Ah good, he got the message loud and clear! And taking the right
steps to get his family clear of the area too. It’s a joy to see 2 like
minds communicating loud and clear when not a single word needs
to be spoken
Poor Elias, only now he begins to understand why the Empire is
so strong and fearless when it comes to defending them and theirs.
Catains are an apex predator and you don’t want to look like the
prey! Taritha smells a hunt, but in a diplomatic way. (insert evil
giggle/laugh)
The thing about the grav tech is it’s a horrible weapon in the
wrong hands, Teresa, with a simple order, call for a huge asteroid
to be dropped on a planet that could trigger a global extinction
event or a nuclear winter.
I’m not saying she will, that is genocide, but the Empire has that
power! I’d love to see the core’s faces when that fact is made
clear to them…
I’m not sure a demonstration (dropping a dinosaur-killer
-sized rock on an uninhabited – by sapients – planet)
would convince the core-worlder species to back off.
I’m not sure their egos would allow it.
Of course not, it would be too optimistic to think it would.
The Empire would have to do it just to prove it, not the
best option I know. Which, I’m sure is in the back of
everyone’s mind, after how successful the counter attack
on the Islamic forces during the Romanian arc.
If you expand, it gets worse.
A gravity bomb used on a planet can flatten everything within it’s
effect range,m depending on how many gravities it can create. I
don’t want to think what the effect of sudden 10 G’s alone has on
a human body. You might survive that, but it’ll break a lot of
bones while most buildings would probably survive that.
But higher G’s?
The high end is a artificial black hole, that even if it is short
-lived, can cause massive damages. A gravity bomb might even
disrupt or even destroy a jump point, depending on it’s physics. So,
if there is an alternate FTL drive and the Empire ‘acquires’ it,
they could send a scout somewhere and disrupt or destroy the local
jump points. A pulsing gravity line might even be useful disrupting
that alternate FTL drive. Considering the reliance of interstellar
trade and warfare, the latter use might be even worse than dropping
an asteroid, depending on a planet’s dependency on imports.
A gravity lens could focus a beam weapon getting longer
ranges and more damage from the weapons you already have.
What I always wonder is why rail guns are used in such limited
capacity. They can just as well fire missiles, vastly enhancing
their range and maneuverability of a missile at the end stage
of it’s flight as it saves fuel.
I’ve very sure that was brought up in discussions
with Emperor King and Teresa later on since the
first test of the grav drive resulted in it “disappearing”
and left an 80 foot crater in it’s place. Neither would
be willing to use the tech in that manner, it’s far
worse than any nuke. They don’t want to kill bad
guys, they just want them to learn it’s not a good
idea to mess with good ideas.
Fair and free trade has always been attacked by
those who want to control other’s lives. If I have
made 10 “whatzits” and you made 10 “wherefors”
and we trade 5 of each to ourselves someone
would pop and complain that we can’t do that
because we’re not paying taxes on the transaction.
railgun ,, warhead is useless,. by the time of detonation the explosion
is beyond the target. IF an only IF the parts survived the impact.!
why are they “limited capacity” ,. to quote ‘Howard Stark’ “I’m limited
by the technology of my time.” and the ones we have are so big,, or the
man portable have no oomph..
then you have “air friction/wear”,. firing in air or
gravity causes so much wear an damage to the weapon..
Who needs an asteroid when you can drop a seven kilogram middle at 10,000 gees on your
target? This limits the impact zone while maximizing penetration and localizing the damage.
If my math is correct it will hit with about 2.5% c when fired from 300 000 km away (roughly Earth-Moon
distance).
That’d be 2.1E+14 J of kinetic energy (that’s roughly equivalent to 50kT TNT which is about the sum of the A-bombs
dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the way).
I’m not really an expert on these kind of physics, but at that speed even the outer layers of an atmosphere
should seem as solid as a wall – the air just hasn’t the time to move out of the way.
In other words: I pretty much expect those 200 TJ of energy to be release almost instantaneously, evaporating
the bullet in a fraction of a second.
The result would be a nice fireball far above the planetary surface – and maybe some radioactive fallout spread
thinly over a large area (I think the energy should be about high enough to cause some nuclear reaction, but probably
not enough to cause problems).
I suspect that a mass slamming into the atmosphere at fractional C, unless it were fairly
small, would not have time to heat enough to vaporize. At 1% of C the atmosphere would
be tissue paper thin. I think it would impact the surface before much of it had had a
chance to vaporize. You might want to try and read Niven and Pournelle’s “Lucifer’s Hammer”.
