Photon Guy

Im not sure about the legality of dynamite but I believe anybody with the money can get a tunnel-borer. But regardless, the 2A does not cover such stuff, just like it doesn't cover drugs. Certain drugs you can have access to only if you're a licensed doctor but that otherwise are banned and that's fine because the 2A does not identify any right to access such stuff. The 2A identifies the right to keep and bear arms, not the right to keep and bear other stuff such as dynamite and tunnel-borers and certain dangerous drugs. Because they had access to them when the Constitution, including the 2A was ratified. When the 2A which identifies the right to keep and bear arms, and that's exactly what it does as it doesn't grant the right it identifies it, muskets were the military/police grade guns back then and citizens had full access to them. Today it's semi automatic guns and in some cases full automatic guns that the police and military use so that's what citizens should have access to as those are the arms of today. The arms that are mentioned in the 2A are in reference to whatever the arms of today are. Back when the Constitution was ratified it was muskets, today it's the more advanced guns that I mentioned. Our country's founders weren't dumb, they knew weapons would get more advanced in the future. So if you want to restrict citizens to muskets as some people say the right to keep and bear arms identified by the 2A only applies to muskets, then its only proper to restrict the police and military to muskets and the kinds of guns that were used back then as well. To allow the military access to more advanced guns and not citizens is a double standard. That's exactly what they're needed for, or to put it more precisely, to protect themselves from the government should the government become oppressive. In the USA it's the citizens that are supposed to control the government, not the other way around. The USA was created for the people by the people. We've got many checks and balances in place but the right to keep and bear arms, as identified by the 2A, is a final check and balance. If all else fails the people can revolt against the government should the government become oppressive.

None that I can think of, but the point is that just because the lightspeed barrier can't be broken by conventional means doesn't mean it can't be broken period.

You have that same problem with friction and the heat it generates with any sort of spacecraft that reaches escape velocity. Conventional spacecraft are made to withstand the friction and heat with special heat shielding. A spacecraft sent into space by a railgun could have that same sort of shielding, and it could have cooling systems too. Yes it would need some engines and fuel to maneuver to the station as you point out but not the tremendous fuel that you need to reach escape velocity the way conventional spacecraft do as the railgun would take care of that. But we don't send supplies from the moon to the ISS, we send it from Earth to the ISS. I suppose we could set up a moon base and start mining the moon and producing supplies on the moon that way, but that's a long way off. Lots of supplies. Water for instance. And food that you don't mind having squashed. Food remains edible when it's squashed.

The way I see it, any kind of gun that the police and military have access to citizens should also have access to. So if you want to ban certain guns from citizens, ban them from the police and military too.

Space itself apparently could be moved by using objects with negative mass. The problem is finding matter that has negative mass which so far only exists in theory but it is a possibility.

What would be the practicality of using railguns to send supplies into space? The way a railgun works is by using magnets to propel objects at really high speeds so a railgun would no doubt be able to propel a spacecraft at escape velocity and by doing so, it would eliminate the need of fuel to launch spacecraft into space. Such spacecraft would have to be unmanned as the acceleration of a railgun would be too much for people to withstand, they would be squashed like pancakes, but I see no reason why supplies couldn't be sent that way. So the idea is that spacecraft containing supplies could be launched into space and then retrieved by personnel on the ISS, Im wondering how that would work.

Not by conventional means but there are theoretical ways of breaking the lightspeed barrier, such as if you were somehow able to move space itself and "ride" it, much like a surfer riding a wave.

You could, but that wouldn't have the horsepower of a gasoline vehicle. Well modern cartridges are airtight so they don't get oxygen from the environment. Are you saying that modern gunpowder itself has oxygen in it?

