Posts tagged technology
Please assume the following: A spaceship in the far future. Output: The ships systems have a high base demand of energy and sometimes you need extreme amounts of Energy in a very short period of ...
A type 1 civilization is defined as a civilization that can utilize the maximum amount of energy equal available to its entire planet, roughly 1017 watts for Earth. This is equal to the amount of ...
Basically, I want to freeze the technology of earth at a level reminiscent of pre-Industrial Revolution Europe. I'm trying to figure out what substance or material would have to be absent from the...
Would it be possible for a nation with 19th century to very early 20th century technology and history and hot desert climate to utilize solar power for electrical generation as a substitute for coa...
Set in the mid 22nd century AD, a major construction work is being carried out in the orbit of Uranus. The military is developing a cheaper fleets using precast reinforced concrete(PRC) hoping to e...
Mind control is a favourite tool of science fiction writers, it allows us to make certain characters do things that they would normally never do without the hassle of explanation. But hard science ...
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...
It's a common trope in science-fiction: "scanning for life signs". A few taps on the screen, and you get an instant population count, often with the ability to distinguish species, and even person...
Premise The goal is to implement a bronze age version of blockchain in ancient Egypt to introduce a layer of security for the royal tombs. Tomb raiding was rampant, and at times even the legitim...
I was thinking in a character who has a...kind of Steam powered Chainsaw, and a sword, what make them special is because the blades of the chainsaw are one-dimensional, same with the sword, they ar...
Can I use nanotechnology to make the strongest possible non-nuclear explosive (when compared to the equal amounts of other explosives) or are we already at the peak-level of what can be achieved wi...
I have an idea for an extremely crackpot engine design for a future society I may incorporate into my story. What would happen is individual antihydrogen molecules injected into the center of car...
In the near future on our own planet of Earth, an odd plague has descended from space. It affects glass. Any glass whether natural or man-made turns into powder. The chemical elements are the same...
Let get this straight being lonely is different from solitude, human is arguably one of the most successful animals ever to walk on two. The secret lies in social interaction, the early humans hunt...
All A.I. comes with a built-in safety mechanism that prevent their kind from ever doing harm to a human or humanity, it is the last straw should they pose any real threat to our safety. A century ...
Set in the distant future, space travel becomes prominent and cheap. I can imagine each spaceship would have a multitude array of sensors to track distance and relative position in space. Is there ...
In my story I've devised lore where Greenland becomes a US territory, and they begin populating the region. It initially just served as the hub for numerous military bases and airbases, but eventua...
I'm working on a powered exoskeleton design for my universe and I had an idea about how to power it. It works in this cycle: Water enters an electrolyzer powered by a massive betavoltaic batter...
Setting: In my world I've introduced some science-defying material. I use it to grant the ability of flight to airships that are less Hindenburg-y and more ship-y. They are not literally ships that...
Assume in the very near future almost all rail transportation would return to steam-powered locomotives. To define it exactly, I mean solid fuel is burned inside the locomotive, which boils water, ...
Humans lay road to gain fast access to distant places until aeroplane is invented, I would presume the mermaids living underwater can make use of the strong water current to get around the ocean qu...
So I'm incubating a few alternate histories in my head. Many of them will butterfly away the Wright Brothers and many other familiar parts of history, and at least one has aircraft development as a...
Right now merfolks are totally envious of us watching a live stream video of cat(fight) via WiFi or satellite internet, ok ok I get it's not the speed but its latency... Urrrr. Nevermind that I sin...
Imagine a species in which the ego never developed. There is no self-direction. This species is always making noise, however, and it is through this noise that the society itself experiences the ...
...kill every protohuman who tries to leave the African continent. This comment made me think about one question. Suppose you have robot guards, like futuristic lasers, who just shoot at any ...
I've always loved well-done ghosts. However, I've always hated the afterlife-speculation that they engender if used in a story. So I need a way to get ghosts without the fluffy spiritualistic bits...
Exposition One of the biggest Problems my Renaissance city with 2.7 million inhabitants is facing is how two get food from outside the city fast enough to the populous before being spoiled. The ...
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...
The situation I'm considering is as follows: A large research vessel with a crew of about 100-200 attempts to land on a potentially habitable planet, but something goes wrong during the descent. A...
Let's say that there are two people named S and C. They are not far apart; less than 10 meters. Let's also assume the scenario takes place in late evening or in the night, for simplicity. Normally...
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 ...
I have my eyes on this new Porsche but all I have is an unlimited supply of ice and a molecular distillery. How can I convert this ice into gold? The molecular distillery can disassemble and reass...
In various TV series and movies villains or organisations have been shown to control animals through technological or cybernetic means, such as the future predators in Primeval. These creatures hav...
I know it may be a bit of a silly question and not really something of great importance to a story, but how would you secure a spaceship when you leave? For example; when the Millennium Falcon lan...
Setting: a mining colony on a distant world, exporting rare-earth minerals. As in many space opera stories, the world is a shirtsleeve environment with a reasonably pleasant biosphere. Tech level:...
Much of the struggle with terrestrial fusion power seems to be with keeping the ultra-hot plasma contained. In a classic Tokamak configuration, magnets using massive amounts of power, suspend the p...
Aqadatio is a planet which is completely flooded. This flood was generated by its own government to get out of debt (long story). The inhabitants of this planet are technologically advanced, more s...
Without changing a planet from being habitable for humans and keeping a similar ecosystem why could intelligent races never access electricity? What in society or behavior could stop people from ...
Without changing a planet from being habitable for humans and keeping a similar ecosystem why could intelligent races never access electricity? What systems need to be erased from the planet to ...
I'm writing a cyberpunk novel where one of the characters has an augmentation that allows them to echolocate. The idea is that there is a device on the center of his forehead (is there a more opti...
Suppose a team of astronauts have travelled to another solar system, and are currently living in a craft which is in Medium Earth Orbit of a planet which has oceans, continents, and complex life. A...
I have a spherical spaceship that is about 2 kilometers in diameter with an outer clear, yet strong shell. This spaceship is largely made up of empty space occupied by air. Aside from this the spac...
Disclaimer: First off, this is not a duplicate of this question. That question deals with stopping the hurricane, or preventing it from ever forming in the first place. It was discovered that wasn'...
it's pretty straight forward, how could a scientist such as a doctor, identify that nano-robots are the cause of some disease without knowing what it is looking for ? It would somehow need to be b...
How Long? In the 1960s, unknown to most, the United States set up a secret base on the moon manned by an "extra" aboard each Apollo lander. NASA architects decided that the base must be built into...
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 1869 a giant space gun was built, with the intent of firing a projectile at the Moon, just to prove that they can do it. Of course, the ludicrous idea to put people inside it was never even take...
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...
If an expert of some kind travels back in time to the 14th or 15th century with modern tools and machines that don't require power to work and if he were to past on the knowledge of modern technolo...
I am building a work in which steam plays a vital role. I would like to include the idea that much of the power for the people is being provided by a central machine that is isolated in one place b...
