Ship's Locker: Out of the Closet

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Pre Career Options or Opportunity Employment

It's possible that during character generation, the player has the option to enhance his character's resume by doing part time work during the high school phase of his educational path, in exchange for obtaining some extra life skills, but little financial compensation.

For simplification, this would be a term starting at fourteen Terran years, and ending at eighteen Terran years.

This would be termed the Opportunity Employment option.

 

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ASTRON - Chick & Hen Concept Tank - Design & Theory

A look at the Chick & Hen tank by Continental Motors, a multipart machine that could be put together or taken apart in the field and was supported by a series of smaller modules that could transform into a variety of combat platforms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwVsImhJrAQ


1. Concept probably more viable as a Traveller spacecraft.

2. Ram jet projectile.

3. I kinda suspect you want to use something larger for the ancillary units.

 

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Jetson One - Official Launch

Meet the Jetson ONE.

Jetson ONE is an ultralight and extremely fun to fly recreational all-electric personal vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. Our mission is to make the skies available for everyone with our safe personal electric aerial vehicle.

Are you ready to experience a completely new and exciting way of travel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzhREYOK0oo


I'd like to think at some point we could do that with computer fans.

 

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Dogs in Space Trailer Netflix Futures

Fetch — a new planet for us all! With Earth in danger, desperate scientists send genetically enhanced dogs into space to find a new world to call home. Dogs in Space is zooming to Netflix November 18!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzOLg2KuyHw


Now we know the purpose of the Vargr, they were meant to find new planets for the Ancients to settle on.

And a hundred millenia later, they still blindly carry out their Prime Directive.

To boldly go, where no Manx has gone before.

 

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vargr

Old Norse

Alternative forms
Vargʀ – East Norse

Etymology
From Proto-Germanic *wargaz, from Proto-Indo-European *werǵʰ-. Compare Old English wearh, wearg.

Noun
vargr m

1. wolf
2. evildoer
3. destroyer


Evildoing destroyer wolf.

 

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Terraforming Mars in Just 3 Simple Steps!

In this not-quite-serious video I explain what it would take to terraform Mars and make it habitable for humans.

Correction: At 1 minute 44 second it's the mass that is a tenth that of Earth, not the gravitational pull, which is about 0.4 times that of Earth. The text shows the right numbers. Sorry about that.

0:00 Intro
0:58 Conditions on Mars
2:02 Step 1: Creating a Magnetic Field
4:50 Step 2: Creating an Atmosphere
6:06 Step 3: Converting CO2 to O2
8:46 Sponsor Message

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb0UnogKQeo


1. Anti gravity devices could cause atmosphere to escape.

2. Asteroid mining demand.

3. Sandworms?

 

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What Did NASA Photograph On Jupiter? | Real Pictures

With a whopping 79 moons, immensely powerful winds, mysterious sounds, swirling patterns and bright aurorae, it goes without saying that Jupiter has long been an object of fascination, wonder and intrigue.

Several attempts have been made to discover more about the large planet for decades now, and NASA’s 1.13 billion dollar Juno mission, which was supposed to end in 2021, might just be the most successful and groundbreaking yet.

Welcome to Factnomenal and in today’s video we are going to take a look at what NASA photographed Jupiter and the real reason why they extended the Juno mission until 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWLG9vFVFwQ


1. Storm cannibalism.

2. Wireless energy grid; maybe you could power spacecraft with it.

 

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How to turn your brain into an antenna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrIf0PArZu4


By using multiple hull-mounted arrays in an integrated computer-controlled arrangement, it is possible to increase the effective antenna size of a sensor suite and increase its range. EM and active radar/lidar will now detect objects at Distant range and passive radar/lidar at Long range. All information gained at these ranges is minimal (see page 150 of the Traveller Core Rulebook).

