Random notes and whatnot

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Random notes and whatnot

Post by Destructionator »

Once again, here I collect links or quotes, or sometimes even my own thoughts, for later reference and analysis, and usually, eventually, integration.
Isaac Kuo wrote: It's been a while since I looked at it.

If I recall correctly, I started off looking at the reference links
to this wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panels_on_spacecraft

In particular, this one got my attention:

http://www.entechsolar.com/SPRAT05b.pdf

This had near-term specific power of 300-500W/kg, which was already
within spitting distance of my usual 1kW/kg baseline assumption for a
vapor core fission reactor.

On slide 21, there's a graph which anticipates 1kW/kg around
2025...which is way before I'd anticipate any significant human
colonization of space (which is something I think of as a
prerequisite to "space combat").

That blew my mind away. I asked a few places whether this was
honestly a plausible scenario or whether these guys were cuckoo. And
the impression I got was that it could happen, and they weren't
cuckoo.

Compared to nuclear power, solar arrays don't need to be refueled,
and have a large civilian market. They gracefully accept micro-
impact damage (which is important for civilian craft as well as
warships). Solar arrays scale down well, down to the power levels of
interplanetary probes we can expect to see throughout the next
century. Nuclear reactors don't scale down well, so we can only
expect a small handful of missions for them in the next century. All
of this, it seems to me, points to a huge head start solar electric
technology will have over nuclear, with little incentive to ever
switch to nuclear. Really, the head start has already begun--solar
electric has flown and is flying. Nuclear electric has not.

Isaac Kuo
From the sf-consiml Yahoo mailing list.


I've been switching more to solar power away from my previous preference for nuclear (though, I'm still tending more towards thermal on both more than electric, but as this thread continues, Mr Kuo might actually end up changing my mind on that too), since solar is definitely cheaper to operate.

But, I've not yet made the leap from nuclear to solar on most warships. (The A'millian SC-01, for example, has not been revised to have solar power, whereas the newer (both in and out of universe) design of the BC-01 is solar powered. Then, the older design (out of universe) of the BC-10 is back to nuclear.)

(Heck, even in not-war ships, I switch back and forth. The SV class ships are almost always nuclear. The transport, ASV Ragnarok (named for the kickass FF8 ship), is (tentatively) solar powered, but the newer transport (in universe), ASV Queen Leila, is back to nuclear.

It isn't a big deal to have them switch back and forth, but I do need to justify all the decisions. I think the only place where the type of power generation actually enters into the story is the ASV Falcon accident (which is an SC-01). I can't recall any other time where it is particularly relevant; it just means going back and changing some of my beautiful designs.)


I have stuff to do today, but the nuclear/solar debate is far from over.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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I was going to write an essay last night and I just went and forgot what it was. This is a note to self to try to remember it; it was a general interest sci-fi like essay that I was going to put to the blog and potentially on Atomic Rockets.... now if I could just remember the subject...

This is going to annoy me all night. I should keep a paper next to my bed for situations like this.

OH OH OH! Human population growth and expansion into space! That must have been it: finally writing up what I've learned in my long journey to what I now feel are realistic population numbers over the long term. Yes, that was it.

I think. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was. Even if it wasn't, that will make a good essay anyway. So expect that posted on the blog and probably copied in here as well at some point over the next several weeks.

Then I see if I still have any blog readers left after my long hiatus; I'm hoping Winchell Chung at least is still there.

So what I'll talk about will be the normal assumption for there to be far more humans than there are today and how that probably isn't going with reality, then address some max and min realistic limits, and finally, ways to break the rules if you need to without breaking plausibility. It will be a nice wrap to my year and a half old debate on that subject.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

Post by Destructionator »

My long time readers have probably seen me mention these before, since for some weird reason, I find the long wait to an inevitable demise bizarrely fascinating...



Long range missile combat is underway. You are on one of the combatant targets, and there are missiles coming toward you. Thirty minutes to killzone. Plenty of time for point defense to work its magic.

But then point defense breaks down. You can't dodge the missile, and now you can't shoot it down. You're finished. Time to just sit back and wait for it to hit...

...Or you could try abandoning ship. You put on your space suit and head out the airlock. You have half an hour of gently flying when the missile hits your ship. A couple minutes later, a random piece of debris hits you, rupturing your propellant tank.

You end up in a spin that you cannot stop into the eternal void. You have a day's worth of air left - great, if you hold out, you might still be rescued. But no one comes. You eventually run out of air and die, alone and dizzy. Should have waited on the missile.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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From the sfconsim-l Yahoo mailing list on solar power:
Luke Campbell wrote: One possible large benefit - you could get nuke thermal rockets for
cheap. It would be plausible to run some propellant pipes through the
reactor core and out to a rocket nozzle for not all that much extra
mass. You get the interplanetary performance of plasma or ion
thrusters, but can boost out of planetary orbit relatively rapidly.
You may be able to do something similar with solar collectors, but for
photovoltaics, you would need to heat the propellant with your
electricity and even if the solar panels had the same electrical
specific power as the fission plant, the reactor core will be
generating 2 to 4 times as much heat as it can electricity and can
thus produce 2 to 4 times the specific thrust (note that when the
turbine is spooled up and the generator going at full spin under load,
the waste heat will only be 1 to 3 times the power of the electricity
produced - but for the thermal rocket, you spool down the turbine and
let the propellant absorb all the heat).

This probably works best if the electric thrusters use the same
propellant as the thermal rocket. No xenon ion drives and hydrogen
thermal rockets, use hydrogen VASIMR or something similar.

Luke
Dr Campbell (yes, he actually has a Ph. D. in physics - one of the many reasons I lurk in that list) appears to agree with my original justification for nuclear power: thermal rockets. Of course, solar thermal is also an option not yet discussed there... Interesting thread, so I'll keep you posted through my lurking.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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Rick Robinson wrote: The similarity to an SSBN patrol fades the closer you look. An SSBN
goes to its station, lurks there a while, comes back. It can be
ordered back sooner, held on station for some limited time, sent to a
different patrol station, or assigned entirely new missions, such as
search and rescue.

An interplanetary spacecraft with a sub-torch drive, once it has
proceeded a little ways on its departure burn, has the divert/reassign
capability of an artillery shell. Spacecraft do not fly or cruise;
they are shot somewhere. A mission might have an abort or divert
option, but it has to be specifically built into the initial mission
profile, with a preset window for executing it.

Similarly a spacecraft has only very limited control over its
encounter with the target. If a peace treaty was signed while en
route, you don't deploy your munitions, and you can deflect your
trajectory slightly to avoid buzzing them. You won't be stopping for a
friendly port call to toast the new relationship unless it is so cozy
that you trust them to refuel you.

We should always say trajectory or orbit when speaking of the paths of
non-torch spacecraft, not nautical terms like "course." Ships and
planes change course at the turn of a wheel (and rudder pedals in the
air). Then turn back just as easily.

I don't even know that interplanetary warcraft would make
interplanetary training missions, except as fairly rare full-package
system tests, like test firings of ICBMs. You can test all the system
components in orbital space, and actually use your time for training,
whereas if you send it off on an interplanetary trajectory, the crew
will spend most of the trip twiddling thumbs or polishing brightwork.


All of this has a big human dimension, because it goes to the whole
concept of command. The commanding officer of a crewed interplanetary
craft is not really like the captain of a ship. Much of the
psychological pleasure of command at sea (or in the air) is that you
can go where you damn well please. Sure, if you don't go where
assigned you'll be facing a board or court martial, but it is still
your choice.

The commanding officer of a spacecraft is Johannes Kepler's XO. You
can keep crew and vehicle sharp for his inspection, but he decides
where you go and when you get there. Aboard civil liners, "conductor"
would be as accurate a term as "captain" - you run the hotel, and if
necessary handle rowdy guests, but you have no control over the
schedule, and you certainly can't leave the tracks to go off cross
country somewhere.

"Psychological pleasure" is easy to dismiss, but it is important when
you are dealing with officer recruitment and replacement. In a way a
space force is more like the army than either the navy or air force.
An army officer never expects to ride a winged chariot or stand on the
poop and say "Sail on!" Army command is all about turning your troops
into your sword, and wielding it effectively if you have to draw it.
Where you go to wield it is not a soldier's core concern, beyond that
your troops can move out when ordered. (If your assignment is
logistics, the movement of troops is your manual of arms.)

