A Futuristic household convience for you (RAR!)

[Hawkwings]

Hmm, what would be more useful for spaceflight? You could have a "transfer ship" on an elliptical orbit that dipped under 200km every day/week or so and send up 400kg or stuff (or maybe 800kg depending on the timing). The limitation being that stuff sent up can only be about a meter wide max. So you're not going to be building any space stations with this, it'd be for supplies, people, etc.

The Boti shed would have to be launched into space physically, but it can carry a shitload more things. Unfortunately the doorway is only 1m x 2m so again you run into the size limitation. Inflatable space station modules might be possible with this. Still, with the amount of stuff you can cram into a storage shed of that size I'm sure smart people could figure something out. Or for a Mars mission, outfit the shed with everything needed to keep a crew alive. Then put the shed in a bigass rocket (with a small cockpit and whatnot, gotta see where we're going!) and boost your way to Mars. The shed would just keep its door open the whole time, and be the "living quarters" and "cargo storage" of a minimal Mars ship. Run some cables and you've got electricity and communications inside.

The recycler would be great for long-term space living. Astronauts have to collect all their waste anyways, just feed it into the machine. It would make a trip to Mars much easier, especially if it could produce fuel of some sort.

Of course, with all three... you could teleport the boti shed up to low orbit into a transfer ship, then meet another spacecraft at the apogee of the orbit, move the shed over, and find the recycler inside, along with a ton of supplies and materials.

[tortieconspiracy]

For me, it's a toss up between the Boti Shed and the recycler. Right off the top, though, the Boti shed would save me about $225/month in storage unit rent and make the contents of said unit easier for me to access so I could sell it off or use it. I could also turn it into craft and library space. There's about a ton of books in this place that need somewhere to go, not to mention my yarn stash...

I could also get good use out of the recycler. I could hook it up to the soil pipe in the basement to take care of biological waste, and I've got a lot of paper and plastic waste that I'd love to turn into something useful.

I don't have a commute to speak of currently, so I don't think I'd have much use for the displacer disks and there's the security issues that other people have brought up. I may have an advantage on the security front though. My house has an entrance vestibule. If I replace the inner door with a security door with peephole, I have a way of containing anyone who got a hold of the away disk. Just put the home disk in the vestibule.

[Count Chocula]

#2, definitely. I have a 6-year-old, 'nuff said. The Boti Shed would just be a big-ass temptation for me to put all the useless shit in my garage and attic in a place I could ignore it until the heat death of the universe. But it's oh so tempting.

[Sky Captain]

Difficult to choose.

1. I live in a large house so storage space is not an issue. Shed is also too big to inconspicuously hide in a car, it could attract attention when used to smuggle stuff. Smuggling illegal stuff could be very profitable, but there is high chance of getting caught. If getting caught when doing conventional smuggling is bad then getting caught when smuggling stuff with a help of what probably would be considered alien technology would be much worse.

2. If only it could process metals and electronic junk I would take Recycler without a second thought. Imagine feeding it with electronic garbage aquired for free and getting out a high end laptop, DSLR, smartphone or any other small size high value perfectly legally sellable electronics device. ALso running such small scale business would carry very low risk since there is nothing illegal in it and I could easily hide Recycler in my garden shed behind all sorts of worthless junk where it would attract no attention.

3. As with Boti Shed the most profitable application of teleportation device would be smuggling illegal stuff howewer risk of getting in trouble is very high. I have no idea what the real world inplications would be if getting caught when smuggling stuff with some sort of magic teleportation device.

[Purple]

I had to go with the shed simply because it has limitless potential for free and unrestricted expression.

For example I could smuggle stuff and newer get caught. Just pack the thing full of merchandise, lock it and send the key via mail to my home while I travel with it on an airplane. The police will scan the thing a million times over but since they won't be able to open it and it looks to small to hide anything of value they will have to let me go.

It also has use in normal robberies as I could just pack it full of stuff when no camera is looking and walk out. Who is going to stop me if they can't even open the box. And even if they do, is anyone going to believe them that the criminal stuffed a magical box full of goods and ran off?

Another good use is for being a psycho killer. I could drag my helpless victims inside the thing torture and in the end murder them without leaving a trace. Later I can like rent a boat and empty them into the ocean or something.

The thing is just amazing.

[Coalition]

One idea might be using the Teleporter to change the airlines or other transportation industries. No more waiting in line to sit in a cramped metal tube, you just step through a series of Teleporter booths (arranged in a layout to help people get anywhere easily) to get to your destination.