 

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Why Science Fiction Loves Desert Planets

With release of the remake of Dune I once again ponder why the science fiction genre loves using deserts as a setting for their stories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-bkrbT7kjs


1. The sterility: the clean aesthetics, the sandbox aspect of it.

2. Not just for science fiction, but also for fantasy.

3. It's not a coincidence that Dark Sun takes place on one.

4. I also suspect that the romance of Arabian Nights plays a part.

5. For Dungeon Masters, it simplifies ecology.

6. There is Lawrence, of course, the White Saviour.

7. The post apocalyptical feel, if you move past Arabian Nights.

8. It can also be metaphorically a dry ocean, with motor transports being land ships.

9. For Great Patriotic War enthusiasts, where the Afrika Korps and the Desert Rats can cleanly clash.

 

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Why Rust Batteries May Be the Future of Energy - Iron Air Battery Technology

While renewable energy sources like solar and wind have now become cheaper than fossil fuels, developing long-term energy storage is key to overcome their intermittency. Lithium-ion batteries are the state-of-the-art battery technology but they can only cost-effectively provide energy for about 6 hours. So, what if we could extend the battery duration to 100 hours ... out of thin air … and rust? Literally!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui6wWzxCrQ8


Rust on, rust off.

 

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What If You Released a Submarine Into Jupiter's Atmosphere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8IB8CgaYl0


1. Jupiter magnetic field, seven hundred kiloklix.

2. Titanium hull.

3. Hull dissolves in atmosphere.

4. One hundred fifty klix, hull collapse.

5. Twenty kiloklix, hydrogen ocean.

6. Thirty kiloklix, metallic hydrogen, two million times the pressure of Terra.

7. Core possibly one hundred fifty percent Terra.

 

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Energy Storage Breakthrough - Solid Hydrogen Explained

Green hydrogen is touted to be one of the essential ingredients for the sustainable energy mix of the future. Yet, there’s an...invisible...yet big problem. Storage, transport, and operation is complicated and expensive, but what if we could create and store solid hydrogen for cheap? A start-up may have a solid technology that could speed up the energy transition. Spoiler: It’s so good it was banned!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7CCq4oBgw4


Too good to develop and sell.

 

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What If Our Understanding of Gravity Is Wrong?

What if there is no such thing as dark matter? What if our understanding of gravity is just wrong? New work is taking another shot at that Einstein guy. Let’s see if we’ve finally scored a hit with Modified Newtonian Dynamics aka MOND.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sTBZ2G4vow


1. Mon Dieu!

2. Astrogation is about hitting a moving target, while you're both moving and expanding.

 

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Does anti-gravity explain dark matter?

Why do we have both positive and negative electric charges, but not both positive and negative masses? Could there be negative masses out there which anti-gravitate? How much such anti-gravitating matter behave? Why don't physicists look for it? Could anti-matter anti-gravitate? So many questions! At the end of today's video you will know all that physicists know about this.

0:00 Intro
0:31 Newton's law vs Coulomb's law
3:53 Does anti-matter anti-gravitate?
6:55 How would anti-gravitating matter behave?
8:27 Does anti-gravity explain dark matter or dark energy?
11:42 Sponsor message

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeAguTk6_2E


1. Particle soup.

2. You get a graviton, and you make it spin in the opposite direction?

 

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Autonomous boats demonstrate a new kind of adaptable infrastructure

Roboats are fully electric autonomous boats developed by researchers at MIT and funded by the city of Amsterdam. They can be adapted to serve many different functions, including the transport of people, waste collection and even combined to form floating infrastructure like docks and bridges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC7ZdvyPfpQ


1. Probably cheaper and easier to handle than an autonomous ground vehicle.

2. Certainly a lot cheaper than an air/raft variant.

 

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Why Wind Power Ships May Be The Future of Transportation

Shipping currently accounts for almost 3% of global carbon emissions. In order to hit global net-zero targets by 2050 solutions like biofuel, green hydrogen and blue hydrogen, as well as ammonia have been held up as alternatives to fossil fuels to be used in ships. But what if we could go back to the early stages of shipping, where the wind was used for sailing, but using current and upcoming technology? Could a wind power ship blow past biofuels and hydrogen as the best pathway to decarbonize shipping?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdI191-vNlc


1. Magnus effect, augment rotating cylindrical rotor.

2. Wing sails, aerofoil configuration.

 

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Are Black Holes Actually Fuzzballs?

Black holes are a paradox. They are paradoxical because they simultaneously must exist but can’t, and so they break physics as we know it. Many physicists will tell you that the best way to fix broken physics is with string. String theory, in fact. And in the black holes of string theory - fuzzballs - are perhaps even weirder than the regular type.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=351JCOvKcYw


1. Black holes evaporate.

2. Hairless Schrödinger cats.

3. Worms? Holes?

 

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Lockheed Flatbed - The Pickup Truck Cargo Plane!

