What would you do with an (enhanced) Portal Gun?

[Crossroads Inc.]

I say "Enhanced" because it would be a bit silly if you could ONLY shoot it on surfaces plastered with ground up moon rock paste. So this one can be used on any flat surface large enough for a stable portal. Also, for the truly adventurous you will get a pair of "Longfall" boots so you don't splat the first time you try using the gun.

So.. Now that you HAVE the gun, and the boots, what SCIENCE will be done, with your neat gun?

[Zor]

Well the science spheres did have chambers made before Cave got on his Moonrock fixation.

Zor

[Napoleon the Clown]

Have it mass produced so that people far more clever than I can use it to solve all kinds of problems. And so that people for more sinister than I can figure out ways to kill people with it. I'm sure the military would pay a pretty penny for something that they could use as an easy means to quickly transport munitions and troops.

[The Vortex Empire]

Get NASA to build a vacuum chamber with an airlock, shoot one end of the portal into the chamber, go outside, get it aligned and shoot the other end at the Moon/Mars/wherever else. Begin dirt-cheap exploration and colonization.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Oh I forgot to add, it Can NOT be reversed engineered or duplicated, any attempt to take it apart will have it vanish in a cloud of pixie dust.

[Zixinus]

Oh I forgot to add, it Can NOT be reversed engineered or duplicated, any attempt to take it apart will have it vanish in a cloud of pixie dust.

Or a explosion as the miniature black hole inside of it brakes containment.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Use it to set up a perpetual motion machine. Arrange a pair of portals at either end of a vertical magnetic coil and drop a large ferrous mass through it. Let it keep falling until it reaches terminal veolcity and hook it up to the national grid and sell infinite elecricity and become rich.

However, if my memory of electric fields from five years back is wrong, feel free to correct me

[Me2005]

Get NASA to build a vacuum chamber with an airlock, shoot one end of the portal into the chamber, go outside, get it aligned and shoot the other end at the Moon/Mars/wherever else. Begin dirt-cheap exploration and colonization.

I may be wrong (or it may be allowed within the context of this discussion), but I don't think the surface that the portal is on can be moving. Or rather, the surfaces of the portals cannot be moving relative to each other.

That doesn't stop you from creating a smallish spacecraft and using the portals similar to how Eternal_Freedom plans to use them to get up to escape velocity though. Shoot, you could put satellites into orbit without rockets if you did the math right. They'd have to be man-sized to fit, but if you put a few people/robots up there to assemble parts you launched, you could build anything.

Not sure what use would be most profitable, putting two portals in very high-transit areas (say, London-New York or New York-LA) and charging a nominal fee for instant two-point global (or national) transportation & shipping, using it to generate power, or using it to put stuff into space. Pending research into how much using it for transportation would earn me, I'd probably figure out a way to mine gold/precious materials (Ala the various Discovery series' - probably in the jungle) while simultaneously generating power - they mostly just pump water around in all the shows, and I could do that while generating hydro power. Once that was going, I'd start using the profits to build infrastructure improvements in whatever country I'm operating in, while diversifying my portfolio by building up industry there.

Once I'm done doing that, I'd use my profits from the other business while using the portals to kick-start the space age. Hopefully I can figure out a worthwhile power system while I'm using the portal to launch stuff, since I likely won't be able to do both at the same time.

[Zor]

Get NASA to build a vacuum chamber with an airlock, shoot one end of the portal into the chamber, go outside, get it aligned and shoot the other end at the Moon/Mars/wherever else. Begin dirt-cheap exploration and colonization.

I may be wrong (or it may be allowed within the context of this discussion), but I don't think the surface that the portal is on can be moving. Or rather, the surfaces of the portals cannot be moving relative to each other.

Spoiler

You are wrong, Portal 2 ended with Chell shooting a portal onto the moon to shoot wheatley into space

Zor

[bilateralrope]

Why do people think the normal portal gun only works on surfaces prepared with moon rocks ?

The old test chambers pre-date the moon landing. Not only does the portal gun still work on them, it works on concrete outside the test chambers. So even if the test chambers were renovated to use moon paste, you can't justify covering the non-test chamber surfaces.

Cave only ever said that moon dust is an excellent portal conductor. Meaning it's not the only one, and might not even be the best possible choice.

[ryacko]

Get NASA to build a vacuum chamber with an airlock, shoot one end of the portal into the chamber, go outside, get it aligned and shoot the other end at the Moon/Mars/wherever else. Begin dirt-cheap exploration and colonization.