Buses drop in necessity, as Greyhound drops Teleporter booths in all the small towns it no longer needs to service. If you want to go to the town, you just step into the appropriate booth, and you get teleported over.

Instead of a company needing to have Teleporter booths at their cubicles for all its employees, they head to the local Teletransit pod, and start popping over to their job. It also improves security, as the company doesn't have to worry about someone getting to a Teleporter pod, and either getting inside the building, or just popping from one pod to the next, robbing houses.

[Zor]

One idea might be using the Teleporter to change the airlines or other transportation industries. No more waiting in line to sit in a cramped metal tube, you just step through a series of Teleporter booths (arranged in a layout to help people get anywhere easily) to get to your destination.

You only get two.

Zor

[LaCroix]

The Displacement pads are nice, but too limited. If there were a Space station in a geosynchronous orbit at ~200km where you could place one of the pads, it would be feasible. The station needs to be big, so smaller rockets and satellites would be assembled there and sent on their way. Have fun dealing with state-funded agencies. They probably would just take them from you. They might even pay you.

The recycler is a great thing to create business around. Although you have only about 1000 household items in store.

Set up shop near a waste dump. Build conveyor belts to put stuff into a grinder and fed it to the thing via the waste tube.
Then let it produce things.You could let it make needles by the ton and sell it to iron plants as raw material. Or toy dinosaurs - have them shred and analyzed, and people can use them as raw material. There might be something in the list that is mostly made of copper... It really makes money out of waste, but is too small/slow as to attract too much attention from the outside.

Best, in my opinion would be the Boti shed.

I'd let someone fill it to the brim with goods, then take a flight to the destination wanted, and there it will be unloaded. International transport never was easier, cheaper and faster. That's about 1350 m³ of storage space moved at the price of a plane ticket. Be sure to use private jets to keep it away from baggage handlers...

[Hawkwings]

Geosync orbits are 42,000 km up or so. 200km is dangerously low, as you're getting drag off the atmosphere and have to keep boosting to stay up.

[someone_else]

Geosync orbits are 42,000 km up or so. 200km is dangerously low, as you're getting drag off the atmosphere and have to keep boosting to stay up.

if you can send up 400 kg of fuel every 10 minutes, this concern is lessened.

[Hawkwings]

You can't though. For one, geosynchronous orbit must be 42,000 km up. You can't have a geosynchronous orbit anywhere else, that's how gravity and orbits work.

Assuming a circular orbit 200km above the surface, that satellite would need to be going at 7.8km/s to stay up. This means a complete orbit around the earth about every 90 minutes. Doing some quick research, apparently the ISS, with a orbit about 350km up, loses about 100m of altitude every day. So you could transfer fuel up to boost, but just not continuously.

Problem is that a 200km orbit isn't that useful. What would be more useful is a highly elliptical transfer orbit that dips down below 200km every 24 hours, so every day at the same time you could send 400kg of fuel + cargo up. Most satellites weight more than that though, so you'd be sending up microsats probably. Which is still useful, just not as useful. With an elliptical transfer orbit that gets up to 20,500 km, about the altitude of GPS satellites, it'll swing back around under 200km every six hours. So every fourth orbit you can send up more cargo for it to carry. Still absurdly useful, but not a replacement for big rockets carrying big heavy satellites.

[Simon_Jester]

The Boti shed would have to be launched into space physically, but it can carry a shitload more things. Unfortunately the doorway is only 1m x 2m so again you run into the size limitation.

You can have a bunch of ten meter steel girder frames that are less than a meter across. Carry them in through the door, stack them lengthwise, and haul them out one at a time.

The size constraint is inconvenient, but believe me the engineers responsible for this kind of thing would be happy to design their hardware to that size constraint if it meant they could put nigh-unlimited amounts of tonnage into orbit/on the moon/whatever.

[Crossroads Inc.]

The Weight nullification and nigh impervious "shielding" of the boti shed makes it invaluable for another aspect of "getting things into orbit" namely nuclear components.

Nuclear heat piles have always been the best source of energy for long duration space exploration in the solar systems. There doesn't need to be a lot of shielding since its all out in space after all. but its nearly impossible to launch them these days because, one, they are very VERY heavy, and two, people through an absolute hissy fit about the possibility of nuclear radiation going all over if the rocket blows up.

The more it is considered, the more the Boti shed would totally revolutionize space exploration and research. I mean ye gods the application for getting building materials into space alone is staggering.

