what she said) so I'm gonna end it here, so seeya later.

Hello people. In this blog I'll talk about the end of the Mayan calender, more specifically how it relates to our current society.

One thing few people realise is that the Mayans didn't have the same sort of calender that we do. Their calender is cyclical, and it tracks days, months, years, and longer periods of times. One of those longer periods is known as a Baktun. This day represents the conclusion of the so called 13th Baktun, and the beginning of the 14th. I am not an expert on the Mayans, so I hardly know the significance of the date, other than that the Mayans stopped predicting specific events on this date. This hardly implies the end of the world, and for the record I do not personally believe that anything horrible enough to destroy the world will, or even can, happen in the near future.

The problem is how society chooses to deal with this day. Every day for the past few months I've heard a people pronouncing, "I don't think the world will end!" and then everyone gets into a discussion about it. And nopony ever says they think the world will end. It's like people just coming up to you and announcing, "I am not a Nazi!". Everyone knows that, because no normal person is. In fact I'd like to say "I DO think the world will end to-day!", just to see what kind of reaction people will get. They've probably never heard anyone say that before.

Additionally, on all the sites I go on, and then in real life, I was flooded with "LOL the world didn't end I knew those stupid savages were wrong!" and crap like that. If the world were going to end, it wouldn't instantly happen at midnight, it wouldn't be magic. Also there are 24 different midnights around the world.

So I guess I'll leave you with this question to ponder: What is up with mankind's obsession with finding dates that the world might end?

I like spaceships. I've always liked spaceships. But only recently have I really appreciated them, and all that goes into their design. I used to think spaceships were all about looks, and it really didn't matter what was on the inside, but the the ways that is not true are too numerous to count. Except that they are, and that's what this blog is about. In a few paragraphs I'll explain a few of the more common ways people mistreat their spacecraft designs.

The number one thing that is featured in almost one hundred per-cent of sci-fi spaceships, and one of my personal pet peeves, is that, brace for caps lock, A SPACESHIP IS NOT A BOAT. Now this is just a general statement and I'll bring up some of the other points later, but for the moment I will discuss the fact that spaceships are not laid out with the floors long ways like a boat is. They're set up like a skyscraper, because during a burn, the thrust will pull everybody towards the engines, so the engines should be below your feet. Maybe if you had an artificial gravity device to pull everyone down, and cancel out the thrust from the engines, it could be set up that way, but not only is artificial gravity impossible, its extra, needless work.

Second, A SPACESHIP IS NOT A BOAT. A space warship really can maneuver in all three dimensions, and it really ain't that hard. This isn't quite as ubiquitous, but monumentally more ridiculous. I understand that in video games it may be hard to portray this, but it gets taken to absurd levels. For example in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (an otherwise good movie) Kirk came up with the "brilliant tactic" of /maneuvering on the Z-axis/ to defeat Khan in the USS Miranda.

Thirdly, there is no friction in space. And when I say "no" I mean "almost no". When a spaceships engines are turned off, or malfunction, or whatever, it won't slow to a stop. And the ship's engines don't always have to be on to move forward. This is a little more forgiveable, but it happens in almost every single sci-fi show.

There is no stealth in space. There will never be stealth in space, and nothing anyone can say will ever change that. Now that we have that out of the way, here is reasons:

1. Spaceships give off heat when they do things. They also give off heat just by keeping the crew alive.

2. That heat is easily detectable. The thrusters on a space shuttle can be detected from Pluto, with a /passive sensor/.

3. You can't get rid of the heat. Attempting to do so will create even more heat, because the three Laws of Thermodynamics are determined to make everyone's lives miserable.

4. You can't hide the heat, because it still needs to go somewhere, and assuming you're fighting more that one ship, someone is gonna see it.

5. You could use decoys, but in order to do so they would need to be the same mass, size, general shape, and engine power as the ship your protecting. Might as well slap guns on them and call them warships.

6. Any way anyone else comes up with is probably also wrong. But if its not then that's awesome, because stealthy spaceships would be cool.

So that's a couple of the many misconceptions people have about spaceships. I might update my blog with a few more, I might not. It depends on how many people care.

Seeya guys, and good hunting.