DARPA Working On Arthur C. Clarke Weapon Idea 453
holy_calamity writes "DARPA is working on a weapon which is similar to one first described by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1955 novel Earthlight — firing jets of molten metal using strong electromagnetic fields. The Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) will function on a smaller scale than Clarke's fictional blaster. DARPA's write-up says it could be 'packaged into a missile, projectile or other platform and delivered close to target for final engagement and kill.' Clarke is also widely credited with suggesting geostationary communications satellites — what other ideas of his will come to pass?"
what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome Arthur C. Clarke's Overlords (Childhoods' End)
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd have to say probably all of them. Even the far-fetched ones like the telekinesis you allude to.
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you people give it up on the flying car already? People have invented flying cars. Flying cars aren't the problem. The problem is that people are too stupid to navigate in 3D space, especially when you consider how "well" they seem to be coping with 2D space.
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
If there are only a few of them, no problem (although the cost will be higher without that economy of scale), but once you get enough people using them, you need "roads" and people can't be counted on to learn enough to fly cars, or maintain them (if you have to pull over in a car, fine, if you have to pull over in a flying car, look out below?)
Without an "easy" control (semi-automated control/ATC?) and maintenance (outsourced rental?) system flying cars probably are not going to appear any time soon.
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the chief problem as I see it is the organization that has made it so near impossible to develop personal aircraft in the first place. The FAA has tailored all regulations to suit Boeing and kin who have the fat wallets and their similarly financed customers. Most Cessna pilots use $10 stop watches mounted to their yoke. Why would anyone do something that sounds so stupid? Because the $400+ FAA certified flight clock found in Cessnas like the plane itself was developed in the 50's and 60's is off by minutes per day and the cheap, made in China stop watch [aircraftspruce.com] will run for months and still keep near perfect time. There hasn't been any real innovation and development in personal aircraft outside of the FAA experimental category in nearly half a century. You still have to control your own air/fuel mix because there aren't any modern "FAA certified" fuel injection systems. It simply costs too much to jump through the hoops. If it wasn't for the FAA that new plane that typically costs as much as a house to purchase would be as cheap if not cheaper than the average passenger car.
I also don't buy the "people are too dumb for 3D" argument either. Most pilots will tell you that learning to fly a small plane is easier than driving a car.
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I assume you're absolutely correct on the economics. But I'm very uncertain that enough people are smart enough for 3D.
The hardest part about driving a car isn't operating the vehicle - it's avoiding all the yabbos on road who aren't paying attention. On an open, unoccupied road or a gentle off-road, driving is dead simple.
To steal a line from No Exit, "Driving is other people". But at least in 2D, I can track them all. In 3D, it's going to be a lot harder to monitor drivers where I can see 50 to 10
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On the security side, how easy would it be for someone like Osama or Ted Kaczynski to load these up with home-made explosives and crash them into buildings?
About as easy as loading a car with explosives and crashing it into a building.
It would be nearly impossible to stop them from doing it (even if you mounted AA guns on every sizable building in the US).
It's nearly impossible to stop people to crash cars full of explosives into buildings. And yet, we haven't stopped building cars.
Anyone could easily hit military bases, dams, bridges, nuclear power plants, and so on with these. They could even be rigged to fly by remote control so they wouldn't need to be suicide missions.
Anyone can easily hit dams, bridges, nuclear power plants and so on with a small airplane right now.
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem you mentioned could easily be solved by incorporating an onboard computer so that it keeps a minimum distance from other dirvers and buildings. The driver could still actually drive the thing, but it would repel like a magnet from other vehicles thanks to the "3D radar" type equipment.
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:4, Funny)
3D!=D
So, D!=0?
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever see how drivers react on a 2 or 3 lane road who enter a newly paved area where the lines haven't been painted yet?
Now imagine that - but flying
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your flying car is delayed while awaiting an engine with higher power-density and higher reliability at lower cost, and a smart enough flight/navigation computer to operate the vehicle in the traffic densities that would be encountered after widespread adoption.
