Rasori

I don't know anything about the speculations of silicon-based lifeforms, so you may be right. Even so, I was just sticking up for Myth Guy Kinda off-topic, but why is it that we say carbon-based and (possiby) silicon-based lifeforms are the only possibilities? Why is it not possibly possible that there's methane-based lifeforms or hydrogen-based lifeforms?

Ophiolite, if the organisms are small they need less heat to heat themselves. A giant organism would need to heat up a WHOLE lot of area, and in areas with temperatures like Titan, that heat is extremely hard to come by.

They're talking about robots, YT. Oh, Sayo, I want to comment on: I sure hope this is an exaggeration. We're not coming up with defenses for flamethrowers because there's no way a flamethrower can be a threat in space. That's the same reason we don't defend helicoptors from landmines (um, it's in the air, the landmine is for ground vehicles) and submarines from TOWs (it's underwater, the TOW is air-to-air and would explode on contact with the water).

I tend to leave it on for impatience's sake. Hell, if I log off so other people can get on (without my programs running in the background) I get annoyed just logging back on. I can't imagine having to start it up everytime lol. Then again, I'm a five-times-a-dayer, myself. What I do know is that the computer I'm on now (at my mom's) is on 24/7 unless there's a storm or, obviously, a power outage and it's starting to make some WEIRD noises. Sounds like a car's engine, and that's from the floor below it lol. It used to be that I could kick it and it'd shut up, but that stopped working. Must've kicked it one too many times...

My science teacher likes to go on and on about asteroids and meteoroids whizzing by us, unnoticed until afterwards. He told us last Wednesday that on the 20th an asteroid came by at 200 miles. Dunno how true it is (he's like me, he likes to exaggerate) but that still makes you worry a bit. Especially since we apparently didn't catch it until after it had passed.

I say minimum force, but sometimes the minimum force would include lethal force- of course, you might get the person knocked out first, but that's where John's temporary insanity comes in. But honestly, if it's 4 guys with shotties (as someone mentioned earlier) and the only way to run brings me into their sight, minimum force would be lethal force. How else do you save your a... butt?

That, my dear YT, is exactly why we're talking about having at least three layers of shielding--anti-projectile, anti-laser, and the hull (however little it may end up helping).

I would agree with Nave for one main reason--as yet, we have not had a single successful supersonic commercial jet. The Concorde wasn't enough to keep itself in business, due to sound and fuel problems. I can, however, see people wanting scramjet speed quite soon.

Honestly, you people are talking about fighting with lasers as if you're going to be firing from lightyears away. I honestly don't think that space combat will ever be ranged more than a solar system, which is, granted, quite a large range, but much smaller than what you're saying. The truth is that the big ships with hundreds of lasers are going to slug it out, but they need support (ahem, projectile interception, mainly, since projectiles have the ability to do a lot more damage than lasers) and thus they need to be close enough for their support to get back and rearm. I'd say extending the range more than a couple of planets will be pushing it for a long time to come, and at that range a laser shot'll be pretty accurate. And we'll almost always have a middleman who can tell us a more accurate position--as was mentioned before, this is much like a howitzer cannon, not an m-16.

How about using the enemies weapons to defend against them? Or move or anything else? Absorb the energy of the laser, as you just suggested, and use it to power an electromagnetic shield that could then block their weapons. Or else take the energy and put it into engines that didn't have a power source earlier. This goes off-topic, but couldn't this allow extremely close to light speeds? If you don't need to store the fuel on-ship, then you have much less mass. Depending on the number of lasers powering you, you could get extremely fast speeds, no? I mean, if you were to have lasers positioned in 'space highways' then you could then power the ship along on its flight. I'll try to look into that a bit more.

The problem with lightsabers is that I'm almost certain that we don't have a way to limit the length of a light beam. Now, if this beam can cut through anything, I don't think it's a good idea- face it up and poke a hole through the moon... not my idea of a smart move.

I have limited knowledge on imaginary numbers, but the reason that there can't be a square root of a negative number is simple enough: to get a negative number by multiplication, you need one negative and one positive number. This means that there isn't one number that can be multiplied by itself to equal a negative number. 1*1 is 1, but -1*-1 isn't -1, it's 1. -1*1 would equal -1, but then that isn't a square because it is two different numbers. Hopefully this helps a little, until someone like Sayo comes in to be really specific.