This army template of command and its meaning fits military spacecraft
pretty well, better than the navy/air force templates, especially if
most of the actual combat vehicles are robotic. The person in overall
charge is a general, with a headquarters somewhere, perhaps a mobile
spacecraft, perhaps on a planet surface. The forces comprise
mostly-robotic tooth, weapon platforms and ordnance, and its logistic
and support tail, where most of the troops are.

In an interstellar space opera with torchships, jump points, and
limited to no FTL comms, it might make sense to mount this whole kit
'n' kaboodle aboard starships for expeditionary service, resulting in
a fairly recognizable space armada. But in a midfuture interplanetary
scenario there is no reason to do this. To launch an attack, you don't
send an armada, you open up with artillery fire. Some of the ordnance
fired may be recoverable and even crewed, but basically you are
shelling the target.

One other interplanetary military mission, necessarily manned, is
sending troops to seize facilities intact. For once a nautical
metaphor is apt, because in this midfuture setting the operation is
far more like boarding than invasion.

First of all, though, you had better not do it till you've suppressed
their space defenses. You can send killer buses ahead of the
transports in a similar orbit, but if you don't take everything out
your transports are in a world of hurt - they were shot out of a
cannon, and can't turn back.

Once you get there, I don't know that assaulting the airlocks is a
viable proposition. Boarding a spacecraft or surface installation is
pretty much surrender or be shot up. Surely there are some kind of
SWAT tactics, but only for special situations - if the defenders are
mostly going to put up that kind of desperate resistance, you are
unlikely to capture much of anything intact in any case, so you may as
well just whack it with kinetics and be done with it.

-- Rick
From sfconsim-l. Very interesting take there, but I don't think it quite applies as well to my near Earth common thing. It certainly works for interstellar stuff: the A'millian ships always came and went at the same time for a reason: they didn't have the propellant to do anything else.

From a thread discussing combat precautions:
Isaac Kuo wrote: Yes. DC personnel will be sitting in coffin-like armored crew
compartments, remotely operating utility bots. They don't need to be
stationed on every "warship"; they might only be on board a few ships
in a taskforce. Ideally, the enemy doesn't know which ships have
(occupied) crew compartments.

Isaac Kuo
It started off with someone asking what kind of things the crew would do when going into battle. Lots of things were suggested, including getting into space suits (shot down since they are a pain to work in and shouldn't be necessary) and evacing the air (now you have it in one pressurized place, so probably not a good idea), then went into damage control and comparing it to the naval model. I'll post more interesting stuff as I see it.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

Post by Destructionator »

Following up on a link Mr Kuo provided earlier for my current research into designing the TC-800, I'm seeing amazing stuff.

Solar panels, about 30% efficient, delivering 330 We / kg at 1,000 V, stowed power of 80 kW/m^3, 300 W / m^3, 0.085 kg / m^2, including radiation shielding. Capable of delivering a megawatt in an array launchable in the Shuttle's bay.

Available today!

That's amazing. 1/3 of the way to my (moderately) conservative fission reactors, practically existing right now, with very low cost. The company expects to hit 1 kWe / kg by 2025 - all the way to my moderately conservative fission reactors, in the next fifteen years.

You can trade area, mass, and of course cost for greater tolerance in pointing errors, which might be useful on a ship.

40% efficiency has already been done in the lab, but not yet ready for mass production. But it proves it is possible; that 1 kW/kg isn't so far off!

This is so cool. And the ASE would have this tech somewhat early thanks to their early work into SSPS. Combine that with their magnetic work, and we have a working solar electric plasma drive in time for Starfleet's second generation ships. The only thing keeping Starfleet nuclear is probably the big surface area of the solar panels interfering with the warp drive's limitations, but seeing how they can be retracted (well, more accurately, they expand for deployment, but same idea) to fit in the Shuttle's bay, that is a problem that should be solvable.


Fantastic, utterly fantastic!
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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From [sfconsim-l] Gorgeous Spies in SPAAACE !!!:
Rick Robinson wrote:
This is a spinoff from H. Cobb's post on 'Rick Drones,' AKA seeker
heads, but a pretty oblique one.