[Purple]

You are all forgetting that you only get one and can't replicate it. Well not unless you are Q him self. The OP even says that you can't even understand how the thing works other than what is written in the manual. So there is really no way to revolutionize space travel other than one ship at a time.

[Simon_Jester]

The Weight nullification and nigh impervious "shielding" of the boti shed makes it invaluable for another aspect of "getting things into orbit" namely nuclear components.

Doesn't that create the risk of irradiating the interior of the shed, reducing its usefulness for other purposes? Then again, you can always shield your RTG fuel in a few thousand kilos of lead bricks as long as it's in the shed, I guess.

You are all forgetting that you only get one and can't replicate it. Well not unless you are Q him self. The OP even says that you can't even understand how the thing works other than what is written in the manual. So there is really no way to revolutionize space travel other than one ship at a time.

That's good enough to be worth quite a bit of money.

[Zixinus]

The Recycler.

It sure as hell would cut down on waste and widen my dinner diet. Would have a problem placing it in my flat, but meh: it's awesome.

[PREDATOR490]

2 - Allows you to lower living costs considerably with all the stuff it can make. All of a sudden waste = stuff you can use again and negate having to go out and buy so much.

1 - Meh, if it was actually a complete home like the TARDIS then that would be hilarious. Then again living in this thing could be a really bad idea if someone on the outside decided to move it with you in it...
If you had the recycler AND this you could store the recycler inside and use the room to store the products like a pocket factory but otherwise. Only useful if you happen to collect lots of stuff that needs stored.

3 - Teleportation, no thanks. The range is pretty weak and requires you to physically place the other pad at the destination before use.

[Ariphaos]

I'd go with the shed.

The recycler is awesome but it's also the most likely to have a pretty close analogue over the next century. We can break things down and make simple junk with fabbers as is - it's probably smaller, and more versatile than future recyclers will probably be, but not all that special in the long run.

The shed on the other hand is small enough that it will fit nicely in my truck, and I could carry everything I own - or plan to own - inside, except my vehicle and domicile.

[DudeGuyMan]

Any of the three, though I picked the shed.

I demonstrate it, I put it up for sale, I collect a billion dollars, and I let some tech company figure out that it's unduplicatable while I sit on my tropical island filled with naked women.

[Coyote]

The Recycler, although the Boti Shed is really, really tempting as well.

But with the Recycler, I can feed in all the household crap that collected up around me and reclaim some living space-- but then, if I needed that household crap again, I just have the Recycler re-make it. Meanwhile, I can enjoy some fairly guilt-free Green living. 1,000 household items covers quite a lot of possibilities, too... if it can make minor spare parts for machinery, then no more worries about, say, oil or fuel filters and batteries for my motorcycle, perhaps. Or better yet, oil and gas. That will save me a ton of money.

The Recycler would basically free me from a lot of financial expenditures. I could even make a ton of money, with "Drop off your used tires/batteries/household chemical waste here" services being offered for cheap, while helping keep this stuff out of landfills.

The Boti Shed rocks, but instead of efficiently storing stuff (which encourage some to get more stuff) I'd rather just get rid of it and have the ability to bring it back later. Although I suppose you could also bury the Boti Shed and use it as a hideaway or disaster shelter, which might be useful in limited circumstances.

[aussiemuscle308]

so, Zor has had his sugar for today...
i think #1 will be necessary in the future to fit all the people into the city.
number 2 is only a few years away with things like 3d printers.
3 is just a transporter pad right? it'd be handy if you live in the burbs and wanted a quick way to work.

[DudeGuyMan]

Yeah until someone at work steals the receiving pad and tries to sell it for a billion dollars because holy shit you're using crazy sci-fi technology for a ridiculously mundane purpose.

[Guardsman Bass]

Yeah until someone at work steals the receiving pad and tries to sell it for a billion dollars because holy shit you're using crazy sci-fi technology for a ridiculously mundane purpose.

That's why I asked if Q put some rule on whether or not other people notice your spiffy new technology. If you got the pads, you could probably turn around and sell them to the highest bidder for a ludicrous amount of money, and then laugh your way to the bank as they try and flounder at duplicating the technology.

[Zor]

Set up shop near a waste dump. Build conveyor belts to put stuff into a grinder and fed it to the thing via the waste tube.
Then let it produce things.You could let it make needles by the ton and sell it to iron plants as raw material. Or toy dinosaurs - have them shred and analyzed, and people can use them as raw material. There might be something in the list that is mostly made of copper... It really makes money out of waste, but is too small/slow as to attract too much attention from the outside.

It can not process anything more than trace amounts of metals.

Zor