Posts tagged engineering
Hello everyone, I am thinking yet again about infrastructure. (my calendar project recently asked about... well, that's outside my expertise, I'll get back to that eventually) And I am thinking of...
Orbital rings are a proposed megastructure intended to dramatically reduce the cost to enter or exit a planetary gravity well. The ring is a solid structure, belting around the planet like a hula h...
Brad and his family are tired of society and the concept of money. They want to live a primitive lifestyle. They need a strong, comfortable and cheap refuge that will protect them from the elements...
I am building a setting that is essentially steampunk,being exact it would be pneumatic punk. What electronics and electronic equivalent exists, are primitive and extremely expensive. Thus the majo...
The setting is fifty-five million years in the future on Earth, with multiple humanoid species that have different ancestors, but share similar characteristics. Their ancestors would be animals tha...
(or some other Lesser Canyon) I'm playing with story ideas for a videogame that takes place in the post-post-apocalyptic US. Everything is overrun with monsters and ocean horrors and whatnot, you'...
Quick Overview Here's the situation: your species, under directive of your friendly world government, has been informed that all "natural" (aka reproducing like your normally would and having a ch...
I wonder if it is possible to install artificial equipment that would exhaust oxygen into air in otherwise CO2 atmosphere so that locally people could breath in open air without any kind of tent or...
Node is the last active city of the lizard people. Node was built to be a self-sufficient city and a nexus of an interconnected bunker system. It was a vanity project from the peak of the lizard em...
So, I'm having trouble with one of my character designs. Guardian angels are former humans who died in such dumb ways that Heaven simply couldn't let them in, not before they proved they can preve...
I'm writing a steampunk/weird west story set in 1867 and I want to incorporate some form of armored battle "walkers" (aka mechs). Looking for ideas for powertrains that could conceivably run such a...
The MC1R gene turns pheomelanin into eumelanins but there are another kind of pehomelanin called pheochromes. So if a brunette or black person used a cosmetic gene therapy to turn off this gene how...
I originally wanted to create giant land biological life-forms but the square cube law is limiting me to sauropod body sized creatures so another element of my story is artificially enhanced biolog...
After surveying customers about their new product, 2019-nCoV™, E.V.I.L. Inc. realized that many of them would pay for an upgrade which allows for the virus to be carried by the wind itself in order...
Imagine a species of humanoid beings living on an Earth-like planet somewhere in the universe; they have developed complex spoken and written languages and they can study their own anatomy and the ...
I wanted to create an extremely large space city which will be made up of many different large space habitats of ringed and cylindrical varieties. Although each habitat will contain its own city o...
In the game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, characters wear exoskeletons with an ability called "land assist", which allows them to slow down their fall using a jet of compressed air (or some speci...
I recently read that not only would a creatures digital DNA need to be stored but its mitochondria and microbiomes DNA needs to be stored. A previous questions answers mentions epigenetic structur...
So for this question there's a Mad Scientist/Dark Lord that wants to engineer a race that can out breed mankind and carry him to victory. He has access to sufficiently advanced genetic engineering...
I think it will be possible in the far future to take a single person`s cells, genetically enhance and change them using genetic engineering and synthetic biology using new genes, and put it in a 3...
Do you think it will become possible to create opposite sex clones in the future? A male clone from a woman or a female clone from a man? I think it will become possible. To create a female clone ...
Background I am trying to find a design for a cylindrical habitat that would allow the enclosed cylinder to radiate heat out to space as does the Earth without using mirrors and windows. Problem ...
I'd love some science advice and facts for this question: If they use wind power to bring up water from the ocean in the day time and spray it on prevailing winds going into land (i.e. 10-15 km fr...
There's a a decent sized kingdom that is situated between the ocean and a gigantic dried out seabed. The Priest-King and his lackeys want to flood the useless desert because who wouldn't want more ...
What needs to be improved or added to the structure (device) of human lungs to be able to filter toxic chemical compounds in the air (for example, in mines the air may contain nitrogen, methane, ca...
