A question for the fen.
Jun. 15th, 2004 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrYou are wandering through the dealer room at a medium to large convention (Westercon, Baycon, that sort of thing).
There's a table with a couple of people wearing some pretty good spacesuit outfits, complete with mirrored helmets. Even have "translators" with an appropriately "computer" voice.
They're selling toy radio controlled flying saucers. They zip around nicely, making a humming noise much like the cars in the Jetsons.
They want $50 for them.
What do you do?
There's a table with a couple of people wearing some pretty good spacesuit outfits, complete with mirrored helmets. Even have "translators" with an appropriately "computer" voice.
They're selling toy radio controlled flying saucers. They zip around nicely, making a humming noise much like the cars in the Jetsons.
They want $50 for them.
What do you do?
Well?
Date: 2004-06-16 06:49 am (UTC)Re: Well?
Date: 2004-06-16 11:04 am (UTC)(chortling gleefully at being on the other end of snippeting :-)
Well, there's no Windows logo, and no mac logo either. The printed manual says it's an ISO format CD. And that it contains the service manual for the saucer.
No computer dependencies are listed. It does state that an HTML browser capable of graphics will be required.
So, gonna buy it?
Re: Well?
Date: 2004-06-16 07:47 pm (UTC)Re: Well?
Date: 2004-06-16 09:15 pm (UTC)The CD has rather detailed schematics and blueprints.
You'll find several "really odd" things. There's a "lift unit", a "drive module" and a "comm unit". The controller has a similar "comm unit". Oh yeah, the power cells ain't batteries
The lift unit seems to be some sort of anti-gravity. There's no explanation of how it works. Just how to test and calibrate it.
It takes power to rise, and feeds power back into the power cells when it descends. It takes very little power to hover.
The drive unit pushes in any direction. No apparent reaction to go with the action (ie if there's an exhaust, it's not detectable without fancy instruments.
The power cell are weird too. Buildable, and apparently as high storage density as shipstones. :-)
Oh yeah, the comm section isn't radio. Apparently they are paired units that have about a dozen parameters that ccan be set. And once a pair tunes, they can't be picked up or jammed by any others. (ie untraceable, unjammable)
Have fun turning the world upside down.
Are there...
Date: 2004-06-17 06:41 am (UTC)2) Any patent numbers associated with the device? (If so, I look up the patents and see if they actually correspond with what I've got here)
If neither 1 or 2 are answerable as "yes", then the things are heading to my work for some serious reverse engineering. Nice that I work at a high tech R&D facility with a concentration in things like NDE.
Re: Are there...
Date: 2004-06-17 11:07 am (UTC)No contact info (well none that's usable: A joke(?) address on Procyon 3 isn't much good).
You won't need to reverse engineer them to build copies. The "service manual" seems more than detailed enough for that. Building larger units looks doable as long as there aren't any hidden gotchas.
But there's not a trace of *theory*. Just practical engineering & maintenance details. There are some equations that look to be helpful in figiring how to scale up (or down) units. But that's it.
In THAT case...
Date: 2004-06-17 11:58 am (UTC)Then I call in my physicist friends to help us test the things so we can start deriving theory from them; I want to make sure there AREN'T any "gotchas" before scaling up. (If doubled in size, the pseudogravity field generated inside the saucer reaches singularity, and all within the area are sucked down to oblivion. Or constant use consumes gravitic field of planet, eventually atmosphere goes away. Or...)
We can also do general functionality tests -- maximum support capacity (if it's hovering, what force is required to raise it or lower it?), speed, etc.
Note that with schematics good enough to allow reproduction of the thing and testing by professionals, there should be no reason we can't get the theory fairly soon, as any usable schematics obviously are using items we either already manufacture or which can be assembled from available components, and we KNOW how all of that stuff works; it will therefore be a matter of measuring and deducing interactions between various components and so on.
Other obvious Gotchas...
Date: 2004-06-17 12:04 pm (UTC)Re: Other obvious Gotchas...
Date: 2004-06-17 01:04 pm (UTC)A: These are usful, but as in Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken" they lead away from other technologies and into a blind alley it'll take use a *long* time to work our way out of.
B: They aren't a booby trap, but are sufficiently ahead of us that can can make "monkey copies" (and worry) or throw a *lot* of effort into research. Or both. Either way, we;'ll be busy for a while and have had our faces rubbed in the fact that we don't know as much as we think we do.
That would either piss us off or teach us some much needed humility.
Considering that they "gave" us this (even in such a roundabout fashion) one has to assume that they aren't articularly worried about the "pissed off" option. :-)
Re: In THAT case...
Date: 2004-06-17 12:54 pm (UTC)Going up lifter energy consumption seems to be about 10% over the change in potential energy. And that extra 10% seems to wind up as heat. Going down, it produces energy equivalent to the potential energy change plus 10%. All this is in addition to the "baseload" consumption (and heat production when) hovering.
Loading? Well, obviously that's covered for up & down in the above. More load, more energy. Hovering? I'll get back to you on that...
Note that with schematics good enough to allow reproduction of the thing and testing by professionals, there should be no reason we can't get the theory fairly soon, as any usable schematics obviously are using items we either already manufacture or which can be assembled from available components, and we KNOW how all of that stuff works; it will therefore be a matter of measuring and deducing interactions between various components and so on.
Yes and no. Consider that I could create instructions for someone in 1900 to create circuits using galena crystals and *two* "cat whiskers" to create crude point contact transistors. And go on to build circuits using them. That doesn't mean they'd have the vaguest idea *how* they worked. That'd required about 30-40 years of solid state physics *and* quantum mechanics that they don't have.
Heck, with only a bit more work, I could do the same sort of thing for *1800*, and have crude radios created.
