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Post by EshaNas on Feb 18, 2019 0:49:28 GMT
I love TV Tropes, but I was searching it for hard science fiction the other day and it could really use a clean up. A bunch of anime space operas, what the??? Ain't nothing wrong with Planetes. Well, there is, but it's not a bad piece of hard-scifi itself.
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Post by EshaNas on Oct 23, 2018 0:44:24 GMT
Well, the shield is fairly self evident, but I don't think the circle is a sun. The rear half appears to be a gear with square cogs, while the front half has spikes. As a guess: Since USTA is made up of NESR and EAM (North Eurasian Socialist Republic and East Asian Conglomerate) a good guess here is that the outer cogs thingy came from flags of those SSR. Soviet republics generally have a round circle of yeast/wheat surrounding a sickle and hammer, And i guess in this case they just glossed that over because they don't plant yeast in space, there's no agriculture anymore, the significance of the proletariat is now made up of only industry workers so no meaning having plants symbolizing farmers. And the center shield could be for putting heraldry, or it had some heraldry originally and then lost its face when mass copies are required. What we see could be a result of simplifying copying over 200 years with people not caring too much what they meant (at least in the beginning). The flag of Nippon Prime is another example, they could have simply used the old imperial battle flag or the current red-dot flag. Probably using a template commonly used for radioactive material simplifies reproduction of the flag??? This does raise the question of what the hell has happened to the West. Russia and Asia and India and Pakistan made it, but not the USA, Brazil, Europe, or even the African Union in some form?
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Post by EshaNas on Jul 25, 2018 2:27:01 GMT
We've already had a Neutron particle beam cannon, basically just an accelerator put on a Minuteman and launched in a sub-orbital arc and retrieved after firing widly into space.
I refer to BEAR, or Beam Experiment Aboard a Rocket.
"Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket (BEAR)
The Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket (BEAR) experiment tested a neutral particle beam accelerator during a suborbital rocket flight. The Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket accelerator is the major component of an experiment designed to demonstrate the operation of an ion accelerator in space and to characterize the exoatmospheric propagation of a neutral particle beam. It is designed to produce a 10-mA (equivalent), 1-MeV, neutral hydrogen beam in 50-µs pulses at 5 Hz. The accelerator consists of a 30-kV, H- injector, a 1-MeV radiofrequency quadrupole, two 425-MHz RF amplifiers, a gas-cell neutralizer, beam optics, a vacuum system, diagnostics, and controls. The design has been constrained by the need for a light-weight rugged system that would operate autonomously.
Charged hydrogen ions that escaped neutralization might play havoc with an NPB satellite. The accumulation of charge might severely degrade weapon system performance in unforeseen ways, although NPB scientists are confident that this would not bean issue. The Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket (BEAR) experiment with an ion source was designed to answer any remaining doubts about space-charge accumulation.
The design of this 1-m-long, lightweight (greater than 55 kg) accelerator incorporates four aluminum vane/cavity quadrants joined by an electroforming process. With the vane and cavity fabricated as a monolithic structure, there are no mechanical RF, vacuum, or structural joints. The accelerator had undergone extensive environmental and operational laboratory testing by early 1989 in preparation for launch. Because of the rigors of spaceflight, the accelerator design has been constrained by factors not normally applicable to conventional terrestrial accelerators. The design techniques developed for BEAR would be applicable whenever, rugged, lightweight, or power-efficient systems are required.
On July 13, 1989 the Beam experiment Aboard Rocket (BEAR) linear accelerator was successfully launched and operated in space. The flight demonstrated that a neutral hydrogen beam could be successfully propagated in an exoatmospheric environment. The accelerato was the result of an extensive collaboration between Los Alamos National Laboratory and industrial partner. The design was strongly constrained by the need for a lightweight rugged system that would survive the rigors of launch and operate autonomously. Following the fight the Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket (BEAR) payload was recovered with minimal damage via parachute after an 11-minute flight to a maximum altitude of 195 km."
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Post by EshaNas on Jul 8, 2018 17:36:40 GMT
This argument always comes down to two positions. One one side you have 1) Sensors are becoming incredibly discerning, sensor fusion is coming on in leaps and bounds and processing power is cheaper than tap water these days also there is no horizon to hide behind. Thus stealth in space is totally impossible. The counter argument runs 1) Space is really uncomfortably big. Like seriously, so huge! Also the noise floor is very high and the miniscule radiant intensity of a vessel from size hundred thousand km means that stealth is essentially ubiquitous. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Stealth in space is de-facto possible, by not being seen - due to extreme distances. As in, light-year distances, maybe a bit less but - nothing interplanetary for the most part? That's the balance as far as can be generally discerned, there are probably a lot of smaller variables than can affect this, but generally interplanetary stealth of nuclear and plus spacecraft is thus generally impossible. Either it radiates too much or a civilized system has so many information satellites, trackers, stations and personnel to look at everything that only the stuff inside of another rock can be hidden, and even then to an extent? Movement and numbers running around, however, would again, generally always be known. This opens up something new, however: the ever-present light-speed lag. If travel is fast, and combat is fast, you can still have surgical and precise strikes that, in a few hours, can change the whole scale of the war. Generally this requires torch ships of an antimatter variety, but I am optimistic about some of our capabilities. Speed is the key for the application of hard power which is the foundation of any polity, after all. If we have antimatter ships shooting each other and have a relatively developed system then a few actions out in the gas giants can tip the scales of any war, especially if the gas giants are important exporters of Helium and Hydrogen. I digress from stealth outright and just emphasizes speed, warfare, raiding, quick actions that take hours to report back to the inner sphere (of course, mobilization and the like will be noted but if the relative space around and above a gas giant is relatively full then it becomes mundane, normal, and trite). That might present a more fulfilling and realistic alternative to stealth outright.