The bronze-age myths persist because religions are ideological rootkits, most of your brethren have been rooted, and the rootkits all include strong imperatives to infect one's offspring. You can't put a stop to the rootkits because society depends on them and hence is patterned to persecute any cleanup effort. Nor can you design a more infectious rational alternative rootkit because you can't rationally answer the universe's many sources of cognitive dissonance, chief among them "you will end", "they'll get away with it", and "religions are rootkits".
In the end you just have to search for and then surround yourself with those occasional outliers, those people who are honest enough to look the universe's uncaring meaninglessness squarely in the eye without reaching for a scripture to anaesthetize themselves with.
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get why people are so afraid of the universe being uncaring? It's not that shocking, nor does it affect your life to know this, since it's always been true and never been different. However, if people knew and accepted this they might actually behave more humane, because they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit for them.
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps they'd behave LESS humanely, since they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit TO them.
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I think there a lot of very smart and either atheist or agnostic people out there who can rationalize why behaving well results in a better world than the alternative. Alas, for some reason, their rationalizations all seem to look curiously like the standard Judeo-Christian Ethos. Which leaves me to wonder
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
But there's a deeper issue with your argument. You are assuming that the commandments were handed down by God, but it's actually quite likely that they were arrived at by one or more smart people (who, after all, would have to be smart if they could read and write at the time). So your argument is just begging the question (circular logic). The reason rational morality looks so much like the judeo-christian commandments is because it was created by rational people. Heck, even if it was created by God, are you saying He's not rational? If you happen to believe the judeo-christian mythos as fact, what's wrong with also trying to understand *why* God made those commandments?
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Actually, no. Its "thou shall not commit murder". Some old translations used the word "kill", but few modern ones do. The hebrew word used in most of our originals is the word for murder. I'm not precisely certian how they defined "murder" at the time, but I'd bet it was at least as loose as "most rational people" feel about it. Probably a bit too loose. I wouldn't be suprised if killing a non-Jew, or perhaps even a bad
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Please prove this. Historical evidence doesn't support it, really. Unless the only parts of history you're using are the Judeo-Christian parts.
Note, by the way, that marriage is only a sacrament by tradition - Martin Luther recognized that marriages were a product of the State, not of God, but since we'd been doin
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is stuff we don't know about the universe. There is probably more stuff we don't know about the universe than we do know about the universe. But we don't need to fill in the gaps with "God did it" to make ourselves feel better. We can admit we don't know something and try to find the answer rather than make something up and move on. That's the difference in believing in made up fairy tails and "believing in science".
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Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lewis' theory says:
A moderate objection to point one is that not everyone has altruistic urges.
A severe objection to point two is that altrui-social behavior is demonstrably beneficial to every member of a tribe, and therefore it will evolve in all social creatures.
An obvious objection to point three is that it's stupid. Of all the explanations for a seemingly inexplicable data point, saying "An invisible ghost in the sky did it!!!1!" is the least useful.
Lewis's theory is useless bunk. Its only function is to give religionists a feeling of rationality.
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:4, Informative)
Your claim that science is a belief system is to fundamentally misunderstand science. Science is a method of inquiry into the natural world, the only one we know of, that can identify objective truths. It takes zero faith or belief or anything like that to accept the outcomes of the scientific method.
Finally, you are also making an argument from ignorance in your discussion of the big bang. The bottom line is we don't know how it all happened. We don't know what there was before. We don't even know IF there was a "before" at all. If time began then then most of your assertions disappear. Just because you don't understand something isn't a reason to say "god did it".
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If you want more power you can buy a variety of assemble-yourself kit flying cars and put any powerplant you want in them. Apparently people have used everything from turbofans to liquid rockets.
Personally I prefer a sail powered flying car. It's purely for recreation, of course, because of the unreliability of the power source.
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You're talking about an infrastructure problem. There ARE places where you
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You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means...
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what other ideas of his will come to pass? (Score:5, Funny)
You'd better not miss. If that rabbit is armed with a shotgun you may not get a second shot at him.
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Only problem with hers was that you only figured out what the heck she meant after the fact. THEN it's obvious, but not before.
