|
Post by darthroach on May 21, 2018 2:49:18 GMT
CoaDE is less outlandish than most space travel but it's still pretty out there. Even going to Mars seems like a tremendous waste of energy and money. There is no economic return on investment, true. Not for a single-planet civilization, anyway. Which is why I said we need to break the incentive deadlock - there is no incentive to do space exploration for an earth-based civilization because besides some precious metals there really isn't much out there except endless living space to sustain a population orders of magnitude larger than what we currently have. But it won't bring anyone a net income. Colonizing planets is a dead end anyway, any reasonable setting realizes that space habitats are far better in every way than trying to terraform dead planets. There isn't anywhere that manned spaceflight is ever going to return a profit. Unless people just get over it and go out there for reasons other than the bottom line, there will be zero space colonization. All the things that could feasibly pay off - asteroid mining and solar power satellites - can be done by drones. There is absolutely stuff to fight over once you're done colonizing a place. Abundance never lasts, demand simply grows to match it. What is political capital if not a resource, a means to some other end? You're taking a naive teenager's view on history. Why are you so obsessed with Mars? Mars is a good, obvious starting point to get the public captivated but it is unlikely to ever be a major economic driving force for space colonization. But space habitats are perfectly viable and much more likely to happen. Fuel is cheap in space. If an orbital civilization ever gets established, it really is more economical to mine asteroids than it is to waste propellant in gravity wells. [/div][/quote] No you don't. The sun is constantly blasting everything within hundreds of AUs with energy you can use for everything from life support to propulsion. Why are you so fixated on planets? Habitats can have custom made living conditions at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost of terraforming some place. That line of thinking is a dead end. The future, if it even exists, lies in swarms of habitats surrounding stars. It isn't worth going to space until people live there. If you break the initial barrier, it is perfectly sensible with even today's scientific understanding. Interstellar civilizations are physically possible right now, they're just not systemically attainable. It's an engineerign and economics problem (that I don't think will ever be overcome, but that's besides the point), not a hard theoretical barrier. It's perfectly plausible given one initial assumption, that we get off this bloody rock to begin with. You're making a load of assumptions about what is or isn't required to live in space that simply aren't supported by anything. You're just trying to convince everyone to go along with your headcanon that prefercs cyberpunk to rocketpunk. That's fine and all, just don't use crap arguments for it. Conjecture, based on your personal preference of what is "realistic" and what isn't. Until any of it happens it's just fantasy, deal with it.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on May 19, 2018 21:36:22 GMT
I would suggest you familiarize yourself with the setting since most of that doesn't apply to the CoaDE universe. There is no fusion, starships or FTL. Just rather improbably cheap additive manufacturing, wacky pricing based on element abundance and the occasional railgun that violates energy conservation laws.
ETA: And you don't even need fusion to do interstellar travel. The light speed limit is probably immutable, but you can theoretically do just fine by coasting at relativistic velocities on lasersails. This, of course, requires vast amounts of space infrastructure but you're going to need that before you even think about going to other systems anyway. The real challenge, I think, is getting off the planet in any reasonable numbers to begin with given the lack of economic incentive. Once that hurdle is crossed, it's all just an engineering problem, no magic required.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Apr 8, 2018 0:03:47 GMT
Aren't laserstars the antithesis of committal since they have practically infinite ammo, massive delta-V from MPDTs, and effective ranges potentially the size of Jupiter? With that mobility and control area I'd expect them to be very good at gunboat diplomacy. Only because hardware limitations do not allow me to sling hundreds of thousands of tiny, well armoured missiles at them from lightseconds away.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Apr 6, 2018 21:25:12 GMT
Inspired by AtomHeartDragon, I have decided to take my hand in making some specialized microdrones armed with cannon and blast launcher. Introducing, the Trooper class.*snip* How well does this fare against fleets of 10Mm laserstars? I have been trying to design a good laserstar kill vehicle that doesn't break my PC on and off for ages now. Dv looks a bit low, and the front of the vessel is quite flat.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Apr 4, 2018 11:00:02 GMT
What do you think this is if not a response?