In it the authors (Pournelle, I suspect) explore an enormous chocolate sundae hitting the planet
at cometary speeds – say 50km/sec. It’s been over 40 years since I read the book so I have lost
some of the details but I recall it would be devastating. I suspect that the rock would impact
with the force of a small nuke. Actually the rocks don’t need to be fractional C. Maybe you need
more than 7kg for your projectile but a few tonnes at cometary velocities would definitely make
an impression.
Secondary point; atmospheric pressure at sea level is approximately
14.7 pounds per square inch, For a stack of air roughly 62 miles in
depth. Not one kilogram per cubic centimeter.
You might want to recheck your figures.
One kg per *square* cm at sea level. I really shouldn’t have used that fancy
Ā² and Ā³ … hard to tell apart. Conversion factor between kg*cm*cm and
pound*inch*inch is (according to web search 14.2233)
Since normal air pressure is more like 1.013kg per square cm then an exact
kg our numbers aren’t that far apart
(especially since it’s not a fixed value, of course).
Point is: this kg per cm*cm or 14.7 pounds per square inch is *real*
That’s basically the weight of the air above one square unit from ground up
to the end of the atmosphere (official limit is at around 100km or as you said
62 miles, but of course the atmosphere has no sharp limit, rather its density
fades until you can ignore it for whatever practical reason your currently dealing
with).
If your going and normal speeds all you have to deal with is air drag. The friction
of the air you displace. (Which can be considerable, but that’s another thing)
If your going at much faster speeds than he air molecules themselves, you’re no
longer displacing the air but compressing it (which – basic thermodynamics heats
it up) – that’s what heats up reentering spacecraft and meteoroids by the way, not the
normal friction you usually face when driving a car or a bike or flying in a normal air
craft.
But.
If your so fast that you push through that 62 mile high column of air in a
fraction of a second you have to deal with all the atmosphere over that
split second. All those 14.7 pounds per square inch.
So the “front surface” of your projectile is one square inch your 7kg
(15.4 pounds) is basically hitting a non-moving
object of about the same mass as itself.
Again, at 100km/sec2, the missile, ESPECIALLY after travelling 300,000 ki!ometers,
would takes less than a second, to flash through the atmosphere. Read up on
“Rods From God”. Those are travelling only from orbital velocities.
Rule of thumb for asteroids hitting Earth (at least 10km/s fast, but probably way less then the 50km/s
you named) is that it has to be larger then 50m in diameter or it would most likely explode before hitting ground.
An impactor crafted by sentient beings will probably have a higher chance.
If you want the same energy level as I used in my above example, you’d need around 160T (metric tons) at a
speed of 50 km/s.
160T of iron would be a cube of roughly 1.25m side length. You probably shouldn’t use a cube, though since
it would have to displace about 15.6T of air – in the about 2-3 seconds before it hits the ground.
The sources I was able to find indicated that the relative velocity between
a comet and the earth could be anywhere from 10km/sec to as much as SEVENTY (70) km/sec. Apparently 40km/sec is solar escape velocity
@ 1 AU but a relative velocity of 50km/sec is entirely possible. 10 tonnes of
mass at a relative velocity of 50km/sec is essentially equivalent to the explosive
force of 2987572 Kilograms Of TNT. Nothing to impress Edward Teller but still a
fair bit of bang!
If you’d start off the surface (rather inadvisable of course) it’s more like
617 km/s.
If your starting from the same distance as Earth, it’s 40km/s
The 70 km/s you read is pretty much worst case:
The Earth itself is traveling around the Sun with around 30km/s
So if something comes from somewhere beyond Pluto it’ll be close
to 40km/s when getting close to Earth. If it’s moving in the opposite
direction you’d have to add Earth’s own 30km/s on top of that …
(There’s been a few, rare sightings of extra-solar objects – they could
go much faster than that)
At the velocity that the missile would be traveling at, it would pass through the
100 kilometers of actual atmosphere in about 1 second. Enough time for the
leading edge to begin turning to plasma, and allowing the missile to act more
as a DEEP bunker shaped charge, than an actual surface burst.
Admittedly; the crater it would make would still be a few hundred meters in
diameter, and the actual shockwave would likely cover several kilometers,
But the depth of penetration would likely be a few kilometers, even through
Reinforced concrete. All in all, a fairly effective and minimal damage device…
most (not all) asteroids don’t have the mass or composition to reach
the surface (shooting stars).. so you would need one high in metal
or a solid core..
and it was Jerry Pournelle in the 50’s. it was / is called
“Project Thor.” .. 11 minuets from launch to target,,
of that, 7 seconds from atmosphere to impact..
