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Distance Learning for fun and profit...

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Why is the truck using mechanical brakes to slow down quickly when it has a GRF installed already?
Why not pulse a high g vehicle-wide acceleration to stop quickly without shifting your cargo or passengers? You could even pop upwards at the same time and hover until the danger passes below you unless you're in a tunnel or something.

The prototype hover device runs with a single on/off button for manual control. The production models can have a full computer plugged in, and respond much faster than airbags.
 
suicidejunkie said:
Why is the truck using mechanical brakes to slow down quickly when it has a GRF installed already?
Why not pulse a high g vehicle-wide acceleration to stop quickly without shifting your cargo or passengers? You could even pop upwards at the same time and hover until the danger passes below you unless you're in a tunnel or something.

The prototype hover device runs with a single on/off button for manual control. The production models can have a full computer plugged in, and respond much faster than airbags.
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Because as Taylor can attest, using a GRF for motive force still has some issues to work out. As evidenced by her accidently putting a hole through her home and launching one strait up with 1g acceleration and no way to get it back down. Using one to lift an object a set distance then providing locomotion from an external source so far seems to be the best bet. But that still leaves you having to deal with the mass and inertia of the lifted object.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
Because as Taylor can attest, using a GRF for motive force still has some issues to work out. As evidenced by her accidently putting a hole through her home and launching one strait up with 1g acceleration and no way to get it back down. Using one to lift an object a set distance then providing locomotion from an external source so far seems to be the best bet. But that still leaves you having to deal with the mass and inertia of the lifted object.
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...

Do you remember the computer-controlled, gravitationally driven GRF Bomb that was used not a couple chapters ago? Or the GRF Plane that was specifically called out as surprisingly cheap to build due to having a GRF drive and no jets?

It was an issue with the first demo model just being a simple on-off 1G acceleration, not an intrinsic flaw of the tech.
 
The aircraft likely had a backup means of propulsion. If it didn't, well, it's no longer a "jet" is it? As for the missile, I read that more as using the modified GRF as a warhead rather then the propulsion.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
The aircraft likely had a backup means of propulsion. If it didn't, well, it's no longer a "jet" is it? As for the missile, I read that more as using the modified GRF as a warhead rather then the propulsion.
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People frequently refer to space "ships" and you can get fully rifled shotguns. If a name is popular, it will stick. Especially when you have a group of people who are referring to a drop-in replacement in the same performance class and need to communicate that concept rather than be technically accurate about it's exact operating mechanism. Also, continuing to refer to jets enhances OpSec.
 
I think the usefulness for cargo hauling depends on a detail I don't remember seeing clarified, does it maintain a fixed distance from the gravitational center of the earth or maintain some other constant? If the former, large changes in latitude could be problematic if the Earth really does bulge at the equator. If the latter, it depends on the constant being maintained.
 
As was shown in the part with the test aircraft, the GRF is able to dynamically alter how it generates a new reference frame. The initial experiments with it at Gravtec, and Taylor's demonstrations, have it locked to local 'down' at a fixed distance. However there is no reason this is all it can do. So, it can indeed be used for propulsion, as well as lift, since lift is merely propulsion at exactly the same acceleration UP as gravity is accelerating you DOWN :)

It also has the nice little benefit of not passing acceleration forces through to anything encompassed by the field of effect, so you don't get inertial effects unless you want them.

And, of course, you can do a lot of other things with it if you're creative enough...
 
mp3.1415player said:
As was shown in the part with the test aircraft, the GRF is able to dynamically alter how it generates a new reference frame. The initial experiments with it at Gravtec, and Taylor's demonstrations, have it locked to local 'down' at a fixed distance. However there is no reason this is all it can do. So, it can indeed be used for propulsion, as well as lift, since lift is merely propulsion at exactly the same acceleration UP as gravity is accelerating you DOWN :)

It also has the nice little benefit of not passing acceleration forces through to anything encompassed by the field of effect, so you don't get inertial effects unless you want them.

And, of course, you can do a lot of other things with it if you're creative enough...
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It also allows for convenient things like allowing one to lock a reference frame at a specific altitude above the center of mass and travelling at that level. This would allow for very precise traffic control in congested skies.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
The issue is, of course, that while Taylor is that good... businesses are greedy enough to only offer "pick two". Sometimes it'll actually be "pick one" due to them skimping out on quality to get faster production while jacking up the price.
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The phrase you're looking for is "market segmentation".

See, offering a high grade product for a low price to everyone fails to extract the maximum profit; from a profit-seeking perspective the ideal is to extract the maximum each individual customer is willing to spend, which will be different from customer to customer depending on their budget and inclinations. So, you want a range of prices, and an excuse for the difference in prices that doesn't cost you any extra.

So, you offer variations of the same product in escalating tiers of quality and price, from "basic" to "premium". Sometimes it's not even necessary to be dishonest about it; a fair amount of high end technology manufacturing produces output of variable quality, so all is necessary is to sort the widgets according to quality and price them. On the other hand sometimes there is no such variation, and the difference in capability is deliberate sabotage on the part of the manufacturer; functions disabled or degraded in order to produce an inferior product that can be sold at a cheaper price, in order to justify the high price of the "premium" version (which in reality is just the un-sabotaged version).

With this Taylor though, doing things like that with her technology is likely to result in her deciding to turn her hand to revolutionizing manufacturing along with everything else. I'm sure she could slap together a pretty good imitation of a Star Trek replicator on relatively short notice.
 
mp3.1415player said:
As was shown in the part with the test aircraft, the GRF is able to dynamically alter how it generates a new reference frame. The initial experiments with it at Gravtec, and Taylor's demonstrations, have it locked to local 'down' at a fixed distance. However there is no reason this is all it can do. So, it can indeed be used for propulsion, as well as lift, since lift is merely propulsion at exactly the same acceleration UP as gravity is accelerating you DOWN :)

It also has the nice little benefit of not passing acceleration forces through to anything encompassed by the field of effect, so you don't get inertial effects unless you want them.