This is the ultimate cargo plane.

It has no fuselage and can carry huge oversized cargo like an american pickup truck, It was designed to Switch to military operations in a heart beat, and was even able to load nearly 200 passengers - sometimes even not at the gate!

And best yet, it was cheaper than any other equivalent plane of its time.

But this strange concept was never built, and left us scratching our heads why. It's time to meet the Lockheed Flatbed!

The name Lockheed Flatbed is the give-away - this was to be a cargo plane with a flatbed or open cargo section.

Yip, we’re talking an open cargo floor, much like a flatbed road transporter or rail carriage, except this one would be airborne.

So, on this aircraft there’s no actual fuselage as one would normally see on a cargo plane.

According to the Lockheed design, the flatbed or open-air section would be used to haul cargo containers, outside vehicles or machinery. In fact, most of the cargo would be housed in removable modules,

much like the huge containers stacked on the cargo ships that ply the world’s oceans.

Importantly, the Flatbed design also allowed for passengers on board, who would be sat in a removable module. The passenger module could be the same size as the cargo hold area or fairing.

These modules could be uploaded and unloaded as a single unit, whereby they’d slide forward off the bed or deck of the open cargo area onto or from a special-purpose truck.

The aircraft would be designed to sit low to the ground, allowing loading trucks to drive up to the aircraft and push loads onto the cargo deck.

Parallel I-beams would be used as the primary load-carrying structure for the cargo hold, atop which metal sheeting would ensure a smooth walking surface.

As with most cargo aircraft, the Flatbed would have rollers in the cargo hold that would allow loads on pallets to be rolled on and off with ease.

The Lockheed Flatbed was designed to deal with instances of when a plane “masses out” before it “bulks out”.

This essentially refers to when a plane reaches its maximum take-off weight or MTOW before the cargo bay’s volume is at capacity. It is a huge headache for the cargo industry and military alike, which is why Lockheed went full steam ahead with this design.

Importantly, Lockheed’s design could work as both a flying flatbed and a closed cabin, as needed.

Some of the applications proposed included:
Flat bed operations, carrying both outsized civil cargo
And outsized military cargo, such as tanks
As well as unpressurised intermodal containers from trains
Pressurised containers, both outside and inside a cocoon

And as mentioned, passengers.
These passengers could be loaded conventionally at the airport gate, or just the model could be rolled up on a truck, then loaded onto the plane later.

Passengers woul;d have been in a 3 dash 3 layoutout, with 20 seats in first and 160 in coach. Typical of a boeing 737 today.

For airports that lacked ramp facilities, the plane could actually carry its own ramp to unload huge loads, as well protection against storms and sand.

Nevertheless, there were of course adverse aerodynamics to the Lockheed Flatbed design, due to it carrying cargo in the open, since an open section to an aircraft at altitude results in aerodynamic compromise.

But Lockheed estimated that this would be a smaller penalty than having a big, bulky cabin when flying a half-empty aircraft.
Some experts have pointed out that Lockheed’s concept would probably have required specialised loading facilities and equipment, such as loading ramps and loading cranes.

This would have escalated the cost of the Flatbed cargo plane, making it more expensive to operate compared with the more standard way in which other cargo planes,

such as the Hercules, Globemaster and Galaxy, are able to load and off-load their cargo.

Then there is the small matter of cargo integrity, which is industry lingo for making sure that the cargo remains intact whilst in transit.

It’s not a stretch to imagine cargo exposed to the elements at high altitudes may be in constant danger of becoming detached and flying off.

It would seem that very heavy or oddly-shaped components and equipment would be more difficult to maintain fastened down during flight in an open-air configuration.

Let's explore why it was never built.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-DM2eJIS9k


1. Carryall.

2. Speaking of which, our airships aren't going to be able to duplicate the performance as shown in the current Dune film, without being gargantuan.

3. The issue seems at least partially the need for additional groundside infrastructure.

 

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United States Colonial Marine Corps | Alien

The United States Colonial Marines are America's interstellar force in readiness. It's role stems from that nation's position as a starfaring, colonizing power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiQuqUo25bc

 

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The Most Common Jobs in Star Wars

We take a look at the industries that employ the most people in the Star Wars Galaxy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYTPggDrZoA