When will the flechette pocket model be available.

America, FUCK YEAH!

*quality this mofo

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by ponceleon.

Why chicchorea, you devil! *wink wink*

>> ^chicchorea:

When will the flechette pocket model be available.

Can't wait to go deer hunting with it. Of course, I'll wind up picking my deer up with a sponge, but hey....

That thing doesn't look that big, imagine putting it (or a slimmer version) in a tank or a c-130, that would be deadly.
Of course now the thing they have to work on is the rate of fire.

Screw the killing machine, I want a camera that can track a six inch object traveling at Mach V!
..and record the image in beautiful slowmo color!

What happens to a human that is hit by that? I assume the force is so great that it would go clean through...either that or make you explode

Not explode, ASPLODE.


>> ^Hmmm:

What happens to a human that is hit by that? I assume the force is so great that it would go clean through...either that or make you explode

clearly the better use for a rail gun such as this is to shrink it down (enough that it is handheld) and then hide it in an arena where you can force a group of people to fight to the death.

So this is what $553,800,000,000* a year gets you.



_{*Iraq and Afghanistan not included.}

I'd say the final round will need to be able to deliver the force to the target, so they'll want something that won't punch through, but transfer all of the force of it's arrival in to the target.

I guess it depends on what type of round is needed. Kinetic rounds are meant to apply maximum force to the smallest possible surface area of a heavily armored target, usually composite armor where conventional rounds are ineffective. The sheer impact force alone and resultant heat and shrapnel, not to mention pressure wave that would likely suck any fleshy humanoids within (after turning them into a viscous red paste) right out the exit hole Alien Resurrection style, would probably do the trick.

Or so I vaguely recall being told from a friend with related experience 'blowing shit up' in an M1A1. I might be a bit off on the particulars. Or he might've been just 'making shit up'. >> ^Asmo:

I'd say the final round will need to be able to deliver the force to the target, so they'll want something that won't punch through, but transfer all of the force of it's arrival in to the target.

[redacted]

>> ^mentality:

So this is what $553,800,000,000 a year gets you.

_{Iraq and Afghanistan not included.}


good thing you took out the iraq and afghanistan money (or tried to at least), wouldn't want that number to seem ridiculously untrue.

a little search says this contract wasn't even $10 million (which is actually pretty small).
http://www.ga.com/news.php?read=1&id=72&page=7

EDIT: and just to be clear, i do think military and defense spending is way too high, but i at least support the development of new technologies as opposed to the continual support/retrofit of old stuff.

>> ^EmptyFriend:

>> ^mentality:
So this is what $553,800,000,000 a year gets you.

_{Iraq and Afghanistan not included.}

good thing you took out the iraq and afghanistan money (or tried to at least), wouldn't want that number to seem ridiculously untrue.
a little search says this contract wasn't even $10 million (which is actually pretty small).
http://www.ga.com/news.php?read=1&id=72&page=7
EDIT: and just to be clear, i do think military and defense spending is way too high, but i at least support the development of new technologies as opposed to the continual support/retrofit of old stuff.



Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that new technologies to kill people were more important than other kinds of research. Good thing we're slashing NASA's budget so we can better conduct an asymmetrical war on terror using the power of electromagnetism.

*Sorry for the snark, but the ridiculous defense spending, record deficit, budget cuts in all the wrong places, and development of weapons systems grossly out of touch with what's needed, is seriously pissing me off. And that goes for the F22/F35 too no matter how f***** awesome they are.

Our new technology allows you to feed the poor countries - with ROUNDS OF STEEL MUAHAHAHAHAAH

I'm Ghark and we're done here.

Even if it misses it will wipe all their credit cards!

*fear

Invocations (fear) cannot be called by freernuts because freernuts is not privileged - sorry.

[redacted]

>> ^Mcboinkens:
To be fair, what has the ISS accomplished? It seems ignorant to ask, and the budget is much, much smaller in comparison, but if we are arguing what spending could be cut, pretty much anything could be a target.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN-gR9040fw

Because it's what's next. Right now it seems a drowsy step as we tumble into the larger stellar neighborhood, but every step we take away from our cradle ensures that it will not necessarily be our grave. The distances involved seem insurmountable, but so too did the distance between Eurasia and the Americas might have seemed to an ancestor, astride a hollowed out log (and even then, the Polynesians navigated unimaginable distances with tech that was hardly better than that ancestor). We need this as a species. I believe but cannot prove that a greater malaise has infected us as a species due to light pollution. Take a city kid out to a field in the middle of nowhere, and show him the Milky Way in all its glory, and he will gasp in transcendental delight. We no longer see such wonders, except as static images in books and on TV. We do need to feed the masses of humanity, but I believe that an understanding of our place in things makes us more likely to see that we are 'trapped' here, and need to care for our fellow prisoners, and that we will never truly escape unless we all go as one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVbnRbTi5XA

>> ^Mcboinkens:

To be fair, what has the ISS accomplished? It seems ignorant to ask, and the budget is much, much smaller in comparison, but if we are arguing what spending could be cut, pretty much anything could be a target.