To the best of my knowledge, conventional combustion requires oxygen. When you make a fire in the fireplace you need oxygen for it to burn. You need your fuel source which might be wood that you're burning in the fireplace, you need the energy to ignite it which can be produced by rubbing sticks together although in this day and age you would use matches or a lighter, and you need oxygen which on Earth is abundant enough in the environment. In a different environment without oxygen, such as on the moon, it would not work. You would not be able to start a fire in a fireplace on the moon unless you're able to provide the necessary oxygen somehow because on the moon there is no oxygen in the environment. Anyway I was thinking about how to produce tools that use fire or combustion that would be able to function in an environment that doesn't have oxygen such as the environment of the moon. I believe guns would work just as well on the moon or in the vacuum of space as they would on Earth because when the primer is struck it produces the necessary oxygen. A gun fires by the primer being struck by a hammer or pin which in turn ignites the propellant in the cartridge and as the propellant burns it creates the pressure that fires the bullet. Obviously the propellant needs oxygen to burn but the primer provides the necessary oxygen when it is struck. Cars however would not work on the moon. The way a car works is a spark is used to ignite the gasoline in the cylinder which burns and produces the pressure to push up the piston, the upward motion of the piston pushes a crankshaft which turns a series of gears which turns the wheels causing the car to go forward. For the gasoline to burn it needs oxygen which the car gets from the environment so you would need an environment that has oxygen for a car to work. So I was thinking about how to make a car you could drive on the moon or in an environment without oxygen, and how to make other stuff that works by combustion that can be used in environments without oxygen. It works with guns so it should work with other stuff.

So it sounds like what you're saying is that chaos cannot lead to order. That's what you seem to be saying to a certain extent when you talk about how heat is disordered and can't be re-ordered. The concept of entropy is associated with disorder, randomness, or uncertainty, in short, its associated with chaos. But chaos can lead to order, sometimes. There is the concept that if you have an infinite number of chimpanzees with an infinite number of typewriters there is a chance that one of them might write Shakespeare. If you randomly press keys on a keyboard there is a chance, however slim, that you could write the complete works of William Shakespeare. That would be an example of how chaos, pressing keys at random, can lead to order. That would work wonders for electric cars.

I believe heat is one of the greatest losses of kinetic energy. For instance, whenever energy is transferred some is lost in the form of heat. Take for instance when you fire a gun, when you pull the trigger it causes a hammer or pin to strike the primer which sets off the propellant. The propellant is the source of the gun's power. When the propellant is set off it burns and expands, releasing kinetic energy which forces the bullet out of the cartridge, down the barrel and out the muzzle. However, at the same time tremendous heat is produced which is why guns get hot when you fire them. Same thing with cars, a car works by the gasoline being ignited in the cylinder which in turn produces kinetic energy that forces up the piston which turns a series of gears which in turn causes the wheels to turn and the car to move forward. However, tremendous heat is being produced with that too which is why car engines get really hot when you run them and need cooling systems to keep from melting. Anyway, I was thinking if there was some way to recycle heat back into usable energy. Usually heat is a nuisance but I was thinking if there was a way to make it into something useful. Maybe turn it back into potential energy somehow.

When are we going to start using hall thrusters?

Im not having a difficult time.

Well then I would say it's a good thing we retired the shuttle. We're better off using rockets such as Atlas V that we used to get the Curiosity rover to Mars.

But we have built spacecraft that do achieve escape velocity. I don't see why the shuttle couldn't do that considering the fact it could reach altitudes where Earth's escape velocity is very low. As for leaving the moon, the moon's gravity is much weaker than Earth's so it would take far less fuel. And you could just put the shuttle in orbit around the moon and use a lander to get to the moon's surface the way they did with the Saturn V rockets.

All you have to do is build a spacecraft that can achieve escape velocity. Once you reach escape velocity you're guaranteed to not fall back to the Earth, regardless of the gravitational effect of other objects such as the moon. That's how probes such as Voyager work.

I know the space shuttle was retired in 2011 but could a space shuttle go to the moon? I know back when we did send people to the moon it was with the Saturn V rocket and from what I heard you need a powerful rocket such as the Saturn V to make it to the moon. But if a space shuttle can escape the Earth's gravity, which it obviously can, I see no reason why it couldn't make it to the moon.

