Posts tagged engineering
I asked a question earlier on here concerning Negative and Heavy Matter - hypothetical types of matter I created to have a working FTL drive. With some extra work, I've tweaked the concept and been...
If a human is kidnapped by an alien vessel and taken to another planet - and, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the alien life-form lives in a completely different environment from Earth'...
I was thinking about our history of music, came upon electronic music and started musing about all the possibilities of modulation and such. I then thought back to a previous question of mine, "Ho...
As recorded in Genesis 11:1-9, the ancients allegedly built a tower to the skies in a valley in Babylon (near present-day Baghdad), and God scattered them across the Earth as a punishment. Accordin...
I´m building a hard-sifi setting and want to use Stellasers (abbreviation for stellar laser) to provide thrust and power to interstellar vessels. This part one is only concerned with the construct...
My world is far away exoplanet with water and some oxygene, but without life or plants, which means without coal and organic materials inside. High tech people from Earth come there and made some ...
In a post-post-apocalyptic world with adequately schizophrenic tech, a tinkerer decides to build a submarine engine around a lump of radium, or some other reliable source of heat. But instead of us...
I'm planing to create "super powers" born out of genetic engineering, but I don't want magic miracle stuff like an x-man, I'm looking for a realistic approach, so overall can you modify the materia...
Imagine a single, long, straight stretch of track. On the track there is a train heading in one direction at 100 km/h and a second train heading towards it at 200 km/h. The latter train is a specia...
You have a material that greatly enhances electric and magnetic sources or electro-magnetism in general. In this world, the material, is known to be a naturally occurring liquid found in geologic...
Good rulers support invention of useful things. But this question has two sides. Support of invention Prevention of fake inventing Basis: Many inventions arise as side-effects of searching for...
What would humans look like if they were genetically suited for life under a giant orange star like Iota Draconis ? These would be people who were genetically indistinguishable from humans from ear...
In my world, 500 years in the future, my population fits anti-gravity engines to salvaged boats as a form of transport. These transports fly close to the Earth's surface and are powered by a highly...
Kikazaru and Protogon have been fierce rivals in the designer baby industry/artificial wombs since time and memorial, but Kikazaru is looking to finally best its rival by introducing a new scheme: ...
I would like to use CRISPr Cas9 technology to extend the life expectancy of my fictional civilizations. From what I understand, CRISPr could extend life by lengthening telomeres and improve quality...
When they started dropping from the skies.. or no, they landed. They were so similar to us, yet so different. Like nothing we would've ever designed or created - but so much like everything Ey...
Sort of an extension of With minimal terraforming, what features/structures would need to be built to protect a 25mi radius city from wind? but with some more items to consider. For whatever re...
I have been drafting the concept of a future world based on current research. I have been contemplating the long lasting transportation tunnels of the future. I am asking about the likelihood of th...
Is it conceivable to genetically engineer a moray eel large enough to hunt and eat humans in its cave like habitat? It needs to have: armored skin that can withstand gunfire good all around swim...
In my story, the AI on a space ship has been corrupted, causing it to try to kill all living occupants. The ship is on a collision course with a planet, and the main controls are inoperable due t...
This question pertains to the videogame The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. In this game, the bell from the Clock Town clock tower can be heard from pretty much anywhere in the world at certain tim...
If someone in the 14-15th century world had the knowledge required to build an engine for use in locomotives and ships, what kind of engine could be made using technology that already existed back ...
The Romans had pumps, aqueducts, water wheels (which were used to grind flour, saw wood & stone etc), valves & pipes (they are known to have used stone, clay, lead & copper for pipes). ...
This question here brought up interesting points on what kind of distribution we could expect for the increase in computational power of mechanical computers in a world relying solely on such non-e...
My ancient golden dragon has a lot of time, since he doesn't die of old age in my world, and a lot of magical constructs that will tirelessly built a defensive mountain chain for him. This chain w...
