Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Well... yes. But the Printer would be smaller than the last one and not as efficient.

Continue downwards and soon you just have a waste.

To answer the logistics question you have to ask what else is it limited by in terms of dimensions and how complex are talking for non-organic material? Can it print out large sheets of complex nano-tube based armor or is it stuck doing more mundane things like composite ceramics and plastics?

It wouldn't need to print a new printer whole cloth but could it print the parts to build another one just like it?

edited 30th Apr '16 8:54:46 AM by TuefelHundenIV

It could print replacement parts, weapons and robot parts.

And I hadn't thought of printing the parts to make more. I suppose it's possible. Then the issue is just getting the materials for printing.

edited 30th Apr '16 8:59:21 AM by EchoingSilence

So it could print complex designs then? Say for example could it print the collective pieces to build a combustion engine provided adequate blue prints and materials? Like say a diesel tank engine? The collective parts could be considered spares or replacements given the often piecemeal nature of maintenance.

When you say molecular printer are you talking something that can manipulate matter fed into it at a molecular level into a new structure or is it more like the replicators of star trek? If it is the former it could be a "junk to gear" kind of consideration. You need roughly equivalent amounts of mass of certain materials to print the items.

To the first part yes.

To the other, molecular matter. It feeds materials and constructs them into specific designs. So Junk to gear sounds good.

Well as long as you can keep it powered and fed with the raw materials necessary your next consideration would be how long it takes to make the materials in question. For example how long would roughly take to print out a rifle barrel for an M-16 when everything else is accounted for? If it can churn one out every hour that isn't bad at all and if you run it for a month you have a good number of barrels for spares and replacements.

If your notably limited on printers like say just two or three you would need work out priorities and needs as well times and materials needed to make something. It could help with logistics provided time considerations are not too tight.

To keep the printer from making more printers, just have some critical components be made of organic material that are hard to come by. Alternately, it's a complex machine and nobody knows how to put it together any more.

edited 30th Apr '16 9:41:17 AM by AFP

Well nobody in the apocalyptic setting knows how to make them any more. A total ban on anything more advanced than a basic electric generator or combustion driven car is forbidden and heresy.

But I like what Tuefel has said. That makes a lot of sense.

Aside from being the only one in the group's possession, this is a highly precise and versatile machine; I don't think it would work quickly, and considering how many things it can do, I don't think simpler tasks like raw material processing and manufacturing things in bulk that don't require single-atom precision are good uses of its time. I think it would be used to make industrial machinery, each capable of a more limited range of functions, but doing them well and quickly. These would do the heavy, larger-scale work. If its precision of work cannot be replicated by its creations even for a specific kind of products, then it may be used for these specific things, such as top-quality electronics, or maybe a really fancy material.

Man: Good point.

Echo: How about this. They can build and maintain the machine with everything except for the programming or whatever stores the programming. Lets call it a core and is say a memory crystal or memory diamond for sake of arguement. Without the right tech and know how they would be next to impossible to create making each one with readable content invaluable.

Such printers would have fairly complex systems to run them and tell them how to work so any readable printer crystals would be highly sought after and very valuable. Say what machines they have are incapable of copying their own cores because they can't be copied while in use. To help keep people from just ripping off cores and building their own machines freely pre-fall they have a form of DRM that tells any printer trying to copy the content that it can't be copied. Because they were controlled technology they are not overly common and a limited number survived with the key part intact.

Blue prints could be as simple as someone drawing a detailed schematic with appropriately noted dimensions and scanning them into the machine through some built in device. That would require education to train engineers and people capable of drawing. Since they have to do this by hand it could take a while to get a schematic just right and correctly drawn. Say this is complicated by the fact the part in question needs to be drawn to scale and would need multiple to scale sheets to create a complete 3d picture for the machine to print. So a part with multiple and complex sizes, parts, and pieces with varying dimensions on each face would require dozens of sheets.

The more sheets you draw for the machine the more accurate it gets. It would make educated people capable of drawing those by hand accurately a premium service like highly trained scribes used to be. Something like even a simple a car would potentially consist of hundreds if not thousands of such schematic drawings for all the working parts. Once they are scanned and designs and drawings refined and corrected enough they could be turned into a commodity themselves.

edited 30th Apr '16 10:25:21 AM by TuefelHundenIV

That's a interesting thought. I had planned for the printers to be stored in Bunkers with sets of blueprints.

But a few tribes with scribes to make the blueprints could bring a interesting dynamic to the setting as well. One of strict machine worship.

Or strict scribe worship.

It would give scribes and those who train them a fair bit of power and influence in their own right. As would anyone capable of fixing and running the machines. Anyone who is known to provide the right kinds of material to feed the machine and know exactly what to look for when sifting through the remains of civilization would valuable as well.

Which provides interesting opportunity when most communities are tribes, kingdoms and empires formed out of withholding advance tech.

