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Post by thorneel on Apr 27, 2017 11:10:32 GMT
Stealth hydrogen steamers are possible more or less based on today's technologies. Are they used? If not, why not? Taboo? Treaties? Magitech sensors? Total information transparency with pervasive intelligence agencies that literally know every industrial project of each-other? If they are used, who use them? For what usage? What are their capabilities, vs existing sensors?
Also, I would suggest your fusion drives to use proton-boron fusion. It is -the most aneutronic one, as helium-3 has significantly more neutron emission from secondary reactions -harder to pull off, showing how mature fusion tech is -ALL HAIL BORON *hrm* boron is a nice element - though it makes it much more common than H3
The main Jupiter colony would be on Ganymede, in the equatorial zone that is protected from radiation by the moon's magnetic field.
Are there projects to unfreeze Earth? We know it's possible, it happened once in the past. Then again, maybe there is a taboo about trying to fix climate, for example after accidentally snowballing Earth in the first place in a previous attempt. Snowball Earth itself can be a pretty interesting setting. The classic Transperceneige comic book comes to mind (and its film adaptation, Snowpiercer), or the longest-running single-author series in the history of science-fiction, La Compagnie des Glaces. Snowball Earth also seems to attract a surprisingly high concentration of train-based societies...
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Post by bigbombr on Apr 27, 2017 11:14:35 GMT
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Post by The Astronomer on Apr 27, 2017 11:48:08 GMT
...The main Jupiter colony would be on Ganymede, in the equatorial zone that is protected from radiation by the moon's magnetic field... Is Ganymede's magnetic field strong enough to shield itself from Jupiter's extra-strong radiation? Anyways, Callisto is the most realistic choice. Far out of the gravity well, nominal radiation and stuffs.
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Post by nerd1000 on Apr 27, 2017 14:09:18 GMT
Okay, let me backtrack on cybernetics. Heavy augmentation is likely to become more standard, and I see cybernetics in addition to gene-mods being used to cope with local conditions. It'll be interesting to see how humanity interacts with its own members who are now so decidedly un-human, at least in appearance. Could be an interesting plot point. I did not know that about cryogenics. Hmm. If cryogenics becomes fairly inexpensive, I do envision it being used on a widespread basis. It could better justify human technicians on cargo vessels. And more. And nerd1000, thank you! I'd love it if you could help me flesh out more details regarding the future progression of biotech, especially since my knowledge is so limited. It's probably best to start with the molecule that's central to it all, which is of course DNA. DNA is ludicrously information-dense: The microSD card in my phone has enough storage to hold my entire genotype twice over, yet that genome contains almost all of the data needed to produce the most complex object known to exist (namely a human brain). A lot of this complexity arises from self-organizing emergent behavior that we're not even beginning to understand. Let's not get too deep into that though. If you want to see how fast we can progress in this field, take a look at DNA sequencing technology. The Human Genome Project started in 1990 and took 10 years to produce the first draft human genome, at a cost of $3 billion. Now we can do the same thing in three weeks for a price that's rapidly decreasing towards around $1000. In other words, our capacity for genome sequencing has accelerated at a rate that makes Moore's law look like it's standing still. In fact geneticists are now swamped in so much data that they don't know what to do with it: genome sequencing has become so cheap and quick (relatively speaking) that it would take all the geneticists on the planet decades to analyse the data we already have (they're still working on the human genome!). As a result, there's a lot of work going on in using AI and learning algorithms for genetic analysis. While the current gene sequencing methods are based on very large and expensive (but very fast) machines, that is about to change. Currently an illumina next generation sequencing machine will take up most of your lab bench and set you back around $1 million, plus the cost of the computer system to run it. A 4th generation Nanopore sequencer (such as the MiniION) is about the size of a small TV remote and costs about $1000, though it is much slower than illumina and won't be displacing it any time soon. I'd say that within the next 5 years it will be common practice for doctors to sequence your DNA to look for disease risk factors, and within 15 years the practice will be so universal that almost everyone who goes to the doctor will be sequenced. With your universe's level of tech people should be carrying sequencers faster and more accurate than we can dream of today in their smartphone (or goggles, or cybernetic hand- whatever floats your boat). Downstream of DNA we can sequence RNA and protein. We can look at protein structures down to not much more than the size of an atom using X-ray crystallography, and methods like electron microscopy are rapidly catching up. We're also starting to gain an understanding of how these structures form (look into the game FoldIt, which offloads some of the rather difficult problem of finding an optimal protein fold to the human brain's natural intuition for 3D objects) and how they carry out their roles. There have already been successful experiments in designing functional enzymes from scratch, and we're only going to get better at it. Finally, we're coming to understand how these elements fit together into a whole living system. The best part: What we know now, which already seems like a lot... well most of that's probably wrong or incomplete. We're barely scratching the surface of what we can know about living systems. I'd compare it to the early days of computing: We're maybe at 'first microprocessor' level of tech and understanding right now. Could anyone back then have predicted an iPhone? That's the kind of tech potential we're looking at now.
