Early and Late TL9

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Organs for transplant, if the recipient is far away from the best donor. Any perishable luxury good that you want to have very fresh. Also, transferring data between air-gapped servers might possibly be a reason, depending on tech assumptions (e.g. whether encryption or decryption is winning the race at the moment).

... or that.

Suborbital express mail periodically does come up in real-world descriptions of things that might actually have a market. It's certainly debatable, and I've seen articles debating it. Every few years a serious aviation company or government agency brings it up; in 2022 one of the Chinese aerospace agencies were talking it up. Given this real-world pedigree, I don't feel I should treat it any less seriously than many pure SF ideas that I've used. After all, the goal is not one future, but ideas that the GM can use to create any number of alternative possibilities, including divergent timelines.

[warellis]

You also see the US military wanting it for troop transportation (which then ignores the fact of how do you prevent troops from getting cutoff or overwhelmed because the force sent over wasn't big due to there being only so much space in the rocket).

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by warellis

You also see the US military wanting it for troop transportation (which then ignores the fact of how do you prevent troops from getting cutoff or overwhelmed because the force sent over wasn't big due to there being only so much space in the rocket).

The Air Force I think has as part of its special operations troops air traffic controllers. Step one, capture an airport.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

I'm not quite sure what you mean.

There have been multiple times when I discovered some thing listed in books as TL9+ was suddenly available for commercial sale at late tL8. Updating UT would require a lot of internet searching to catch those items.

Maybe some re-evaluation of TL9 performance too..

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

There have been multiple times when I discovered some thing listed in books as TL9+ was suddenly available for commercial sale at late tL8. Updating UT would require a lot of internet searching to catch those items.

Maybe some re-evaluation of TL9 performance too..

Could be. Other times I think I made TL9 too powerful!

For example, let's take a look at the Laser Microphone. The concept is certainly TL8, so the one in UT should be better. The standard model is 2.5 lbs. and has a range of 3000 yards; a more compact model is only 300 yards.

But the best laser microphone I've found at the moment at late TL8 is 20 lbs. and 500 yard range, and a lot of them are even bulkier! I wonder if I made the TL9 version too good to be realistic, even though lasers and processing algorithms *are* probably an order of magnitude superior?

One of the things is that there is rarely a bright line between TLs, and GURPS says as much. We are quite possibly already in early TL9 in some areas of technology. After all, many things have changed since the "start date" of TL8.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

But the best laser microphone I've found at the moment at late TL8 is 20 lbs. and 500 yard range, and a lot of them are even bulkier! I wonder if I made the TL9 version too good to be realistic, even though lasers and processing algorithms *are* probably an order of magnitude superior?

Kinda depends on what the limiting factor on their performance is. I suspect the limiting factor is high resolution optics, which are hard to miniaturize (if you need 100mm diffraction-limited optics, unless you start playing games with phased arrays, you've got a pretty big system), rather than computing or laser power.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

. . . As nursing staff becomes rarer and more expensive, robot assistants will make more sense. Lifting patients out of bed causes vast numbers of injuries among nurses. They already have prototype nursing assistant robots in Japan. . .

"Attention, AI maintenance. Nursebot 23456 just threw a patient out of a window. Check software accordingly."

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

"Attention, AI maintenance. Nursebot 23456 just threw a patient out of a window. Check software accordingly."

Susy The bot tossed Mr. Del la Pore out the window.

Sally At least the creepy old letch won't be missed.

[Tom Mazanec]

Apologies for the bump if it is too long...start a new thread from here if that is better.
What early and late TL 8+1 biotech is on the horizon?

[twofortea]

Hmm... biotech is really not my forte, but I can try to cover some of them?

Here is Medical Gear:

Antitoxin: The price given is for if the antitoxin is the kind grown in genetically engineered bacteria or yeast (as opposed to many of the current ones, which are plasma harvested from exposing animals to the toxin). Most of them are currently LC3, prescription required and only dispensed for a clear need like being in the emergency room or running a poisonous snake laboratory. The actual form factor for most of these, at least now and in early TL8+1, is usually something like an injectable in a vial.

However, let's have a glimpse of what these might look like later in TL8+1: naloxone is an anti-opioid-overdose nasal spray, which is LC3 or LC4 depending on your locale. It is very much possible for the untrained to administer. Others may instead come as an EpiPen type injector, or a disposable hypo (see below).

Automed: ??? This has so many combined gadget functions that it is way too complicated for me to evaluate.

Bandage Spray: Early TL8+1; we have all the individual technologies, just not together. Liquid Bandage, a paint-on protective for scrapes, scratches, and burns, has an antimicrobial in it already. Adding a hemostatic (bleeding-stopping) agent and reformulating it into a spray can is at least plausible to me. However, it might be advisable to reduce the effectiveness on stab and piercing type wounds because the hemostat and antimicrobial can't get in.

Biomonitor: Almost all of the technology is almost there; the combination and miniaturization is early TL8+1.

