Re: Earth's tech level

[email removed] writes:
>
> Supposedly, they recently found that Anti-matter will become
> STABLE at temperatures close to absolute zero.  Yes!  It will NOT
> EXPLODE!  I believe they were talking about storing it in
> crystalline form at liquid helium temperatures.

And there you have it.  Dilithium crystals at TL 8.

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He also writes:
> Adrian, Bertil and others have been talking about if earth is
> TL 8 or not.

And, since GDW have changed the definition of TL 8, I now agree that it is.
(TL 8 means superconductors, which we do have.  It no longer means fusion
power and anti-grav, which we do not.)

> "A Scout crew, for example, would  take great intrest in whether
> the "low-tech" planet they were investigating could intercept
> them with a gun-armed ME-109, (sic) an F-12A multisonic
> interceptor carrying an air-to-air guided missile with a 5Kt.
> warhead or an SA-5 "Gammon ABM weapon with a 5 Megaton warhead
> (VERY interested), yet all three of these weapons are nominally
> tech 6!"
>
> 	"TL 6.0 would be equivanent to 1940-45, and would include
> "Little Boy" and prop driven monoplanes.

Well ... I'd say that prop driven monoplanes are TL 5, because they were
around in WW 1.  The Junkers F1, which came out in 1918, even had a metal
skin, thus winning the 1918 award for worst-timed innovation - a metal
fighter at a time when Germany was short of metal.  To me, TL 6 means jets,
and TL 6.0 means jets like the He 178 and Gloster Whittle.

> 	TL 6.1 would be 1945-50 and include "Fat Man", the first
> jets and V-2 class rocket weapons.

Agreed, with the exception that TL 6.1 means the first operational jets,
e.g. Me 262, Meteor and Shooting Star.

> >From the Ref's handbook:
> TL 4 =1900
> TL 5 =1930
> TL 6 =1950
> TL 7 =1970
> TL 8 =1990
> TL 9 =2010
>
> I personally disagree with the above.  In my opinion it
> should be:
> TL 4 =American Civil War
> TL 5 =World War I
> TL 6 =World War II through mid Korean War
> TL 7 =Mid Korea up to mid Vietnam War
> TL 8 =Late Vietnam war up to today

I'd say that WW1 marked the transition from TL 4 to TL 5, and WW 2 marked the
transition from TL 5 to TL 6.  Wars are great things for improving technology!
(Even if they aren't much good at anything else.)

>					According to COACC the F-14
> is a TL 8 aircraft (oops it was deployed in the early 70's!)
> The A-6, the A-10, the Harrier, the B-52, the Boeing 747, and
> many others are TL 8.  (The B-1 is TL 9) (sigh!)

The B-1 _looks_ TL 9, too!  But calling the B-52 TL 8 - that really shows
how much the definition of TL 8 has changed.  :-)

> No, I have'nt seen any Spinal mount partical accelerators in the
> world today, nor 250MW laser batteries, nor man portable laser
> weapons that can kill.

There was an article in a gun magazine some years ago about a laser rifle.
It caused quite a stir, to the point where the U.K. government got worried
because existing firearms legislation didn't cover something which didn't
fire a solid projectile.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be just an April Fool's hoax on the part of
the magazine!

As for particle accelerators and big lasers, I expect they are possible,
if someone put up the money.  It's small lasers that are the problem -
there is just no way today to have a portable power source which can put
out enough power to supply a laser weapon which can do more than blind
someone if it hits them square in the eye.

> Remember 2001?  we thought we were gonna have HAL in operation
> last sunday!  January 12th 1992!

And some people round here actually think they'd be told about it if such
a machine is developed.  :-)

> The point is that back when Trav came out, we thought technology
> was gonna go alot faster than it did.  (We also thought that the
> economy would keep us going at the rate we did!)  Let's face it,
> technology is not progressing at the rate it did back then.  Some
> of our top of the line fighter aircraft are 15-20 years old.

You think that's bad.  We've only recently finally got round to replacing
our Shackleton AEW aircraft, four-engined propellor types with radar going
back to WW2.

- --
 "Keyboard?  How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
 UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian     |  ARPA:   [email removed]