Comments on: A Proposal For DARPA https://blog.speculist.com/scenarios/a-proposal-for.html Live to see it. Thu, 16 Dec 2021 08:21:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 By: Ric Locke https://blog.speculist.com/scenarios/a-proposal-for.html#comment-8531 Ric Locke Thu, 11 Nov 2004 23:14:47 +0000 http://localhost/specblog/?p=146#comment-8531 Our guys use a variant of the system already, call it a proof of concept. Your gadget is a good idea — after all, I’ve suggested it myself before :-) — but there’s a problem:

Heading.

Position can be done with Special Relativity. Heading gets you into General, and it’s not clear that the tensor can be solved. “Which direction is it pointed” is a much, much harder problem than people who haven’t tried to solve it think. East, West, North, South is relatively simple given broad enough definitions. “Keep the orphanage out of the blast radius at 1 km” is really, really tough. Even elevation, the angle above the horizon, is tougher than it seems. Ask a surveyor about the “geoid.” “Which way is straight down?” is not an easy question!

Regards,
Ric Locke

]]> By: Phil Bowermaster https://blog.speculist.com/scenarios/a-proposal-for.html#comment-8530 Phil Bowermaster Wed, 10 Nov 2004 12:01:20 +0000 http://localhost/specblog/?p=146#comment-8530 The menu is an good idea. Sometimes you need only a grenade capable of taking out one or two enemy soldiers. Other times you want to take out a tank or an entire building. Just set the dial to the appropriate setting, point, and shoot.

The next step is to move the soldier himself behind the lines, and have the infantryman pointing the laser target be a robot. It will be a while before we have a robot as versatile as your typical 19-year-old GI, or one that can march 100 miles on a couple of MREs. But we’ll get there.

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