How easy is it actually to reverse engineer a UFO?

[valkyrie013]

Was reading a book lately, and it was of an alien species that invaded Earth, we fought them off with help, and we now have ships, etc.

A Character asked the person who helped us, can he help us reverse engineer the ships so we can build our own. He said "Not a chance, would take decades, maybe hundreds of years to do".

The character asked why? and he said, "Because you can't make them right now, you can't even make the parts, you can't even make the machines that make the parts, you can't even make the machine that makes the parts to make the parts for the other machine. The parts require new forms of matter that you have to make, atom scale manufacturing, all of which you don't have, and will take decades to design and make."

So, thought occurred to me, if a UFO, or other type of ship lands, crashes, etc. Can we actually remake it? Or even fix it?
Now, to me, the factor of reverse engineering a thing is how far ahead is it of where we are right now! If the part is say, a 100 years further along, there's a good chance that we would be able to manufacture or build something to manufacture it. Now, say said ship is a 1000 years ahead of us?

Example:
A control box of said UFO, its a solid cube 1 foot on each side. Its the main computer for the engine. Its a solid block of some unknown material, programing is made at the atomic level and hard wired into the atomic structure itself . Not like we would know that, we probably wouldn't know even remotely how it works. And my book example was with the help of somebody who Knew what it was, how it worked, how to make it, etc.

Now, even looking at a UFO, and seeing HOW it does say, bend light, or use gravity as propulsion, would steer us in a direction of figuring it out how to do it ourselves, but as Stargate said, Closest we would get of our own ships would be to slap a US Airforce sticker on a captured one!

So? Thoughts on my supposition?

 

[Finn]

 

[Non Sync]

Other challenges would be figuring out control systems and how they interfaced with the crew. Would need to understand the alien's physiology, language, and psychology. If it was a belligerent and paranoid species, the ship could have booby-traps to prevent it from being used against them.

Environment and other inspirational factors could also influenced designs.

 

[valkyrie013]

@Non Sync
The book I took the example from, a ship that the main character stole was run by an alien race that had a load of implants, and used there brain/implant links to control the ship, so there was an "Emergency Bridge" that they had manuel controls, but 99.9% of the time they used the implants.
So think of a Borg ship, you kill the queen and the drones, ships yours.. How do you navigate? There is no bridge. No one on your team has any implants.. Do you fashion a control stick from a Stick and an rudimentary lathe?

 

[Deks]

AI controlled Atomic scale manufacturing has been a reality since 2018 actually.

And as for how easy would it be to reverse engineer an alien starship... well, it would depend on the level of technology.

We DO have the ability to construct far better craft than we do today using different/superior kind of materials, which mainly aren't used due to cost efficiency (aka money) factor standing in the way - otherwise, if we applied the most up to date automation, materials, AI etc. onto the task in a sustainable capacity, I suspect that it wouldn't take us too long.
Even the notion that a ship is there would spark new ideas and therefore new areas of interest to research, which would also result in increased speed of technological development - the resistance level of the hull to existing tools, materials, etc.

Power generation might be an issue, but not necessarily. Already we have created viable physics research that eliminates the negative energy requirements for powering the theoretical Alcubierre Warp drive and are working on a way to reduce the power demands and bring them in line with nuclear fission reactors we have available (whereas the research quotes that the efficiency could potentially be improved by DOUBLE beyond that ratio).

A lot of people severely underestimate what we can presently do.
For example, science and technology evolve exponentially, not linearly... therefore, it would be quite possible to expect significant headways in a relatively short amount of time.
I'd say a decade or two to set up appropriate production lines (especially if AI is used for R&D), and if automation does all of the work, it would be built excessively fast (seeing how automation is between thousands, to hundreds of thousands to billions of times faster and more efficient than humans).

Also, we have methods of power conservation, reclamation of waste energy (a process which can be improved upon) and a ton of other things.

To be fair, we're barely starting to use AI and adaptive algorithms in R&D (which would greatly accelerate development by uncalculated levels compared to before), and we had this ability for decades - but living in an existing system limits most people's way of thinking (not to mention the fact such a big change would require a systemic change - which is something a LOT of people would presently object to given their 'taught obsession' with the way things are).

 

[Dryson]

Would you have to torch through the metal? Would our torches even cut through alien metal?

 

[diankra]

First capture your UFO.
Best guess, much of it beyond understanding, but a few things close enough to advance technology by a generation by reverse engineering.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

It depends on technological distance. I suspect an engineer or scientist from 100 years ago would have difficultly understanding some of our modern technology such as LCDs, integrated circuits, advanced materials, digital circuitry, and digital processing. Other things would be easier to grasp such as AC circuitry, analogue circuitry, radar, lasers, and even computers provided he had managed to get logged in somehow - although how to use a mouse might be problematic*. My father remembered being taught by a rather advanced science teacher in the early 1920s about likely future developments in radio ranging and detection based on the work of Hertz, Hülsmeyer, and Watson-Watt and light or microwave amplification based on Einstein's work on stimulated emission. Someone from 200 years ago would have barely a clue and from 300 years ago almost none. The rate of advancement is accelerating and I imagine none of us would immediately understand technology from 100 years in our future and some of it would be completely baffling.

* At university in the late 70s, I remember a physics lecturer picking up a computer mouse and pointing it at the screen expecting it to do something. I think he must have seen a demonstration of a light pen and thought it worked similarly. Perhaps some of you reading this have never heard of light pens, which isn't surprising. I first used them with vector graphics displays in the mid 1970s. Both light pens and vector graphic displays were thought to be the future of interactive computing back then. I used a data glove and VR back in the late 80s but I'm still not using either of these at home even though I often think they would be handy for some tasks.