Everyone sees everything in space, but from a distance you don't
really see very much - only the trajectory, acceleration, and
plume/radiator flux of a spacecraft, from which you can derive an
approximate mass; and some kind of imaging once the physical
dimensions of the spacecraft approximate your resolving power.

>From a distance you cannot see what a spacecraft's payload is. Even
from a short distance, or with jumbo instruments, there is no a priori
reason to think that weapon payloads or the spacecraft that carry them
have to differ outwardly logistic spacecraft including civilian ones.
Or cannot be readily disguised. Space is very friendly that way; it is
easy to hide guns under tarps.

In a purely tactical or operational game, this just means uncertainty
about force competition. If a task force is coming your way, you don't
know the force mix, but it probably is not mixed in with civil liners.

At the strategic level, however, most of what you want to know cannot
be determined by remote surveillance. In the techs we commonly discuss
here, travel times are long, meaning among other things that there is
little to no reason for forces to routinely be on special military
orbits, 'patrol orbits.' They can be on ordinary civil orbits,
indistinguishable from general civilian space traffic. When an attack
is coming, you'll have plenty of time to deploy into combat orbits.

There is every motive to make peacetime military force redeployments
as inconspicuous from a distance as possible, by taking civil orbits,
so that you do not know my deployment structure. If there is no civil
side, I at least know that everything is military, and my staff can
try to reverse engineer what you are doing, at least to estimating
proportion of logistic payloads to weapon payloads.

The worst case for intelligence is a closed society with a big civil
sector. If the Chinese are doing Lots Of Stuff in space, clearly
building habs and such, but no one but the Chinese ever gets to go
there, all I know about the whole Chinese space program is what I can
infer from traffic analysis.

If, however, there is substantial human freedom of movement among
civilian space centers, HUMINT including good old spying has a huge
role to play. Remote imaging is simply not going to tell you what the
other guy has got around Mars.

However, if there are any open civil facilities at Mars, and space
militaries tend to be heavy on mostly straight males, I'll send a
gorgeous female to hang out around the spaceport bars and chat up off
duty spacers. ;) How many seem like space military types? Do they talk
about mirrors and drilling, or cans and Ricks?

Needless to say, many sorts of people can be gorgeous in the eyes of
space military personnel, and there are plenty of opportunities for
non-gorgeous people as well. But suffice to say that the best known
contemporary unmasked spy, during her years of active covert service,
almost certainly had the job of circulating around the sorts of
parties where arms dealers hang out, purring about yellowcake.

This is a dimension of space warfare that we too seldom discuss on
this board. ;)

Seriously, there is also an interesting trade off between remote
surveillance and espionage. Let's look at Mars again. You can
segregate off your space military, restricting them to bars where you
vet all gorgeous people before allowing them in. This locks me out,
because my spy - I am going to risk Chris's wrath and be shamelessly
political by calling her Valerie - is a high value asset. Gorgeous
people with the loyalty, (human) intelligence, and tactical skills, in
this case sass, to carry out the mission are expensive.

However, in shutting out Valerie you have served up a feast to my
traffic analysts. How curious that Valerie can't buy a taxi ticket to
one of the big stations, and no one from that station ever shows up in
the public bars. Hmmmm. Now I watch that station with special
interest, everything that comes and goes, where it comes from and
where it goes.

So, given any freedom of interplanetary/interstellar civil movement,
there is a strategic concealment tradeoff between hiding your forces
from remote surveillance, and hiding them from spies.

-- Rick
The A'millians would almost certainly need to get their human subjects to do this kind of work, but once the Star Empire is established, it should be possible. This could lead to some trust issues (a bunch of the A'millians in high places are actually rather racist, though they try not to show it), but is probably pretty necessary for their security.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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Rocket science is fucking hard. Well, the science is actually somewhat simple, but rocket engineering is fucking hard. And I'm just doing it with rough overview numbers rather than for real. Really gives some respect for real rocket engineers!

