Good to know: no time travel.
 

From the Q&A

Question: Are there any limitations on touching or hitting the rack while hurtling?

Answer: Restrictions on contact between the Robot and the Overpass are defined in Rule <G34>.

Restrictions on contact between the Robot and The Rack are much more severe, as they would have to involve reverse time travel.

Re: Good to know
 

Robots designed to contact the rack while hurdling will invite extra scrutiny at inspection. If you use a flux capacitor make certain it is a COTS component, or that you fabricate it from COTS materials.

Re: Good to know
 

You could always just go to Pit Admin and ask if any other teams have one. I still laugh whenever I'm reminded of the team that did that in Houston in 2003.

Re: Good to know
 

Remember, "you don't just walk into a store and buy plutonium!" :ahh: If your "sponsor" provides you with plutonium, they have to be willing to provide it to all FIRST Teams. :eek:

Re: Good to know
 

What's the acceleration needed to get to 88mph in 50 feet? And the plutonium is easy to get around, all you need is a lightning bolt every match so you can get that 1.21 jigawatts of energy (though you still need to get it from an approved supplier).

Re: Good to know
 

A) the GDC has a great sense of humor sometimes =]

B) Back to the future rocks hardcore!!! :cool:

Re: Good to know
 

that's what the prototype is for - you can use whatever materials you want on it (even those from an unapproved supplier) - jump into the future and buy a cold fusion conversion kit from an approved supplier (after all, they'd clearly be willing tosell to any first team that wanted to purchase from them). Then you can just burn up a battery to power the robot..

After all, the rule states that all your power come from the 12V battery, but it doesn't say *how* you extract energy from it.

Re: Good to know
 

You'd need a constant acceleration of 50.77 m/s² (5.178 g) for 0.645 sec to go from 0 m/s to 39.34 m/s (88mph) in 15.24 m (50ft).

Re: Good to know
 

No problem, just bring back a Mr. Fusion

Re: Good to know
 

Roughly 5 G's...No problem, who hid the jet engine?:D:rolleyes:

Re: Good to know
 

If you're worried about it passing inspection, why don't you just travel to the future and see if the inspectors will clear it?
Hmm, actually, if you're already in the future, you may as well see who wins nationals and see if it is worth it to keep working (yeah, right - like anyone's going to pass up building a robot). Then again, if you are skilled enough to build a time machine, then beating Overdrive should be a piece of cake.
One piece of advice - make sure that if you go to the past, be sure to have a backup in case you go to a time before Exide batteries were invented (otherwise you'll have to go through the business of stealing a train and all that business).

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

Just one question:
How does one get back on track with the thread topic?
or
Are we already?

Edit: well, 2 questions...maybe...

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

We never left the track. (This thread is kind of a joke. We need the humor around here...)

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

I know -
this could be the thread that never ends....unless it is derailed.

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

Hmm lets see...

Does anyone remember a team coming out of the future and running into the rack? I know I don't, which should prove that time travel will not happen at any of the FIRST competitions that we remember, in this time line at least.

Maybe one of these days we'll get a flux capacitor in the KOP. I'm going to bet that would have some very strict rules on it.

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

It's too bad we didn't get one this year, as this is my last as a student, and I'd love to be able to program one of those bad boys!

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

Even still, a flux capacitor needs 1.21 gigawatts of electricity (I looked it up) to operate; Our KOP would need to need to provide some sort of Power of Kits.

Re: Good to know
 

It would be awesome if you went to the future and found out you were going to win. Then you could just sit back and relax for the rest of build season, since you will win anyway.

Sure, causality will collapse and space-time would probably rip apart, but who really cares?

Also, concerning the plutonium, remember that it should be available at every corner store. Also suicide booths should be legal. And where's our space base?

Re: Good to know
 

I would... but it's not available for pick-up till after The Championship Event this year... This is very annoying. I'm looking into getting it expedited though.

<crosses fingers> :cool:

Re: Good to know
 

That would be team 11 :rolleyes:

Re: Good to know
 

Bah. Go to the future, find out next year's game, and astound everyone as you decode the clues.

I think the point of this thread is that you can't get back ...

Hey, be nice to those Pit Admins. I know one of them quite well this year. There's a reason why they put non-tech people there - the techs are all busy doing techie things, like inspections and making the field work.

Beside, from what I remember of Houston (from the FLL corner) any pit announcements were more like annoying noise than information. Most people probably didn't hear the joke.

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

I suspect that 832 did it, but the Head Ref was never able to confirm that. Anyway, they didn't get penalized.

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

Why not go to the past with this year's game video and show it to yourself. That way you would already have your robot done before the game began. But isn't there some sort of rule against that? Oh well, who cares about rules?:p

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

Come someone tell me what The Rack is btw?? Wasn't that last year?? Did they actually mean Track, or is this really a time travel back to 2007's game kind of clue???