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Post by newageofpower on Apr 27, 2017 14:09:55 GMT
The Astronomer link did not appear while making my message. Now that I have read it, it conveniently dodges the boil-off problem regarding a high temperature (i.e. does not flashfreeze an unprotected human) high density (i.e. human appropiate) atmosphere. EDIT: Actually, assuming very high oxygen fractions, humans can function in fairly low density atmospheres; though it will still be fairly cold for unmodified humans. Wait, what? These are 100 GW - 10 TW Fusion torches. They have maximum exhaust velocities of 2500 km/s. And a specific power of 100 kW/kg. And they're throttleable. First of all, I wouldn't brag about a puny specific power like 100 kW/kg when you're using fusion - Deskjester hit 336 MW/kg with a Decane solid core fission nuclear thermal design; and the CoADE engine prevents the man from using a composite/tapered nozzle or other IRL design optimizations! And our forum is now devising liquid encapsulated fuel pellet designs, with significant increases... Link: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/thread/561/rocket-engine-construction-threadOn this forum, multiple players have devised MPDts with relativistic exhaust velocities - though we do have problems getting to dozens of TW of fission power generation without crashing the game. While real life variants are unlikely to have impressive power-to-weight ratios, known electric drive theory (as net system power increases, % energy for preparing the propellant decreases and thus efficiency increases) supports the conclusions reached in our designs; if you can hit multiple TW of reactor output, your electric drive is going to yield more dV than a fusion torch of similar output. Obviously a fusion torch can have far more output than a reactor of similar mass, but there goes your efficiency. And obviously, if society is super-post scarcity, timely delivery applications will prefer the high thrust drive over the anemic electric drive. Back to your story - without easy industrial technology, how does Venus make a giant merchant fleet? With easy industrial tech, why hasn't a more resource-rich polity (basically any one of hundreds of other sites in the solar system) manufactured a giant Merchant Fleet first? In fact, I would advise you dial down on the industrial tech - an energy rich polity could easily reach 100% self-sufficiency, which sounds like it does not agree with the goals of your story.
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Post by The Astronomer on Apr 27, 2017 15:12:51 GMT
The Astronomer link did not appear while making my message. Now that I have read it, it conveniently dodges the boil-off problem regarding a high temperature (i.e. does not flashfreeze an unprotected human) high density (i.e. human appropiate) atmosphere. EDIT: Actually, assuming very high oxygen fractions, humans can function in fairly low density atmospheres; though it will still be fairly cold for unmodified humans. What link ._.
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Post by SevenOfCarina on Apr 27, 2017 18:36:34 GMT
Stealth hydrogen steamers are possible more or less based on today's technologies. Are they used? If not, why not? Taboo? Treaties? Magitech sensors? Total information transparency with pervasive intelligence agencies that literally know every industrial project of each-other? If they are used, who use them? For what usage? What are their capabilities, vs existing sensors? Also, I would suggest your fusion drives to use proton-boron fusion. It is -the most aneutronic one, as helium-3 has significantly more neutron emission from secondary reactions -harder to pull off, showing how mature fusion tech is -ALL HAIL BORON *hrm* boron is a nice element - though it makes it much more common than H3 The main Jupiter colony would be on Ganymede, in the equatorial zone that is protected from radiation by the moon's magnetic field. Are there projects to unfreeze Earth? We know it's possible, it happened once in the past. Then again, maybe there is a taboo about trying to fix climate, for example after accidentally snowballing Earth in the first place in a previous attempt. Snowball Earth itself can be a pretty interesting setting. The classic Transperceneige comic book comes to mind (and its film adaptation, Snowpiercer), or the longest-running single-author series in the history of science-fiction, La Compagnie des Glaces. Snowball Earth also seems to attract a surprisingly high concentration of train-based societies... If I remember correctly, Hydrogen steamers had .... issues. They'll likely be useless in this setting, owing to their payload of fairly sluggish chemical fuelled missiles, the prevalence of gigantic passive sensors and micro recondrones, and the absence of AGI. My initial thoughts were p-B11, but D-D runs on a more easily available fuel, is easier to ignite, and, if the reaction products (T and He3) are burnt with more D, has a maximum exhaust velocity of 8.78% c. Most of the Jovian system's population will be on Callisto, with the rest mostly scattered beneath the surfaces of the inner Galilean moons. A small, but significant minority will reside in orbiting habs or on the smaller, outer moons. Yeah, killing Earth is an issue. Earth needs to be inaccessible, else Luna gets a ready supply of resources for its own use. And that means no outer system tensions. Hence, Earth being frozen over isn't enough. The atmosphere should choke your engines, the ground should want to swallow you up, debris should rain down on your head, the surface and air should be irradiated and there needs to be a significant threat of a volcanic eruption if any major mining operation is executed. But I simply don't know how to make this plausibly happen. Any ideas? Or should I pursue a diiferent train of thought?