Put it this way, Sayo: if we were trying to develop armor from medieval times, the first question we'd ask would be "Are we defending againts spears, slashing swords, thrusting swords, or arrows?" Say we were talking about ranged weapons--arrows--and we needed the armor for that. We'd need to get an estimate of the speed and range of the arrows, so we can make sure the armor is strong enough and the right form to stop or deflect the arrows. You don't develop armor as an all-purpose thing, you develop it to defend against something else. As such, you need to know how that something else works. Now, the thread gets more and more off-topic as we keep debating about whether or not it is off-topic, so let's get back to the futuristic Sci-fi Shields, shall we?

Sayo, if that was in response to Edward's post, it's uncalled for. The post started with just space warfare, but he talked about shielding. Plus, talk about warfare tells us what we may need these shields to protect against, and thus what we need to have to make the shields work.

LOL @ Sayo. And thanks, J'Dona, for clearing that up better than I could.

Just a note that isn't really all that important (and possibly wrong... but I don't THINK it is): Me is acceptable in a few (VERY few) cases (rather than someone and I). If you would say, had the other person not been included in the sentence, that "me" did something, you can still use the phrase "Joe and me." For example, if you need to ask someone for a ride, you'd say "Can you take me to the mall?" If you and Joe were going to the mall, you would say "Can you take Joe and me to the mall?" Actually, I may need to read up on it more, but I think that in the above case it's acceptable to say "Can you take me and Joe to the mall?" Just another confuzzling part of the English language- and, more confuzzling, is that confuzzle isn't a word.

Good. I didn't think I was THAT far behind the times.

Yay! I want to print this out and give it to everyone I know.

I think it's for dramatic effect Anti-gravity fields are a good option, assuming, of course, we ever get the technology to make one (perhaps we already have it, I'm not up-to-date on all technologies, but I didn't think we had one) and that you mean anti-grav as in reverse-gravity, because cancelling out gravity would have very little effect.

LOL. However, we are talking about sci-fi shields. It's not a totally scientific discussion, because we're talking about theoretical technologies. And we're not explaining how to make these theoretical technologies work

Obviously I don't know the costs of any of this, but I would assume the reason that gauss guns would be used rather than Tank Buster-type missiles is cost. I think a magnetic round would be much cheaper to produce than a "smart" weapon. And I'm sure that, since we're assuming we have the technology to power these shields and the ship at the same time, we'd be able to extend the reach of the shields (pump more power into them) in order to mess up the missiles--that is, either mess up their computer components or change their trajectory--as defense. Granted, however, that these missiles are a good possibility for weapons choices.

Sayo... we're talking about the future when we actually need space weaponry and stuff. The cost would be prohibitive, but so would the cost of a ship without it. The cost of a modern-day stealth fighter like the F-22 is very prohibitive, so they add more stealth features (at a bit of a higher price) in order to keep it from going down. So the ship that would have these shields would be high-priced anyway, so by adding shields they protect their investment better. And we already have too many complex systems and redundancies--nothing's perfect. YT- that's something to look into. In space, the cloud would be whisked away much quicker than in an atmosphere, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it wouldn't last long enough to help out.

Don't forget the game industry- one of the main things holding them back is the fact that they can't compress as much as they want to onto a DVD. And once we get a 1-tb disc (I believe this was stated before) we'll starting seeing 1 tb as nothing, and striving for 2 tb discs, because programs will get bigger. And the drives will drop to about current DVD-RW drives' prices within a couple years. Plus, technology will advance enough to protect the disc more, I'm sure.

Also, the design of the B-2 makes a tail entirely unneccesary. Because it's a wing and the engines and systems are basically centered, it is extremely stable. I've heard testimony that it's impossible to stall- which makes sense, because the forces would re-level the wing before it made the plane stop moving. Turning could be a bit of a problem, but it's workable, and thanks to its stealth it doesn't need to turn fast And Cap'n is also right.

The point of making shields is to make them defend against weaponry. Since you don't need a hand to hold an energy shield or weapons, however, you aren't limited to just one weapon and one shield, two shields and no weapons, or two weapons. You can have hundreds of weapons and as many shields as there are generators that can fit in a ship. So if you develop shields to defend one type of weaponry, then develop evasive tactics for when shields fail or another weaopn comes, you have the best defense you can. You can include both of the shields I'm suggesting, however, in just one ship if you need to.