 

[StarCruiser]

Technology (in general) is a feedback loop. You advance one - seemingly minor - thing and that feeds back into a handful of other less minor technologies, or even breaks a completely new avenue open for advancement.

One significant breakthrough can change just about everything in the world virtually overnight. Sometimes, that's a good thing and sometimes you get Global Climate Change as a side-effect!

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

We also lose technology, knowledge, and skills over time as these become redundant. Usually, that's not so worrying but I expect one day it might become crucial for survival at some tipping point.

 

[Oddish]

It depends on how advanced it is. Something crazy-complicated like a FTL drive or a counter-grav engine might be impossible. But if they use something close to our tech range, such as high-intensity lasers or pulse detonation engines, we might be able to reverse engineer it.

 

[diankra]

It depends on technological distance. I suspect an engineer or scientist from 100 years ago would have difficultly understanding some of our modern technology such as LCDs, integrated circuits, advanced materials, digital circuitry, and digital processing. Other things would be easier to grasp such as AC circuitry, analogue circuitry, radar, lasers, and even computers provided he had managed to get logged in somehow - although how to use a mouse might be problematic*. My father remembered being taught by a rather advanced science teacher in the early 1920s about likely future developments in radio ranging and detection based on the work of Hertz, Hülsmeyer, and Watson-Watt and light or microwave amplification based on Einstein's work on stimulated emission. Someone from 200 years ago would have barely a clue and from 300 years ago almost none. The rate of advancement is accelerating and I imagine none of us would immediately understand technology from 100 years in our future and some of it would be completely baffling.

* At university in the late 70s, I remember a physics lecturer picking up a computer mouse and pointing it at the screen expecting it to do something. I think he must have seen a demonstration of a light pen and thought it worked similarly. Perhaps some of you reading this have never heard of light pens, which isn't surprising. I first used them with vector graphics displays in the mid 1970s. Both light pens and vector graphic displays were thought to be the future of interactive computing back then. I used a data glove and VR back in the late 80s but I'm still not using either of these at home even though I often think they would be handy for some tasks.

A good phrase is Emergent Technology: something a bit ahead, but not so far ahead as to be inexplicable and non-duplicateable.

 

[Oddish]

In a story I'm working on, two humans trade for tech from a more advanced alien society.

One of them gets a centuries out of date schematic for a pulse detonation engine. Because the tech is only slightly ahead of us, companies like Boeing and McDonnell Douglas can replicate it, and he becomes a billionaire.

The other one gets a state of the art plasma rifle. Neither he nor his associates can replicate or reproduce it, so he finally just goes out and attacks an enemy's carrier group with it. He sinks a destroyer and heavily damages the carrier, then he and the gun are blown to bits.

The story is not my best work, but the lesson is obvious.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yeah, don't equip people who are mentally unequipped with weapons that they are not able to handle responsibly. That black monolith has a lot to answer for.

 

[Deks]

Yeah, don't equip people who are mentally unequipped with weapons that they are not able to handle responsibly.

Which is funny because that's exactly what we've been doing for a VERY long time now.
A lot of those people are in positions of power too.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Don't mistake the nurse button for the nuke button.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[Oddish]

The guy's maturity or fitness is not entirely relevant. The way the story was written, his cause was not just, but a person who WAS fighting for a just cause would have been in the same situation: he would have had one weapon, however unearthly its power. He sank a 400+ foot long, state of the art ship singlehanded, but the enemy had scores of others. If he had gotten an older weapon design, something that could be replicated and distributed, he might have given the enemy far worse than a bloody nose.

 

[Swedish Borg]

I think it's impossible.

First, it's unlikely that we could get our hands on such a ship (I am assuming here that such a ship exists of course). It would take some mistake from its owners that would just be beyond belief. Say if the whole crew died suddenly and so the ship we left somewhere on the ground unattended. You'd still have to enter it and it would probably be protected against intrusions and set to self-destruct if intruders defeated its defenses. I mean that only makes sense, you land on a planet with primitive but intelligent beings on it, at the very least you'll take that kind of precaution. So you'd have to take the ship's defenses off-line without knowing anything about them, and you can be sure that at least some of these defenses are beyond your current knowledge. It would be like some medieval man breaking into a modern car (set to self-destruct rather than falling into alien hands). Now even if you somehow manage to take the ship off-line without damaging it. You're left with delicate components, molecular-size (most likely) assembled in unknown conditions, open the wrong box and you'll break vital components without even knowing it, expose part of the ship to air and it'll oxide so fast that you won't even see it happen. the computer part (and it'll most likely be one) will follow a logic that we don't understand in an alien language, the access will be restricted to people with codes, or with physical characteristics, like the timber of their voice or DNA or whatever. If the computer doesn't respond, you'll never know if it's because it's broken or because you've used the wrong code or whatever... The unlikelihood of someone managing to get past all these obstacles is ridiculously high. How can you reverse engineer something that you can't make work for all these reasons and which has been made under unknown very subtle and delicate technical conditions?

And that's why I think it's impossible.

 

[Oddish]

Highly unlikely. Any technology that can reach Earth from another star is going to be (pun intended) light years ahead of anything we've got.

 

[Tim Walker]

I voted for two choices: 2. Duplication of more sophisticated technologies may be a long way off, perhaps centuries from now. 3. A subset of technologies may be-by the aliens' standards-older and relatively simple.

Perhaps 3 might be just barely at, or just outside our reach. Perhaps a crude, clunky derivative could be fabricated.