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I have two earth clones, in essence, separated by 16550 miles (26350 kilometers). They are, of course, tidally locked, and orbit each other once every 24 hours. These planets orbit a sun identical ...
Cloud Nine is the name given by Buckminster Fuller to his proposed tensegrity sphere airborne habitats. The principle is simple and the physics seem to be sound. For a sphere, as its radius is ...
In A World Out of Time, per Schlock Mercenary, Earth is moved to a new home by lighting a fusion candle. The fusion candle idea is discussed in the Schlock quote: Building a gas-giant colony s...
As per the title, given A billion ($10^9$) dollars. Present day technology. A year of time (including making projects and testing), (preferred, not compulsory) No restriction about maximal nor mi...
Assume there's a human being who can keep a strong electric potential near to (or on) his skin. Is it possible to use the air-ionizing property, or similar ones solely or mostly solely based on thi...
To start with, i know You measure the Kardashev scale from stellar success, but lets say we have a civilization that are vastly advanced compared to us, so they are equivalent to a type 2 civilizat...
It is estimated that in about five billion years, our sun will enter its red giant stage. During that phase it will expand and completely engulf Mercury, Venus and possible Earth. Earth will either...
Think of a giant hemispherical shell, constructed of spaceships, sitting just far enough from Earth to be too far for Earth-based defences and close enough to effectively cast a shadow on the entir...
My idea was to use 2 stages for an interstellar spacecraft (particularly the Orion Drive) and use it in a way similar to Project: Daedalus. Phase 1 would involve accelerating to cruising speed foll...
Okay, so the heat death of the universe is approaching. You can't stop it. You can't dodge it. What do you do? You wait it out. According to wikipedia, about $10^{{10}^{56}}$ years after the heat ...
Epimetheus is a planet with about three times the mass of Earth orbiting a sun-like star in the Andromeda galaxy. However, two major factors separate Epimetheus from Earth. First, it has a thick at...
Sometimes I reminisce about the giant eagles from The Lord of the Rings and two things come to mind: Boy, I wish I could have my own giant eagle! Could a bird even carry something that heavy on i...
Nobody knows where the big Blue is. Some people say it's a dream. Some people say it's the space between the worlds, where all the things that fall through the cracks end up. The occasional rains o...
Would that even be possible? Will the bones deform during early infancy? Will the cartilages between joints wear off faster? Will internal organs collapse under their own weight? I have no professi...
Earth, present time or very near future. Astronomers have just announced that it is believed that almost 9 billion habitable Earth-like planets exist in the Milky Way alone (this is true, but there...
Positive mass moves in the same direction as its momentum and if negative energy exists then it would move in the opposite direction from its momentum. I was thinking of a type of mass, known as "...
Basically, in the event of a blotting out of the sun á la an impact winter, what sort of food source (if any) could be used to sustain humanity? In my universe, underground/makeshift greenhouses ...
How dark would it be living in an impact winter? Where would an asteroid have to hit earth to cause an impact winter? gives a great breakdown of the effects of an impact winter, but I'd like to k...
For those unfamiliar, An impact winter is a hypothesized period of prolonged cold weather due to the impact of a large asteroid or comet on the Earth's surface. (Wikipedia) In my world I want...
Preamble The Alternity Cosmos II is a complement to a dice role-playing game that uses heuristics based on hard-science to 'build' plausible star systems for the Alternity game: http://www.altern...
Like it says on the tin. Problem? Basic configuration is not going to work. If I used several additional layers and all the Outer and Inner layers using carbon nanotubes, whereas the Middle Layer(s...
In this world a secret society "farms" people with desired features (personality appearances etc.). They have ectogenesis of course; but they can't afford personnel to take care of the "products" u...
I'm not into psychology, but I've heard a lot about veterans who have committed suicide, went crazy, became addicted or have their lives ruined in other ways because of the shock they lived through...
Well, gentlemen. Here is Part II. We know what to do about the manoeuvre, but we need to know possible tactical options the two Task Groups would use. Background Now, as previously specified, we...
When I was observing the Moon yesterday, I asked myself: What would happen if a meteoroid impacted the Moon on the more clear part of the Moon which we can see, leaving a crater of the size like t...
