Sundog

This would end sea transport of goods. We use transport ships for all sorts of bulk materials transport. Ships can carry massively more than aircraft, but we pay the price of longer transport times and the requirement to maintain specialized ports to support them. But with this technology we can transport anything from anywhere to anywhere a plane can reach - ports cease to be of value trade wise, and long range shipping ceases to need to be available to the sea.

That's roughly what I figured - I was envisioning an "anchor" asteroid out in Geostationary tethered to the construct.

If you have the capacity to make percussion caps, you have the tech to draw brass and make cases. The only reason cap-and-ball stayed popular as long as it did was a combination of military conservatism and Smith and Wessons' patent on the drilled-through revolver cylinder, which made it difficult for other companies to make cased repeating handguns.

Of course, you could have the bad luck to walk into the remains of a Headquarters Company. A Colonel or even a 1-star, bunch of other brass and senior NCOs plus some luckless plebs doing all the grunt work.

A cousin of mine reloads his own brass. He prefers not to reload the same case more than twice, but if you were using black powder, pressures are considerably less - though simultaneously, you have to deal with more corrosion. I think your guess would be close.

Hela is the only possible problem - Elrond could take Ronan single-handed, Galadriel could probably take Hela, and Red Skull is, comparatively, a joke.

The formula for nitrous-based powders would survive, but the chemical processes to do it are significantly more complex than making even good quality black powder. That could easily make it expensive and hard to get. If you have the metallurgy to make even single-action revolvers, you can also make lever and bolt-action single shot guns, and it's only a little further (spring steel) to making magazine-fed versions of those. Fulminate of Mercury for primers is tricky but not complex. So thinking Old West levels of weapons tech should work.

Only in Next Gen. Look at Kirk's cabin in TOS.

I have been considering a construct I wish to use in either a game or other format, specifically a RIGID space elevator. Flexible enough to avoid cracking due to wind-shear and such, but a solid construct up to low earth orbit, with perhaps a tether to an asteroid in geostationary. The elevator is hollow - open at the top to allow railcars to simply drive into the hollow centre, but sealed and in vacuum all the way down, so cars need simply drive down or up without having to "re-enter" atmosphere at all, docking with airlocks at the base. Now, I realise this means an absurdly strong material and structural design, but that isn't my problem. My question is: what would be the gravity conditions at the top? The structure is NOT in free-fall. It's top is going around the earth once every 24 hours, an absurdly slow speed for something in LEO. As I understand it, earth's gravity at LEO is not significantly less than at the earth's surface. So, would I be correct in assuming that the top of the structure would not be in microgravity, but would in fact have close to 1g standard earth gravity towards earth? This is important in that it would require spacecraft to land on the structure, not merely dock with it. And people in habitats attached would be in full gravity, making long term life possible. However, it would also prevent the use of microgravity construction or manufacturing - these would need to be done in free-fall habitats and moved to the structure for transshipment. Or am I completely off here?

Keep up your physio, here's to a full recovery!

The Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson, Steelheart, Firefight and Calamity. Superbeings, called Epics, some of tremendous power, have emerged throughout the world - and every one of them is a supervillain. The main character is seeking to join a secretive group called the Reckoners - normal humans who target, study and, if they can, kill Epics.

Sad? The guy survived into his SEVENTIES with ALS, and contributed greatly to our understanding of the universe. ALL HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO!

Bing Crosby, the Rat Pack and the rest of the 1940's-50's oeuvre?

To me, KIllmonger's actions were entirely in character with what we had of his past. His history is one of breaking the narrative - both in himself and of others. He moves from ghetto kid to military discipline, then breaks that again by going to the less-rigid special forces, then to CIA black ops, where he is taught the skills and abilities to break not just the course of individuals, but the narrative of nations. Then he breaks his own story twice more - moving from CIA to renegade mercenary, before violating his position there by killing his employer and heading to Wakanda. What does he do there? Break the narrative! He kills the legitimate king by goading him into a duel he did NOT have to fight (the time of challenge being long over), then sidelines the council of the tribes, accepts the grudging loyalty of the royal guard, and gets the army pretty much completely on his side, upsetting the entire interlocking power structure. As Agent Ross says, just as he was trained to do. Killmonger was a prisoner of his past, as was, in large part, T'Challa. This was a sub-plot I loved - two men, both haunted and empowered by the choices of the past made by others. Ultimately, Killmonger, despite his willingness to embrace change, cannot change from his predestined course. T'Challa, as expressly shown in his second spirit quest, can.

That's assuming the systems are as far apart as they are in Earth's neighbourhood. If Hoth and Bespin were both in the same tight globular cluster, we could indeed be talking months to get there under the Star Wars sublight drive. Of course the reality is probably that Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale)

I always figured that without the Hyperdrive the Falcon actually took weeks or months to get to Cloud City.

Illusionary Man! (Well, what did you expect?)

Twix. Crunchy. Cloudy Days vs Sunny Days

Submarines with Albacore hulls travel faster underwater, but that technology was not developed until post-war. That said, I believe some of the last U-Boat designs did actually manage the trick too. But certainly not in 1936.

You don't need to open it to use it. An Army carrying the Ark before it is invincible.

The Omen had good sequels. Terrble twos: Star Wars II (The Empire Strikes Back, not That Which Remains Unspoken) vs. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

WE LOSE. M-14 vs FN FAL

Well, except that he does save the girl and is responsible for placing the Ark in the custody of the US government. Presumably, had he not been there, the Nazis would have been the ones to recover it, seeing as they knew of it's existence and nobody else did.

Citizen Kane (1941) The primary plot is driven by a reporter seeking the meaning of Charles Foster Kane's last word, "Rosebud". The journalist interviews many people important in the life of Kane (a powerful newspaper magnate and one-time Presidential Candidate), and in flashback we see the important events of Kane's life, and learn of the man, his successes, and his failures. Ultimately, the journalist's quest is unsuccessful, though the audience does get to see the answer to the riddle in the final scene. However, the opening scene, of Kane on his deathbed, makes it clear he is alone - there is no one to hear his whispered final word.

Pink Floyd's lawyers are, however, on the run from Death Tribble.