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Post by EshaNas on May 30, 2018 3:41:21 GMT
I use it as a resource to further my own works, really. I design some ships and scenarios that I write up and see how it goes.
One day, there will be a master 4x game. One that combines Civ, Hearts of Iron, Simcity, with Total War combat - and will reach into space. And COADE is, to me, like KSP, a forerunner as to what that game might eventually unveil as your faction spreads throughout its solar system.
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Post by EshaNas on May 30, 2018 3:35:57 GMT
Some aspects are zeerust. That is a sad fact we must acknowledge. No Captain Kirks or Buck Rodgers or Flash Gordons for the most part. We have little need for outright explorers or conquistadors as imagined of old.
Space is the domain of the Scientist, Engineer, Doctor, Tourist, and Colonist - in that order. The first three will probably always be the backbone of space, with maybe just engineers and their doctors in a less beautiful universe. The tourist has already emerged, the Colonist will soon emerge in this century, and probably along the same numbers of the colonists of the new world - small ships at first, barely with a hundred persons, then dedicated cruise liners/cyclers of the thousands, should terraforming or orbitals be more easy to pursue than not, and probably tapering off back to the airliner of a few hundred at most after the 'heavy stuff' is done.
I do think that we'll still send people throughout the stars. The first voyagers would doubtlessly be uncrewed probes, and if we're taking interstellar travel seriously, we can have large numbers sent to colonize whatever planet as we'll probably have either beamrider technology or antimatter farms to propel ships nearer and nearer to C outright. Seedships might form, but I doubt the generation ship ever would - the closest analog might be some background or hider culture that diffuses slowly through space out of ideological and cultural mores than engineering ones.
And unless we break the light barrier, either by wormholes or warp drives or breaching the universe into another to breach back into the universe or whatever way we can fathom, interstellar politicians and their gangs of hard power - 'Marines' will probably never take off, either, but interplanetary ones would emerge as technology advances to zip people around the system in a matter of weeks or days. Humanity will probably still fight over the same ideological tribes that form in response to cultural and economic plateaus, as masses cry out for people who promise - and maybe even deliver - answers. What their fights might be are nearly unpredictable, but given enough time and technology, fights will happen. We missed a hotter-than-tolerable episode in the cold war with machine-gun satellites, abandoned base plans, Polyus lasers and BEAR Neutron beam weapons of SDI - and if we could do that thirty, forty, fifty years ago - then we can do it now, or in ten years, or in fifty, or in a hundred or whatever years from now.
Though the idea of a Martian revolution will probably be zeerust as well soon, if it isn't already. Any 'Colonial' administration would probably include a way to independence in the long run, and may even give them independence outright to cut costs as soon as they're self-sufficient and capable of expansion in the system without the help of Earth. A preferrable outcome than the cliche (seriously where did this idea come from, anyway?) expected conflict.
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Post by EshaNas on Dec 26, 2017 19:29:55 GMT
Apparently, we've broken through and gone from phased radio arrays to phased optics, which DARPA is apparently researching via EXCALIBUR to form lasers. They claim that it'll be 10 times lighter and efficient than common mirror-laser weapons. What does this bode for space warfare? Space-borne lasers suffer from inefficiency, massive amounts of waste heat and possibly other problems such as sheer mirror size to get any good range. Do Phased array optics change anything regarding that? This article from 2014 gives some rough numbers such as 35% efficiency for 100 KW, but notes that cooling is still a challenge - in an atmosphere, even!
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Post by EshaNas on Nov 21, 2017 15:36:37 GMT
500 years from now might be too much to predict with any certainty; OA has humanity in the nanotech age by then with at the least above-normal human intelligent AI. If we're talking about 50 years from now, or even a 100, the average body - or cyborg body at least - might be prevalent; and electronic warfare and communications warfare might be so proficient to limit teleoperation or telecommunication with drones or so. And then we have to ask what is to fight for? Cyborg body in 2117? *doubt* 2067 is too near-future for anything described in this thread to happen, for sure. Think more 2267 or 2567.
