NationStates Jolt Archive

There are things that I think a lot of people would like to do even though they don't have any of the tools necessary to pull such a thing off. When people try to sell that snake oil to me I've started to call them rockets, reffering to someone building a rocket to another planet in their backyards. But aside from conning people into thinking you can do something you can't, there are just little dreams of engineering and fabricating prowess, or other things, that you would like to do but really, ain't gonna happen.

For example, I'll give you mine. I have wanted for a long time to take something like this (http://www.drtomorrow.com/what_new_images/2003_DrT-BMW_Madrid.jpg) into something like this. (http://www.jeebstoys.co.uk/condor.jpg) Despite not knowing shit about engineering, scooters, gyro copters, not having mechanical skills, money...really, absolutely none of the tools necessary to even think about accomplishing that goal.

The other would be to make a functioning replica of the Submarine Lotus from James Bond...I like things that are also other things, as you can see.

So, presuming you understood that, whats yours?

BTW: Don't bother pointing out the infeasibility of mine or other peoples projects. If they were feasible they wouldn't be rockets. It wouldn't let anyone know anything other than your inability to grasp what's being talked about...

create some kind of new transportation system...not quite teleport, but something faster and cheaper than air travel.

I should add one of the saddest ones. I keep thinking I'm on the verge of a perpetual motion machine only to realize I just re-invented hydro electricity. The number of times this has happened is disturbing...

Build a machine that gives me everything I ask for.

If we're going for infeasible, I wanna build god.

Build a machine that gives me everything I ask for.

If we're going for infeasible, I wanna build god.

I should have added the caveat that there is at least the possibility of convincing yourself it could work that usually stems from a lack of understanding on how those kinds of things work...the element that seperates the gyro-scooter from the flying carpet. Both are awesome, only one can I pretend I can make work (the difference between 'if I was handy and mechanical' and 'if I was a wizard')

I want to design and build a modern 'castle' complete with draw bridge, secret passages and a moat. *nod*

Awesome.

Didn't you at one point want to build and adult sized fun house with old style mildly dangerous attractions?

I want to design and build a modern 'castle' complete with draw bridge, secret passages and a moat. *nod*

for me its my little trains in place of cars, and living high tec totally off grid out in the boonies somewhere.

or i should say, i don't mean not sharing back into the grid whatever surplus my wind and solar might collect, but just not being dependent on it and having to pay a corporatocracy, not having for there to be a corporatocracy, to provide it.

i don't think there's anything pie in the sky about any of that, just the way 'the system' is set up now, that economicly coerces people into remaining dependent on it and indentured to it.

and that's what i feel really needs to be chainged, because 'the system's' self serving circular illogic is motivating a very destructive carelessness toward nature's cycles of renewal which are where the air we breathe, along with everything else our existence depends upon, comes from, and if nature's 'system' should totally crash, we will with it, because we're a part of it that cannot exist without what it gives us, and we really arn't yet able to replace that.

and we aren't because in order to be able to, we would have to be more honest with ourselves about understanding how it works, which again the circular illogic of the illusions of symbolic value prevents us, out of the short sightedness instant greed, from even wanting to understand, those who think they have something going on by the rest of us not doing so. and of course they do have that amassing of symbolic value going on, but they really are blinded by it too.

so anyway, there's this kind of world i'd rather be living in, and way of living, with creative and useful tecnologies, but using them to live closer to and in greater harmony with, nature's cycles of renewal, and all the little furry creatures and trees and all that.

and really its these bloated economic intrests that are the only thing standing in the way of everyone being able to.

=^^=
.../\...

a jetpack so I can get to work really early only I won't because I will just sleep for longer

:)

I want to design and build a modern 'castle' complete with draw bridge, secret passages and a moat. *nod*

the question is though do you put crocodiles or alligators in the moat?

I would like to replace the final section of bone in my thumb with a small, in some way refillable, gas canister. The top of my thumb would then be hinged to reveal flint and whatever you snap flint against to create a spark.

In this way, I could flip my thumb and produce a flame, an inbuilt lighter of sorts, which I think would be both handy as well as impressive in bars and clubs if not anywhere.

