Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

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Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by Somes J »

Inspired by a discussion with Destructionator that went into a tangent about firepower in space battles.

A lot of SF seems to draw heavily from WWII, so I had a thought about going at that, but from a different angle.

What I'm picturing here is maybe a post-apocalyptic universe. Civilization on Earth collapsed (or something), but before that happened humanity established a large band of orbital habitats around Earth. The orbital habitats survived, at least for now, but they suffered a technological regression as a result of being cut off from high tech components manufactured on Earth, which knocked them back to maybe 1920-1940 level.

The interesting thing about such a scenario is that if you're already in space, having a space program is a lot easier. If you can build an airtight can with some minimal environmental systems and give it maybe a few km/s of delta V you have a spacecraft that can possibly travel quite widely throughout a tight-packed orbital cluster. It never has to enter atmosphere or lift off so it doesn't need to be very sturdy, it doesn't need a high-thrust rocket, and close orbital transfers should be fairly low delta V compared to getting off the surface. Maybe such crude ships could even range out to some nearby asteroids, to gather resources.

So I think maybe potentially you could have "space empires" in such a setting with pretty primitive technology.

When it comes to war they could fight in primitive heavily armored spacecraft with giant guns and unguided rockets, because they have no computers or nukes.

Basically instead of doing WWII in space by justifying it with magitech, it's people in space with WWII level technology.

It's something I just thought up like 10 minutes ago in a flash of inspiration so I haven't really given all that much thought to the technical aspects and such (I PMed Destructionator to get his opinion on it), but I think it might work, and it'd certainly be an unusual approach. Just figured I'd see what you guys thought of the idea.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by Artemis »

I really like this idea, actually! Reminds me a lot of stuff like Ministry of Space.

One question, though, is why there'd be no computers or similar technology in space, when it seems to me we'd need stuff like that just to keep the habitats running?
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by Somes J »

Artemis wrote:One question, though, is why there'd be no computers or similar technology in space, when it seems to me we'd need stuff like that just to keep the habitats running?
Like I said I honestly haven't given all that much thought to the technical details as yet, but I actually can't really think of anything a space habitat would need that couldn't be done without computers offhand.

I'm more concerned about how space navigation would work without computers, but offhand I don't see why humans couldn't do the necessary calculations. Ships having a navigator's box with guys with slide rules calculating orbits and burns by hand would fit pretty well with the retro theme.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by Magister Militum »

When it comes to war they could fight in primitive heavily armored spacecraft with giant guns and unguided rockets, because they have no computers or nukes.
You sold me on super-armored warships filled to the brim with big guns and big rockets. This is an awesome idea that I'd love to see expanded on.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by Ford Prefect »

I think there may be a problem with their base level of technology. I actually have a sequel in mind to my Gundam fanfiction which basically relies on the notion that the society on this far flung space colony has been knocked down a few pegs. But the thing is, their society was previously very advanced. For example: gunpowder. It's unlikely that anyone had even heard of gunpowder unless they're some sort of historian with an interest in dead civilizations from over ten thousand years ago. Certainly no one had ever used it since long before humanity set out from the solar system. Same thing with internal combustion, materials science etc.

Admittedly as this is the premise of a science fiction universe you can do it, but I think it bears thinking about what technological regression means when all your portable power plants are based on fusion and all your weapons are railguns and basically nothing in the past one or two hundred years has been made without nanotechnology and some degree of intelligence. How does such a society go back to riveted steel and bolt action firearms? Admittedly I doubt this setting would be as 'far flung' in terms of time as the planet I mentioned above, but any sort of cataclysm capable of knocking society back that far isn't likely to leave many records, and the people who survive may not have the knowledge to actually rebuild to that sort WWII level, because they've never even heard of anything else.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

