Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

To add my two cents to the mix, having sapient extraterrestrial species be utterly physiologically different and wacky compared to humanity is something to be , well, expected. Settings like Orion's Arm make it clear that the evolutionary pressures and genetic mutations in species are never exactly the same across different planets, giving rise to things like To'ul'hs , Cthonids and the Muuh for a few examples. If you want to go to something beyond that in wackiness factor, the various powers of Xeelee Sequence have some nice examples in the Photino Birds, Silver Ghosts and the Xeelee themselves. That said, I haven't really bothered to have detailed, accurate science unless it's just general, vague strokes in my own Outsider Multiverse worldbuilding project, what with it being soft sci-fi and space magic of various types existing within its multiverse. So really, just do what you want, so long as it's internally consistent within your setting.

Edited by ericshaofangwang on Jan 29th 2020 at 6:06:25 PM

On a lower gravity planet, a different range of sizes and limb arrangement could easily arise.

One thing a two brained, four armed organism can do is multitask in a highly unpredictable environment. I imagine a creature climbing across a cliff-face, dodging cliff-dwelling predators while searching crags and small caves for prey (ie, a land octopus). It would have very fast, highly complex reflex-responses to deal with getting ambushed. Since they like each other, they develop social intelligence, and eventually self awareness, leading to the invention of guns. Then they go looking for those predators.

Edited by DeMarquis on Jan 29th 2020 at 12:53:38 PM

Yea, six-limbed animals may be rare on earth, but i imagine a place where the extra manipulation is useful and the extra weight not too much of a penalty, they could definitely arise.

A low gravity world would presumably also have more extreme geography, making the extra limbs for climbing larger-than-normal trees and larger-than-normal rocks etc quite useful.

The other option is to simply make them the product of uplifting or genetic modification.

Edited by devak on Jan 29th 2020 at 10:33:55 AM

There are several million (and counting) species of six or more limbed animals on Earth. They're usually called Arthropods. Occasionally, crustaceans.

I believe we already specified endoskeletal, land-dwelling organisms.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 29th 2020 at 10:45:30 AM

I don't know of any six-limbed endoskeletal (Birds, Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians) species barring freak mutations and birth defects (conjoined twins, etc.)

Okay. So I’m looking for some hand waves. Basically the idea is that, a covert group of space marines infiltrated an abandoned facility and discovered an infant that’s been experimented on to be enhanced to perfection, but unbeknownst to them, thenchilds brain has an artificial intelligence deep within his mind, and won’t “activate” until he goes through puberty. How could I prevent this discovery? Other implications, that I need to address?

The idea is that it’s an AI that’s supposed to subtly influence him) but ultimately he has to make the choice) to eventually betray the faction he was rescued by. The AI has free will itself as well but feels obligated to follow its programming directives. It can “possess” its host but only for so long and afterwards it’s processing power decreases with exponential use and ultimately too many possessions will literally kill it.

Preventing the discovery could boil down to a simple case of didn't notice it in time.

Short answer, no. Any unusual implants can be written off as part of the augmentation process and the parts might just be too risky to remove. The possession is perhaps the strangest part because you need to determine what the host recalls and how aware he(she?) is.

Standard warning apply, how do the implants avoid rejection, how do A.I.s work, why modify a kid and not an adult, etc.

Actually, the biggest issue is why they started with a kid rather than an adult.

And as a suggestion? Bioglass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioglass_45S5 The stuff tends to fuse with bone over time, basically being absorbed into the body. This can explain why nobody removed the AI even as a precaution. The implants were made with bioglass and can't be removed without taking a large chunk of the patient's skull with it.

My explanation was that the procedures done on him would let his brain grow "with" the AI rather than chance rejection from a fully developed brain of an adult

If the AI is made of a synthetic organic material, it may be indistinguishable from the child's own brain on an X-ray or an MRI. The only way to detect it would be if it was a different density or activity level from the natural neural material around it, and since the whole idea is for the AI to grow with its' host, there is no reason why that would be the case.

An interesting dilemma arises: how do the researchers know that the AI will possess the person, and not the other way around? How do they know that the two won't merge into a single person of unpredictable behavior? Maybe they didn't and that's the basis of your story.

I mean for all intents and purposes they ARE the same person. Distinguishing between the two ultimately is meaningless.

You'd be better off thinking of it as dissociative identity disorder.

