StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I guess it's that the laser cutters available to us aren't suited to the purpose.

Is it a matter of frequency? Power? Both...?

I guess what I also wonder is if a laser can -etch- glass (vaporize or ablate or whatever effect, removing the volume of material being etched away) why that removal-of-material can't penetrate fully through to the other face of a glass sheet, thereby making a cut.

Thanks!

I understand that lasers are used to etch glass, and can be employed to heat glass to fracture along desired lines (CO2 lasers seem preferred for the purpose). What physical constraints prevent lasers from being used to -cut- glass in the same way they cut steel, tungsten, wood, etc? Is the problem ...

Once upon a time and long ago I was with a production that had got permission to shoot a service inside a Pentacostalist Church, the real-live deal with our actors as their characters and the congregants as, well, themselves. As it happened this was a primarily Spanish-speaking group and you could i...

LaCroix - also good.

Man, this site is handy.

That's good...

Really what I had originally in mind (and what one character describes) is a single very large moon whose orbital radius contracts, then expands again in a sort of slingshot effect, but even as I typed it I pretty well figured that wasn't anywhere near realistic-sounding. Once it starts spiraling in...

LaCroix - I dig the captured-third-moon concept but I have a very nice opening already written wherein someone watching the larger moon witnesses the asteroid impact (and, belonging to what's basically a late-medieval-level-of-technology society, pretty well loses his shit).

The change in the satellites' orbits is substantial enough that earthquakes and vulcanism become noticeably more frequent and intense, and tides rise sufficiently higher that low-lying coastal towns have to be abandoned. For plot purposes, the idea is that there is a dormant-for-millenia article of ...

For purpose of a particular story I would like to describe circumstances wherein we begin with an Earth-sized planet with two moons, one larger than Luna and the other smaller. The larger moon is struck by another body and its orbit changes.* This perturbs the orbit of the smaller moon, as well. And...

A gentleman never asks and a lady never tells.

Or maybe that's the other way 'round. I forget.

Thanks for the responses so far - in terms of vision what I wondered was whether the reduction of one's iris aperture to some fraction-of-a-millimeter diameter would mean no more near or farsightedness: would the pinhole effect render the tiny person's vision 20:20 or better?

Because this touches upon what are probably pretty basic physics I posted here: Think of a magical process (physics part to come) that reduces human beings by about 1:18 (about the scale of old-school Star Wars action figures) - for present purposes the means of smallification aren't immediately rel...

Just had one of those conversations that started with my eagerly accepting what I thought was going to be a staff design position on a multi-season tv show which by now should run on rails - that is to say, something easy I can practically do in my sleep in Los Angeles, a nice way to get back into t...

I think it's a Fabio reference.

While working on a certain tv series based in Honolulu... I'm spending most all of my time at my desk in the Art Department, while my bosses - the Art Director and Production Designer - are flitting about the island with the producers, here there and everywhere scouting shooting locations, etc. And ...

Several years back at a wrap party Jerry Bruckheimer's assistant was dreamily going on about her beloved cocker-spaniel/maltese and I had had just enough to drink that it seemed clever to ask if a cocker spaniel plus a maltese yields a cocktease.

Almost certainly not.

"Our female employees are encouraged to secure their woman parts in their employee locker at the start of each shift prior to beginning their tasks, in the interest of workplace safety."

A few years back, was working on this martial arts-dimensional-travel-action movie wherein one of my main sets featured this big dimensional-travel machine, complete with big dimensional travel-machine operating console - with associated operator, which role would normally be played by an extra (no ...

"We want the town to look like it was designed by hookers."

"Drunk hookers."

"Drunk Scottish hookers."

"Drunk Scottish robot hookers."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It's been a winner today, with my crewmates.

I'm partial to Babasaheb Ambedkar's distinction where rules are concerned, as included in his discussion of Ahimsa: ...the doctrine of Ahimsa does not say 'Kill not.' It says, 'Love all.' Buddha said 'Love all, so that you may not wish to kill any.' This is a positive way of stating the principle of...

"The easiest explanation anyone has ever given me about the Amish and their relation to technology is that they are not permitted to own it, but they are permitted to use it. So Amish will certainly use a hydraulic backhoe, bulldozer, computer, telephone (cell or regular) or any other kinds of ...