Figure that this stuff will make a similar shanbles of existing theory. It all works based on knowing how gravity works and maybe other stuff. But they don't tell you that.
Hmm.
Date: 2004-06-18 07:24 am (UTC)2) Prior obscure website publication will be unlikely to gain you patent rejection. A decent lawyer would kick that out of court, especially since it's quite possible to fake up dates on websites and even insert history if you really wanted to (and with the technology in question, it'd be worth the effort to someone).
3) We already WORK with the "unpleasant Government Agencies" (DHS, SOCOM, USMC, etc), and they'd just be offered a license on the stuff.
4) So the hovering object is at an ABSOLUTE elevation, then? It doesn't conform to the landscape?
5) 10% greater than PE as heat... hmm, will need cooling for speedy ascension. Not all that much compared to engines, of course.
6) Maximum speeds attainable?
7) You're more pessimistic than I am. If you handed someone a working device that could be built with their technology, and they have a scientific mindset, at the very LEAST you're cutting down on their development time by a LARGE factor. A radio in 1800, with a real research organization behind it (remember that we HAVE those now, didn't really have effective ones then) would be a shortcut of probably at least 50 years to proper theory of electromagnetics. Your 1900 transistor (assuming it gave them something cool and useful enough to motivate spending hundreds of millions on researching it, which your antigravity devices certainly do) would cut development of quantum theory down to 15 years, at least for the critical elements. Remember that Einstein made his Relativity breakthrough in about 1911 and quantum followed not all that long thereafter (even though it offended Albert's sensibilities, it shows that even in the natural progression of things 40 years from 1900 would be reasonable, so given a specific and analyzable example of a specifically quantum-related phenomenon and sufficient motivation, you'll get it a *HELL* of a lot sooner).
8) "Dead ends" are a dangerous game to play. Sometimes it turns out that because the newbies don't come into it with preconceptions that they make use of it in ways you don't expect. "The greatest swordsman in the world does not fear the second-greatest. He fears the worst, because there is no telling what he will do."
9) There's also quite a number of other ancillary characteristics of your devices which may, or may not, use these same obscure physical principles. You've got quite a few different systems there serving different purposes; the "battery" alone will be a significant advance, forget the antigrav.
Re: Hmm.
Date: 2004-06-18 11:45 am (UTC)Oh, I realizred the is a "gotcha" of sorts. The manual even warns you about it. It's *descending* (at any rate) with almost fully charged cells. You see, a fuly charged cell has an energy density considerably higher than TNT. The phrase that will probably catch someone's eye is "overcharging cells may cause catastrophic failure". Along with "physical damage to cells may cause uncontrolled release of energy further damaging cells in a positive feedback loop"
The cells store something in the neighborhood of a MW/hr per kilo.
Re: Hmm.
Date: 2004-06-20 07:31 am (UTC)On the"gotcha", you're saying... someone set up us the bomb?!
Not a hard Gotcha to get around, though; just an equivalent of a safety valve for charging. The same problem, albeit less destructive, exists for a number of batteries used today.
That's a LOT of energy storage. By themselves those little gadgets will change the face of technology.
Re: Hmm.
Date: 2004-06-20 03:42 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, you don't seriously think that you're the *only* folks trying to reverse engineer one of these do you?
As for the power cells, yeah, they'd make an interesting bomb, but the cirrcuits do try to avoid that. Stil, I'd not want to be around if you hit even a "D cell" sized one with a sledgehammer. :-)
Lots of things about this will change the world. "anti grav", "reactionless" drive, *truly* secure com links. That last will screw things up for a lot of folks, all by itself.
Think we ought to summarize/condense this thread and dump it on the Bar somewhere, just to stir things up?
Re: Hmm.
Date: 2004-06-20 08:03 pm (UTC)Patent law is complex, and a lot of it depends on things other than the strict letter of the law, especially if you throw in "National Security", etc.
Oh yeah, you don't seriously think that you're the *only* folks trying to reverse engineer one of these do you?
Judging by the statistics on your board so far, actually, YES.
More seriously, no, but given the reactions here I may WELL be the only one who buys a couple AND happens to work at a firm connected to Homeland Security, the US Military, and various state research agencies, AND which has NDT research capabilities, immediate access to machinists and engineers used to prototyping small units, and so on.
Lots of things about this will change the world. "anti grav", "reactionless" drive, *truly* secure com links. That last will screw things up for a lot of folks, all by itself.
Truly secure? Are you saying the control methodology isn't detectable? Or that there's some method of encryption beyond what we currently understand?
You still didn't give me the load-bearing in hover mode. And does it consume energy hovering -- or will it literally stay there forever (or at least until one of the components fails)? And the maximum speed achievable with the device both vertically and laterally? No emissions aside from heat at all?
Think we ought to summarize/condense this thread and dump it on the Bar somewhere, just to stir things up?
That's up to you. :)
Re: In THAT case...
Date: 2004-06-17 01:09 pm (UTC)When you are confident enough to tear it apart, you'll discover a few things. "identical" parts *are* identical. Chemical analysis (assuming someone tries the right kind soon enough) will suggest that all elements present were isotopically pure. Add in the lack pf tool marks and molding seems and someone will probably suggest that these where assembled using some sort of "fabber" that built them up from atoms.
Not that such is necessary to make things work. But...
To be expected...
Date: 2004-06-18 07:25 am (UTC)Re: To be expected...
Date: 2004-06-18 11:51 am (UTC)Handing that part and screw to a machinist ought to producing some interesting reactions. :-)
Oh yeah, "atomic/molecular constructors" aka "fabbers" are not necessarily nanotech. They could be used to construct "nanites", but they are not nanites or even necessarily nanite based.