Well, no. If the AI has its own, independent goal structure, and maintains its own independent memory, its a fully distinct entity. One which could very well stay in observation mode, taking no action, until some criteria is reached.

This might explain why the AI is passive until puberty. The kid would never adapt to having a voice in their head and the AI would never integrate with the host.

Got rid of the contents of this post because I realized they belong elsewhere. I apologize for that.

Edited by HallowHawk on Feb 11th 2020 at 10:29:20 PM

Was watching Top Gear, and they talked about how in the late 70s Lotus made a Formula One car with ground effect. I also remember when I played Metal Gear Solid 3, there was a sequence where you take off in a WIG, or a plane that uses ground effect. From what I gathered, ground effect uses the way air flows near an object when it's close to the ground to crate a bubble of air that the vehicle can float on, allowing it to travel quite fast. But in the Formula One example, the ground effect was used to increase down-force, which seems like the opposite of what it does for the planes. I feel like I'm missing some key piece of information here.

The thing about F1 cars is that they generate so much power, that a major limitation is how you actually keep the car on the road and transmit that power. That's why downforce is so important, the aerodynamics make the car stick to the road.

Essentially if you can control aerodynamics to such an extent that you can make an airsack below the vehicle, you can let it do anything (that aerodynamics can reasonably do). A wing of a plane is the opposite of an F1 car, where you create upforce. Control surfaces on a plan alter the airflow such that the direction your travel in changes

That doesn't answer my question...

I've looked into it, and from what I can tell, the two situations are using two different forces, but in both situations they are present due to the vehicle's proximity to the ground, hence, "ground effect."

When a plane is in the air, the wing pushes air downwards. But when the plane is near the ground, that air being forced downward would press against the ground, hence why an air cushion is made. In the Formula One car, forcing air through the cars sidepods caused the air to travel faster than it would otherwise have done, causing lower pressure and thus more downforce, an effect which is amplified because, relative to the car, the ground is moving, creating more downforce than if the pods weren't touching the ground.

That’s sort of correct. “Ground effect” as it pertains to Formula 1 and “ground effect” as it pertains to aircraft are two completely different things that just happen to have the same name, but that’s not a fully accurate description of what they both are.

In F1 ground effects is a catchall term to describe downforce-producing aerodynamic effects that use the ground as an aerodynamic surface, such as the Bernoulli effect. A wing on an F1 car is not part of ground effects because it’s acting purely on the air surrounding the vehicle. In aircraft, it refers to a situation where the aircraft is flying very low to the ground and the flow of air coming off the wing is disrupted by the ground, which causes increased lift and decreased drag. This happens to ordinary aircraft as well but specialized ground effect aircraft take advantage of this by generating the lift necessary for them to fly with only tiny wings, though they have to fly very close to the ground.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 13th 2020 at 2:00:47 AM

Instead of just super tiny wings, you can also go for massive payload capacities as well.

One thing I came across while looking this up: When Lotus started using Ground Effect in its car, it had to find a way to keep a seal with the ground, so they made this big piece of plastic attached to a spring that moved up and down to keep a seal with the road. Now, Formula One banned Ground Effect cars a few years later, but it's my understanding that Indycars still use Ground Effect. Does anyone know what modern day Indycars use to keep this seal with the ground?

I think they use a different system entirely, that is yet a third thing with that name

Ground Effect can have some interesting effects on aircraft. Mind you, "interesting" isn't always "good." One thing they caution about is that under certain conditions, it can cause an aircraft to gain altitude before it gains enough airspeed to actually fly. Wheels come off ground, inattentive pilot pulls back on the stick, ground jumps up and smashes into the plane.

Ground effects in racing isn’t just one thing, it’s any aerodynamic effect on the car that uses the ground as an aerodynamic surface. It was never explicitly banned, but many cars that took advantage of extreme ground effects like the Chaparral 2J were individually banned and extreme ground effect was essentially made impossible to achieve when they standardized the design for the bottom of the cars in the 80s and 90s, though ground effects like the Coanda effect are still taken into consideration. It’s inaccurate to say “ground effect was banned”.

IndyCar allowed more ground effect downforce a few years ago because the amount of body aero was out of control, and it was affecting the quality of the race. The ground effects they allow are fairly minor, though. F1 is actually considering allowing similar ground effects for 2021 for similar reasons.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 13th 2020 at 2:55:06 AM

Came across a video talking about how ground effect was going to be reintroduced in the 2021 Formula One season and it cleared up a lot of my confusion.