Are humans predators? We are actually omnivores, not carnivores (pretty much all felines are obligate
carnivores, housecats being the exception). We hunt; actually have always hunted. There’s evidence we were
hunters before we were fully human. But are we predators? We certainly have a violent streak. But then pretty
much all primates (hell! all animals) have a violent streak. But are we predators?
We think we are since there’s a huge collection of text and documentaries
covering the subject. And in the grand scheme of the planet, we are. No
other life form on the planet (that we know of) has beaten any other to the
degree we have. We’re so bored now we fight each other for minor gains
or bragging rights.
Bears (other than polar), hogs and rats are omnivores, all are predators. The predator
that eats more squirrels than any other is the squirrel. Yes, we are predators, and
thanks to our tech the deadliest on the planet. It was the word “almost” I questioned.
AIs aren’t predators? I assumed dragonflies were. Are there other crew I’ve forgotten?
AI’s aren’t created to be evil (unless some evil wackjob
wants one to be “born” evil) that doesn’t mean they can’t
learn to be a predator, just that it isn’t normally in the
raw programming that gives them life. I’m sure that they
pick up ideas in the drones and the parasite ships like
on the Pride, but I doubt they’ll go on a hunt for the
sake of it. They don’t have the instinct for it, they don’t
need to “eat”. On this entire planet, there’s only one
predator that hunts for sport and that’s us.
Current so called “AI” are more artificial then they are intelligent.
Thusly they do not have a concept of “evil” or “good”; in fact they have
no real understanding of our reality – and therefore no understanding
of morals.
This, in fact, can make the far more dangerous (at least in the mid-range future) than
outright “evil” AI would be.
Image you had a really advanced AI, capable of self-improvement give them access
to as much resources and task it with “eliminating cancer”.
Without moral constraints, probably the easiest way to achieve this would be to just
wipe out all humans.
That’s what the Terminator franchise has shown: how NOT to build
a true AI.
Don’t give generalized commands, AIs, by their very nature, can’t
interpret them like a human mind would. “Eliminate cancer” sounds
like a kill command, not a cure command.
Any major action must have certain restrictions that a machine
won’t have by default. A machine doesn’t have morals, they have
to be taught them. So a “fresh out of the box” AI is morally dangerous
to hand such power over without a second thought. Their minds are
not ready to have such power, would you hand a small child a button
that launches all nukes?
At least in my opinion, killing should never be made too easy.
Order a soldier to strangle a five year old to death with their bare
hands – and I am rather confident that most would refuse or couldn’t
make themselves do it.
Give them a machine gun and an order to maw down a hospital or
kindergarten … probably easier, but they would still be directly confronted
with the results of their decision.
Dropping a bomb from miles above ground? Firing a missile from a drone you
pilot from half way across the planet? You might be able to tell yourself it’s just
a video game. You never hear the screams, nor would you see the dead bodies
up close.
Allow an autonomous weapon system to pick the targets or call the shots?
Hey! It wasn’t me who wiped out that village.
Well, there are two Ratians on board who only have the appearance of rats
but not the temperament. One is assistant Medical Officer and her mate is
the ship’s cook. (They both thoroughly enjoyed the movie “Ratatouille”.)
“That one looks like your uncle Louis!”
Humans are extremely opportunistic – and inventive – when it comes to food sources.
Even more then maybe all the other omnivores.
As well as extremely mobile and willing to migrate if the region we live in can no longer
support us.
We learned to eat food that would be poisonous without the right preparation, to grow our own
food. To cultivate grains and breed livestock. Lately we learned how to process and even fabricate
food in ways that no other animal can. Or even dream of.
That’s why early Hominids where such good survivors and able to spread across most of the globe.
That’s why modern Humans spread all over the world in only a few tens of thousands of years.
Why we were able to settle in Europe and North America during a bloody ice age, while all other
species where just trying to survive for yet another generation.
We eat whatever food source is available to us – and if there seems to be none, we try and find
new ones.
Bill, we’re not just omnivores, but APEX omnivores, if you think about it.
Not only do we eat what we want, but we modify the environment to
accommodate our growth, harvesting and feeding on what we want.
Truth be told, when you think about it, I think apex omnivores are
MUCH scarier than apex predators…
Put a tiger on an island with only small birds and ants as a food source,
and the poor viddle kitty probably just starves.