So, one of my D&D characters has a cut/relief-carved quartz crystal amulet (medallion shaped) that's both an arcane focus (crystal) and a holy symbol (amulet), and I thought it would be a good ...
Assume technology more advanced than current levels, let us theorise for this question that we are capable of reaching and if needed extracting material from any planet or moon / body in our solar ...
Background A McKendree cylinder is a rotating cylindrical space habitat comparable to the more well known O'Neill model. It was proposed by NASA engineer Thomas McKendree in 2000 as an update of O...
Radiation is the ultimate bane of all organic life. Its particles punch holes in our DNA, causing mutations and giving us cancer. But, is there a way to make an organism that is unable to get radia...
My knowledge of Stirling engines is that they work via a heat difference and are extremely heavy when used on a larger scale. This makes the use of them on vehicles a strange choice when there are ...
Problem statement There exists a thriving Bronze Age civilization in a gigantic rainforest, bigger than the Amazon and Congo put together. This civilization is built in on the flood plains of a mi...
Here is a big one for you engineering fans to chew on. First off, a little context: The giant robot in question is called Mazinger Z, considered to be fiction's first pilotable mecha, launching t...
When the giant aliens came lumbering out of the interdimensional fissure, we fought back, building giant robots of our own... which promptly collapsed onto themselves and were unable to move becaus...
So, there was this pupet show about two characters, Mazsola and Tádé. They lived in a BIG pumpkin, that had been hollowed out and repurposed as a house. It looked something like this. Now, I k...
I am a complete amateur regarding biology, so please forgive me if this question is a little stupid. Could we ever create squids that have human-level intelligence and could serve as a replacement ...
In my world there is a rogue scientist who wants to wipe out at least 90% of humanity. He's has a sample of measles which are very contagious but he needs something new. Could he merge measles with...
One thing I like about Attack on Titan are those lovely Omni-Directional Maneuver (ODM) gears! They're the perfect combination of a jetpack and a grappling hook. I love how the thrusters are placed...
First these are ground effect vehicles, not true aircraft. While Star Trek, Star Wars, Blade Runner, The Jetsons, and every scifi I can think of has "magically hovering" private transportation, I a...
I have a world that isn't an exact analogue to medieval technology, closer to the late 1700s in terms of culture and agriculture/metallurgy, only without gunpowder. I have them ahead of real histor...
My VR machine isn't the plug-it-to-your-brain type, but instead it's more like a "reality sphere" around your body that have some kind of gravity machine to keep you in the center of the sphere and...
Why might a species advanced enough to develop genetic engineering start a process by which their own genes, over hundreds of years, would get edited back to resemble their more primitive ancestors...
The aliens in question aren't of a hive mind in the strictest sense (instead of many drones answering to a leadership caste each organism acts as one cell, all of them are essentially 'the same ran...
In my late-Victorian-based world, mechanical contraptions are incredibly advanced due to the early discovery and quick popularisation of mechanical computation. The science of writing instructions...
I am trying to work out the size and (because this is among other things for populating a rotating habitat) weight of an arcology made to house, say, 5000 people - that seems a good number for a se...
We already have them. They are the future, and they are beautiful. Quantum Entangled Particles. One spins one way. The other, another way. Unobstructed they spin, in complete opposition to each oth...
Civilization is fairly young in my setting. Thus, the sheer number of ruined buildings and abandoned structures, found throughout the wilderness, seems strange. The ruins vary a lot: has-seen-bett...
In my story, a ship is built in orbit around Earth, designed for a 20-person scientific expedition to a planet 11.4 ly away. It will accelerate at 1g for half the distance, then flip around and acc...
What materials and what shapes should be used for struts inside a vacuum airship's envelope? The vacuum airship is a theoretical dirigible design were you replace the hydrogen/ other lifting gas w...
Chainsaws in games and films are an epitome of gruesome dismemberment. In Zombie attacks they are used to cut through cloth and flesh while in games they can dismember if not cut from skull to groi...
So, I was watching a funny movie about undead pirates when the realization hit me, I never once tried to create naval superiority for my Mary Sue. Well, guess I just do it now. Titanic 2: (n)Ice t...