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I take it you've never actually tried that? It's really hard to hurt something with a sawed-off shotgun at much beyond 20 feet, and really hard to get that close to a rabbit (unless the rabbit is a pet). Try a .22 instead.
Re:Automated memes (Score:5, Funny)
Better you than me, mate!
Re:Automated memes (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore, it seems DARPA in usual fashion is looking at the best way to help keep raising the national debt level. If anything, the military industrial complex has been the bankers best friend, it has managed to keep spending at insane levels, without really producing any new ways of killing people... not even those who are defenseless and easy to kill in the many innovative ways militaries and governments have devised for the last few centuries.
I mean hell, the missile, bullet, DU Penetrator, APFSDF rounds, all of it, its still the same principle of a hurled projectile, spear, sling stone or arrow. New methods of slinging shit, but still the same old idea. Pretty sad if you think of it. They keep reinventing the wheel, but the wars aren't even fought for land or gold anymore, they're fought so the idiot masses can feel good about themselves. That, there is the worst part of it, as far as I am concerned. Its one thing to fight evil bastards who want to take what is yours, whether it be, life liberty or property, but most of the wars today are fought merely to keep the cattle spending their hard earned income without asking questions. What is not as much sad as it is remarkable is the bovine imbecility present in the vast masses of humanity. THAT amazes me.
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The people who suffer more are the ones who have to live in the place, after it's been peppered with DU.
The ones who DON'T have to live with the consequences are the ones who gave the orders to use the stuff, in the first place.
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All battlefield anti-tank weapons tend to do nasty things to the crew because it's the best way of ensuring that the thing stops shooting at you.
"Now that I think about it, military wars, where militaries are fighting on both sides, rather than just one military butchering civilians, is a good thing, in a way."
Wars
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Perhaps the concept will be similar to the uranium-tipped anti-tank weapons that impact the external armor. The pressure of the impact instantly vaporizes the metal, and splatters the interior occupants with the resulting vapor (turning them into ash).
(shrug) Who knows. I've seen the military come-up with some whacky ideas like an airplane carrier that, ins
The Mark V Computer (Score:5, Funny)
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Link is here [lucis.net].
Posted as AC to prevent karma whoring.
Bring the marshmallows (Score:2)
I wonder if this would be ruled inhumane. As if it's any worse than a nuke, just on a smaller scale.
Re:Bring the marshmallows (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is that if you were hit by this stuff, you'd be dead almost before the nerves could send the signal to your brain telling you, "hey bub, I think you're about to die, so here's some pain for the road."
Re:Bring the marshmallows (Score:5, Informative)
Have flamethrowers and napalm been ruled inhumane?
In any case, molten high velocity metal is already widely in use in anti-armor weapons. In the case of spalling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spall [wikipedia.org], the molten metal is from your own vehicle not the weapon.
Solve the energy crisis (Score:4, Funny)
against civilian targets, yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm#Usage_in_warfare [wikipedia.org]
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A tired but true argument: Doesn't that go for most weapons? I'd think basically any incendiary weapon would make for an agonizing death.
Besides, this particular device sounds much more along the lines of shaped-charge munitions which have been used for a long time; it just throws some electromagnetics into the mix.
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So, basically, it would be no worse than being hit with a bazooka. That is to say, it would suck.
"My man Tasty was shot with a BAZOOKA! Look at him! He used to be six foot four before he got capped!!!"
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What's the definition of a 'humane' weapon? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Bring the marshmallows (Score:5, Informative)
In a conventional HEAT, the charge is in the form of a narrow cone, and the liner is projected as a narrow jet of molten metal. It must explode at the correct standoff distance and the correct angle to be effective, but when it works it works quite well against even heavily armored vehicles.
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You bring up another type of round, which is not so common any more, HESH or High Explosive Squash Head. Basically, the round consists of a plastic explosive and detonator. The plastic explosive squashes into a pancake when it hits the armor and then explodes. It does not penetrate the armor at all
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Re:Bring the marshmallows (Score:5, Insightful)
There's very little that's as bad as being hacked to death by a rusty foot of steel.