Anywho... I believe Rule <T01> disqualifies a team who uses the the space/time continuum to extend build season more than 6 weeks anyways.
I'm sure maybe a team update will come out (some time in the future...*) to include time during the game to be covered under this rule as well. :p








*Not that I have actually USED the space/time continuum and have any insider knowledge of said team update... but.. ya know... just sayin' there may or may not be one. ;)

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

It's all rumor and innuendo. As coach of 832 I neither confirm or deny the existence of time travel. It is a secret weapon after all!:cool:

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

Please direct your attention to my signature, I think it raises a very valid question on this topic.

We're Back in Blue
2054 Big Blue Crew!

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

Other than to go back (less than a year) and buy a lottery ticket, why would you want to go back in time to 2008?
What purely awesome thing has happened so far this year that you would pick 2008 as your year to go back to compared to every other year something cool (or bad that you would want to try and prevent ala' the movie Timecop, or the TV series Quantum Leap) has happened?

Unless you're a New England Patriots fan (lame), I don't personally see anything worth visiting so far in '08. :p

And if you invented Time Travel, would you even be the type of person to even care about something like Football?

Seriously.. I'd rather go forward in time.

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

If Mankind was ever going to discover time travel...wouldn't we be seeing people from the future today?

How do you know you're not? You can't expect time travelers to advertise themselves. It's against Union rules!

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

If someone invented time travel...

and went back in time to accomplish something, and did it...

Then, in the present, they wouldn't have a reason to invent time travel...

And thus, wouldn't invent time travel...

And thus, the task the person accomplished wasn't completed...

so they invented invent time travel...

and went back in time to accomplish something, and did it...

Then, in the present, they wouldn't have a reason to invent time travel...

And thus, wouldn't invent time travel...

And thus, the task the person accomplished wasn't completed...

so they invented invent time travel...

and went back in time to accomplish something, and did it...

Then, in the present, they wouldn't have a reason to invent time travel...

And thus, wouldn't invent time travel...

And thus, the task the person accomplished wasn't completed...

so they invented invent time travel...

Re: Good to know
 

Getting 1.21 jigawatts of energy would be considerably difficult considering Watts is a measurement of power :p

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

Unless of course through time travel you create a new time line, not modify your own. Then you return to your original time line as you left it, only with one more alternate universe out there when when you left.

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

But that deals with quantum phys-- ooh, shiny objects.

Think about it this way, though. We know that the Flux Capacitor works in one universe, and doesn't cross through them. We see this demonstrated when Doc writes that letter for Marty and Marty gets it hundreds of years later or whatever. Either the person achieves their task in this universe and falls into a paradox, or they find a way to open a wormhole to another universe where they complete their task, but they don't get the satisfaction of people in their home universe knowing what they did. Also, going from universe to universe damages the integrity of the space/time continuum, if I recall correctly.

Also, I don't think you'd want to create a NEW universe. That might be kind of hard. Now, you COULD access a parallel universe, which would be a much more viable and achievable option. In that case, I'll let you use my garage (I'm convinced there's a quantum hole somewhere, my mom hit her rear view mirror on the edge of the door, some plastic flew off and then the chip disappeared and the mirror was fine).

Re: Good to know
 

Indeed, but it isn't that hard to get 1.21 gigawatts of power either. All you need is an 80" OD cylinder with 1" walls that weighs 120lbs and spin it up to a measly ten million rpm. The cylinder is then storing about 10 gigajoules of energy... just deliver that energy in the right time and you have 1.21 gigawatts of power... By an amazing coincidence that flywheel seems to follow the weight limit and <R16> rules; I had better get working on this, don't want to get left in the future.

Re: Good to know: no time travel.
 

There's also the theory that the mechanics of time travel would erase any knowledge you may posses about the future, sorta like a cosmic safety switch to prevent paradoxes...

Oh, and don't forget, only living organic material would survive the journey, so you'd better not travel to nationals... It'd be pretty embarrassing to show up in the middle of the finals on the overpass stark naked...

Re: Good to know
 

Good luck to you with this project. You're going to need it.

Besides the obvious challenges of accelerating, stabilizing, and recovering energy from this 80" hula-hoop-of-death, you'll need to find a material that can withstand the hoop stress without flying apart .

Also, since the surface of your hoop will be cooking along at a just over one meter per microsecond, you'll need to refigure your energy calcs to account for special relativity. That speed is significant with respect to c.

Assuming you overcome all of the challenges, please don't present this device for inspection at a FIRST event -- good volunteers are hard enough to find without having to worry that one of our inspectors might fall into a wormhole. :eek:

Re: Good to know
 

Quote "Bah. Go to the future, find out next year's game, and astound everyone as you decode the clues."

Clever! Devilishy clever!

Still, I don't know why you would need to go through the trouble to make your robot go through time (that requires dealing with FIRST regulations). If you have the technology, just make a team time machine for everyday use - you get the benefit and all that you have to do is deal with the US safety codes (or else conduct it in secret, which is in my mind a much better choice).