I'm half tempted to make a wholly sci-fi rocket engine and power plan. Doing this would have probably no unintended consequences (I'd still use reason; no MFTs for me), but it really isn't something I actually want to do, since it feels like the cheap way out. I'm not above extrapolating and even taking the occasional liberal leap of tech, but even then, I try to at least have a bit of a grasp of the underlying fundamental limitations so I can stay inside them.

For a simple example, I won't ever make solar panels that get 2 kWe / m^2 in Earth orbit, because that is simply impossible; there isn't that much power available up there. I'd also be against having 1.4 kWe / m^2, because that is a little too close to the upper level allowed by thermodynamics, but getting near to that in the far future at least isn't prohibited by any physics I know of.


Not all limitations are quite so simple, however. In electric rockets, you also have limits brought in by voltage and current, and smart people knows what else. I'm trying to get a handle on these things as best I can before going ahead and saying 'magic engine works super well'. It is a lot of hard stuff.


Anyway, something that makes it harder for me is the warp drive limitation, too. This is something I can tweak, since it is wholly fictional, but I'd prefer to work around it to make the designs more interesting (and keep the warp drive as a big liability to keep it out of most designs). And I need to rethink Mr and Mrs author-insert to see if they have any engineering degrees, and just how I want doctors of engineering to work.

Then finally, the fruits of my rocket research: two new ship designs, inside and out!

All this will be coming soon; I g2g right now.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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I don't comment a great deal in the rest of the board, but I do try to read a lot of it, and I've noticed I tend to focus on things that most of you don't even seem to mention much at all.

I think the reason for this difference is based on one big thing: this universe is just to support the author-insert's life. That is its core driving force; everything else in the setting just comes from my extrapolations of reality.

This gives a very different perspective on everything; it introduces an observation bias that is quite the opposite from being epic. Loads of time are spent talking about mundane issues like marriage laws (and, of course, my huge write-ups on the biology behind the culture) and education procedures, whereas wars are, for the most part, just background events. His legal rights regarding his wife is a big deal to him. Their income and taxes? Yeah, that's a concern too. Another couple million humans far away killing each other? Not so much. (Except when his wife (to be) volunteers him to become a part of the science and engineering team sent in to clean up their mess. Even then though, the focus is on the technical solutions to the problems rather than what caused the problem in the first place.)

Anyway, I might take a break on my reading about eye cells and rocket science and talk a bit about human history and their brutally savage child-race acts in the next few days in the forms of quick summary articles (as opposed to the earthling's tour short story, which is on hold until I calculate exactly how their space flight will work - which is a background fact no doubt, but I really like making it so I can feel like I'm actually there, picturing the whole trip in my mind, hearing the sounds of the fans, feeling the thrust of the engine - this requires an absurd attention to detail which takes a while to work out.). Anyway, look forward to all this in the coming days too.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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From sfconsim-l:
Luke Campbell wrote: I've occasionally thought of using laser submarines. The subs can
stay underwater, safe from detection and space based fire, until they
are ready to surface and take a potshot at an overhead spacecraft.
This prevents the orbital bad guys from being able to target a fixed
ground installation, and they will constantly be on their toes from
subs popping up and zapping them. Such subs could dive before any
missiles could reach them, leaving lasers the only way to fight them
(unless the invaders have robot hunter-killer subs they can drop from
orbit). In the context of the cloud problem, the subs could also go
around storms and weather patterns, so that they can fire from clear air.

All this may be more difficult on extra-solar colonies. Lots of ocean
and thick air may make for a world that is mostly, or constantly,
covered in clouds - like Venus or Titan. Unless the planetary
defenders can put their lasers, or at least mirrors, above the cloud
layer, they may not be able to use lasers for defense at all.

Luke
I have laser barges in the Royal Navy, but laser subs are something I never though of - that's a cool idea.


Also, Marina's soviet breadline thread on SDN, on page 6 and 7, has me arguing for the minimum guaranteed income, which I have implemented in the UKA (funded by government services primarily). My arguments have a few holes, but as the SDN crowd attacks them, I am able to refine it more and more. The main attack in there is my perspective on who is rich (which I've conceded) and implementation issues, some of which don't apply to to A'millians, and others which do doubly so (the UKA has some 70%+ unemployment...). The main disagreement though seems to be one of fundamental ethics: my utilitarian and responsibility arguments vs a you deserve what you work for argument. It's been pretty fun.