In my world I would like to have a cyborg-inspired veteran, but am not sure what kinds of prostheses would be possible, ideally without the use of electrics. My main concern is how the prostheses ...
Saw Pacific Rim for the first time with a friend recently; I'd never really thought too hard about giant robots/been as into Mecha and Gundam stuff as some of my friends before, but the Jaeger conc...
This is the first part of a series of questions I'll ask about a self-sustaining colonization ship. I'll keep editing this post as things unfold. Part II - Landing Edit 1: Added two movie referen...
This is not a duplicate of Building Noah's Ark or Can We Build Noah's ark?, because the former asks only about a relatively small number of species and the latter is set in Biblical times. Ignori...
I'm no engineer, but I was wondering how a steam-powered door would work. I want it to be difficult to open unless you know how (not a simple "twist the doorknob and open"). There is access to plen...
Could one make a smaller eclipse kept stationary on the surface of the earth in order that one may be able to see the stars 24/7 from one site? How could this be achieved? Geostationary satelli...
This is a follow up to a previous question that I thought should be a new question instead of just discussing in the comments of that one. This is an idea for a space station on the surface of ...
I would like for a civilization to be very good at bio-engineering, but I do not know how they would be able to modify DNA to suit their purposes, with greater things than breeding can bring. For e...
In my story, there is a puppet master who uses disturbingly realistic marionettes in his theater. His goal is to create a marionette that is wholly indistinguishable from a real person, aside from ...
Without going into great details for the reasons behind it, people in The City travel everywhere by bicycle. There are no stairs or lifts (elevators) in high rise buildings and no safe parking spa...
In the wake of this, my answer to this question about where to put a Dyson Sphere an apparent issue came up. And it needs some good resolution: What are we going to do with all that heat the syste...
In the distant future, space-stations use centrifugal force to emulate gravity, effectively being a cylinder (or something similar like a wheel) spinning around a central axis at high speeds. A sp...
This is something that was just offhandedly mentioned in a Sci-Fi book I read once and as I am now writing one myself I thought I might use it. The scenario is that I have a ship approaching a wa...
No, I am not talking about space ships, I am talking about water-based ships sailing the oceans on planet Earth. What would be a plausible cruise speed and maximum speed for what would be the equi...
This is an idea for a space station on the surface of Eris (but could work on other celestial bodies), using rotating rings to simulate gravity. The idea is that these rings would sit horizontally ...
In my story, humans have colonized both a high-G and a low-G world in the same star system. How would surface vehicles have to be designed differently for practicality and economy on each of those...
I'd like two medieval societies to be separated from one another by a huge vertical wall. The wall is so high that no-one has succeeded in shooting an arrow (or anything else) over it. It disappea...
In one of the most empty regions of space between the galactic superclusters there is a giant space bubble, with a radius of about 1,000,000 light years. Most of this bubble is one molecule thick ...
In my epic fantasy world set in the 1450's there are underground tunnels that literally go across from under the ocean for 700 miles or so. So here are my questions: How long would it take to dig...
In my stellar empire, the sapient life of the home world are arachnids. Due to an oxygen-heavy world with certain evolutionary characteristics, spider-like beings developed intelligence and formed ...
It is the near-future. Breakthrough, mass produced carbon nanotubes have been invented and are relatively cheap. These nanotubes have the properties that we would expect, and are manufactured in 'r...
In this scenario, an underwater city is a collection of domes interconnected by tunnels 17 feet wide and 17 tall. The largest of the city's domes is 71,000 square feet in area and 137 feet tall. ...
As he neared the outskirts of the city the canyons of multi-storey buildings lined with coffee- and tea-houses gave way to the large squat shapes of factories, storage-halls and other industry. ...
A side shot from my series on a computer-less future; see here, here, and here. Project Rho defines a torch-drive as an engine with both high acceleration and high exhaust velocity. A torch-ship i...
Introduction See background information here. 1000 years after darkness fell on Old Earth, humanity is scattered throughout the solar system. Apart from the Harmonious Republic of Mars, there are...