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Post by SevenOfCarina on Apr 27, 2017 18:39:40 GMT
Hmmm. In can't seem to access the website. No worries, I'll take a look at the wiki and the tv tropes pages.
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Post by SevenOfCarina on Apr 27, 2017 19:19:09 GMT
The Astronomer link did not appear while making my message. Now that I have read it, it conveniently dodges the boil-off problem regarding a high temperature (i.e. does not flashfreeze an unprotected human) high density (i.e. human appropiate) atmosphere. EDIT: Actually, assuming very high oxygen fractions, humans can function in fairly low density atmospheres; though it will still be fairly cold for unmodified humans. Wait, what? These are 100 GW - 10 TW Fusion torches. They have maximum exhaust velocities of 2500 km/s. And a specific power of 100 kW/kg. And they're throttleable. First of all, I wouldn't brag about a puny specific power like 100 kW/kg when you're using fusion - Deskjester hit 336 MW/kg with a Decane solid core fission nuclear thermal design; and the CoADE engine prevents the man from using a composite/tapered nozzle or other IRL design optimizations! And our forum is now devising liquid encapsulated fuel pellet designs, with significant increases... Link: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/thread/561/rocket-engine-construction-threadOn this forum, multiple players have devised MPDts with relativistic exhaust velocities - though we do have problems getting to dozens of TW of fission power generation without crashing the game. While real life variants are unlikely to have impressive power-to-weight ratios, known electric drive theory (as net system power increases, % energy for preparing the propellant decreases and thus efficiency increases) supports the conclusions reached in our designs; if you can hit multiple TW of reactor output, your electric drive is going to yield more dV than a fusion torch of similar output. Obviously a fusion torch can have far more output than a reactor of similar mass, but there goes your efficiency. And obviously, if society is super-post scarcity, timely delivery applications will prefer the high thrust drive over the anemic electric drive. Back to your story - without easy industrial technology, how does Venus make a giant merchant fleet? With easy industrial tech, why hasn't a more resource-rich polity (basically any one of hundreds of other sites in the solar system) manufactured a giant Merchant Fleet first? In fact, I would advise you dial down on the industrial tech - an energy rich polity could easily reach 100% self-sufficiency, which sounds like it does not agree with the goals of your story. I'm by no means an expert on this subject, so I welcome any suggestions. The 100 kW/kg figure isn't just for a drive unit, it's for an entire ship, hab, rad shield, propellant tanks and all (Discluding remass and payload, of course). There was an existing study by a Mr Hyde wich suggested a fusion rocket of similar specs to what I have proposed, and it seemed fairly plausible; hence the specific power figure. But I worry that if I jack up too much, kinetic kill missiles with impact velocities of tens of thousands of kilometres per second would become launchable across solar system distances. With the current specific power figure, and mass ratio of e, a KKV impacting at 2500 km/s will take something like 90 billion kilometres to accelerate up to speed. With a specific power of 100 MW/kg, that turns into 90 million kilometres. I'm not sure how this will affect the laser/kinetic/missile balance though. Dialling back on the industrial tech, yes sir! Now here comes the part with justifying fusion rockets and barely-more-advanced-than-today industrial tech. Maybe I should make this more near-future? Venus is barely getting established, Luna has numerous fledgling states that are attempting independance, Mars is mostly a colony, drive tech is slow, and then, all of a sudden, Earth goes kaput? Population shrinks from multiple billions to hundereds of millions practically overnight? All hell breaks loose on Mars, Luna gets flooded, Venusian ideologies attract idealistic scientists, artists and engineers, Mercury attepts some laserstars, the Belt mining economy crashes, and an exodus from now-wrecked Terra triggers outer system colonization? This could have more potential. What do you folk think?
