Posts tagged engineering
Using the following dimensions (and assuming any material characteristics necessary to maintain structural integrity), could a Standford Torus-style artificial habitat achieve the necessary spin to...
I understand that the wind is caused by a differential in atmospheric pressure, but say that a city built in an extremely flat landscape is constantly threatened/harassed by the wind and wind-relat...
The concept is simple: I want to create a horse species, that are like the Superman of horses and can easily pull of acts, we've seen them done in movies. One of the many steps in this is to cr...
If you've never been in a shower fight you cannot possibly imagine the pain a wet towel can inflict.. Pete Williams, 12b Avergreen Road, 4th grade, likes Brussels sprouts1 A towel can b...
Through a short amount of research it seems most blood is cleaned in the liver and most toxins are neutralized before being passed into urine or the bowels. If this is how most toxins are excreted ...
In the world I'm building, there's a race of sapient, technologically advanced lizard people, most of whom live in an enormous, climate-controlled city. Based on the answers to this question, it se...
This is a followup to this question about city building on flood plains. There is a civilization that developed along the rich varzea flooded forests of an enormous rainforest river, larger than ...
So one of the aspects of my science fiction world is genetic manipulation and modification of humans by one of the factions. I am wanting to have a subset of humans who receive a single eye transpl...
I want to make a powered light armor for my sci-fi setting. The candidate material is carbon, as it's lightweight and has a whole rainbow of different allotropes with different properties. I want...
Ok I'm not exactly sure how to tag this or where to ask, but... Could someone create living, breeding-viable wolf adults with the genes responsible for Siamese points (as found in the cat breed), a...
I'm reading this article on speech in animals, and it made an interesting claim: chimpanzees and other non-human great apes posses the anatomy needed to vocalize words, they just don't use it to do...
I am imaging a world in which a minor plot device is that there is a strain of dogs that were genetically engineered so that they are even more loyal than ordinary dogs at first, but at some point ...
I was considering the possibility mermaids might make use of sailing ships similar to the USS Monitor, but with sails and supposedly wood. Now, the mermaids wouldn't mind the ship being filled wit...
I was wondering if we could create science research submarines that are as large as military nuclear submarines. This is because I have not seen any large research submarines they all seem to be sm...
What I am proposing is a bridge making it possible to travel between two planets, I have some ideas but I would like to know if and how it would work. Maybe somehow stopping their orbit and locking...
Lets say in 2069 a big interstellar corporation needs to create a "love potion" to subdue a religious pacifist rebel group that refuses to reproduce until they get independence. This love potion d...
My people are traveling in a generation ship. For some reason they can't make the ship radiation-proof. Their solution: genetically modify their descendants to be radiation proof. How could one mod...
Atlantropa, Herman Sörgel's proposal to turn vast swathes of the Mediterranean Sea into livable dry land by installing five hydroelectric dams (the main one across the Strait of Gibraltar), is an ...
The year is 2267 A.D. Humanity has colonized Prima Centuari system. A federal government is established; the population is expected to grow at an exponential rate to reach 1 billion by 2300 A.D. A...
In my other question "Is it possible to build a bridge between planets?" several concepts of interplanetary bridges were formed. What I would now like to know is, are any of the proposed bridges ab...
Yes, I know that this is quite a BORING question (get it ;) ), but I really DIG this kinda stuff (no really). If you have watch an action children's show or a cartoon of some kind, we have all see...
In the game "Stelaris" torpedoes and missiles are different categories of weapon. Presumably they wanted to include numerous kinds of weapons for the player to chose from. These weapons are all lau...
I'm trying to figure out how a minimalist style society would work. Its secretive founders have been planning this since the 19th century, hiding in universities, influencing the young to attempt t...
Assume humans have the technology and motivation to genetically engineer humans capable of breathing underwater and on land. Also assume for this example mechanical technology is somewhat constrain...
Is there a limit in physics/chemistry I need to change by inventing Unobtainium? Or is it just a matter of economy by making regular fuel much harder to extract, and chemical explosives much common...