Lastly, you guys have seemed really quiet lately... *begs for attention*
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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Sikon discusses future agriculture once more on SDN:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 84#2810484

The 'Superfarms' of this 'verse are based on something Sikon said in 2006, and he discusses the possibilities a bit more here.
Sikon wrote: [...]
The combined effect of all of these factors and more can be around an order-of-magnitude production increase per unit area compared to the best conventional agriculture.

However, at least so far, that hasn't been enough for proposals to be considered a financially worthwhile business investment, since the costs go up too.

So it's a cool idea, a little like the style of the agro-industrial nuplex complexes proposed but unfunded in the 1960s. However, it would take a breakthrough in technology, methods of more inexpensively constructing large greenhouses, or at least substantial R&D expenses for it to become refined enough to be economically competitive in the foreseeable future ... theoretically possible but hard to predict in any particular timeframe.

Environmentally, it would be beneficial in terms of drastically reducing the amount of land needing to be consumed by human agriculture. Such is technically capable of reducing that to literally under 1% of the earth's 60 million square mile land area for current and projected future population, at tens to hundreds of square meters per person depending on diet goals and other assumptions.

However, environmental benefits alone don't tend to result in implementation unless there's net money to be made.
Or unless you have Queen Anna The Great as your despot!

I do need to ask Sikon what he thinks about the cost of operation (including manpower) of these compared to conventional farms, and then ponder if they really are the best solution in a post oil, globally warmed, post WW3, starving Earth.
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

Post by Destructionator »

From Sikon's post:

* (NASA estimated 44 square meters per person with fancier agriculture having 24-hour sunlight in a spacestation).

This means the UKA would need 300 million square meters of farm. The way it is supposed to work is they have 7 of these superfarms, each feeding about a million people. It would need to be 44 million square meters. About 7 km x 7 km. Big ass greenhouse, but it doesn't strike me as being impossibly huge.

I'll write up a complete page on the superfarm when I have more time for a detailed analysis.
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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Ford Prefect posted a question over on SDN which may be of general interest:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=123884

Especially note my own posts (hey, this is my forum and thread after all!), which while a bit off topic from the OP, are still somewhat interesting. I discuss why I don't think a realistic space force will come from the navy and then go into a possible method for figuring ranks and such on some ships.

Note my terminology in the post where I defend my anti-navy statement - they are spacecraft, not ships. They have trajectories and orbits, not courses. Etc.; subtle things like that IMO help keep the reader's mind from venturing back into blue water mode, reminding him that space is indeed an alien environment.
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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Starglider talks about possible future materials and debates Stuart about what difference they might make here:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 3&start=76

I might have to reconsider my 500 year stagnation period...

And check out the picture the Duchess posts here:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=124005
That's some good artwork.
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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I wrote this in the HoS over at SDN:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 45#2823445
A realistic interstellar exploration program may look something like this. [...] This mission would consist of a smallish ship,

I disagree about this. Odds are a real interstellar mission will actually have to be a huge craft, probably some kind of converted habitat, for the simple reason that the expedition is going to be on its own for a very long time, so it must be self sufficient if it wants to have any hope of surviving. The interstellar craft will be dependent on support from home for the majority of its trip - the home base will be sending it both thrust and probably its day to day survival energy.

Then, once they arrive, it will be a long time before they go down to the planet at all, and certainly a long time before they consider living there (if ever). This is because all their existing infrastructure will be aboard their spacecraft, which will have to remain in orbit. They'll have to spend some time solidifying their position: capturing local asteroids for material, deploying solar power collectors, etc., before they can consider heading down to the planet, or else it will be a one way trip into the gravity well.