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Ford Prefect wrote:Admittedly as this is the premise of a science fiction universe you can do it, but I think it bears thinking about what technological regression means when all your portable power plants are based on fusion and all your weapons are railguns and basically nothing in the past one or two hundred years has been made without nanotechnology and some degree of intelligence. How does such a society go back to riveted steel and bolt action firearms? Admittedly I doubt this setting would be as 'far flung' in terms of time as the planet I mentioned above, but any sort of cataclysm capable of knocking society back that far isn't likely to leave many records, and the people who survive may not have the knowledge to actually rebuild to that sort WWII level, because they've never even heard of anything else.
I don't think the original level of technology would necessarily have to have been extremely advanced. In a space colony thread on SDN Destructionator mentioned:
Destructionator wrote:Everything O'Neill did, with the big exception of the launch cost estimates (he ran with the very optimistic Space Shuttle lies told to Congress at the time), was based on existing technology in 1975. The tensile strength of the cables was all what could be done with iron and aluminum.
So concievably the original level of technology might even have been mostly pre-modern. I haven't gotten around to reading the thing he linked to though, I've been really busy with my grad school application.

On the other hand while discussing this over PM with Destructionator I came to the conclusion that some aspects of the setting might work better if it was in orbit of a gas giant instead of Earth, which might imply a more advanced initial society, but even then I think I could probably think of something.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by Ford Prefect »

Sure, O'Neill was working with the science of the 70s, but at the same time I seriously doubt that this really translates to significant colonisation of orbit. I'm not sure why I'm being so picky here, but it's probably important to keep in mind. I mean, if they're initially stuck on a space colony from an advanced society, they may not necessarily have the means to create certain technologies. That said, you should probably go for it if you think it's viable.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

This sounds marvellous! I've often wondered whether and how a space habitat could devolve into a lower technological state.

Though in addition to Ford's points I'd like to raise two of my own: How stable is the ecosystem of a space habitat and how easy would it be for people on such a habitat to get new resources, like fuel or metal or the like? I'd assume that they couldn't really get rocket fuel from anywhere onboard the habitat unless the habitat was attached to an asteroid, so that would necessitate some kind of far flung mining operation on a near Earth object, which in turn would require a certain amount of space technology necessary to extract the ore from the asteroid. I of course have no idea how faesible this would be given whatever level of technology you are envisioning.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

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Even though it could work for the start of a setting (I hope so at least, I really like the idea) I would imagine people to redevelop certain technologies pretty quickly. After all, they're in an entirely artificial environment, even if they forgot the specifics they're presumably not stupid, so they'll *know* the kinds of things technology can do just by having a good look around. I would expect these guys to be back to nukes and beyond in no time at all, unless there's something keeping them back.

Also, already in WW2 people could design and build things like tv-guided bombs, as well as infra-red and radio guidance systems.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by Destructionator »

One of the beauties of this is the dependence on Earth lets you get the results somewhat easily.

If we put the thing in an alt history starting at today. Go ahead and say the 70's space colony thing went beyond their best hopes - they got L5 by 1990 with the first handful of habs. They have a doubling time of 5 years, slightly better than the projections too. This gives us about 50 Island IIIs to work with.

1990: 3 habs
1995: 6
2000: 12
2005: 24
2010: 48

If population grew as quickly as the hardware, that'd put us at about 1 billion people in space. This is much higher than needed for the scenario, and only required a little generosity in assumptions across the board.



Indeed, that's so much higher than needed that I think it is too high. If it grows to that size with people from Earth, they would have brought their fabs and knowledge with them too by then... so we probably want to scale back on that, quite a lot, but it shows how it could be done (mathematically) without being far future. And if space launch is cheap enough to send up people in these quantities, it is cheap enough to send up computer chips and stuff too - ecnomically, prices are biased toward just buying from Earth instead of building factories in space.



-----


I think the Earth drop off needs to happen in that first few years of doubling. There might be a brief period where the habs have everything they need to double on their own, but don't have their own technology infrastructure. Need electronics? Just buy them from Earth. Need information? Just use the satellite link to the Earth internet, no need for your own books, you can count on Earth's resources for a lot cheaper at this point.


Then *waves hands* Earth becomes suddenly unavailable. The time between they realizing Earth is screwed and it actually becoming screwed is small enough that very little stuff makes it up. The colonies are left with what they already had, and their economies are fucked up beyond all recognition too, putting an even bigger delay on their startup.



So they know it can be done, but can't organize to go it, and even if they did, they don't have the startup infrastructure nor half the experts required to make it work.