It's hard to create a new animal from scratch. If you genetically modify an existing species until it becomes a drastically different species, then implant the fertilized embryo in a female of th...
If I have a typical Dyson sphere, around my star, it will block the light needed to live on an orbiting planet. Is there any other megastructure that can function like a Dyson Sphere, but does al...
After reading Is it possible to build a bridge between planets?, I wonder: what situation would provide technology support that enables them to make the trip, but limits them to walking speed? Th...
What I am asking is not if there is an possibility of an island (Isle of Wight size because it is an island I am familiar with) size tortoise , I will find a way around that, I just want to know if...
Context NASA commissioned some awesome, vintage-style prints a while back advertising the colonization of Mars. Three of them stood out to me because they depicted colonization of the moons of ...
Lets say you have a geothermal or nuclear power plant and nearby you have system which converts that energy into nutrient porridge. This nutrient porridge must have everything the human needs to su...
Let's assume that sometime in the far future, ice-mining on Europa has become a very profitable business venture due to dwindling fresh water on Earth and the growing demand for more water from the...
Some estimates put the percent of Earth's surface covered by landfills at 0.02%. Even if the world composted and recycled as much as possible, we would be left with an insanely large amount of w...
Suppose a mad engineer needs the world destroyed by next Tuesday. For efficiency's sake, he considers "Gray Goo," a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario in which self-replicating machines devour ...
I'm creating a world opposite of Les Visiteurs, where modern age structural engineer accidentally time travels to 13th century. When guards of the local lord arrest him on suspicion of being a spy,...
It seems like Dyson Spheres are always brought up in the context of harvesting power. However, another use for a Dyson Sphere may be to cloak your solar system/inner planets. If the star's output d...
On the picture there is a building that slightly inspired me and convinced me that building like this indeed could be built in RL. However I have the following question. Could a building like th...
The hybrids were created when unseen aliens sent SETI a message explaining how to combine human and alien DNA. (Ignoring the scientific illiteracy and contradictions in the films) Under the constra...
Which voltage and frequency would be selected if there were no legacy issues? I can easily find how selection of electricity frequency and voltage was based on backward compatibility and quite arb...
A Weyland-Yutani like conglomerate wants to colonize exoplanet in the habitable zone of the orange dwarf 0.75 M of the Sun. The planet has 2 X Earth diameter 3g surface gravity atmosphere 92% ...
How would I future-proof a complex machine or set of machines so that they will still be running 2000-3000 years from now? Is this possible with our current level of engineering and we just don't d...
Let's say you're an alien and you want to make sure your species outlives your planet or whatever disaster you currently face, whether it be natural or engineered. You load up a bunch of self-repli...
I'm imagining a town in a river valley. The river runs straight through the town and is diverted or spread out into canals that form a grid in the central, low-lying part of the town. Technology is...
In the not so distant future a man builds a remote doom fortress to design, create, and raise GM/GMO children. His plan is to nurture geniuses who can enact his dastardly plan to wipe out humanity...
What modifications would be needed for a mammal, bird or reptile to work with electricity? For work I mean mostly think and move, for example it would need to eat in order to repair it's body, gro...
In an old story of mine, there happened to be a species of humanoid who could produce a variety of mutants and hybrids from stolen and harvested DNA, sperm, and biological tissues. They would produ...
I'm working on a Dieselpunkish Science-Fantasy setting and I am trying to find an alternative to conventional electrical systems used in computers. Computer and telecommunication systems in the se...
Let's assume that the dictator of a large and rich country is approximately 70 years old, and that signs of old age are showing, meaning that his death is not very far. Let's assume that the people...
Imagine a SupraWorld being built around a gas giant like Jupiter. To have a 1g gravity on the surface the resulting SupraWorld would have to be less than twice the radius of the giant (my calculati...
In my alternate history, during the Islamic golden age (in this case, 9th century Arabia - present day Oman), my characters are building a series of glass towers. They are like lighthouses travers...