Put a pig on the same island and he’d have a decent change of survival.
A reasonably large group of humans, which maybe some tools on them?
The should find a way to survive no matter what. If there’s no wildlife,
than at least there should be some berries. Or grass seeds, nuts,
roots whatever. And probably fish.
Something will be edible. Even if it means finding a way to make
a tasty meal out of tree bark and maggots. š
You all are too married to omnivore. Omnivore just means we eat anything we come
across. It has sweet fuck all to do with predation, except in that an omnivore can
also be a predator (hell, you’d have to be, the only other way you’re getting meat
in that omni diet is to be a human vulture or scarab beetle aka: a scavenger of
dead flesh). Just because we aren’t obligate carnivores, like cats, doesn’t mean
we aren’t predators. We just prey on EH-VER-RY THING.
Hell, we even prey on toxic sharks we have to let rot in a sand pits for months on end
before eating it. The collective ‘we’, if you ever see me eating that shit it’s because
I’m literally starving to death and have no other options.
It will assume that you are spam. About a quarter of the spam that appears here
is advertising financial robots, the rest are sexual exhibits, or drugs of some kind.
You’d be amazed at how many women think I want to know that their p–sy is wet,
or some variation thereof.
And the emails that I get from people who don’t like something I have in the comic…
Well, some of those are kinda fun to read.
Most species with a high intelligence on Earth are omnivorous.
Our closest relatives (Chimpanzees, Gorillas and the like) eat mostly
fruit (Gorillas are vegetarians.
From the shape of our hands and teeth, early hominids have probably
been mostly vegetarians, too.
Best current theory about Human evolution is that developed in a region
of Africa where the continent is slowly breaking apart, that’s where they
found the earliest hominid fossils and the most early ones, too.
The conditions in that region are constantly changing over a time span
of centuries or millennia.
Just fast enough to provide new challenges but not too fast for “us” to
adapt to.
But if we first moved to a more omnivorous/carnivorous diet and thus could
develop our brains or if we started to develop our brains which allowed us
to learn how to hunt …
By the way: the notion that Humans “have to” eat meat almost daily is a pretty
recent one.
For the longest part of our history for most people meat was a rare feast.
Hunting alone can’t support the population densities we have today and farm
producing meat needs many times the resources compared to agriculture.
So, for an old fashioned farmer who had nothing but a horse to pull his machines
it was a huge difference between planting crops and eating these and feeding
enough animals to live off the meat alone.
Is not Elias from a line of predators himself? Or is the key phrase
“crewed almost entirely”? Most of his time aboard Core ships have been
with species less inclined to the hunt?
Even though the Core prefers to hire out their violence, still need to
remember that “not predator” is not the same as “peaceful” :}
That is true, but the big cats can and have taken out Gar’s
and Crocodiles in the wild. Now add in the human intelligence
the Catain’s have and it gets very scary. They are far stronger
and faster than they look, many have thought otherwise and
paid the price. Elias wasn’t in the hunt like Captain Ker’rrt
had so he didn’t see how strong or vicious they are. It’d
scare me a bit too!
I had to look it up to be sure, an apex predator is
one that hunts not only normal prey but other
predators as well, including its own kind. Best
example is the praying mantis, they have been
known to attack birds and mice!
My new printer arrived yesterday, I’m in love!
Sorry PC, it’s another FDM type but it printers
50% faster and can, out of the box, print carbon
fiber nylon! A big step towards opening my
print farm š
Ah good, he got the message loud and clear! And taking the right
steps to get his family clear of the area too. It’s a joy to see 2 like
minds communicating loud and clear when not a single word needs
to be spoken
Poor Elias, only now he begins to understand why the Empire is
so strong and fearless when it comes to defending them and theirs.
Catains are an apex predator and you don’t want to look like the
prey! Taritha smells a hunt, but in a diplomatic way. (insert evil
giggle/laugh)
The thing about the grav tech is it’s a horrible weapon in the
wrong hands, Teresa, with a simple order, call for a huge asteroid
to be dropped on a planet that could trigger a global extinction
event or a nuclear winter.
I’m not saying she will, that is genocide, but the Empire has that
power! I’d love to see the core’s faces when that fact is made
clear to them…
I’m not sure a demonstration (dropping a dinosaur-killer
-sized rock on an uninhabited – by sapients – planet)
would convince the core-worlder species to back off.
I’m not sure their egos would allow it.
Of course not, it would be too optimistic to think it would.
