Valve Is Teasing "Index" - Its Own VR Headset

[coder]

Sorry, this one caught my interest... Ummm ionize that ore, send it down a partical accelerator and beam that mass back to earth. Done. We could do that right now. Unmanned and without trying to drag an asteroid to earths orbit.

Hmmm... you're talking about transporting it to a vessel in Earth's orbit, correct? So, you're still not solving the problem of getting it down onto the surface. In the case of phosphorous, we're talking about something like a quarter billion tons/year.

Anyway, just think about how much mass you're proposing to move, and the velocities involved. That's a lot of energy you've got to get from somewhere. And you need to account fo the effect on the asteroid's orbit. And whatever's going to catch it would need to use thrust to stay in orbit (or to reach an orbit where it could sink that amount of inertia).

[duby229]

Hmmm... you're talking about transporting it to a vessel in Earth's orbit, correct? So, you're still not solving the problem of getting it down onto the surface. In the case of phosphorous, we're talking about something like a quarter billion tons/year.

Anyway, just think about how much mass you're proposing to move, and the velocities involved. That's a lot of energy you've got to get from somewhere. And you need to account fo the effect on the asteroid's orbit. And whatever's going to catch it would need to use thrust to stay in orbit (or to reach an orbit where it could sink that amount of inertia).

A high power laser can cut right thru the atmosphere. That was proven by the mid 80's. Every technology required to beam mass straight to the surface is at least 35 years old or older.

EDIT: The US government still denies it, but I'm completely convinced they have kw lasers in orbit that can drill a hole thru the top of your head from space.....

[coder]

A high power laser can cut right thru the atmosphere. That was proven by the mid 80's. Every technology required to beam mass straight to the surface is at least 35 years old or older.

EDIT: The US government still denies it, but I'm completely convinced they have kw lasers in orbit that can drill a hole thru the top of your head from space.....

I'm skeptical there's an efficient way to do it (both energy-efficient, and in terms of the amount of material actually reaching the target - especially that involves transiting the Earth's atmosphere).

But I return to my earlier point that it's like you're forgetting about Newton's laws of motion. If we accept your claim that it's possible to transport the mining products via particle beam, then it seems to me it's at least impractical. The beam would thrust the asteroid away from wherever you're sending the material, not to mention the amount of energy it would require.

And, if you're not sending it straight down to the surface, then whatever's catching the material needs to exert the same amount of energy as the sender, just to maintain its orbit. I guess if the receiver's orbital plane was aligned with the asteroid, then the asteroid could hit it at two points in its orbit (i.e. hitting it both coming and going) without affecting the orbit too much, but then you're only transferring material a small % of the time.

[Weasel]

A high power laser can cut right thru the atmosphere. That was proven by the mid 80's. Every technology required to beam mass straight to the surface is at least 35 years old or older.

EDIT: The US government still denies it, but I'm completely convinced they have kw lasers in orbit that can drill a hole thru the top of your head from space.....

Please pick up a decent physics book first before posting more of this nonsense.

[coder]

Please pick up a decent physics book first before posting more of this nonsense.

I think he's now too busy filing patents on his ideas.



Perhaps he could at least license them for use in crappy sci-fi movies and video games.

[duby229]

It's whatever, but I'm completely convinced.

EDIT: You guys have no idea what a vacuum tube is? Really? And if you ask me what does that have to do with it, well then, yeah.....

EDIT: Or gyro's apparently either, geez.... You do know what inertia is right? A famous man named Isaac Newton defined it hundreds of years ago....
https://www.google.com/search?client...30.xxCSdCOy0iI

Seriously guys, traveling in space -at all- would be completely impossible without gyrosopes

EDIT: Read that link, seriously, read it. Albert Einstein defined a phenomena of gryscopes called the moment of force, it is how gyro's carry their inertia. All spacecraft -need- them. And we can build giant gyro's with -huge- moments of force.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and if you guys don't believe Reagan's Star Wars program was real, then you better think again. It damn sure was. Fact. Orbital energy weapons designed to hit the ground were already perfected in the mid 80's, it's long been done. There are all kinds of ways to attenuate a beam, and most of them were perfected during the Star Wars program. We -ONLY- have modern Lithography techniques -because- of technologies developed -for- the Star Wars program. Those orbital weapons platforms sit 600 miles up, and only have to attenuate 10 miles of atmosphere.... Believe me it is exactly same concept.

[coder]

It's whatever, but I'm completely convinced.

EDIT: You guys have no idea what a vacuum tube is? Really? And if you ask me what does that have to do with it, well then, yeah.....

EDIT: Or gyro's apparently either, geez.... You do know what inertia is right? A famous man named Isaac Newton defined it hundreds of years ago....
https://www.google.com/search?client...30.xxCSdCOy0iI

Seriously guys, traveling in space -at all- would be completely impossible without gyrosopes

EDIT: Read that link, seriously, read it. Albert Einstein defined a phenomena of gryscopes called the moment of force, it is how gyro's carry their inertia. All spacecraft -need- them. And we can build giant gyro's with -huge- moments of force.

Seriously, what are you even talking about?

My point was that transferring that amount of mass requires a tremendous amount of energy, and you've got to accelerate it at both ends. Plus, you need more thrust/energy to keep the asteroid from floating away into deep space, as you beam material towards Earth.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and if you guys don't believe Reagan's Star Wars program was real, then you better think again. It damn sure was. Fact. Orbital energy weapons designed to hit the ground were already perfected in the mid 80's, it's long been done. There are all kinds of ways to attenuate a beam, and most of them were perfected during the Star Wars program.