The arms race is back on. But honestly, I don't think nukes are what will end up deciding this one - whoever gets general AI first wins this fight and all the fights to come. New weapons don't really need a response. Currently, nobody has large scale missile defense. Russian weapons can already destroy the US, and US weapons can destroy Russia (you can also substitute these two with any major nuclear power). Developing more potent weapons doesn't change the status quo of MAD at all, it's either posturing or a response to worries about others developing defenses. If defenses are developed, however, that will need a response or that status quo is endangered, and that is likely to result in an arms race. In a full strategic exchange. This does not apply to limited scenarios like North Korea with their half a dozen nukes suddenly developing the ability to circumvent US ABM defenses. Or a nuclear exchange with China, for that matter.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Apr 3, 2018 22:24:17 GMT
Yup this is our response to Russia and China's actions Eh, anybody who seriously believed history ended in 1991 is a moron. There are periods of peace and respite, but that's just what they are, perods. If civilization doesn't die in a nuclear fire first. I can't imagine the runners of up the armsrace will be happy to see MAD dismantled. Though, what will probably end up happening is a bunch of posturing and some disarmament treaties at the end of all this. I can't see any sort of scenario where SDI actually goes live, the Russians and Chinese simply won't let it happen. Come to think of it, US might be going for a rehash of the 80s where they forced the USSR to spend themselves into ruin by attempting to match star wars.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Apr 3, 2018 21:54:40 GMT
Other nuclear powers will have to respond and improve or expand their arsenals to compensate for the defenses, or they risk a situation where their opponent could conceivably win a nuclear war. It's not really a place you'd want to go to. What do you think this is if not a response? The arms race is back on. But honestly, I don't think nukes are what will end up deciding this one - whoever gets general AI first wins this fight and all the fights to come.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Mar 7, 2018 22:22:37 GMT
Eh. If they were Peter Watts' vampires (read his "Blindsight" and "Echopraxia" if you haven't already) I would just deploy some long, narrow, perpedicular radiators (I have quite a surplus from my continuous rod munitions tests) and scoop them up while they're seizuring. I have it on good authority that this strategy may be outdated...
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Mar 6, 2018 11:53:09 GMT
Space does not have temperature, because there is nothing to have temperature. But your armor does. It depends on the incoming energy. Isn't temperature relative to distance from the sun (or other generic heating celestial body), based solely on solar radiation though? Like, Mercury is a few hundred degrees, while, say Pluto is in the lower range of negatives? We'll ignore the fact that these bodies may or may not have an atmosphere. Temperature of what? The surface of these planets? Because vacuum doesn't have temperature. Temperature is the measure of the average kinetic energy of particles in a system, it doesn't make sense to speak of temperature without any matter. There is no air to have ambient temperature, to convect or conduct heat away from objects. Some patch of surface exposed to sunlight might be hundreds of degrees hotter than some patch of surface in the shade. How much something heats up in the sunlight can depend on how reflective it is, how well it conducts heat, etc. There is no "temperature" to space in Pluto's orbit, there is only the hypothetical question of what temperature your ship's armor will reach if it sits there long enough.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Dec 4, 2017 9:51:48 GMT
The ship doesn't have anything close to that performance. When operating with NTR it will usually have no more than 10km/s delta v, while operating with MPD it will have acceleration in the microgees. It's not a torchship, it's just got two very different systems of engines - sort of like two gears. Pretty much everyone puts an MPD on their ships nowadays, because they are very little additional mass and give a ton of additional delta v. You can't use them in deep gravity wells due to the glacial acceleration, though. That isn't necessarily true. Granted sufficient power, MPDT-equipped craft can achieve acelerations nearing 1 m/s^2 while maintaining tens of kilometres per second of delta-v. As an proof, I present this. Do note though, that this craft later had its low-gear acceleration boosted to 40.1mg-114mg in exchange for a somewhat smaller delta-v budget. Your MPD probably breaks physics in some way. Most likely somewhere in the heat transfer system.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Nov 5, 2017 9:47:13 GMT
The ship doesn't have anything close to that performance. When operating with NTR it will usually have no more than 10km/s delta v, while operating with MPD it will have acceleration in the microgees. It's not a torchship, it's just got two very different systems of engines - sort of like two gears.
Pretty much everyone puts an MPD on their ships nowadays, because they are very little additional mass and give a ton of additional delta v. You can't use them in deep gravity wells due to the glacial acceleration, though.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Nov 2, 2017 5:14:24 GMT
Most definitely not apllicable. The forward thrust arises because: 1. The keel prevents the boat from being pushed laterally 2. The sail is angled more than the ship. The result is that the keel cancels out the force in the direction of the wind and all you're left is the force perpendicular to the wind - which get projected on to the keel axis in the positive (forward) direction. So what you're really doing is using the water to direct your movement. This cannot work without something to push off of. ETA: I just realized it ought to be possible to sail directly into the wind so long as your sail is an airfoil that can produce lift at negative angles of attack. BRB making a viral mystery video ETA2: or maybe not. Need to think this over. The induced drag ought to always work out so that the resulting force vector is no more than perpendicular to the airflow, otherwise we'd be violating the conservation of momentum.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on Aug 29, 2017 19:37:16 GMT
The human mind will be the ultimate space weapon. *badum-tish* You are actually quite close. Except, instead of the human mind, it's going to be super-AIs commanding militaries before any of the space tech even comes along.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on May 17, 2017 20:35:47 GMT
darthroach AFAIK the structural bracing visible in the editor isn't yet computed in the final mass and cost. I figured, since your ship isn't built like a skyscraper. I assume that since most ships constructed in 0g will never be exposed to more than a few dozen miligees at most, qswitched didn't figure it would be worth including. Well, when you're talking about a mile tall ship constructed in a full g, supposed to handle actual liftoff, the loading becomes quite a bit more substantial.
|
|
|
Post by darthroach on May 17, 2017 19:39:25 GMT
I wonder how structural mass is computed. Because this thing is going to need a ton of structural mass.
|
|