All Questions
Tagged with engineering transportation
22 questions
10
votes
8
answers
2k
views
Ultra long distance oceanic travel
Many times, other people and I have thought of settings involving very large or infinite Earths- ringworlds, alderson discs, or simply an infinite flat plane. The task of traveling millions of ...
- 1,051
6
votes
9
answers
2k
views
How do (near future) people travel between floating islands?
In the near future, the surface of the Earth becomes magically unlivable. However, luckily for people, there are now magically floating islands in the skies (typically 5000-8000 feet above the surface)...
- 4,868
6
votes
6
answers
2k
views
How would a travelling civilisation mass produce products like computers and clothing? [closed]
Some info:
The civilisation travels in a magical, unpredictable, and irreversible way through a magical item. They can only travel from a world once, so they can't constantly bring items through ...
- 133
4
votes
1
answer
135
views
Space station maglev junction design
I'm designing a city building game in a huge 3D (without any notion of "top" or "bottom") space station (or rather, a space city). There are various functional buildings (vertices) ...
- 398
11
votes
8
answers
5k
views
The Topography of Madness: Why would my lighthouse be designed with noisy, maddening switches? [closed]
My world is dead and mostly unexplored. And at the end of the known world, there is a beacon which serves that singular purpose: warning anyone approaching that beyond this point, there is nothing ...
- 8,209
9
votes
7
answers
2k
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Super broad gauge railway vs double wide/multi track railway
So here's the scenario, a mad scientist has just managed to take over the continent on his campaign for world domination (which continent I will leave to your imagination but for simplicity lets say ...
- 439
4
votes
8
answers
752
views
How could a resistance movement sabotage a hyperloop?
In my setting, a futuristic North America, the hyperloop is a newfangled mode of long-distance transportation. Basically it's a vacuum tube at low friction and air resistance, which allows pods to ...
- 2,177
34
votes
28
answers
8k
views
Why would space traders pick up and offload their goods from an orbiting platform rather than direct to the planet?
I'm outlining some ideas for a game I'd like to write, that at its core is about interplanetary space-trading (amongst other things, but that's not relevant to the question).
For project-scope reasons ...
- 443
15
votes
7
answers
2k
views
How many refugees can I pack into a nuclear-powered version of the largest ship ever built?
Countryistan is a large island nation approximately 3,000 kilometers from the nearest landmass.
The government of Countryistan is secretly planning on committing genocide and ethnic cleansing against ...
- 13.2k
29
votes
7
answers
8k
views
Would rubber carriage wheels significantly improve the efficiency of horse-drawn carriage travel?
So, suppose a medieval society knows how to create vulcanized rubber. (As long as they have rubber sap, sulphur, and the recipe, it shouldn't be outside of their capabilities. The process is super ...
- 5,847
2
votes
3
answers
155
views
How could a 'reverse-stile' work? [closed]
How could a reverse stile, which is a gate that can be passed by hooved quadrupeds but not by humans, be built? The humans are modern humans, and will have the same equipment (limited to what they can ...
- 17k
1
vote
2
answers
270
views
How could the Kobold Cannon's munition work?
"That is a weapon, NOT a teleporter" - Samuel "Whyamieventrying"
Hayden
The concept is fairly simple. You have a crazy, but crazy talented kobold inventor with lots of spare time and junk. This ...
- 19.5k
18
votes
6
answers
6k
views
How can sapient beings engineer transportation and building when they can only count 0, 1 and many?
Imagine a species of humanoid beings living on an Earth-like planet somewhere in the universe; they have developed complex spoken and written languages and they can study their own anatomy and the ...
- 48.3k
24
votes
22
answers
8k
views
How to safely derail a train during transit?
Imagine a single, long, straight stretch of track. On the track there is a train heading in one direction at 100 km/h and a second train heading towards it at 200 km/h. The latter train is a special ...
- 6,788
4
votes
8
answers
597
views
Victorian long-distance express transport?
In my world, law enforcement is dispatched from the capital to places around the island.
The reason for them being dispatched in this fashion is due to there being few officers and the capital being ...
- 6,788