Day to day life in a countergravitic civilization (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario on an earth like planet in another universe have a civilization of humans like ours in most respects and at our level of technological development save for one area: 40 years ago a breakthrough in physics allowed them to build their first countergravity cell, after a decade of trial, refinement and factory development all the industrialized nations of this civilization was making extensive use this revolutionary technology.

Countergravity cells allow for the levitation of payloads up to 22km above sea level for marginal electrical energy costs. Countergravity cells are mechanically simple and remarkably reliable so long as they have enough power for them. The smallest countergravity cells are discs about 8cm across and 1 cm thick and are powerful enough to lift up to 15kgs while running on a couple of batteries. The largest cells are 10 meters across and have a similar lift capacity and energy consumption for their size.

How would the existence of this technology effect the day to day life of the average citizen, the way cities were laid out, the general economic situation and similar things?

Zor

[Simon_Jester]

"A similar lift capacity..." uh, does that scale linearly with the radius of the lift cell? With the square, as in the area of the circle? With the cube, as in the volume of the cell?

[madd0ct0r]

oooh the non war version of teleporters vs floaters?

[Borgholio]

Question - can a countergravity cell installed at a 45 degree angle be used to provide thrust? Or is strictly vertical?

[Zor]

"A similar lift capacity..." uh, does that scale linearly with the radius of the lift cell? With the square, as in the area of the circle? With the cube, as in the volume of the cell?

Volume of the cell. Mind you there are practical limits on how large you can build them. A cell with twice the volume than the largest one listed would cost about 10 times a much.

Question - can a countergravity cell installed at a 45 degree angle be used to provide thrust? Or is strictly vertical?

Strictly vertical and horizontal.

Zor

[phred]

Countergravity cells allow for the levitation of payloads up to 22km above sea level for marginal electrical energy costs.

So these thing are working against the gravity of the planet, as opposed to whatever the nearest surface is?

Well air travel just got a severe boost. I would imagine it would really change the way we move cargo around. You could have loading bays and storage of say your average grocery store up on the roof and an open area to lower the goods into the store. Same with any other large business that move a lot of products on a regular basis

[Borgholio]

Oh well if they work horizontal as well, I can see this revolutionizing transportation. Replace wheels with anti-grav on car, trucks and trains, that will allow for faster speed, heavier loads, greater fuel economy, and less wear and tear on the infrastructure. Ocean freighters will have an order of magnitude greater efficiency since they can skim the waves instead of having to plow through them, and they can carry greater loads. When an advanced enough AI is developed, we could eventually see multiple vertical lanes of traffic like on Coruscant.

The military would love this. Hovertanks would be far quieter and faster, plus land mines would be pretty much a thing of the past. Warships would probably become hovership destroyers similar to what we talked about in the flying aircraft carrier thread. The aircraft themselves would be able to VTOL perfectly with no need for catapults or runways. Helicopters would become a thing of the past.

[Simon_Jester]

"A similar lift capacity..." uh, does that scale linearly with the radius of the lift cell? With the square, as in the area of the circle? With the cube, as in the volume of the cell?

Volume of the cell. Mind you there are practical limits on how large you can build them. A cell with twice the volume than the largest one listed would cost about 10 times a much.

A ten-meter disk is 125 times wider than an eight-centimeter disk. It is therefore, uh... slightly less than two hundred thousand times more voluminous. It can therefore lift three thousand metric tons.

To be fair, this is about nine or ten tons per meter of surface area of the disk, so it could lift, say, a slab of rock equal to its own surface area and two meters thick. Impressive, but not preposterously so.

Moreover, there is no obvious reason why you can't just build two of these giant ten-meter disks and stack them on top of each other. In which case you get double the lifting capacity for twice the cost, not ten times the cost.

Question - can a countergravity cell installed at a 45 degree angle be used to provide thrust? Or is strictly vertical?

Strictly vertical and horizontal.

That's gibberish.

Two separate questions:
1) Can antigravity disks exert force in a direction OTHER than "straight up," opposite the direction of gravity?
2) Can the direction this force points be controlled by steering or rotating the disk?

[Batman]

"A similar lift capacity..." uh, does that scale linearly with the radius of the lift cell? With the square, as in the area of the circle? With the cube, as in the volume of the cell?

Volume of the cell. Mind you there are practical limits on how large you can build them. A cell with twice the volume than the largest one listed would cost about 10 times a much.

A ten-meter disk is 125 times wider than an eight-centimeter disk. It is therefore, uh... slightly less than two hundred thousand times more voluminous. It can therefore lift three thousand metric tons.
To be fair, this is about nine or ten tons per meter of surface area of the disk, so it could lift, say, a slab of rock equal to its own surface area and two meters thick. Impressive, but not preposterously so.
Moreover, there is no obvious reason why you can't just build two of these giant ten-meter disks and stack them on top of each other. In which case you get double the lifting capacity for twice the cost, not ten times the cost.