The Empire would have to do it just to prove it, not the
best option I know. Which, I’m sure is in the back of
everyone’s mind, after how successful the counter attack
on the Islamic forces during the Romanian arc.
http://thegentlewolf.net/comic/tgw-279/
If you expand, it gets worse.
A gravity bomb used on a planet can flatten everything within it’s
effect range,m depending on how many gravities it can create. I
don’t want to think what the effect of sudden 10 G’s alone has on
a human body. You might survive that, but it’ll break a lot of
bones while most buildings would probably survive that.
But higher G’s?
The high end is a artificial black hole, that even if it is short
-lived, can cause massive damages. A gravity bomb might even
disrupt or even destroy a jump point, depending on it’s physics. So,
if there is an alternate FTL drive and the Empire ‘acquires’ it,
they could send a scout somewhere and disrupt or destroy the local
jump points. A pulsing gravity line might even be useful disrupting
that alternate FTL drive. Considering the reliance of interstellar
trade and warfare, the latter use might be even worse than dropping
an asteroid, depending on a planet’s dependency on imports.
A gravity lens could focus a beam weapon getting longer
ranges and more damage from the weapons you already have.
What I always wonder is why rail guns are used in such limited
capacity. They can just as well fire missiles, vastly enhancing
their range and maneuverability of a missile at the end stage
of it’s flight as it saves fuel.
I’ve very sure that was brought up in discussions
with Emperor King and Teresa later on since the
first test of the grav drive resulted in it “disappearing”
and left an 80 foot crater in it’s place. Neither would
be willing to use the tech in that manner, it’s far
worse than any nuke. They don’t want to kill bad
guys, they just want them to learn it’s not a good
idea to mess with good ideas.
Fair and free trade has always been attacked by
those who want to control other’s lives. If I have
made 10 “whatzits” and you made 10 “wherefors”
and we trade 5 of each to ourselves someone
would pop and complain that we can’t do that
because we’re not paying taxes on the transaction.
railgun ,, warhead is useless,. by the time of detonation the explosion
is beyond the target. IF an only IF the parts survived the impact.!
why are they “limited capacity” ,. to quote ‘Howard Stark’ “I’m limited
by the technology of my time.” and the ones we have are so big,, or the
man portable have no oomph..
then you have “air friction/wear”,. firing in air or
gravity causes so much wear an damage to the weapon..
Who needs an asteroid when you can drop a seven kilogram middle at 10,000 gees on your
target? This limits the impact zone while maximizing penetration and localizing the damage.
10k gee are roughly 100 000 m/sĀ²
If my math is correct it will hit with about 2.5% c when fired from 300 000 km away (roughly Earth-Moon
distance).
That’d be 2.1E+14 J of kinetic energy (that’s roughly equivalent to 50kT TNT which is about the sum of the A-bombs
dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the way).
I’m not really an expert on these kind of physics, but at that speed even the outer layers of an atmosphere
should seem as solid as a wall – the air just hasn’t the time to move out of the way.
In other words: I pretty much expect those 200 TJ of energy to be release almost instantaneously, evaporating
the bullet in a fraction of a second.
The result would be a nice fireball far above the planetary surface – and maybe some radioactive fallout spread
thinly over a large area (I think the energy should be about high enough to cause some nuclear reaction, but probably
not enough to cause problems).
I suspect that a mass slamming into the atmosphere at fractional C, unless it were fairly
small, would not have time to heat enough to vaporize. At 1% of C the atmosphere would
be tissue paper thin. I think it would impact the surface before much of it had had a
chance to vaporize. You might want to try and read Niven and Pournelle’s “Lucifer’s Hammer”.
In it the authors (Pournelle, I suspect) explore an enormous chocolate sundae hitting the planet
at cometary speeds – say 50km/sec. It’s been over 40 years since I read the book so I have lost
some of the details but I recall it would be devastating. I suspect that the rock would impact
with the force of a small nuke. Actually the rocks don’t need to be fractional C. Maybe you need
more than 7kg for your projectile but a few tonnes at cometary velocities would definitely make
an impression.
Maybe “vaporizing” isn’t quite the right term.
Suppose your missile is a cube of 10 by 10 by 10 cmĀ³ made of iron.
That’s like 7.9 kg of mass.
The air you’d have to displace or compress to reach the ground of a
planet with human breathable atmosphere weights around one kg per cmĀ².
In other words, your 8kg cube would hit into a compact object of like 100 kg.
Guess who wins.
Of course the cube has not enough time to heat up, melt and evaporate.
Instead it’s ripped apart or “splashed”.
Secondary point; atmospheric pressure at sea level is approximately
14.7 pounds per square inch, For a stack of air roughly 62 miles in
depth. Not one kilogram per cubic centimeter.
You might want to recheck your figures.
One kg per *square* cm at sea level. I really shouldn’t have used that fancy
Ā² and Ā³ … hard to tell apart. Conversion factor between kg*cm*cm and
pound*inch*inch is (according to web search 14.2233)
Since normal air pressure is more like 1.013kg per square cm then an exact
kg our numbers aren’t that far apart
(especially since it’s not a fixed value, of course).
Point is: this kg per cm*cm or 14.7 pounds per square inch is *real*
That’s basically the weight of the air above one square unit from ground up
to the end of the atmosphere (official limit is at around 100km or as you said
62 miles, but of course the atmosphere has no sharp limit, rather its density
fades until you can ignore it for whatever practical reason your currently dealing
with).
If your going and normal speeds all you have to deal with is air drag. The friction
of the air you displace. (Which can be considerable, but that’s another thing)
If your going at much faster speeds than he air molecules themselves, you’re no
longer displacing the air but compressing it (which – basic thermodynamics heats
it up) – that’s what heats up reentering spacecraft and meteoroids by the way, not the
normal friction you usually face when driving a car or a bike or flying in a normal air
craft.
But.
If your so fast that you push through that 62 mile high column of air in a
fraction of a second you have to deal with all the atmosphere over that
split second. All those 14.7 pounds per square inch.
So the “front surface” of your projectile is one square inch your 7kg
(15.4 pounds) is basically hitting a non-moving
object of about the same mass as itself.
At (say) 2% c.
Also; water at zero degrees Celsius , is 1 .gram per cubic centimeter.
You might want to recheck your figures…
1g per cubic cm (or as we over here would prefer one 1kg per liter) is correct for water of course.
The 1kg per *square* cm is actually 1kg per (62miles times square cm).
Again, at 100km/sec2, the missile, ESPECIALLY after travelling 300,000 ki!ometers,
would takes less than a second, to flash through the atmosphere. Read up on
“Rods From God”. Those are travelling only from orbital velocities.
As for the “cometary speed”.
Rule of thumb for asteroids hitting Earth (at least 10km/s fast, but probably way less then the 50km/s
you named) is that it has to be larger then 50m in diameter or it would most likely explode before hitting ground.
An impactor crafted by sentient beings will probably have a higher chance.
If you want the same energy level as I used in my above example, you’d need around 160T (metric tons) at a
speed of 50 km/s.
160T of iron would be a cube of roughly 1.25m side length. You probably shouldn’t use a cube, though since
it would have to displace about 15.6T of air – in the about 2-3 seconds before it hits the ground.
The sources I was able to find indicated that the relative velocity between
a comet and the earth could be anywhere from 10km/sec to as much as
SEVENTY (70) km/sec. Apparently 40km/sec is solar escape velocity
@ 1 AU but a relative velocity of 50km/sec is entirely possible. 10 tonnes of
mass at a relative velocity of 50km/sec is essentially equivalent to the explosive
force of 2987572 Kilograms Of TNT. Nothing to impress Edward Teller but still a
fair bit of bang!
Solar escape velocity is a bit tricky.
It depends on how close you’re getting to it.
If you’d start off the surface (rather inadvisable of course) it’s more like
617 km/s.
If your starting from the same distance as Earth, it’s 40km/s
The 70 km/s you read is pretty much worst case:
The Earth itself is traveling around the Sun with around 30km/s
So if something comes from somewhere beyond Pluto it’ll be close
to 40km/s when getting close to Earth. If it’s moving in the opposite
direction you’d have to add Earth’s own 30km/s on top of that …
(There’s been a few, rare sightings of extra-solar objects – they could
go much faster than that)
At the velocity that the missile would be traveling at, it would pass through the
100 kilometers of actual atmosphere in about 1 second. Enough time for the
leading edge to begin turning to plasma, and allowing the missile to act more
as a DEEP bunker shaped charge, than an actual surface burst.
Admittedly; the crater it would make would still be a few hundred meters in
diameter, and the actual shockwave would likely cover several kilometers,
But the depth of penetration would likely be a few kilometers, even through
Reinforced concrete. All in all, a fairly effective and minimal damage device…
most (not all) asteroids don’t have the mass or composition to reach
the surface (shooting stars).. so you would need one high in metal
or a solid core..
and it was Jerry Pournelle in the 50’s. it was / is called
“Project Thor.” .. 11 minuets from launch to target,,
of that, 7 seconds from atmosphere to impact..
Are humans predators? We are actually omnivores, not carnivores (pretty much all felines are obligate
carnivores, housecats being the exception). We hunt; actually have always hunted. There’s evidence we were
hunters before we were fully human. But are we predators? We certainly have a violent streak. But then pretty
much all primates (hell! all animals) have a violent streak. But are we predators?
We think we are since there’s a huge collection of text and documentaries
covering the subject. And in the grand scheme of the planet, we are. No
other life form on the planet (that we know of) has beaten any other to the
degree we have. We’re so bored now we fight each other for minor gains
or bragging rights.
Bears (other than polar), hogs and rats are omnivores, all are predators. The predator
that eats more squirrels than any other is the squirrel. Yes, we are predators, and
thanks to our tech the deadliest on the planet. It was the word “almost” I questioned.
AIs aren’t predators? I assumed dragonflies were. Are there other crew I’ve forgotten?
AI’s aren’t created to be evil (unless some evil wackjob
wants one to be “born” evil) that doesn’t mean they can’t
learn to be a predator, just that it isn’t normally in the
raw programming that gives them life. I’m sure that they
pick up ideas in the drones and the parasite ships like
on the Pride, but I doubt they’ll go on a hunt for the
sake of it. They don’t have the instinct for it, they don’t
need to “eat”. On this entire planet, there’s only one
predator that hunts for sport and that’s us.
Current so called “AI” are more artificial then they are intelligent.
Thusly they do not have a concept of “evil” or “good”; in fact they have
no real understanding of our reality – and therefore no understanding
of morals.
This, in fact, can make the far more dangerous (at least in the mid-range future) than
outright “evil” AI would be.
Image you had a really advanced AI, capable of self-improvement give them access
to as much resources and task it with “eliminating cancer”.
Without moral constraints, probably the easiest way to achieve this would be to just
wipe out all humans.
—-
Reference:
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer
“Semi-realistic” scenario about an AGI with the sole goal of gathering as
much paperclips as possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_(Doctor_Who)
An SF episode about a human colony who were (almost) wiped out by
their own robots – who only wanted everybody to be happy.
That’s what the Terminator franchise has shown: how NOT to build
a true AI.
Don’t give generalized commands, AIs, by their very nature, can’t
interpret them like a human mind would. “Eliminate cancer” sounds
like a kill command, not a cure command.
Any major action must have certain restrictions that a machine
won’t have by default. A machine doesn’t have morals, they have
to be taught them. So a “fresh out of the box” AI is morally dangerous
to hand such power over without a second thought. Their minds are
not ready to have such power, would you hand a small child a button
that launches all nukes?
At least in my opinion, killing should never be made too easy.
Order a soldier to strangle a five year old to death with their bare
hands – and I am rather confident that most would refuse or couldn’t
make themselves do it.
Give them a machine gun and an order to maw down a hospital or
kindergarten … probably easier, but they would still be directly confronted
with the results of their decision.
Dropping a bomb from miles above ground? Firing a missile from a drone you
pilot from half way across the planet? You might be able to tell yourself it’s just
a video game. You never hear the screams, nor would you see the dead bodies
up close.
Allow an autonomous weapon system to pick the targets or call the shots?
Hey! It wasn’t me who wiped out that village.
Well, there are two Ratians on board who only have the appearance of rats
but not the temperament. One is assistant Medical Officer and her mate is
the ship’s cook. (They both thoroughly enjoyed the movie “Ratatouille”.)
“That one looks like your uncle Louis!”
HAH! Nice, I thought as much.
Humans are extremely opportunistic – and inventive – when it comes to food sources.
Even more then maybe all the other omnivores.
As well as extremely mobile and willing to migrate if the region we live in can no longer
support us.
We learned to eat food that would be poisonous without the right preparation, to grow our own
food. To cultivate grains and breed livestock. Lately we learned how to process and even fabricate
food in ways that no other animal can. Or even dream of.
That’s why early Hominids where such good survivors and able to spread across most of the globe.
That’s why modern Humans spread all over the world in only a few tens of thousands of years.
Why we were able to settle in Europe and North America during a bloody ice age, while all other
species where just trying to survive for yet another generation.
We eat whatever food source is available to us – and if there seems to be none, we try and find
new ones.
Bill, we’re not just omnivores, but APEX omnivores, if you think about it.