And, of course, you can do a lot of other things with it if you're creative enough...
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How hard it would make a ship like in Flight of the Navigator with TaylorTech?
 
Mr_Rose said:
Taylor pretty much just has to think of it and go "oh yeah, cool!"
Might skip the time drive though. It tends to create weird parallel timelines where NASA staff somehow got power of arrest…
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Well, that was probably due to budget problems and to cut scenes in the movie. Plus the fact the two companies behind the movie wanted different things, the fact the movie is still quite good is basically a small miracle.

The time drive most likely exist to solve the time problem from traveling at Faster that Light Speeds
 
mp3.1415player said:
And, of course, you can do a lot of other things with it if you're creative enough...
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So, does Taylor (and/or the SCIENCE!) Have access to lenses, reflectors and diffraction materials for gravity? At minimum she should be able to cause a localized gravitational shear.

Does a change in gravity move at the speed of light? If so, what would the temporal-spacial shear be like for a high G high frequency chirp be like? Something with edges as close to a square wave as the tech could create. Maybe with a 1cm wavelength. If it could be collimated or beam-formed you could do some scary things. It's not like any conventional armor blocks gravity.
 
Seems to me the me crossTaylor (O'Makey Zorah version) has the necessary tech to create a functional jump or skip drive.
Jump drive: create a portal from here to somewhere over there in that star system, then fly the ship through the portal with the GFR, effectively Jumping across space without ever going faster than light.
Skip drive: a jump drive, but chaining a series of jumps rapidly.
 
It also shouldn't take long for some engineers to monkey an upgrade to existing power plants.
Just take a flywheel and slap a low intensity gravity field on one side to keep it spinning. Generator now needs no fuel, and scaling up makes things simpler.

Available power goes up with the square of the speed, and gravitational acceleration boosts it linearly, so you can reduce the shear arbitrarily low by dropping the intensity a lot while spinning the flywheel just a little faster.

Good luck getting that to reduce electricity costs though, unless someone preempts things for PR or for PA approval.
 
Watching the original (animated) Transformers movie. After seeing Optimus Prime die, I imagined Learning!Taylor running in saying "Wait! I can fix him!"
 
Ogamaga said:
If the former, large changes in latitude could be problematic if the Earth really does bulge at the equator.
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The "bulge" exists, but the variance in sea level between the equator and the poles is best measured in meters. Not hundreds of meters, not tens of meters. Meters. There will be a greater impact from the terrain having hills and valleys then from the bulge.

Set the distance from the core high enough to avoid terrain hazards, and everything else will be handled as well.
 
Honestly, people are kind of ignoring the evidence provided in the aircraft test. The reference frame devices can have the distance they push you in any direction can be altered while in use, so a bit of programming and a sensor could make a 'hovering car' just change its elevation when it approaches a hill to keep it a steady distance from the road. Modern cars have sensors to alert drivers of crashes, and a bit of fairly straightforward programming could be done to avoid things like suddenly crashing into a hill instead of sliding over it.
 
Bel said:
Honestly, people are kind of ignoring the evidence provided in the aircraft test. The reference frame devices can have the distance they push you in any direction can be altered while in use, so a bit of programming and a sensor could make a 'hovering car' just change its elevation when it approaches a hill to keep it a steady distance from the road. Modern cars have sensors to alert drivers of crashes, and a bit of fairly straightforward programming could be done to avoid things like suddenly crashing into a hill instead of sliding over it.
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. . . And the angle at which it would have to tilt to match the contour of the road so as to avoid grinding into said road up a hill/mountain side? Do note, there hasn't been any mention of the GRFg angling itself in relation to it's new gravitational reference; instead it remains flat at a steady distance from the surface, at the elevation it was "re-set" to. And while elevation may be adjustable, easily enough, it's less the elevation, and more the position of the device and accompanying shell relative to the angle of the surface that would be important to a "grav car" on any actual surface/roads. Less a problem for "sky cars" though.
 
WCSII said:
. . . And the angle at which it would have to tilt to match the contour of the road so as to avoid grinding into said road up a hill/mountain side? Do note, there hasn't been any mention of the GRFg angling itself in relation to it's new gravitational reference; instead it remains flat at a steady distance from the surface, at the elevation it was "re-set" to. And while elevation may be adjustable, easily enough, it's less the elevation, and more the position of the device and accompanying shell relative to the angle of the surface that would be important to a "grav car" on any actual surface/roads. Less a problem for "sky cars" though.
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Considering the power to initiate the effect is less than two C batteries, if for some reason you can't just set up a 90 degree offset from 'down', install two of the gravity reference frame generators and then you can angle the car by lifting one and lowering the other.
 
WCSII said:
And the angle at which it would have to tilt to match the contour of the road so as to avoid grinding into said road up a hill/mountain side?
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That's less of a problem than you might think, these devices are small. You would just mount four GRFs, one on each corner, in a gimble. Programed for an average height above ground you'd likely get a very smooth ride but you'd have to make sure that the GRF remained either on the plane of the vehicle, or more simply mount the gimbles in a suspension rig to avoid twisting the frame.
(and partially imp'd :ninja:)
And as mentioned above power requirement's are minimal. More power will be needed for the onboard electronics than for the GRFs themselves. Unless the mass they are carrying affects the power requirements, but I don't recall anything in story to suggest that.
 
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