You should be able to do that already by using several platforms side by side. I mean how many cargos heavier than 3,000 metric tons have a footprint 'smaller' than 10x10 metres?

Question - can a countergravity cell installed at a 45 degree angle be used to provide thrust? Or is strictly vertical?

Strictly vertical and horizontal.

That's gibberish.
Two separate questions:
1) Can antigravity disks exert force in a direction OTHER than "straight up," opposite the direction of gravity?
2) Can the direction this force points be controlled by steering or rotating the disk?

I wouldn't go all the way to 'gibberish' but it 'is' a tad hard to decipher (assuming I got it right of course). 'Strictly vertical' presumably refers to the direction the countergravity works (you can move up and down in the gravity well) while 'strictly horizontal' refers to the platform's orientation required for it to work (so no, no sideways movement using the countergravity effect).

Of course that still leaves questions open-'can' you use multiple platforms in close proximity, either side by side or stacking them, and if so, to which extent? Does the platform have to have a clear line of sight to the surface or is it okay for there to be something (like another platform) in the way?

[Zor]

That's gibberish.

Just up and down. Damn edit.

Zor

[biostem]

One issue, though, is that, while these disks take care of lifting the weight, you'd still need practical, reliable, and safe methods of steering/stopping the load you're carrying. You could either treat all antigrav vehicles like aircraft, and make sure they have clear lanes of travel, or you could use the discs to take care of carrying the load, but still use robust wheels and brakes to take care of controlling the load.

This would also revolutionize personal transportation - you could basically have your own flying device - vertically oriented for shorter distance "urban" travel, and horizontally oriented for recreational sorts - use a small array of discs to take care of the load, then some small jets or propellers for thrust.

It'd also be interesting for shipping - outfit conventional cargo or tanker ships with these and use it to allow control over how deeply the ship sits in the water and/or even allow brief "skimming" over small sections of land - no need to go through the bottleneck of the Panama canal or such.

I could also see a form of scaffolding for construction - use some module discs to temporarily support a roof while you affix it to a building, or equip workers with discs linked to accelerometers which kick in if one should accidentally fall.

Heck - the flying aircraft carrier mentioned in another thread here may actually be feasible, (assuming a nuclear reactor would be sufficient to lift such a vessel).

[Simon_Jester]

Can you use multiple disks in close proximity to each other, and/or stacked on top of each other?

[Cykeisme]

Countergravity cells allow for the levitation of payloads up to 22km above sea level for marginal electrical energy costs. Countergravity cells are mechanically simple and remarkably reliable so long as they have enough power for them. The smallest countergravity cells are discs about 8cm across and 1 cm thick and are powerful enough to lift up to 15kgs while running on a couple of batteries. The largest cells are 10 meters across and have a similar lift capacity and energy consumption for their size.

When you say there's marginal electrical and energy costs, I assume you mean that the electrical energy is very efficiently turned into gravitational potential energy, and not outright violating conservation of energy, right?

If it circumvents the first law of thermodynamics, we'd have two other more important changes than transportation and military craft:
1) Limitless near-free electricity from power plants that, in essence, levitate and drop loads to run turbines.
2) Throwing out a big part of what we understand of physics.


Like biostem said, regardless of violation of CoE or not, the lines between air travel and maritime commercial shipping would start to blur.
We could have massive floating "ships" to carry vast quantities of cargo overland at relatively low altitudes, and designs with sufficient redundant backup systems (as these systems themselves are quite small and light) would be quite safe. Of course, without friction with anything except the atmosphere for slowing down, a lack of "braking" power could be risky in an emergency.. dropping land-anchors might work, but that in itself is a huge hazard in populated areas.
Thus, traffic control would have to be very strict and tightly regulated, possibly even more so than real-world air traffic control.

As for personal vehicles that can be owned and used by the public with minimal training (car analogues), it's probably too dangerous.. the standard reason why technology is not the only restriction on everyone having "flying cars". The safety-related responsibilities for piloting and performing maintenance on a vehicle like that would be increased at least an order of magnitude.

If they're more efficient than elevators (and certainly would be easier to set up, you don't need to set aside an elevator shaft with reinforced mounts for the motors at the top), that'd simplify design of buildings.
Aside from elevators, construction would be much easier as well.. even cranes would become obsolete.


Meanwhile, the military applications are fairly obvious. For one thing, the difference between tanks, helicopters, strategic bombers and air superiority fighters would be little more than the difference in total mass of the vehicle, and the ratio of mass given over to horizontal propulsion versus armor and ordnance.

[Zor]

Can you use multiple disks in close proximity to each other, and/or stacked on top of each other?

In proximity to each other yes, but not on top of each other.

Zor