I'm somehow dreaming of a car made like this:
powerplant: Diesel engine running on methane OR axial-flow turbine running on hydrogen OR (even better) hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells.
transmission: fully electrical (AC), with entirely electronic traction control
motor: 4 independent electrical motors (synchronous), one on each semiaxle

this tech is already available, but I don't think it will be put together like this very soon.

...eh...

a jetpack so I can get to work really early only I won't because I will just sleep for longer

:)



the question is though do you put crocodiles or alligators in the moat?

Dr. Evil knew what a good moat needs:

http://web.mit.edu/yermie/www/images/shark%20laserbeam.jpg

Sharks With Frickin' Laser Beams. :)

My "rocket" would have to be to have my own airstrip with an asphalt Runway 100 feet wide and 3,500 feet long. It'll have a gas pump too for Aviation fuel. It'll never happen though, an airport like that would probably cost too much. :(

My "rocket" would have to be to have my own airstrip with an asphalt Runway 100 feet wide and 3,500 feet long. It'll have a gas pump too for Aviation fuel. It'll never happen though, an airport like that would probably cost too much. :(

Why not just buy a treadmill?

Why not just buy a treadmill?

Good for take off but how am I going to land? :p

I'm somehow dreaming of a car made like this:
powerplant: Diesel engine running on methane OR axial-flow turbine running on hydrogen OR (even better) hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells.
transmission: fully electrical (AC), with entirely electronic traction control
motor: 4 independent electrical motors (synchronous), one on each semiaxle

this tech is already available, but I don't think it will be put together like this very soon.

...eh...

I had one of my rockets vindicated recently. I wanted to take an old Cadillac and install a small jet turbine that runs on biodiesel and hook it to electric motors so all it does is generate electricity, not run the drive tires. I was pretty sure this would work, and son of a bitch (http://gas2.org/2007/12/14/car-hackers-hummer-gets-60-mpg/), it works! I'm awesome. Not as awesome as the guy who actually did it, but whatever.

Sharks With Frickin' Laser Beams. :)

flying dogs with lazer beams and commercial house music surely? (http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/flying-dogs-p1.php)

My "rocket" would have to be to have my own airstrip with an asphalt Runway 100 feet wide and 3,500 feet long. It'll have a gas pump too for Aviation fuel. It'll never happen though, an airport like that would probably cost too much. :(

will it be a flying airfield?

I'm somehow dreaming of a car made like this:
powerplant: Diesel engine running on methane OR axial-flow turbine running on hydrogen OR (even better) hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells.
transmission: fully electrical (AC), with entirely electronic traction control
motor: 4 independent electrical motors (synchronous), one on each semiaxle

this tech is already available, but I don't think it will be put together like this very soon.

...eh...

every combination of those has been done. what hasn't is ways of mass producing cheaply enough some of the components required to produce a product that wouldn't require the average joe sixpack to take out a 30 year morgage to pay for the damd thing.

the other problem of course is you've still got pavement everywhere tearing up the countryside, that you still need the trees, and the little critters to fertilize the trees and so one, so we can all have air to breathe and all the rest of that.

but i think if each person who wanted to build something like that for themselves, and could get ahold of all the fiddly bits and all the skills and knowledge to make it from scratch for themselves, well, to each their own.

we just don't in cameroi, subsidise the auto industry by building and maintaining paved roads for it. but if you wanted to build a little road for yourself arround where you're own house is and whatever neighbors might not complain, that would be ok. you'd just be on your own for all of that, including fuel or recharging or what have you.

everybody has a right to make for themselves one or two of anything they feel like it, provided of course they can themselves actually do so.

the idea of a completely clean car isn't a bad one, it's just that the idea of making and or keeping the majority of mobility dependent on personal vehicules and the roads all over the place for them, isn't as good, as people don't really think about it that much take for granted, because of this age when that's what most of them are familiar with.

which hasn't always been and very likely won't always be.

=^^=
.../\...

flying dogs with lazer beams and commercial house music surely? (http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/flying-dogs-p1.php)

Beware! (http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/poitier/135/bees.wav)

I want to design and build a modern 'castle' complete with draw bridge, secret passages and a moat. *nod*

Right on!

Its all about the murder holes.