What might happen too is also similar to what some people propose for Mars: send robots ahead to not just probe the area, but also to start building some equipment to prepare the site for the human crew's arrival. If that happens, maybe the interstellar craft will indeed be small, just carrying a lot of people and other life (plant seeds, etc) in hibernation or whatever who then use the already prepared habitat when they arrive,

Of course this assumes we send normal people in the first place, which might not be valid. With advanced technology, these people may more resemble computers. Whoa, consider this: an interstellar Star Trek style beaming with reasonably hard tech: send the robot probe ahead, have it build a information receiving and body cloning gizmo. Then we upload someone's brain and blueprints for his body (android, cybernetic, or DNA + some additional info for meatware) and shoot them down a data laser to the new star. The gizmo receives it, reconstructs the person's body and transfers his consciousness into it. Repeat until the colony is finished! A little crazy, but I don't see a reason why it would be impossible with arbitrarily advanced technology. I know this is off topic for this thread, but this thread is off topic for this thread and it is a kinda cool idea.





--------------

The last paragraph is the coolest one: galaxy colonization without requiring high birth rates nor actual interstellar manned trips!

I'm so tempted to talk about far future ASE 'verse which has a galactic empire.


Which reminds me, from me on another forum:
draw 1 billion from a single planet...
You say that like it's hard! 1 billion is nothing to a mature hard sci fi solar system. The Earth system along can support at least 3 trillion people all by itself!

This is the problem with soft sci-fi. The authors have no sense of scale and no concept of reality. Planets are completely irrelevant to a real space civilization - they'll just ignore them. The asteroids are where the fun is, something completely ignored by most sci-fi authors.

A real galactic empire could have 3,000,000,000,000,000,000 large ships spending less than 1% of its GDP on the space warfleet.

Their standard laser cannons if combined would fire the equivalent of Death Star beams faster than every minute. And if they decided to start destroying all the Earth like planets in their empire, it would still take them over 100,000 years to finish the job!

And losing all those planets wouldn't even have a noticeable impact on their economy. Odds are most people wouldn't even notice that it happened.


Galactic empires would actually exist on a scale that is utterly incomprehensible outside these huge numbers. What we see in Star Wars is nothing even remotely close to that realistic scale.

Judging purely from what we see in the movies, saying the GE actually has at most hundreds of star systems is actually quite generous.
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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I've been reading TV Tropes for almost 14 hours straight now and my eyes hurt. But some of the interesting ones in there describe things I have in mind.

Sadly, I already closed the tabs, but some of the titles from memory: Patrick Steward speech, utopia justifies the means, magnificant bastard, affably evil, and many more; I must have read at least 100 pages today, but I'm tired now. Lots of fun stuff; I really want to get back into writing soon (which I want to anyway; I have so many scenes in my brain; I just need to write the rest of the story to tie it all together...).
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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Add Mary Sue Topia to the list!
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 15#2827515
.
Darth Wong wrote:
RedImperator wrote:Besides being awesome, what would be the purpose of this construct? A Dyson swarm makes sense for capturing solar energy. Jupiter is a net radiator, but I don't think it's enough to justify the expense of such a construction project, and it's too far away from the sun for the outer surface of such a construct to be habitable. Are you thinking of a hypothetical alien solar system with a gas giant in the habitable zone?
It would be ultra-cool as something left behind by ultra-powerful and inconceivably ancient progenitors as a habitat or experiment. And then somebody tries to figure out the geology of their anomalously large Earth-like planet, and discovers that several kilometres below the surface is a completely artificial construct ...
How cool!
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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I need to say something about formal declarations of war later.
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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You remember my flying away into the void suckass death? Well, if it was in the real 'verse, you'd very likely not be alone. Thanks to Marina for making me think about this.

While you still might be screwed (such as an attack where you use your propellant tank as a shield... I'll talk about that later), you don't need to be.

So you have your astronaut in his space suit floating off into nothingness in the lonely void of space. Then, Mission Control speaks! The radio still works!

Doomed astronaut now is being constantly reminded that he isn't alone, and is given the option of taking his mind off his impending doom by helping solve his problem:

"The nuclear frigate, Swift Death, is burning your direction now. She has a chem shuttle which can intercept you in two days."

"But I only have one day of air left."

"Right..."

"Hmm, what if Swift Death reprogrammed one of their missiles to burn-flip-burn? A missile should have the speed to meet me sooner."

"And we put a replacement air tank on it! We're on it! ...But, could you replace it? They're not made for in flight swap outs."

"Well, I think I could live through the pressure difference."

"I've got an idea: suppose we put a telepresence arm on the missile."