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Bullshit. Napalm is no worse then any other area of effect weapon. It just got a bad name in Vietnam because they dumped it on civilians so much.
The only AOE weapon you can begin to argue is inhumane is cluster bombs, simply because they leave so many unexploded bomblets around. Napalm doesn't sit around waiting for some civvie to come by and trigger it ten years later.
Childhood's End's Telekinesis (Score:4, Funny)
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And one day when the Sun starts to die, we will collapse Jupiter into a star and set up a new Earth on Europa....
Just saying.
Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Childhood's End's Telekinesis (Score:4, Funny)
I did a mental double-take before mentally inserting the capital letter on "Southwest". Like, wha? He hates California or something? :p
Magneto Hydrodynamic... (Score:5, Funny)
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Um... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:4, Insightful)
Clarke died in March 2008 (Score:2)
It is too bad that Clarke passed away a month ago. I'm sure he would have loved to see that the military was making a death ray based on his design. article here [cnn.com]
In other news... (Score:2)
sci-fi comes from science (Score:4, Interesting)
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But Earthlight was written in 1955. Now granted, I don't know when DARPA started this project, but...
Rail Gun (Score:2)
At what point does electrically charged molten metal become plasma?
space elevator (Score:5, Interesting)
a few more... (Score:2)
An Obelisk [boxeswithknobs.com]that sends out a brain splitting shriek on all radio frequencies?
Or, perhaps the the mind of HAL [sfgate.com] itself which is what DARPA wants to become by way of Skynet [cyberpunkreview.com]?
Mebbe, mebbe not.
RS
What about the old fashined way (Score:4, Insightful)
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The same could be said for lasers, using conventional explosives to generate a lot of power in a very small time period and then project that power down range.
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how about the idea of civilization (Score:4, Insightful)
Waiting (Score:2)
FOOSH!!
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
We've seen time and again weapons designed and built in the US being used against our forces. (Stinger missiles, anyone?) Does DARPA *really* need to be Al Qaida's R&D division?
(Armchair)Generals Always Prepare for the Last War (Score:4, Insightful)
However, this really applies equally well to the arm chair generals on Slashdot that tend to bring the phrase out.
In the case of research into advanced weaponry, obviously we shouldn't just be doing research (such as this) that would only come in handy in the types of war we saw in the past (i.e. in the Cold War).
However, just as true is that we shouldn't be doing only research into advanced weaponry that is useful for "current needs" as you put. The enemy we currently are facing or might reasonably expect to face at the moment is not using heavy armor, therefore you argue we should discontinue research into weapons useful against heavy armor. That seems like a smart investment until an enemy that isn't exactly like the one we face now comes up.
Given the long development time behind advanced military hardware, and the fact that the US's time as the sole superpower in the world seems to be rapidly approaching its end, maybe it's not such a bad idea to be putting at least some of our research money into preparing for future, as well as current threats.
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Yes, it's nice to invest in staying on top of our own self-defense. But if you go too far on that path (and if you also spend a lot of effort trying to dominate the rest of the world out of paranoid fear) - then you're basically shooting yourself in the foot.
The US is heavily dependent on global trade. The military supports the trade network and treaties. I agree that there's deep problems with both the way that the military is supplied and how it is used. But there are valid reasons to have such a large military.
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They're all going? That's easy, then. Just find out when they're planning to stop by, then have all 23 million Taiwanese people slip out the back door and occupy the mainland while no one is home.
Since everyone in mainland China ia politically conditioned to believe that Taiwan = China, the Chinese invaders will never figure out that the Taiwanese are gone, and will continue fighting amongst themselves while the Taiwanese population sets up s
It's not about defense (Score:5, Insightful)
err.. not Blackbird (Score:2)
OT - It's way past time that
stealth F117 Blackbird. (Score:3, Informative)
There was an F-117 Nighthawk, and an SR-71 Blackbird. Two very different aircraft.
In the DARPA lab... (Score:4, Funny)
Second engineer: You've got your railgun in my flamethrower!
Both: Two great tastes that taste great together!
First Rule (Score:3, Funny)
Not really. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not really. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:And This Concludes (Score:5, Informative)
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