All of us on this site know computers can be built. Many of us can build them from parts. But do any of us know what's needed to build those parts? Do we even know where to begin building a microprocessor factory? Especially if Intel and AMD and friends' trade secrets died with the companies!


What they do have is a mostly untapped captured asteroid and two habitat clusters, both at just a fraction of their population capacity. Most the people living up there are experts in freefall manufacturing, agriculture and habitat maintenance; their job was to build and double this stuff! So maintaining the hab isn't an issue and there's plenty of growth potential.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

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speaker-to-trolls wrote: How stable is the ecosystem of a space habitat and how easy would it be for people on such a habitat to get new resources, like fuel or metal or the like?
Ecosystem stability would depend on when it is set. If it is early on, it might be unstable because the kinks haven't been worked out yet. By the time it is developed enough to have a war setting, I imagine they would have solved those problems.

In the timeframe I'm thinking of, the problem should have been solved, and the maintenance people would know what to do (if anything needs specific human intervention)
I'd assume that they couldn't really get rocket fuel from anywhere onboard the habitat unless the habitat was attached to an asteroid, so that would necessitate some kind of far flung mining operation on a near Earth object, which in turn would require a certain amount of space technology necessary to extract the ore from the asteroid. I of course have no idea how faesible this would be given whatever level of technology you are envisioning.
We discussed this in the PM too: I figured capturing would be possible, but inefficient; a lot of the asteroid's material would need to be used for the simple rocket to push it around, and probably people to guide the process (yay asteroid miners).

With the difficulty of process, it might encourage pirates too. Arrrr!
Artemis wrote:One question, though, is why there'd be no computers or similar technology in space, when it seems to me we'd need stuff like that just to keep the habitats running?
Eh, once they are established, if all goes well, there shouldn't need to be much high technology to keep them going. The main maintenance issues are:

a) Solar alignment. Should mostly take care of itself (object in motion tends to stay in motion), but any little adjustments needed can be done by motors and optical setups - rotate the hab a wee but until the sun is visually aligned.

b) Maintaining rotation. Again, inertia does most the work, but some losses can be had to friction. Motors and simple instruments can spin it right back up and keep a look at it

c) Hull damage. The main problem here is just doing the work in -1g (on the outside of the habitat, you'll be tending to be flung off). That's a problem of danger, like working up on a tower, rather than engineering. You just weld on the replacement patch. The hardest part would be finding slow leaks. (Knowing you have one could be done with a barometer - notice the average air pressure this year is lower than the last couple years, and you know something is wrong). Finding the leak would probably consist of a painstaking visual inspection - look over the hull for ice droplets. A telescope might help. In any case though, it shouldn't need high tech and computers.

d) Maintaining the land, mankind has been doing this for a pretty long time. We'd add temperature checks, but simple weather instruments combined with maintaining the motors on the mirrors, etc., are all that's needed.




I'm pretty convinced that a space habitat could live on without man at all, once it is built, so keeping it in good shape with low tech should be plenty doable too.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by Somes J »

Ford Prefect wrote:Sure, O'Neill was working with the science of the 70s, but at the same time I seriously doubt that this really translates to significant colonisation of orbit.
I actually am not too sure about that myself. I have the impression a lot of the reasons we don't have space colonies have more to do with politics and economics than technological limitations; we've had the technical capability to build them if we really wanted to for a long time, but there's no particular reason to expend the necessary effort. I don't think it's terribly implausible to think that a civilization with different priorities might have a large space presence by now.

Hmm, maybe I could kill two birds with one stone and suggest a scenario along the lines of Stephen Baxter's Flood. That would provide both A) a reason for people to start massively investing in space in the near future B) a reason Earth gets screwed over leading to the technological collapse.
Siege wrote:Even though it could work for the start of a setting (I hope so at least, I really like the idea) I would imagine people to redevelop certain technologies pretty quickly.
That's not a problem from my perspective; I don't see any particular reason I'd need the setting to be in technological stasis. The story just happens to be set in an era I find interesting.
Also, already in WW2 people could design and build things like tv-guided bombs, as well as infra-red and radio guidance systems.
Like I said, I haven't really thought things out in any great detail yet. It's all still at the conceptual stage as yet.
Destructionator wrote:With the difficulty of process, it might encourage pirates too. Arrrr!
Yeah, this seems like a setting where space piracy might actually make a lot of sense. Easier to just intercept somebody else's metal or construction material or volatile shipment instead of going out and mining and refining the stuff yourself.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by Destructionator »

Baxter sounds like an interesting author. I might check him out next time I read (who knows when that will be).