Are you serious? Here's a list. You'll probably need someone with 40 phds to explain all the implications of this mind boggling wealth of research.

But no, we love pewpew guns and large asplosions.

I'm not disagreeing. I'm actually currently in the middle of a research project on the decision to scrap Constellation and the implications. All I was saying is that taking the anger out on such a small program isn't fair. For $10M you'd have a hard time doing something as simple as upgrading all the PCs in a ship class to WindowsXP (and yes, that is something that is only now happening).

The total cost to launch a space shuttle into orbit is incredibly high though, also. Like in the $1B territory.
>> ^mentality:

>> ^EmptyFriend:
>> ^mentality:
So this is what $553,800,000,000 a year gets you.

_{Iraq and Afghanistan not included.}

good thing you took out the iraq and afghanistan money (or tried to at least), wouldn't want that number to seem ridiculously untrue.
a little search says this contract wasn't even $10 million (which is actually pretty small).
http://www.ga.com/news.php?read=1&id=72&page=7
EDIT: and just to be clear, i do think military and defense spending is way too high, but i at least support the development of new technologies as opposed to the continual support/retrofit of old stuff.


Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that new technologies to kill people were more important than other kinds of research. Good thing we're slashing NASA's budget so we can better conduct an asymmetrical war on terror using the power of electromagnetism.
Sorry for the snark, but the ridiculous defense spending, record deficit, budget cuts in all the wrong places, and development of weapons systems grossly out of touch with what's needed, is seriously pissing me off. And that goes for the F22/F35 too no matter how f awesome they are.

[redacted]

[redacted]

>> ^Mcboinkens:

This is so ridiculous I can't even really take the comparison seriously. Not discovering the Americas earlier in the history of Earth was mostly due to our own ignorance. We though the world was flat, and assumed nothing else existed. The vikings are alleged to have made it to the Americas much earlier than Columbus, even.
On the other hand, physics is holding us back in space. Sure, if we learn how to bend spacetime or use wormholes we may have a shot at getting off earth, but it's silly as hell to think it will actually happen within the next 1000 years or so. By that time, we'll probably all be extinct already.
Terra-forming is out of the question, it would be impossible in anything but science fiction, and the only reasonable planet we could even do it to is Mars, which we can hardly get a probe to that worked successfully. Will we make progress? Yeah, definitely. But to think we'll leave this planet is absurd. The only hope for humanity is progress in renewable energy, population control(limiting births, not promoting genocide)and learning to accept other people for their culture and religion. The faster we figure that out, the better off we'll be.
Also, that west wing clip was flat out dumb. Sending men to Mars would do nothing for us but inflate our Space-peen. There is literally nothing to gain from sending humans there rather than robots. It is riskier both cost and liability-wise. The only thing remotely useful would be setting up a base, which would require huge funds, and a ridiculous amount of new research. Plus, they really wouldn't be able to do much once it was set up. We already know the atmosphere, composition, and features of Mars. What would a man do?


First, the issue of whether or not the earth was flat was pretty much settled by Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE. Columbus had so much trouble drumming up funds precisely because anyone who knew anything about cartography (i.e., the Portugese) knew that he was either lying or suicidally deluded. We don't know why Columbus thought what he thought, and we probably never will. Perhaps he believed but could not prove that there HAD to be something between the Western coast of Ireland and the eastern coast of Japan. As for why no one else tried it, you're right. Others had. Don't forget that there is strong evidence of others visiting the Americas prior to the Vikings. Given how many Polynesians must have given their lives to map out the ocean currents that led to the fragments of rock jutting out of the ocean, it was apparently something intrinsic to the species, but no longer as strong a yearning.

