Random Questions Thread

@Sabre's Edge: Fine, is it plausible that a war of sufficient scale in which these technologies were developed years ahead of time could have happened? Not necessarily WWII, but WWI with nukes and such.

@ Tomodachi: Cowardice. "Yellow-bellied" and all that.

Seriously? Only that?

@KSPAM: Not really. One thing you have to realize is that war doesn't actually breed innovation in major combat systems; it forces experimental technology to deployable and then refined status more quickly. Aircraft design in WW 1, for example, was essentially retrograde, and the biggest technological advances of World War 2 (jet aircraft, radar, even the use of antibiotic drugs) were based on work done before the war.

Probably the only technological gamechanger that war has actually created was the atomic bomb, and it occupies a weird place where it was actually possible to go to engineering without fully understanding the implications of theory. Technological advance proceeds from scientific advance; basic research comes before you can do engineering with it, but wartime work is all about the engineering rather than the basic research.

edited 9th Jul '14 4:07:42 PM by Night

Jaundice (in duller shades), electricity (thank you Pokemon), energy (its brighter shades seem like Genki Girl colors to me), maybe sunlight, or innocence if it's a pale shade (I picture maidens in soft yellow dresses, stuff like that).

edited 15th Jul '14 7:48:30 AM by CrystalGlacia

Plus, there's the whole economic side of things to consider. Money quote:

From whence came that economic strength, that let the US conduct the Manhattan Project? Partial answer: the economic boom of the 1920s, which really laid the groundwork for the WWII mobilization of industrial/economic power. The factories were dormant in the 1930s during the Depression, but roared to life again when WWII hit. That alone clashes with the proposed scenario, since "Prohibition-era" would be, by definition, during the Roaring Twenties or the Great Depression, when the boom was underway.

"Yellow is commonly associated with gold, wealth, sunshine, reason, happiness, optimism and pleasure, but also with envy, jealousy and betrayal. It plays an important role in Asian culture, particularly in China."

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow)

edited 10th Jul '14 2:32:13 AM by MCE

Huh, interesting.

I'm considering using rhombus shaped pips (for enlisted) plus bars to indicate NCOs/officers.

So this:

◊

-

Might be equivalent to an extremely junior officer. Does that look sensible? And is there anything else I could use to denote officers/NCOs?

edited 10th Jul '14 5:25:45 AM by Flanker66

Thanks!!

Tomodachi: Check out these pages.

edited 10th Jul '14 2:13:36 PM by Noaqiyeum

Would the Director of the CIA know absolutely anything and everything CIA related are there things classified even to him/her in his own organization he/she leads?

Need to Know applies to everyone, as far as I know. If the director doesn't have a need to know about [xyz], then he will not be briefed on it, end of. Doesn't matter that he's got the highest security clearance.

Continuing on my WW 1 and Prohibition weapons-based questions, would it raise too many heads for someone in the early 1930s to have access to nerve gases like sarin (even though in real life it was discovered in 1938), or is this an Acceptable Break from Reality? Remember, this is somewhat of an alternate history.

If that doesn't work, what kinds of poisonous gases, either military or industrial, could be (a) weaponized for urban warfare, and (b) could be treated (preferably prevented) by someone with a conventional knowledge of herbal medicine and pharmacology?

edited 10th Jul '14 3:24:10 PM by KSPAM

Chemical weapons were the military development of WWI. If there were less universal outrage on how much more horrifying they made the battlefield - say, because the war ended sooner due to shrewd diplomacy, or earlier advancement of tank warfare to break the deadlock in the trenches, or the war started later because Ferdinand and his assassin didn't happen to cross paths after they both got lost - I can imagine that more funding would have gone into their research.

Technically true, but the fact he has direct access to the budgeting and his position sort of override it.

It is possible there'd be things under his technical purview that would Top Secret/SCA/Codeword he wouldn't be told more than vaguely about, however, or originator-controlled information that he'd have no reason to find out about unless he got curious.

edited 10th Jul '14 3:46:28 PM by Night

Hm, true, I was slightly iffy on it but I basically stated what I'd heard.

For the most part, though, a good rule of thumb would be that if you're not sure whether someone would have a need to know [xyz], assume they don't.

The other issue is that though he might be authorized to know about something, he might not: information overload is a serious issue for intelligence agencies. In theory his deputy and then the rest of the bureaucracy should be able to handle that, but information can get lost in the gaps.

Okay, this is kind of complex.

I'm try to work out the acceleration, as expressed in apparent g-forces, involved in reaching various objects in the Solar System within a set timeframe using a continuous burn.

I don't suppose there's a calculator for this stuff?

There is a calculator for everything.

Yeah, but Google didn't find it.

Oh god. I hope you like calculus. A continuous burn would imply that you're constantly accelerating, until you hit turnaround and need to decelerate. After that you get to calculate position and velocity based on acceleration (and then deceleration), which means I hope you're comfortable with integrals. Then you have to factor in the movement of the planet, since you're not moving in a straight line...

You know what, it might be faster to ring up someone who has Kerbal Space Program and ask them.

Well, I actually found an answer for 1g (thank you google!) so I can work backwards to the number I need. (Which was half a gee.)

1.7 to 4.7 days at a continuous 1g acceleration to Mars, for the curious.

edited 10th Jul '14 6:01:29 PM by Night

...you didn't assume "twice the accel, half the time", did you?

No, because I wasn't using twice the acceleration for starters.

(1g equation: 9.8 (T/2)2^2/2 = d/2, T = 0.64 √d; .64/2 √d = T for .5g

Or at least that's what they tell me.)

edited 10th Jul '14 6:31:43 PM by Night

@Night: Here you go

Here's another one

And a third, the simplest one of all.

edited 10th Jul '14 7:48:53 PM by demarquis