Starship Asterisk*

neufer wrote:

geckzilla wrote:
What if you increased the mass of the earth to the mass of the sun?

We would all be living on a white dwarf and I would be somewhat more degenerate than usual.

• Supposing you did Drain the Oceans, and dumped the water on top of the Curiosity rover,
  how would Mars change as the water accumulated? — Iain

• If you call a random phone number and say “God bless you”, what are the chances
  that the person who answers just sneezed? On average, not just in spring or fall. — Mimi

• If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn't be able to take off,
  what would the rope have to be made out of? — Connor Childerhose

• What if a huge mountain—Denali, say—had the bottom inch of its base disappear?
  What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? What about 1 foot?
  What if the mountain's base were raised to the present height of the summit,
  and then the whole thing were allowed to drop to the earth? — John-Clark Levin

• What if a spacecraft slowed down on re-entry to just a few miles per hour using rocket
  boosters like the Mars-sky-crane? Would it negate the need for a heat shield? — Brian
  
  Is it possible for a spacecraft to control its reentry in such a way that it avoids the atmospheric compression
  and thus would not require the expensive (and relatively fragile) heat shield on the outside? — Christopher Mallow
  
  Could a (small) rocket (with payload) be lifted to a high point in the atmosphere where
  it would only need a small rocket to get to escape velocity?— Kenny Van de Maele

• If you had a printed version of the whole of (say, the English) Wikipedia, how many printers
  would you need in order to keep up with the changes made to the live version? — Marein Könings

• If you could teleport to a random place of the surface of the Earth,
  what are the odds that you'll see signs of intelligent life? — Borislav Stanimirov

• How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? — Myrlin Barber

Beyond wrote:I liked the baseball at the speed of light link. One pitch and it's all over, for quite a ways. ing

Ann wrote:... I remember one poster saying (but in Swedish) "It is the velocity that kills you".

Isn't that true.

• What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated
  balloon? Then, while falling, I release the helium and fill the balloon. How long of a fall would
  I need in order for the balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely? — Colin Rowe

• If all digital data were stored on punch cards,
  how big would Google's data warehouse be? — James Zetlen