Anywho, one problem with a slow decline of Earth is you'd expect them to send up as much as they can - one of the early things built might be a microprocessor fab, which would ruin some of the fun here. Earth knows their time is short, but not so short that they are helpless to prepare for the fall.

Something more catastrophic leaves the spacers less prepared. As depressing and cliche as World War III is, it would do the job.


Hmmm, what if we went with a slow death and combined it with an accident? You're familar with the Kessler Syndrome, yes? Imagine if they knew Earth's days were numbered, so everybody throughout the world rushes to develop space. In the resulting panic (panic might not be the best word, since I figure it would take years) things are disorganized.

Low orbit grows very quickly in sheer numbers of stuff, and there is no central organization of it, so before long, shit happens. Something collides, and the pieces break more stuff, and more and more until LEO is a deathstrip.

The colonies are cut off from earth in a matter of hours. Without the communication relay satellites, they have poor comms too; the signal is weak and unreliable, so sending stuff by radio has limited bandwidth too. There's only so much data they can pull and those needed people and tools to start building computer chips: they were to be delivered on Tuesday.



It does the setup, but there's a few problems with this:

a) The Kessler syndrome might not be that bad in practice. We can handwave that though.

b) But, it tends to solve itself; the atmosphere would clean it up before too long.

c) Even if it doesn't clean itself, studies have been done showing that cleaning the debris with ground based lasers isn't terribly difficult, and here we'd have the assistance of space based stuff too.

All in all, it'd be hard to justify it closing off Earth for more than maybe a couple years at worst. This probably isn't enough time for the retro setting to really develop, nor enough time for the nasty shit to really cream Earth, unless it is pretty fast moving to begin with.


Oh pooey, idk, maybe we can tweak it? Or just abandon that angle.



Hmm, what if the massive space colonization program started in like 1960? That makes it harder to pull off, without the experience of Apollo, but something else may suffice. Say they discovered they only have some 30 years before Earth starts to go to shit. Most tech freezes around 1960 as the whole world focuses on implementing some fix and/or backup plan (the setting here being that backup plan).

The habitat program takes most of those 30 years just to get off the ground; they had to focus on the basics of survival up there, tech protectionism had to take a backseat. Building factories for high tech is less important than just making it possible to save as many people as they could. Computer technology of the time means they can't just save it all to a thumbdrive and save it for later either.

That might just work. We could then open in 2010 in this alt history: 20 years after the first major hab was produced, and right as Earth's climate becomes most unliveable. Their tech level though: 1970 at best, though most people (and nations) can't afford that at all and have to make due with much, much less.



I'm just throwing stuff out here, seeing if we can pick and choose anything that fits. I think we have a lot of plausible enough options though now - far more than just ww3.
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Forgive my ignorance on this subject: But how serious would the climate problems have to be to make trying to ameliorate it more expensive than building a bunch of space habitats each big enough to fit a major city inside? I know that the O'Neill habitats were supposedly buildable with 70s technology, but technology and economy aren't always synonymous; building one of these things must involve putting together billions of tons of refined materials in space, to say nothing of the process of filling the thing with air and creating the ecosystem before moving all the millions of inhabitants up there.

I have the most basic of possible understandings here, so please correct me if these aren't valid concerns.