I have two earth clones, in essence, separated by *16550 miles (26350 kilometers). They are, of course, tidally locked, and orbit each other once every 24 hours. These planets orbit a sun identical...
Many authors describe worlds with higher gravity than our own, from whence super-muscular aliens originate. However, as we increased the size, mass and surface gravity of a world; there would be p...
Could an unmanned solar plane go not only above the clouds, but also so fast that it always is in the day-side of the planet? A solar plane flying above the clouds receives sunlight $12$ hours per...
So, after going through a some rough calculations, I figured my earlier question ran into a few problems regarding the final velocity of the asteroid. I pulled the mathematics a bit incorrect, so I...
So, I ran into a problem regarding the aftermath of a colonial war for independence. What happens is the following: The scenario is this: late 24th Century, humans have colonised the Inner Solar Sy...
Setting The US is waging a failing War on Drugs where cartels are quickly gaining power. Scenario In the near future, say 2030, with current technology, the Texas state government is implementin...
I have a story where a powerful outside force killed (next to) all humans on earth some decades ago. The way I want to build it is that it required that the human outposts on the moon to die as we...
As the legend goes, Coca-Cola was planning on shooting lasers at the moon to project their logo. Unfortunately, the FFA said no (they didn't want planes to be blinded). I haven't been able to confi...
The Halo video game's extended universe book Halo: Evolutions describes the Battle of Psi Serpentis, in which a superjovian planet is converted into a brown dwarf via massive nuclear bombardment of...
In the game Portal, there are glowing light platforms. These platforms are (supposedly) made of solid, compressed light. How can these realistically be made?
Anchor one end of the cable to the side of the moon that faces the earth. Drop the other end of the cable to earth so that it drags along the ground. The earth's gravity and friction contributes a ...
In the Warhammer 40k universe, there are planets where the population hasn't developed so far and are left in the feudal stage, (or the technology has degenerated so much it is back to the point). ...
Imagine that God has many universes to deal with or just needs a break sometimes. He has a pause control. What plausible mechanism does God use to perform the pause without breaking the laws of ph...
It's the far future. Humans are still! increasing in population. We have developed habitable orbital structures and terraformed any planet we possibly could. We reached the maximum potential for h...
Mars is a cold, inhospitable, slightly damp ball of rock that would be very difficult to do things like grow crops on. However, it's also very far away. Far enough that, presumably, it would probab...
Lets say I have a space fleet flying to attack an installation. The enemy knows I'm coming but not my numbers or exact disposition. Since I'm moving much slower then C the light from my fleet wil...
Okay, so some space miners fly into space to get Helium-3, and then fly it back to earth to sell to non-space people. Flying into and off the earth is rather expensive, so they want to simply take ...
I want to get a shuttle from place to place in a reasonable amount of time. Say, 6 to 8 hours maximum, with a short break at the midpoint to turn around. Assuming constant acceleration to midpoin...
My question is simple: How many nested moons are physically possible? If our moon had a moon, that would be a nesting of 1. I'm assuming it's easily possible for a really big moon to be orbiting ...
So, imagine a team of space marines, fighting some sort of space bug zombies on a planet's moon. Things are going pretty bad for them, and the last surviving protagonists are running for their live...
Considering our topic challenge, and the fantastic eclipse last Sunday a question came to me. Could there be a stable (relatively speaking) planetary system where a(n) eclipse/alignment would actu...
In Ribbontails Series Aman5 there are creatures called Kuutamian animals. These animals are sapient and can have any form. The creator uses the excuse that they have three DNA strands, but how real...
The Biblical story of the Flood describes how over a period of 40 days the earth is flooded so that the peak of the highest mountain is 15 cubits/22.5ft/6.858m below the new mean sea level. The fl...
An alien race decides to test the hability of humans to survive and engage into space travel, for whatever reason. The planets The aliens prepares a pair of Earth-like planets revolving around a ...
Okay, so now that we've established that the badger folk (or Melinae sapien, if you want to be politically correct) are trading their ore to the humans for cat food. Now we need to determine what ...