<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>I want a working one<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
You can get one from Valen industries, conveniently based on Minbar. They have long traditions and the last time a pike was brought in for service was 900 years ago.
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A working fighting pike is simply beyond our technology for now. Extending and compressing the pikes was done as CGI. A Minbari denn'bok has most interesting qualities:
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While compressed, it seems to be very light. We can see Marcus handling a compressed pike with ease - as if it weighed no more than a few hundred grams.
Yet we can see Minbari warriors use it as if it were very heavy - and you wouldn't even try to hit a Minbari warrior with something that weighs 500 grams. They would prefer to hit an opponent with something no lighter than 20 kilos.
Also, we see the force of an extending pike shatter a door on a White Star - a door which Sheridan could not scratch when hitting it with a pike in an ordinary way.
This suggests that the pike extends *extremely* fast and has a great mass, as it simply shattered the door and came through it - without being thrown back from resistance.
Getting something made of metal to compress and extend like this is improbable by today's standards... but getting it to seemingly change mass (or acquire new mass from seemingly nowhere and lose it again promply afterwards) seems for now
simply impossible.
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Canned flarn is a sacrilege.
[This message has been edited by Lennier (edited July 28, 2001).]