How easy is it actually to reverse engineer a UFO?

[Dryson]

Where would you start in salvaging a UFO?

The insides or metallic alloy hull?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Where would you start in salvaging a UFO?

The insides or metallic alloy hull?

That's a very good question. If it were me in charge I'd actually start on the outer shell of the hull first and work slowly in from there.

 

[Swedish Borg]

The first thing you should make sure of is that it isn't rigged to explode in case of tampering.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The first thing you should make sure of is that it isn't rigged to explode in case of tampering.

Eh....... You have to take risks in science. First we crack the shell then we see what's inside.

 

[Non Sync]

First, you need to figure out the whole system. Existing terrestrial spacecraft uses some pretty toxic materials.

 

[dupersuper]

Where would you start in salvaging a UFO?

The insides or metallic alloy hull?

Assuming it is a metallic alloy...

 

[Swedish Borg]

First, you have to know what kind of limbs the extraterrestrials have. If they are octopuses with a ten-finger hand at the end of each limb the controls could be hard to use..

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Well what are the odds any landing or crashed spaceship would have an organic hull?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

It might be made from programmable matter or similar nanotech.

 

[Swedish Borg]

It might be made from programmable matter or similar nanotech.

Or the hull could be made of neutronium, even in the 24th century there's nothing that can go through these.

 

[Santaman]

Neutronium is a non material.. unless your ship is a neutron star which would make flying around the universe quite challenging to say the least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutronium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron-degenerate_matter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star#Mass_and_temperature

A neutron star is so dense that one teaspoon (5 milliliters) of its material would have a mass over 5.5×1012 kg, about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza. In the enormous gravitational field of a neutron star, that teaspoon of material would weigh 1.1×1025 N, which is 15 times what the Moon would weigh if it were placed on the surface of the Earth.

 

[Swedish Borg]

Neutronium is a non material.. unless your ship is a neutron star which would make flying around the universe quite challenging to say the least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutronium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron-degenerate_matter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star#Mass_and_temperature

The doomsday machine had a hull made of neutronium which is why the Enterprise's weapons couldn't even make a dent in it.

 

[Santaman]

So Trek universe neutronium would be a mixture of papier mache, chicken wire, some plastic/Bondo and/or fabric, possibly some wood and a few cans of paint.

 

[Swedish Borg]

So Trek universe neutronium would be a mixture of papier mache, chicken wire, some plastic/Bondo and/or fabric, possibly some wood and a few cans of paint.

Actually, it's the toughest substance to cut through.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

You seem to be having difficulty differentiating between fiction and reality.

 

[Swedish Borg]

You seem to be having difficulty differentiating between fiction and reality.

Aren't you the one who talked about programmable matter?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

It might be made from programmable matter or similar nanotech.

That would be Booker's ship crashing in Washington DC haha.

 

[Tim Walker]

After moving craft to remote bunker/lab....

Begin examining exterior at macroscopic scale, by passive means. Start with visible light, then move onto to other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Repeat process at smaller scale.

One thing you are looking for is a hatch that will give you access to the interior.

 

[Swedish Borg]

Maybe it's a trap. Maybe the aliens put it there to catch humans the way we do with lobsters...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Aren't you the one who talked about programmable matter?

True but our ideas have moved on since 1960's Star Trek. Neutronium would go through a sudden phase change (actually explode) unless constrained by extreme pressure or gravity. Robert L Forward discussed encasing it in diamond but I'm not sure that would be strong enough to contain it. Nanoengineered materials seem much more versatile to me for constructing spacecraft hulls with the ability to make parts transparent, reconfigure them, toughen them, repair them and so on. Of course, this whole thread is really speculative fiction.

The term neutronium has been popular in science fiction since at least the middle of the 20th century, such as the Doomsday machine in Star Trek, or collapsium in H. Beam Piper's Terrohuman Future History novels. It typically refers to an extremely dense, incredibly strong form of matter. While presumably inspired by the concept of neutron-degenerate matter in the cores of neutron stars, the material used in fiction bears at most only a superficial resemblance, usually depicted as an extremely strong solid under Earth-like conditions, or possessing exotic properties such as the ability to manipulate time and space. In contrast, all proposed forms of neutron star core material are fluids and are extremely unstable at pressures lower than that found in stellar cores. According to one analysis, a neutron star with a mass below about 0.2 solar masses would explode.

Ref: Neutronium - Wikipedia

[astro-ph/9707230] The fate of a neutron star just below the minimum mass: does it explode? (arxiv.org)