And I never precluded the use of robots to get us where we're going, at least initially. I do think that there is tremendous hubris in the fields of science when it comes to what we know and what is left for us to discover. It does seem like there's a lot of space out there, and the distance which once seemed so insignificant to the early sci fi writers now seems insurmountable. I take Pascal's Wager (or at least the fallacious logic that drives it) and say that the actions we must take to get us out there would benefit the human race as a whole far more than it would hurt. To give up would be to surrender to a nihilism quite endemic in the species. Consider for a moment the construction of the cathedrals. Would such populist public work projects even be possible in this day and age? Would the average Joe be willing to start a project, knowing that he would not be able to live to see its completion? If we don't get off this rock, I blame that attitude far more than I blame the laws of physics.

To get back to the present topic, it's possible that the railgun technology being developed could serve as a kind of propulsion, but it seems as if they've worked out the mechanics of the propulsion, and only need to get the scale down pat. They know how to send something really fast, but they want to weaponize it, to better kill at a distance, an attitude that has never won us many friends. As a result, I'd pull money out of this program.

Finally, I cannot really respond to your dismissal of a manned trip to Mars, because it's clear that you don't see what I and so many others see. Maybe it's a simple matter of me being that Polynesian sitting on the shore of Rapa Nui, wondering what other islands were out there. You, on the other hand, would rather we invent some better way to catch fish, or to figure out what to tell people so they don't chop all the freaking trees down and doom us all to a nasty population crash. Your instinct and my instinct don't run contrary to each other, as long as I'm willing to plant a few trees on my way out to sea. What you learn and what you do help me to do what I want, and what I might learn would benefit you and what you do.

Rail guns scare the shit outta me. Especially with artillery.

>> ^Mcboinkens:
You realize that list had no content, right? It was a list of items with no details. Anything can add a new topic to it since you don't need any actual research. When's the last time you heard about a breakthrough because of the ISS? That was my point. I support the ISS, but to tear into a budget because it is "useless" can definitely be applied to NASA as well.
Reviewing the list, it pretty much just covered anything possible "under microgravity conditions". How practical is that? Are we really planning on going to other planets at the moment? We can't even go back to the moon, and that's what my whole point was. Shift funds to what is the most useful. I would much rather have an upgraded Hubble or even new version of the hubble. Studying how viruses work in space isn't particularly useful when we have no reason to be in space to begin with, and so on.
EDIT: so that it doesn't seem like I am talking out of my butt, take a look at one of their "accomplishment" powerpoints: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/168741main_AIAA_2007_ISSProgress.pdf
It's pretty easy to see that it's mostly fluff, and I realize that its an old document, but it was the top result and I was lazy. It talks a lot about what they WANT to do, or what they did, but nothing really came of it.

WTF are you talking about a list with no content? Did you even read ANY of the 720 reference linked in the wiki? And do you realize scientific discoveries take time? Oh you know, we're just running a lab IN SPACE. Let's give it a few years after it's finished assembling before we let our ridiculously shortsighted negativity take over, ok?

>> ^EmptyFriend:

I'm not disagreeing. I'm actually currently in the middle of a research project on the decision to scrap Constellation and the implications. All I was saying is that taking the anger out on such a small program isn't fair. For $10M you'd have a hard time doing something as simple as upgrading all the PCs in a ship class to WindowsXP (and yes, that is something that is only now happening).
The total cost to launch a space shuttle into orbit is incredibly high though, also. Like in the $1B territory.
>> ^mentality:
>> ^EmptyFriend:
>> ^mentality:
So this is what $553,800,000,000 a year gets you.

_{Iraq and Afghanistan not included.}

good thing you took out the iraq and afghanistan money (or tried to at least), wouldn't want that number to seem ridiculously untrue.
a little search says this contract wasn't even $10 million (which is actually pretty small).
http://www.ga.com/news.php?read=1&id=72&page=7
EDIT: and just to be clear, i do think military and defense spending is way too high, but i at least support the development of new technologies as opposed to the continual support/retrofit of old stuff.


Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that new technologies to kill people were more important than other kinds of research. Good thing we're slashing NASA's budget so we can better conduct an asymmetrical war on terror using the power of electromagnetism.
Sorry for the snark, but the ridiculous defense spending, record deficit, budget cuts in all the wrong places, and development of weapons systems grossly out of touch with what's needed, is seriously pissing me off. And that goes for the F22/F35 too no matter how f awesome they are.




It's $10 million invested from the US office of Naval Research from June 2006 to Jan 2009. It doesn't say how much was invested in the last two years, and how much the project costs in total, including other sources of funding. And that's just for a proof of concept. How much is it going to cost taxpayers to make a version fit for service, and they start arming ships with it? Yeah, billions sound like the right territory.