"Right, then an operator on Swift Death could reach back there and do it, ....brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Make it so!"



That's the "problem" with hard sci-fi: it's just too hard to have a non-happy ending! Technology + smart people = problem solved. He won't be in perfect condition when rescued (he'll probably be dehydrated at the least), but the physicians on the Swift Death have the smarts and the tech to fix those problems too.

Of course, there is a lot that can go wrong here, so our stranded astronaut isn't necessarily safe (Loading all that equipment onto a jerry-rigged missile might not actually work), but he now has some real hope.

This might make a good short story to write out in detail later.






For sad endings, there are always executions, but you aren't alone then either. The executioner will at least give you a hug as he slips the needle in....
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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My watching of Mobile Suit Gundam over the last couple days is making me really want to throw Minovsky particles in to here and do my take on them.

They'd be a very interesting development, especially with some minor tweakage, but even without tweakage, it would be so fun to play with the idea.

I can have the peak of the kind of technology I've been describing in the main threads, then spend some time doing far future far out like stuff for a while, then bring in the ol' particle and take up a whole new kind of tech.

I've already added a Minovsky fusion generator to the setting as a homage to the show. (Similarly, I also have a Duchy of Zeon on A'millia, which is named for the entity in the show - the real similarity shows itself when the Duchess of Zeon (made a duchess as homage to the SDN user) takes the LKT spot, and rules a chunk of Earth from a space colony... I even have some uniforms very similar to the Earth Federation ones, since I think they look awesome anyway.)

All I have to do is set that invention a bit forward in time, make it work with Helium-3, and make it create the magic particle...

Gundam is actually pretty hard sci-fi; the Minovsky particle is already very well defined, so it'd be a lot of fun seeing how similar my take on its consequences would be compared to what we see in the Gundam 'verse.

It is doubtful that I'll see Mobile Suits as being practical even with it, but the same other tech and kind of close up space battles might happen. It'd be a blast.

I'm soooo tempted.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
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Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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Now is the time for mankind to stand up for the future!

HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON! HAIL ZEON!

we now return you to your regularly scheduled thread
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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So what if someone got used to living on the moon where he could make big jumps and be fine then suddenly went back to Earth?

He might try to make the same jump there and end up seriously hurt. Jump or fall related accidents may be rather common among moon people visiting Earth.
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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So if I go with some of the revisions I have in mind, my timeline is going to change a fair bit. It will look something like this:

Prehistoric
Ancient
Medieval
Rise to space
The high frontier era
Post holocaust recovery
Conquest
Calm
Culture (where the ASE's new monarch happens to be an AI)
Interstellar expansion and some transhumanism
The Minovsky era (my big, long range laser battleships suddenly become useless!)
Armageddon (hey sometimes I just want to blow everything up. It ruins optimism to an extent, but I'd have 1000 years of that still.)
Return of the transhumans


Of those, the transhuman stuff excites me the least and might just ruin the stuff later. It should probably be background stuff if anything.

...but BUTLERIAN JIHAD!

maybe.

"Earth for Earthers! Get off my world, you transhuman scum."

"Earth for nature! Leave it alone and live in space!" (but i shouldn't copy char too much.... despite agreeing with him from what I've seen so far)

Though humans vs transhumans might make for some good armageddon war material. The space bastards wouldn't be above doing colony drops then...

"If you love your world so much, you can stay there!" *cuts the space elevator cables*

And then the upper level asteroid goes tangent line right through a colony cluster of sympathizing humans!

Or the earth humans cut the cable themselves as a weapon to hit some transhuman habitats. And they then retaliate with a colony drop.


By GOD, I will have some fucking colony drops!


And when the dust has settled.... who will survive?
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Re: Random notes and whatnot

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So I was just thinking about remote controlled battle robots, and the best design I've thought of so far is this:

You have an armored case rolling about on some tracks. A nice simple design that can move over a lot of terrain while still being stable. Above it is a thinner rotating section with a gun. Above that is another rotating section, even thinner, with a camera and antenna.

Sound a little familiar?

Image

Mine would probably be shorter and have a wider base for more stability, but the resemblance still tickles me a bit.
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
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