Only as complicated as a car allowed for the standard public, nothing more than that.

And with the world littered with vaults and bunkers holding this tech.

What are you not understanding Marine? Designed for the stresses of re-entry does not necessarily imply or mean it's built of sterner stuffs than the rest of the rocket. (Well maybe not the heat shield...)

The Apollo command capsule was designed to aerodynamically survive re-entry even though materially most of it wasn't much if any different than the rest of the Saturn V rocket.

Which would mean in spacecraft terms, the base craft in the argument is more built like an Apollo command capsule or Space Shuttle than a spindly, wiry, thin as fuck spacecraft that can only exist in zero-G conditions.

It's simply a matter of thrust. If your ship after it lands can put out enough thrust to get back up to orbit, more power to it. If it needs additional or external boosters, you might've needed to think that whole landing thing through a little more.

If you want a realistic craft that does what I'm talking about, look up Space X's reusable supply rocket than lands on a barge. It's meant to go up and come back down without needing to be permanently discarded along the way. (Though I think current models only take the payload so high before that part separates and lands and the rest of it continues on its merry way up via its own booster.)

Tom: I understand quite a bit more then you do. First the capsule is made largely out of aluminum, padding, some seals, and insulation. Only the heat shield is steel and is the only part meant to take the brunt of re-entry and by its nature is meant to be eaten away in small quantity as it descends. It really isn't all that sturdy. Simply being tipped a little too far in one direction or another would rip it apart. The various rocket parts survive re-entry all the time and several have been fished out of the ocean. The Re-entry capsule is literally the most simple design you could have. It is simply meant to fall into a gravity well. Really getting back into the atmosphere is a lot easier then getting out. It has the minimum thrusters and fuel needed for orientation and pointing into the atmosphere the right way. It is otherwise entirely reliant on the heat shield to survive re-entry, the aerodynamics of a brick to induce high drag on purpose, and the series of chutes to safely descend past that point.

No an interstellar craft that could land and lift off again would be nothing like that capsule or even the space shuttle. Especially given how simple it is deliberately made to be and how much of its original mass is shed by the time it returns to Earth. Even the space shuttle relies heavily on gravity helping pull it back down and using the heat soak surfaces. It doesn't get more complicated until after re-entry where it is operating as a glide vehicle to return to Earth. Neither of those options is even close. An interstellar craft is very likely landing with all its mass and likely lifting off with the same mass in the first place. The craft would be vastly different in a myriad of ways to anything we operate now.

The Space X rocket isn't even close and it is ironic you mention it. Especially given the fact they only recover the first stage. They abandoned 2nd stage recovery because it added too much mass for the heat shield, engine, and additional equipment to make it possible. Which would mean they need more fuel and more thrust and therefore more cost for the launch. Even then it is not lifting off, landing, and lifting off again. The whole purpose of recovering the first stage is so it can be cheaply refurbed, refueled, reassembled and launched again to try and lower the cost of launches in general. It is still shedding mass as the payload ascends. An interstellar craft that lands itself and has to lift off again is doing something completely different.

It is not simply a matter of thrust. It is a matter of aerodynamics, thrust, fuel, mass, and gravity. Unlike the rocket systems we use now including Space X, an interstellar craft as described is really unlikely to be shedding mass as it ascends meaning it has to lift more mass continuously. You have to also land that same consistent mass at least the landing will be the comparatively easy part.

I don't think you appreciate exactly how much effort in terms of energy expended it would take achieve a craft like that. Especially if you are talking a realistic approach. The more realistic high power options like the Orion Drive are not practical in atmosphere for obvious reasons. Which is why the softer sci-fi options are one of the better choices for such story telling because they work around that problem.

That was almost a total extinction level event in Atomic-Robo involving a Orion Drive.

Well the Orion Drive isn't something you just light inside the atmosphere.

Unless it is Kerbal space program, in which I made an Orion drive powered airplane. >.>

Look, the Kerbal Space people are a very special case, I'm amazed that they even got a rocket program started up! At this point I assume most of their work is Achievements in Ignorance.

Immy: Lol. That is hilarious.

I kind of like some of the ground based assisted launch options like the rocket sled ramps or mag sleds typically situated on a mountain.

Here is one example with a twist. It is to launch a hypersonic in atmosphere craft that carries something like the 2nd stage up to altitude and then launches it to orbit from there. The craft lands and can be re-used repeatedly.

edited 30th Apr '16 3:30:28 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Hello it's me, Troper, the resident weapons noob. I have a question, actually a bunch, about shotguns.

Are you waiting for a rely or what, Instead of just posting the questions right away?

Well feel free to fire away, no pun intended, you could also check out The Gun Thread in OTC.

I didn't want to seem rude by barging in here with a bunch of questions. :/

But if you insist...

Is a drum feed feasible?

What is a decent gauge size?

What's a good recoil compensator?

Is a buckshot round or slug round better?