I may be wrong (or it may be allowed within the context of this discussion), but I don't think the surface that the portal is on can be moving. Or rather, the surfaces of the portals cannot be moving relative to each other.

Spoiler

You are wrong, Portal 2 ended with Chell shooting a portal onto the moon to shoot wheatley into space

Zor

I don't consider Portal 2 to be canon.

What would happen if you opened a portal between Boston (sea level) and Mexico City (elev. 8000+ feet)?
—Jake G.
Bernoulli’s principle gives us this estimate of the air flow rate:
Flow rate= 440 mph
That’s fast enough to strip up the pavement from a parking lot. I suggest we put it in Kendall Square—the MIT folks are probably used to dealing with this kind of thing.

That's from XKCD what-if.
Simplest perpetual motion machine imaginable. Just stick a turbine next to it and blam, free energy.

[Terralthra]

Spoiler

You are wrong, Portal 2 ended with Chell shooting a portal onto the moon to shoot wheatley into space

Zor

I don't consider Portal 2 to be canon.

Tough shit?

[Ahriman238]

Haven't we had this thread before?

Well my answer remains the same as Eternal_Freedom's, perpetual motion electric generator. Unless all of us get a portal gun, in which case I suggest we pool our resources to build the most lucrative transportation company in human history.

[Sea Skimmer]

You might make more money using the portals as the worlds cheapest and longest oil pipeline then as a wind or water energy generator. The SCIENCE shall come from all the crap you didn't kill to build a real pipeline. Plus after you build up enough money, then you can have a moon base built out of poured concrete.

[Carinthium]

I'm not sure if it's cheating because I didn't think of it first, but with the benefit of what I know on this thread definitely attempt a perpetual motion-generator at first (then oil pipeline later when my sucess is more publicised).

Otherwise, it's a tricky question as I consider the arguments about teleportation worth taking seriously and hence don't want to send myself through. I don't have such qualms about others though- so if I get an ally I could use it for crimes nobody will believe happened. (There's no real equiviliant to L to conclude about the supernatural) To be safe, I plan my crimes so that 'reasonable doubt' will always come into it in court.

[ryacko]

Arguably the best thing to do with the portal gun (assuming it isn't nationalized by the US government (or whatever you're enslaved to) to either A take apart, or B, conquer the world), would be to offer it for private bidding.

The free market would be able to come up with the best use for it.

Although no matter how big the portal is, it probably would be the most efficient as some sort of perpetual motion generator, assuming it would be easily feasible to do so.

[amigocabal]

Arguably the best thing to do with the portal gun (assuming it isn't nationalized by the US government (or whatever you're enslaved to) to either A take apart, or B, conquer the world), would be to offer it for private bidding.

The free market would be able to come up with the best use for it.

Although no matter how big the portal is, it probably would be the most efficient as some sort of perpetual motion generator, assuming it would be easily feasible to do so.

And that is a key phrase.

An object that passes through the portal to reach a higher elevation would have more GPE on the other side. if CoME applies, then the energy to traverse the portal has to come from somewhere, either from the objects own kinetic energy upon entry (if the object enters the portal, it exits the portal with less momentum) or the portal itself (which could close the portal if a massive enough object tries to gain enough elevation).

Note that if CoME applies, it would also apply to objects using the portal to reach a lower elevation, with the object having less GPE on the other side, and the excess energy either being dissipated as heat, changed into kinetic energy ( thus causing the object to exit the portal with more momentum than it entered), stored into the portal itself, or some combination of the three.

[Terralthra]

Objects retain exactly the momentum coming out that they do going in. This is said (if garbled) during Portal 1.

[Eternal_Freedom]

In layman's terms, "Speedy thing goes in, speed thing coms out."

Which is why the perpetual motion machine idea works. If the momentum had to come from somewhere my infinite electrical generator wouldn't be infinite.

[amigocabal]

Objects retain exactly the momentum coming out that they do going in. This is said (if garbled) during Portal 1.

Was it ever said if any energy was drained from the portal itself when an object passes up? Or, if it passes down, the portal absorbs part of the GPE deficit, with the rest being expelled as heat?

[Terralthra]

No, but you can test part of that hypothesis in the game by creating an infinite vertical portal set, falling through it, and walking away from the computer for a day. Neither side ices over nor heats up noticeably, and it would simply by inefficiencies in heat transfer.

[ryacko]

No, but you can test part of that hypothesis in the game by creating an infinite vertical portal set, falling through it, and walking away from the computer for a day. Neither side ices over nor heats up noticeably, and it would simply by inefficiencies in heat transfer.

In all fairness, Valve isn't renown for their physics games.