Beta and Higher Patron Notice
Added 2015-10-24 02:07:51 +0000 UTCREALISTIC DESIGNS
added new section RM-1 Lunar Reconnaissance Craft
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns.php#id--RM-1_Lunar_Reconnaissance_Craft
MAPS OF SPACE
added a diagram of Galactic Directions
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacemaps.php#directions
ENGINE LIST
added to Open Cycle Gas Core Reactor a quote about Crew radiation dose from plume of Gas-Core rocket
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#gascorerad
added to Open Cycle Gas Core Reactor more cross section diagrams
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#tmx2243
ASTROMILITARY
added to Fleet Missions a quote from the Eldraeverse
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/astromilitary.php#eldraefleetmission
BASIC DESIGN
added to Discovery XD-1 more pre-production images of the Discovery's heat radiators from the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/basicdesign.php#boss
ROCKETCAT'S UNIVERSE
added to Locations a few more "incidents" at the TerraCo Military Isolation Lab
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/approcketcatu.php#id--Locations
added to Copyrighted Locations a quote from Silent Galaxy
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/approcketcatu.php#id--Locations--Copyrighted_Locations
expanded the section RocketCat Origins
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/approcketcatu.php#id--RocketCat_Origin
ALIENS
expanded the section on Paleotechnology
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php#paleotechnology
FASTER THAN LIGHT
added to The Fourth dimension images from a comic book about the fourth dimension
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fasterlight.php#hypernaut
EXOTIC SIDEARMS
added to Ridiculous Handwavium a Victorian Steampunk smoke-ring gun
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sidearmexotic.php#quiver
Comments
Oh, and just for fun, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg</a> Start from 9:42.
Jon Richards
2015-10-27 02:13:03 +0000 UTCI understand your take on that, and I agree that if it was possible to damage/destroy ALL of reality in one go, there wouldn't be anything left once the first species messed up. My thoughts on the matter are that attempting to "hack" reality won't be so much using a programming interface as exploiting physics "glitches". While an actual interface with the system would be amazing, it is probable that the universe is not designed with one accessible from the inside, just as many games/simulations can't be edited from within...though there are some neat things you CAN do if an "ingame" editor is part of the program. One wonders why that would be present, though...
Jon Richards
2015-10-26 15:45:11 +0000 UTCWell, it's not like they don't have people working on the danger... it's just that they're concentrated in operations EPOCH SHATTER (hacking the simulation) and VACUUM AVALANCHE (oops! we broke physics!), neither of which has shown up on the printed page yet. That, and the Robustness Hypothesis, which argues that the universe is very, very big and very, very old and as such _has_ to have robust error-handling or at least error-encystment mechanisms, or it would have crashed long ago...
Alistair Young
2015-10-26 15:32:53 +0000 UTCYes, weapons that hack reality's source code. The closest I recall in science fiction was the "anomalous physics" in The Space Eater by David Langford. AP allows one to alter the values of various constants in physics. In their first attempt, suddenly, 1/3rd of all the stars in the entire universe explode. After that, being found in the same building as any AP equipment is against the law, punishable by death, sentence to be carried out the instant it is discovered.
Nyrath
2015-10-26 13:12:23 +0000 UTCSomething that you haven't mentioned yet, but that I think would be an interesting addition to the exotic weapons section are reality altering weapons, or rather weapons or devices that cause their intended effect by altering reality in a specific pattern in the weapon, that causes a non-local effect in the intended target area. That's not a good description, so for a good example, I love the hypometric weapons from Revelation Space. Or, for a better one, imagine the universe as a computer. If this is true, imagine us as a particularly detailed video game. A reality altering device is something that takes advantage of a flaw in the simulation, but not a cheat, more of an exploit, such as "jump 256 times in the top right corner of map 8 and your score will reset to maximum", except it's "Generate a femto-scale pattern too complex for the machine running local space-time to process in a timely manner near your enemy, and wait for the universe to perform an exception handling routine, to remove the pattern, and your enemy, from the program". Any such device would be both hideously complex, as so far there is no experimental evidence of anything like this, and hideously dangerous, as we do not know whether we ARE a simulation, what OS the universe is running... or the system architecture, or anything else, so the only way I can see anything like this be discovered is by complete accident, that one in a million chance that a piece of equipment DESIGNED to do one thing does something entirely different as well(or the brute force method), and it seems like the easiest "effect" to discover would be a locally destructive one, e.g. Rewrite everything within some huge radius of Planck lengths to vacuum/hydrogen/heaviest stable isotope/energy... That said, once you can do that, you can start using a destructive effect to "map" the computational architecture, and use information gained from that to enable finer manipulation, e.g. "Yes, we may have turned slightly less than a cubic mile into a hideous black cube that destroys all that enters it for all eternity by overloading the "server", BUT we now know the area that each "server" covers, how MUCH it takes to overload one, and that the coverage is cubic... I'll bet we can make a lag projector!". :) Being able to generate non-local effects would be a tremendously valuable tool or weapon, as depending on the nature of the "exploits" discovered/allowed, you could have a fantastically powerful weapon, such as something that overwrites a variable sized sphere/cube of whatever's inside into vacuum (for a fun tactical limitation, postulate that when the device is activated, the field is generated at a fixed distance, and along a fixed bearing relative to the "universe", regardless of which way the device is pointing), or a stardrive that lets you hack your ship to another system instantly, or an onboard teleporter, or a cheap matter creator (or duplicator)... in short, whatever you think you need in story. The trouble with this is that the initial "research" is hideously dangerous, akin to opening a land mine by banging it with a rock, but you might kill everyone, and specific applications may not exist, just as it probably would not be possible to find a glitch to do everything in a game, and that the universe may notice this, and have antivirus software, or tech support... Best case, the stardrive/weapon stops working for no reason, worst case, everything involved disappears/dies/turns to energy/is hauled out of reality, given a lecture on fairness, and returned... :D This is similar to Young's ontotechnology... in fact it's identical, but my take on it has tends to focus more on the danger.
Jon Richards
2015-10-26 04:44:49 +0000 UTCAnother good one. I have to remember that ReiherCo owe RocketCat some high grade tuna from our aquaculture system. Gotta stay on the good side of that kitty. I do like the section on Xenopaleontology. Both Norton and JMS inspired me to do a short "starting point" for the SciFi Ideas website: <a href="http://www.scifiideas.com/inspiration/leftovers/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.scifiideas.com/inspiration/leftovers/</a> I used the term "Xenoarcheologist" and accepted the fact that after a couple of thousand years, the gleaming crystal towers of a long lost civilization would be so much pretty beach sand. And since I do a podcast, we had a question about what would be left after 10,000 years. We answer it and argue over building codes. :-) <a href="http://tritacsystems.podbean.com/e/episode-244-listener-questions-part-2/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://tritacsystems.podbean.com/e/episode-244-listener-questions-part-2/</a>
John
2015-10-24 03:58:02 +0000 UTC