The National Park Service does not send people into space, which can be very risky. If the space industry was run by private businesses they would be far less likely to take unnecessary risks that can result in people being killed, because they wouldn't want the backlash. Well a private corporation would be far more reluctant than a government organization to take unnecessary risks which would jeopardize people because they wouldn't want the backlash which would result in, if not the company going out of business at least the loss of lots of money, especially if they're competing with other private corporations. The company of Remington that makes guns, there was a time they were making faulty products that were unsafe, some of their guns would even fire without the trigger being pulled. To the best of my knowledge thankfully nobody was killed as a result but they did lose lots of business and as such they had to take certain actions such as firing some of their higher up managers. That's why a single company should not hold a monopoly in the space industry, there should be multiple companies just like it is with airlines.

If a disaster such as Challenger happened with a private company the backlash against the company would be so severe that it would go out of business. As such, a private company would not take such a risk. I know that today they are a government funded and government run organization just as they were back then.

It's the management of NASA that I don't like. It's because of how careless and impatient the managers can be that we had disasters such as Challenger and Columbia. With Challenger the engineers knew there was something wrong, they knew about the faulty 0-ring and they warned management but management decided not to listen to them and went ahead with the launch anyway. One of the engineers even knew that Challenger was going to blow up before it happened but management wouldn't listen to him. Just to satisfy their own egos and impatience they decided to throw safety out the window and it cost lives. With Columbia they knew that some of the crucial heat shielding had been damaged and they could've launched a rescue mission with Atlantis or they could've even allowed some of the crew members to do a spacewalk and repair the damage but they didn't, and that too cost lives. So that's what I don't like about NASA, how they can be so utterly careless and ignore danger and as such it leads to disaster.

Well that's good. While Im a really big fan of space exploration, I am not a fan of NASA. I don't really trust how NASA is run and I wouldn't mind if NASA was completely dissolved, or at least greatly down graded, and the space industry was taken up by private businesses. So by upper atmosphere I take it that means the Thermosphere. I've never heard of airplanes flying that high.

In the movie 2001 the now defunct airline company Pan Am had gone from the airline industry into the space industry. We know that won't happen now since Pan Am went out of business in 1991 but I've been thinking of the possibility of other airline companies and private businesses in general going into the space industry. To the best of my knowledge in the USA the only organization that sends people into space is NASA which is entirely government funded. It would be better if private companies would take up the space industry since that way the space program wouldn't rely entirely on government funding and there would be more opportunities for people to go into space not to mention more opportunities to develop technology used in space.

Well in terms of science fiction cases of planets with really strong gravity in which, as a result, the inhabitants of such planets are super strong, an example would be with the series The Orville. In The Orville there is a little girl with such tremendous strength that she can smash through walls and pry open big metal doors and bulkheads. The girl, whose name is Lt. Alara, is the chief of security on The Orville and the reason she is so strong is because she is a Xalayan, a fictional race from the planet of Xalaya which has a really strong gravity. The gravity on Xalaya is so strong that a human who stepped out on the surface would be crushed flat like a pancake without special protection such as a gravity suit. A metal can from Earth that's thrown onto the surface of Xalaya would instantly be flattened. Now The Orville is a spoof on science fiction and its not supposed to be taken seriously, even by fictional standards, but still that would be a science fiction example of a planet with really strong gravity having really strong people.

Sometimes in science fiction they have planets that have very strong gravity and as a result the people from such planets are really strong. For instance, people from a planet that has twice the earth's gravity would be able to perform tremendous feats of strength while on Earth or while on any planet or environment that has gravity around the same level as earth's gravity, able to bend steel bars and lift cars and so forth. Im wondering though just how realistic that would be in real science. Let's say Earth did have twice the gravity, would we all evolve to be super strong? Or is that just in science fiction and not in real science?

You would have to ask Stan Lee if you want to know exactly what kind of radioactive spider we're talking about when we're talking about the spider that bit Spiderman. So can you have access to good drinking water without having to lug large amounts of water around, when you don't have running water? Let's say you're out in a desert. Or let's say you are in an area that does have water in the form of oceans and rain, is it drinkable water? The water in our oceans is not drinkable for various reasons, not the least being that it contains way too much salt. That's the problem with water that you find in nature, it could not be the drinkable kind.