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Post by bigbombr on Apr 27, 2017 20:55:57 GMT
The Astronomer link did not appear while making my message. Now that I have read it, it conveniently dodges the boil-off problem regarding a high temperature (i.e. does not flashfreeze an unprotected human) high density (i.e. human appropiate) atmosphere. EDIT: Actually, assuming very high oxygen fractions, humans can function in fairly low density atmospheres; though it will still be fairly cold for unmodified humans. First of all, I wouldn't brag about a puny specific power like 100 kW/kg when you're using fusion - Deskjester hit 336 MW/kg with a Decane solid core fission nuclear thermal design; and the CoADE engine prevents the man from using a composite/tapered nozzle or other IRL design optimizations! And our forum is now devising liquid encapsulated fuel pellet designs, with significant increases... Link: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/thread/561/rocket-engine-construction-threadOn this forum, multiple players have devised MPDts with relativistic exhaust velocities - though we do have problems getting to dozens of TW of fission power generation without crashing the game. While real life variants are unlikely to have impressive power-to-weight ratios, known electric drive theory (as net system power increases, % energy for preparing the propellant decreases and thus efficiency increases) supports the conclusions reached in our designs; if you can hit multiple TW of reactor output, your electric drive is going to yield more dV than a fusion torch of similar output. Obviously a fusion torch can have far more output than a reactor of similar mass, but there goes your efficiency. And obviously, if society is super-post scarcity, timely delivery applications will prefer the high thrust drive over the anemic electric drive. Back to your story - without easy industrial technology, how does Venus make a giant merchant fleet? With easy industrial tech, why hasn't a more resource-rich polity (basically any one of hundreds of other sites in the solar system) manufactured a giant Merchant Fleet first? In fact, I would advise you dial down on the industrial tech - an energy rich polity could easily reach 100% self-sufficiency, which sounds like it does not agree with the goals of your story. I'm by no means an expert on this subject, so I welcome any suggestions. The 100 kW/kg figure isn't just for a drive unit, it's for an entire ship, hab, rad shield, propellant tanks and all (Discluding remass and payload, of course). There was an existing study by a Mr Hyde wich suggested a fusion rocket of similar specs to what I have proposed, and it seemed fairly plausible; hence the specific power figure. But I worry that if I jack up too much, kinetic kill missiles with impact velocities of tens of thousands of kilometres per second would become launchable across solar system distances. With the current specific power figure, and mass ratio of e, a KKV impacting at 2500 km/s will take something like 90 billion kilometres to accelerate up to speed. With a specific power of 100 MW/kg, that turns into 90 million kilometres. I'm not sure how this will affect the laser/kinetic/missile balance though. Dialling back on the industrial tech, yes sir! Now here comes the part with justifying fusion rockets and barely-more-advanced-than-today industrial tech. Maybe I should make this more near-future? Venus is barely getting established, Luna has numerous fledgling states that are attempting independance, Mars is mostly a colony, drive tech is slow, and then, all of a sudden, Earth goes kaput? Population shrinks from multiple billions to hundereds of millions practically overnight? All hell breaks loose on Mars, Luna gets flooded, Venusian ideologies attract idealistic scientists, artists and engineers, Mercury attepts some laserstars, the Belt mining economy crashes, and an exodus from now-wrecked Terra triggers outer system colonization? This could have more potential. What do you folk think? Seems good. You were using initially confined fusion? If we assume fusion, than that means we either have powerful pulsed lasers suited for inertial confined fusion or high temperature superconductors for magnetically confined fusion. This might influence the balance between lasers versus coilguns.
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Post by Enderminion on Apr 27, 2017 21:49:18 GMT
why are you only using lasers or magnets? you can use both you know right?
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Post by RiftandRend on Apr 27, 2017 23:25:10 GMT
why are you only using lasers or magnets? you can use both you know right? Lasers and magnets lead to very different types of fusion systems. Lasers are used for millisecond pulses while magnets are for semi-continuous operation. I don't see any middle ground between these systems, so using them together seems pointless.
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Post by Enderminion on Apr 27, 2017 23:48:33 GMT
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Post by RiftandRend on Apr 27, 2017 23:52:01 GMT
Cool, I learned something today.
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Post by SevenOfCarina on Apr 28, 2017 3:26:11 GMT
why are you only using lasers or magnets? you can use both you know right? Magneto-Inertial confinement, as far as I understand it, uses a lithium liner for propellant, radiation shielding and open-cycle cooling. My limited knowledge suggests that it can't really achieve very high exhaust velocities. For a 4 kt wet mass, 1.4 kt dry mass, and a jet power of 100 GW, the optimum exhaust velocity for a brachistochrone trajectory, even for a Venusian close approach distance of 40 million kilometres, is 290 km/s. It gets worse for longer distances. This seems far in excess of the figure mentioned in the Atomic Rockets page.
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