I know it was talked about and probably a lot of money was spent on it. But, if they ever got it to work, then I'd have expected the Iraq war to go a lot better for the US. And they could just be zapping IS terrorists and Taliban from space, instead of doing all these drone strikes and the bombing runs in Afghanistan, Libya, and lately in Syria. So, no, it doesn't seem very perfected to me.

We -ONLY- have modern Lithography techniques -because- of technologies developed -for- the Star Wars program.

Why do you say that? And even if you're right, it still doesn't mean that the star wars space lasers ever actually worked. You can have successful spinoffs without the core program ever succeeding in its goals.

Those orbital weapons platforms sit 600 miles up, and only have to attenuate 10 miles of atmosphere.... Believe me it is exactly same concept.

If you don't understand the difference between photons and atoms, I can see why you might think that.

[duby229]

Seriously, what are you even talking about?

My point was that transferring that amount of mass requires a tremendous amount of energy, and you've got to accelerate it at both ends. Plus, you need more thrust/energy to keep the asteroid from floating away into deep space, as you beam material towards Earth.

Seriously? Ok, I guess I should start by saying that it was Einstien who discovered that we don't live in 3 dimensions of space. In fact our 3 dimensions are really just a manifold wrapped over a substrate we call time. He built his work on Relativity based on Reiman manifolds. Also relativity doesn't have shit at all to do with the speed of light, instead it really is all about the speed of causality, which of course the speed of light abides by, and is the entire reason he didn't like quantum mechanics. Now when you apply relativity to the mechanics of a gyroscope it emerges an inertial force that Einstein dubbed its "moment of force" It's a very well understood phenomena and every spacecraft ever built by anyone has used gyroscopes to resist inertial forces acting on them. It is -the- reason why spacecrafts -already- don't fly out into deep space. The solar wind alone would push spacecraft away without gyroscopes. In fact space flight at all would impossible without them. Gyroscopes essentially attenuate gravity.

I know it was talked about and probably a lot of money was spent on it. But, if they ever got it to work, then I'd have expected the Iraq war to go a lot better for the US. And they could just be zapping IS terrorists and Taliban from space, instead of doing all these drone strikes and the bombing runs in Afghanistan, Libya, and lately in Syria. So, no, it doesn't seem very perfected to me.

Oh you can bet your last dollar there are folks who mysteriously died while sitting at home, or driving down the street from a little itty bitty laser hole on the top of their head.

Why do you say that? And even if you're right, it still doesn't mean that the star wars space lasers ever actually worked. You can have successful spinoffs without the core program ever succeeding in its goals.

If you don't understand the difference between photons and atoms, I can see why you might think that.[/QUOTE]

So you've never heard about the double slit experiment then? You don't know about the wave-particle duality of energy huh? Actually, in a totally separate insight it was Einstein who first figured that out too! Yes! In fact once accelerated the -entire- reason ionized particles can be beamed at all is because -all- energy exhibits wave-particle duality. It is fundamental to quantum mechanics.

[Weasel]

It's whatever, but I'm completely convinced.

EDIT: You guys have no idea what a vacuum tube is? Really? And if you ask me what does that have to do with it, well then, yeah.....

EDIT: Or gyro's apparently either, geez.... You do know what inertia is right? A famous man named Isaac Newton defined it hundreds of years ago....
https://www.google.com/search?client...30.xxCSdCOy0iI

Seriously guys, traveling in space -at all- would be completely impossible without gyrosopes

EDIT: Read that link, seriously, read it. Albert Einstein defined a phenomena of gryscopes called the moment of force, it is how gyro's carry their inertia. All spacecraft -need- them. And we can build giant gyro's with -huge- moments of force.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and if you guys don't believe Reagan's Star Wars program was real, then you better think again. It damn sure was. Fact. Orbital energy weapons designed to hit the ground were already perfected in the mid 80's, it's long been done. There are all kinds of ways to attenuate a beam, and most of them were perfected during the Star Wars program. We -ONLY- have modern Lithography techniques -because- of technologies developed -for- the Star Wars program. Those orbital weapons platforms sit 600 miles up, and only have to attenuate 10 miles of atmosphere.... Believe me it is exactly same concept.

I don't know what gyroscopes have to do with anything. We were talking about your "beaming matter" sci-fi nonsense.

I don't know if you realize but the way you "beam" matter is by simply accelerating it. It requires a lot of energy, though, but that's normal since it's matter and has mass. Mass resists acceleration or deceleration, that's like the point of mass.

It doesn't matter how you break the atoms: the mass is still there. In fact, breaking the atoms that are lighter than Iron tends to produce more mass which makes them harder to accelerate. That's exactly why fusion produces energy for atoms lighter than Iron: joining them together (fusing them) makes them weight less and the remaining energy (as converted from the larger mass before) is the energy from a fusion reaction. And we all know that energy is quite great since it's used in Hydrogen bombs and stars use it to shine.

You think converting matter to energy is "easy"? If that were so, we wouldn't even need hydrogen bombs. Fusion energy would be completely insignificant. Just 1 gram of matter is enough to be the equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb if converted to energy. 1g that fits in a tiny pocket.

Just stop this matter beaming nonsense. You don't understand the scale of energy you're talking about.

[ssokolow]

Just stop this matter beaming nonsense. You don't understand the scale of energy you're talking about.

I bet he won't.

A friend of mine who comes across as far more grounded in reality was writing a piece of fanfiction set in a hybrid magic/victorian tech setting and wanted to have the character produce a distraction for their escape from a flying pirate ship by using the energy released by rusting iron to produce a makeshift hydrogen rocket blast. I had to napkin out the math to get him to accept that the "fuel" his character had on hand would produce less thrust than a brief gust of wind.