On a lighter note; If you want another reason for the cutoff from Earth, how about the Earth was the victim of an excercise in Space Game Theory by the paranoid people of Gliese 581 G? 8-)

A couple of other questions; How many near Earth asteroids are there that could be mined by the cylinder people, and does anyone have any idea how proficient they're likely to be with a generally 20's ish tech level at building smaller habitats away from home?
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Re: Crazy universe concept: retro hard SF

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speaker-to-trolls wrote:But how serious would the climate problems have to be to make trying to ameliorate it more expensive than building a bunch of space habitats each big enough to fit a major city inside?
Really, really bad. One of two things would happen:

1) Earth is going to become unlivable, or close to it. You just don't have any options.

or 2) Someone took the upcoming danger and used it as an excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway. For example, they were already funding space, but the potential for disaster, real or exaggerated, made them turn that funding up, a lot.

I know that the O'Neill habitats were supposedly buildable with 70s technology, but technology and economy aren't always synonymous; building one of these things must involve putting together billions of tons of refined materials in space, to say nothing of the process of filling the thing with air and creating the ecosystem before moving all the millions of inhabitants up there.
The air is actually somewhat easy - it comes for free with the rocks, in part. (Moon rock is mainly metals chemically bonded with oxygen. Heat them up and you get both building metal and lots of excess oxygen. Nitrogen, carbon and water are a bit tricker, but capturing an asteroid could provide, or maybe skimming it off Earth. The moon alone isn't enough, but except for water*, it provides like 99% of the total mass.

* It might even provide water! That new probe launched earlier in the year said it is far more abundant than we used to believe.)

The nitrogen doesn't need to be as abundant as it is in Earth's atmosphere for people and plants to live, so waste oxygen from refining moon rocks could provide most the air too.


So the life forms need to be launched from Earth, human and non-human, but the vast majority of everything else comes from space, which can be a slow, but cheap process. O'Neill built a scale model of the mass driver system that he felt could automate mining the moon. Robot trucks pick up moon rock and load it onto this catapult which just constantly launches little tiny packets of material. It is picked up in space and heated by reflected sunlight to be chemically broken down and melted into usable material for construction.


He felt this was possible with some work back then and his scale model showed the core principles at least worked. The automation combined with the slow and steady operation of the assembly line is what did the job.

For some math, consider if the mass driver could remain fully loaded and fires up one kilogram of material every 5 seconds. It would launch about 40,000 tons over six years.

O'Neill's Island I was just 10,000 tons. If half the launched material is usable, we get a ballpark of building one small habitat every couple of years, from the single mass driver. (the mass driver btw was designed so it would fit in the Shuttle's cargo bay, when folded up. The Shuttle doesn't have the range to carry it to the moon, but they wanted to prove the size was doable too.)


Naturally, if things work out, they would expand mining operations significantly and speed things up. More mines on the moon and captured asteroids could multiply this a thousand times.

The trick is modest automation combined with 24/7 operation of the mines. If the automation doesn't work out completely well, small crews could do it too, driving the trucks around and sorting through it. That increases the cost, but isn't an impossible task.

On a lighter note; If you want another reason for the cutoff from Earth, how about the Earth was the victim of an excercise in Space Game Theory by the paranoid people of Gliese 581 G? 8-)
Heh, but them doing that would a) show they are completely insane and b) put a whole different pressure on the people that might ruin ww2 in spaaace!
A couple of other questions; How many near Earth asteroids are there that could be mined by the cylinder people,
There's thousands of them total, with hundreds being of size they should be able to handle.

Capturing a NEO is a somewhat time consuming process though. It doesn't take a huge amount of delta-v from the rocket, but the other side of that is small delta-v = slow transfer. The process might be wait until the right part of the year to make it nearby. Launch, wait months for your ship to catch up with it. Attach the rocket booster and do the nudge to put it into position that Earth will catch up to it next year. Then give it the final nudge to capture it.

Since so much of that process depends on waiting for Earth to catch up to it, we could be looking at a couple years between saying "I want that asteroid" and actually having it.

Not a big problem, but would encourage planning. And pirates from those who fail to plan!
and does anyone have any idea how proficient they're likely to be with a generally 20's ish tech level at building smaller habitats away from home?
Away from home is probably a no go, unless they want to keep it extremely simple; a hollowed out asteroid with no luxuries might work, but a nice hab won't, since they just won't have the stuff.

A possibility is building the hab at home and moving it out. But with the sheer mass, any big movements would be hard to do without employing some high technology.
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