| ▲ | fifilura 6 hours ago |
| Finally! Ice-9! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine |
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| ▲ | hermitShell 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Another instance of 'Super Ice' or as named in the article 'Pykrete' in science fiction is in Neal Stephenson's Novel from 2015: Seveneves. The substance is used in space for the construction of temporary habitats.
I suppose this is plausible if you manage to find a large source of ice and bring it into a stable orbit. It won't melt into liquid, and perhaps the reinforcing fibers could help prevent sublimation. A lot of the novel strained my ability to suspend disbelief, but the overall scope and ambition is so awesome I was able to forgive the poor editing. It's attempting to be hard sci-fi, much of the novel is taken up by technical descriptions that could only appeal to an engineer-minded person. |
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| ▲ | NitpickLawyer 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > A lot of the novel strained my ability to suspend disbelief, but the overall scope and ambition is so awesome While the 2nd half of the book is definitely still sci-fi territory, the first part is slowly getting into the plausible tech realm, 12 years after the book was written. We now have a much stronger space industry, and probably could match or exceed the payload to orbit in 2 years from the book (if everyone would work towards the same goal, which is still a bit of fantasy but hey...) | | |
| ▲ | randallsquared 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > getting into the plausible tech realm Except bringing an asteroid all the way down to the ISS. That part was uncharacteristically thoughtless, I think. | | |
| ▲ | hermitShell 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It basically enabled the plot and mostly happened 'off camera'. The parts about the management of radiation was pretty cool though. Because if it I earmarked "Ichi-F: A Worker's Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant" to read later on. |
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| ▲ | macintux 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Side note, but I have a hard time thinking of Seveneves in halves; isn't it 3 distinct parts? Mainly I remember skimming the middle third because it felt like such a drag. | | |
| ▲ | doginasuit 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You could cleanly think about it in three parts, but the time jump in the middle which involves a whole new set of characters is another way to split it. | |
| ▲ | rtkwe 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes the book itself is broken into 3 parts but if you're looking at it from a scientific plausibility scale parts 1 & 2 are in the same vicinity of that scale where part 3 jumps a good ways into more traditional scifi levels of plausibility. | |
| ▲ | NitpickLawyer 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Heh, true. My brain went into "pre space" and "post space" as halves :) |
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| ▲ | 8note 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | pykrete isnt a scifi material. its a ww2 idea the brits had for making an ice based aircraft carrier | | |
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| ▲ | Zambyte 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The Wikipedia article mentions how this happened with an anti-AIDS medication called ritonavir. I watched this video by Veritasium on that situation a while back; I recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksn5yrsC3Wg |
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| ▲ | thinkingtoilet 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I literally picked up Cat's Cradle for first time in decades this weekend. Funny how these things line up. |
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| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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