A much bulkier equivalent, a combination of a fingerclip pulse oximeter and automated blood pressure cuff, is already available right now. We also have demand - and supply - for bracelet form factors that have at least some of the features: of course a fitness tracking watch/wristband can take continuous pulse, but several of the newest ones can measure blood oxygenation if you are quiet and sitting still for a long time, and at least one cutting-edge fitness tracker watch can even take (very limited, two-electrode) ECG measurements! But I will personally insist on the blood pressure part because in an emergency situation a loss of blood pressure means a loss of blood, so.

Biomonitor Injector: TL8. Continuous blood sugar monitors that automatically administer insulin as needed, and implanted heart monitors that administer defibrillation shock if the heart suddenly stops, already exist right now. They also have memory that can be accessed and examined by a doctor, just as promised. They are single-purpose and do not monitor any other vital signs, though, which is probably for the best since increased complexity means increased chances for things to break.

However, there is a major biological caveat: a patch-administered or surface-injected drug is not going to work fast enough to matter, and intramuscular injection sites must be rotated regularly to prevent scarring. Which means the drug has to be dumped straight into a larger blood vessel. Which requires the installation of a port. Which is currently a major surgery.

Diagnostic Sensors: Everything listed already exists right now, just separately. Now, if you want to see a glimpse of what this might look like in practice, check out the videos on how to use an AED (automatic external defibrillator) (price currently in the four digits $). Miniaturizing it to 0.5lb feels like kind of a stretch, though.

Diagnostic Bed: Plausible late TL8+1, if you can make all the imaging sensors small and cheap enough. But research is currently prioritizing precision and speed over miniaturization at the moment, so not early or mid TL.

Diagnostic Probes: Blood nanobots don't seem like the direction technology is going. Um... TL8+2?

Disposable Hypo: This is a reasonable TL8+1 miniaturization of current technology (insulin self-administration small enough to fit in a pants pocket!). But it is presently cheaper to distribute vials and make the buyer provide their own needles, and I don't know when the economics will tilt the other way.

Disposable Test Kit: Common and cheap in TL8.

Emergency Support Unit: TL8 to TL8+1, depending on what you need it for.

This entry conflates the heart and lung machine (critical to survival and may need to be available in minutes) with other machines that replace other organs (can usually wait for several hours or a few days).

Heart and lung machines have been in regular use in surgery for quite a while, but a version that can be used for days instead of hours, ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), is at the cutting edge and occasionally even successful in late TL8. It should work better in TL8+1. However, installation currently requires multiple minutes because it needs to go in blood vessels, and automated blood vessel finding probes that could plausibly take the 10 seconds listed are unlikely until late TL8+1, if not later.

A lot of other organ replacement machines are firmly TL8: a machine for end stage kidney disease (hemodialyis) is now available for home use. Implanted fully artificial hearts have been in use for years. For pancreas, see the automated insulin pump, above. There is way too much stuff going on in a liver (there are, like, dozens of different liver enzymes) for one machine to be able to replicate it currently, but TL8+1 should be able to do it.

First Aid Kit: A prototype "smart first aid" kit called the GALE was conceived of, but never actually sold. It included diagnostic tools such as a pulse oximeter and infrared thermometer, a touchscreen interface to access instructions on how to treat specific injuries, the ability to video-call doctors using mobile data, a built in battery bank and flashlight... it goes on and on. This was never actually sold to the public, at least in this form. It is currently being developed for eventual use as a "portable doctor" in remote areas, with a substantially higher price to match.

If you aren't able to purchase this kind of smart kit, you're still going to get these at TL8+1: Hydrogel bandages in addition to (or, eventually, instead of) the fabric ones, packets of hemostatic (bleeding-stopping) powder or gauze, if that bandage spray thing exists it goes here too, QR codes for an associated app that will let you call up videos of how to use each piece (with a convenient link for reordering the part underneath), and...

While I was researching for the bandage spray, I found out that holding cuts closed no longer requires sutures or butterfly bandages! The Zip Stitch allows you to shut a wound by putting two large adhesive patches on either side of the wound and pulling them together with the equivalent of zip ties. Wow.

Hibernation Chamber: ??? I see lots of articles about how this is theoretically maybe possible, and no articles detailing actual advances in making one.

HyMRI: ???

Plasti-Skin: A hydrogel patch bandage that also releases hemostat and antiseptic is plausible, but for it to release enough hemostat to stop a tourniquet-worthy wound is not going to be until late TL8+1.

They will not assume the color of the skin underneath (at least during TL8+1) because that is too much smart to put in a fundamentally disposable product. You could probably get various flesh tones though.

Pneumohypo: Jet injectors were invented in TL7. However, they are currently not used because the risk of disease transmission is too high. Even one-use disposable caps failed to protect against fluid dynamics instantaneously sucking air and specks of blood back into the injection chamber. There are injectors where the entire fluid path is a one-time-use cartridge, but everyone in the medical community has decided to just use needles and have done with it. Sorry to those with a phobia.

Diagnostic Smart Bandage: Not until after Plasti-Skin.

Pocket Medic: Not until after Diagnostic Smart Bandage.

The various other physician and surgical equipment is too detailed and specialized for me to deal with.