Portcullises were also meant to bottleneck soldiers, while you poured boiling oil on top of them, through "Murder Holes".

Also, a good name for a metal or punk band

*metal fist*

every combination of those has been done. what hasn't is ways of mass producing cheaply enough some of the components required to produce a product that wouldn't require the average joe sixpack to take out a 30 year morgage to pay for the damd thing.

Actually a 50 kW turbine doesn't cost a lot (and it's simpler than a Diesel or Otto engine) , nor do synchronous motors. Simply I can't picture myself the major car builders switching to mainly non-mechanical techs - see the most recent hybrid cars.



the idea of a completely clean car isn't a bad one, it's just that the idea of making and or keeping the majority of mobility dependent on personal vehicules and the roads all over the place for them, isn't as good, as people don't really think about it that much take for granted, because of this age when that's what most of them are familiar with.


totally agree (I'm the ultimate railway fan); still my idea of car would be the ideal personal mover.

As a trainee railway engineer of sorts, I would say one of my grandest fantasies in terms of an insanely massive, improbable, "cool" building/renovation project would be the reconstruction of a Polish Armoured Train. Not just an Armoured locomotive, no...

A Loco, and several Large Calibre Gun trucks, with an Ammo wagon and a Command carriage, and to top it all off a preserved WW1 German Army Railway Artillery cannon.

Then I'd tour Europe on my train, playfully threatening to bombard Paris along the way.

complete underground communities, in the litteral sense too. i mean complete with 'elevators' that go every which way instead of just up and down, and yes, twisty convoluted passages every which way too, endless mazes of them, with snuggly little hidey corners to live and sleep in. there's a place like that on lananara. it's called the woumbsnugs of nebethira. nebethira being the collage town that later came to be built over the top of it.

it was built by an agoraphobic sect of the nalanuthu called the nalanutho. who'se number of fallowers has dwindled over the years, many of the dwelling spaces now occupied by students attending the college above.

ah yes, and i'd allso like to build a kind of high tec/low stress 'commune' that would be like a cross between train mountain and ananda.

=^^=
.../\...

oh yes, and the thing about hybred cars, is ok, so you're using electric traction motors to turn the wheels, but you're still burning something. the only burning something that doesn't put carbon into the air is hydrogen, and that's of course what i was refering to first cost wise.

i think the energy industry has its sights set on selling us turbines that burn some kind of proccessed coal when the oil runs out, which i think would be a big mistake environmentally.

my idea for little trains wouldn't be using any sort of combustion either, but either fuel cells or stored energy, the latter recharged from a grid powered by wind and solar and all the other sustainables in common, like all the not so sustainables feed into it now.

compressed air might be the cleanest way of storing energy, not requiring battery chemistry or as much lubrication as flywheels and windups. but batteries or flywheels, ala perry people mover, are still a major improvement over having to burn anything. pneumatic traction motors are noisy though, electric ones are both clean and quiet.

many many tradeoffs, but the current practice of using combustion in any form to provide propulsion is still worse then any of them.

i do like the efficiency of turbines, but you've still got the problem with combustion products and byproducts.

=^^=
.../\...

Good for take off but how am I going to land? :p

Let me think on this, stand by to test out my theories....oh, and perhaps buy some life insurance while you're waiting.

Edit: Right, meet me on the highway, we're going to test this (http://www.flixxy.com/plane-landing-on-motorhome.htm) out

A transportation system:


In tubes, probably underground. Allows high speed without noise or waste of ground space.
Private spaces for each traveller, but the personally owned vehicle reduced to the minimum to make them affordable for all.
Automated, select a destination and kick back. Human drivers are a danger to each other, plus kids could use it equally to adults.


I'm currently thinking 1.5 metre diameter spheres, weighted to have zero buoyancy, carried in water. Spheres, so they flow nicely and can be oriented to suit the occupant because ... g-forces! Yes, it could be faster than air travel.

Oh, and a Popular Mechanical.

The idea rather freaks me out, though, and I'm damned if I'll buy one made by Sony. Or Apple.