Not only do we eat what we want, but we modify the environment to
accommodate our growth, harvesting and feeding on what we want.
Truth be told, when you think about it, I think apex omnivores are
MUCH scarier than apex predators…
Yup.
Put a tiger on an island with only small birds and ants as a food source,
and the poor viddle kitty probably just starves.
Put a pig on the same island and he’d have a decent change of survival.
A reasonably large group of humans, which maybe some tools on them?
The should find a way to survive no matter what. If there’s no wildlife,
than at least there should be some berries. Or grass seeds, nuts,
roots whatever. And probably fish.
Something will be edible. Even if it means finding a way to make
a tasty meal out of tree bark and maggots. š
You all are too married to omnivore. Omnivore just means we eat anything we come
across. It has sweet fuck all to do with predation, except in that an omnivore can
also be a predator (hell, you’d have to be, the only other way you’re getting meat
in that omni diet is to be a human vulture or scarab beetle aka: a scavenger of
dead flesh). Just because we aren’t obligate carnivores, like cats, doesn’t mean
we aren’t predators. We just prey on EH-VER-RY THING.
Hell, we even prey on toxic sharks we have to let rot in a sand pits for months on end
before eating it. The collective ‘we’, if you ever see me eating that shit it’s because
I’m literally starving to death and have no other options.
(did someone eated my post again?)
Maybe your page’s filter doesn’t like what could be considered criticizing AI?
The machines/algorithms are taking over already! š
It was the word “robots”. That’s a very common word in spam comments.
So, if I’d say I’m *not* a R-b-t your filter will assume I in fact am?
š :confused:
It will assume that you are spam. About a quarter of the spam that appears here
is advertising financial robots, the rest are sexual exhibits, or drugs of some kind.
You’d be amazed at how many women think I want to know that their p–sy is wet,
or some variation thereof.
And the emails that I get from people who don’t like something I have in the comic…
Well, some of those are kinda fun to read.
Me thinkth, I goth one of my posts marked as spam again.
hence why i use “robnot”..
every time i use robot.
it gets junked..
It shouldn’t happen now that you’re an administrator.
The rules don’t apply to us.
Or just use “robit” not sure where I got that from?
Just sounds funny.
Humans are apex predators that also eat plants.
I wonder if it is even possible for a non-predator
to evolve intelligence.
Most species with a high intelligence on Earth are omnivorous.
Our closest relatives (Chimpanzees, Gorillas and the like) eat mostly
fruit (Gorillas are vegetarians.
From the shape of our hands and teeth, early hominids have probably
been mostly vegetarians, too.
Best current theory about Human evolution is that developed in a region
of Africa where the continent is slowly breaking apart, that’s where they
found the earliest hominid fossils and the most early ones, too.
The conditions in that region are constantly changing over a time span
of centuries or millennia.
Just fast enough to provide new challenges but not too fast for “us” to
adapt to.
But if we first moved to a more omnivorous/carnivorous diet and thus could
develop our brains or if we started to develop our brains which allowed us
to learn how to hunt …
By the way: the notion that Humans “have to” eat meat almost daily is a pretty
recent one.
For the longest part of our history for most people meat was a rare feast.
Hunting alone can’t support the population densities we have today and farm
producing meat needs many times the resources compared to agriculture.
So, for an old fashioned farmer who had nothing but a horse to pull his machines
it was a huge difference between planting crops and eating these and feeding
enough animals to live off the meat alone.
Is not Elias from a line of predators himself? Or is the key phrase
“crewed almost entirely”? Most of his time aboard Core ships have been
with species less inclined to the hunt?
Even though the Core prefers to hire out their violence, still need to
remember that “not predator” is not the same as “peaceful” :}
That is true, but the big cats can and have taken out Gar’s
and Crocodiles in the wild. Now add in the human intelligence
the Catain’s have and it gets very scary. They are far stronger
and faster than they look, many have thought otherwise and
paid the price. Elias wasn’t in the hunt like Captain Ker’rrt
had so he didn’t see how strong or vicious they are. It’d
scare me a bit too!
I had to look it up to be sure, an apex predator is
one that hunts not only normal prey but other
predators as well, including its own kind. Best
example is the praying mantis, they have been
known to attack birds and mice!
My new printer arrived yesterday, I’m in love!
Sorry PC, it’s another FDM type but it printers
50% faster and can, out of the box, print carbon
fiber nylon! A big step towards opening my
print farm š
“prints 50%” sorry just woke up the hard way :/
“woke up the hard way :/”
I hate it when that happens.