A transportation system:


In tubes, probably underground. Allows high speed without noise or waste of ground space.


sounds like the Internet

complete underground communities, in the litteral sense too. i mean complete with 'elevators' that go every which way instead of just up and down, and yes, twisty convoluted passages every which way too, endless mazes of them, with snuggly little hidey corners to live and sleep in. there's a place like that on lananara. it's called the woumbsnugs of nebethira. nebethira being the collage town that later came to be built over the top of it.

it was built by an agoraphobic sect of the nalanuthu called the nalanutho. who'se number of fallowers has dwindled over the years, many of the dwelling spaces now occupied by students attending the college above.

Whoa, whoa ... I can't tell what's a typo, what's a real word, and what's a fictional construct in that.

I hesitate to recommend Neil Stephenson unreservedly, given some of the crap he wrote recently, but there is a terrific passage in "the Diamond Age" where he describes a community called the "Drummers" who live in this plastic slum on the continental shelf.

It's nicely conceived ... underwater, without the diurnal rythm, these people create their own rhythms and merge into a kind of collective entity. Hackworth (one of the main characters) is dumped there to get him out of the way for a while, and he emerges neither better nor worse, as if he's been dreaming for an unknown period of time.

Also consider the seitches of Dune, or the underground world of the Morlocks. This idea of an artificial cave, shaped to fit our human needs ... in which we are like corpuscles of the blood of our species ... is very intuitive. Perhaps we are working towards it, with our air-conditioned buildings, indoor garages, air-conditioned cars ... but we insist on control.

It would be lovely to just be able to stop and snuggle down for the night, whenever night overtook a person on their rambles through society. It would be great to walk into boardrooms and have a fair comment heard. But it can only really work under the aegis of some protective overmind, a moral code or a higher being, or a depersonalized expression of our communal will (eg, a mechanical god). Without that, we are each individuals and fear the predator.

I have dreams like that, where I live in a global building where parts are familiar and 'mine' yet it's all open to me ... but I think in these dreams I am not the insecure 'me' which requires some territory which is only mine. Perhaps I am just a "point of view" and don't fear the loss of my own life.

Oh, my mind is wandering ... not sure really what I mean.

sounds like the Internet

Like a vacuum cleaner: all good clean fun, 'til you get sucked in.

Awesome.

Didn't you at one point want to build and adult sized fun house with old style mildly dangerous attractions?

I still do. Sort of a combination fun house, indoor maze and amusement center. I thought about converting one of those old mill buildings in many river towns. They're massive and entirely wasted like this: http://flanneryproperties.com/images/Dana%20river.jpg

Imagine a building that size going to waste! However, I'd like to pretend that is actually feasible. :p

I still do. Sort of a combination fun house, indoor maze and amusement center. I thought about converting one of those old mill buildings in many river towns. They're massive and entirely wasted like this: http://flanneryproperties.com/images/Dana%20river.jpg

Imagine a building that size going to waste! However, I'd like to pretend that is actually feasible. :p

DO NOT get legal advice. Just do it!

EDIT: DO get PayPal though. I'll give ya twenty bucks for starters ...

sounds like the Internet

I'll address the first meaning, too. Yes, to a large extent the internet obsoletes personal transportation.

Unless you are going to blow my mind with some completely atomized form of industrial production, we still need to move freight.

The "System of Tubes" I described could also be used for freight. A human body can't be broken into pieces for transport, so the human body defines the size quantum of a better transport system.

Anyone who wants to move an ivory tower has a huge air-freight bill to contend with. Anything else, they can break into human-sized pieces.

Did I mention, as part of my transport plan, I would ban driving, tax above-ground cars to hell, and tax air transport to hell and back?

There are two good reasons to put transport underground: we need earth or rock of some sort to make buildings, and the artificial deserts which are roads have got to go.

I don't see polluting the sky with commuters as better than polluting the land. Therefore, go underground, walk, or stay home.

I would want to invent the travel-between-universe machine.
If only it can get to build...

I would want to invent the travel-between-universe machine.
If only it can get to build...

in an infinite number of universes odds are an alternative you is just about done with his machine to come see you

its great how you can choose to make this the universe of laziness

Admittedly not my idea but when I watched this the first time it was aired I have to say I was rather optimistic.

Of course I had forgotten about the Top Gear Curse.

http://www.topgear.com/content/features/stories/2007/02/stories/03/1.html