We already have bioelectric-mechanical prosthetic tech; along with humanoid robots. I doubt a full body cyborg is that far off. The main problem is not engineering the body but powering it: both the servomotors, their batteries, the biological hormones and energy converters to keep a person at a standard level of activity and stability. But that stands for a lot of things, our battery and energy tech is plateauing while our needs continue to rise.
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Post by EshaNas on Nov 14, 2017 16:21:14 GMT
Those are extreme disadvantages, ach.
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Post by EshaNas on Nov 13, 2017 10:18:30 GMT
Radiators tend to be the most vulnerable part of a ship and usually have a higher cost and mass then the reactors they cool. I recommend making the outlet as high as possible. The savings in radiator mass and cost are usually much greater than the increase in reactor mass and cost for the same power output/ Could shaping radiators differently help? Say, a curved radiator over the hull or so? I know 'skin' radiators existed for the Apollo Manned module, but what about for reactor and engines?
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Post by EshaNas on Nov 9, 2017 1:44:55 GMT
So much of this depends on details of politics that'll be influenced by tech in ways that are hard to forsee even if we knew what the technology was. For example, if there's heavy taxation on shipments of goods to far-flung regions, we might see smugglers who would be reluctant to call on the Navy for assistance, and a Navy which is more-or-less OK with pirates who keep their heads down acting as an alternative minimum tax on the smugglers without the Navy having to get their hands dirty or expend limited budgets patrolling ignorant and ungrateful backwaters. It is fortunate that politics, cultures, motivations, and personal quirks driving people - all which influence each other in some sort of order - are far more known than humanity in space as a whole. One can pick a date to split off from and draw up a scenario quite easily and readily. Maybe environmentalism really did kick off in the 70s, maybe the Soviets didn't muck up their manned programs and the US/capitalist world kept on pushing forward, maybe the BIS shoved a man into a V2 or so rocket right after the war for reasons, maybe the Nazis took to space than burning down Europe, maybe Musk or some unknown visionary really did kick off New Space, so on and so on.
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Post by EshaNas on Nov 8, 2017 12:19:06 GMT
With SSTOs; we could see a mix of environmentalism and consumption demanding off-world metal mining, if not even production, all to return to Earth. Especially if there's still a huge disparity in living standards and demand is high to drive development and consumption. (Though this would be far more logical with space elevators or skyhooks, as SSTOs can still, well, burn up on re-entry or explode or bounce off and are limited in cargo capacity).
It would require a mix of culture and economics and politics, but you could have a few dirty rocks providing for Earth quite easily; so long as you get huge SSTOs or metallic hydrogen or some sort of ubercarbon nanotube to make a elevator allowing for easy imports. Voila, now you have something to fight over/hinder with consequences that can easily spiral out of control (Oh, no, the Synoecism is targeting the space elevator itself in a burnt-earth strategy! We need to stop them!).
There's also the related Space Guard/Orbit Guard setup where moving all these rocks around makes some call for fleets of coast-guard esque vessels watching each other and the trajectory of any rock being moved/mined out of mistrust and redundancy and safety.
That doesn't circle back to infantry, of course, unless the asteroids are a pain to get to in the first place and thus capturing them outright with a few specialized units might be worth the trouble, but it does allow for space warfare and thievery of goods.
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Post by EshaNas on Nov 7, 2017 18:20:32 GMT
500 years from now might be too much to predict with any certainty; OA has humanity in the nanotech age by then with at the least above-normal human intelligent AI.
If we're talking about 50 years from now, or even a 100, the average body - or cyborg body at least - might be prevalent; and electronic warfare and communications warfare might be so proficient to limit teleoperation or telecommunication with drones or so. And then we have to ask what is to fight for?
The rebellious colony is an archaic scenario. Unless Earth can arrive on Mars in days or hours, colonies won't exist; you either have bases ala Antarctica (and even those are a day away at most in an emergency, often less, though that's the benefit of jet power and global transport networks) or de-facto independent posts flying some flag of Earth or their own flag once they're self-sufficient.
By 2067, hopefully, we'll have a few manned space stations, probably another Skylab (3?), a Chinese station, a Russian station, and maybe a European or Indian station. Maybe a few civilian ones in earnest - the long awaited hotel, for example. A few bases and colonies on Mars, a base flying on Venus, a base and a spaceship factory or two on the Moon (and maybe even a space elevator there, golly!). We also probably would had visited the outer system in some HOPE mission or two.
That's not a lot to fight for. And we have to tie what happens on Earth to space still: a mid-century collapse of peak-oil or some such might severely impact humanity in space for the time being, for example.
2067 is not that far away. We've already seen how a advanced spatial presence can be delayed, if not outright destroyed, by politics on Earth. Fifty years ago, we were preparing to go to the moon. Now, we're preparing to go to Lunar orbit; with no manned presence on the Moon before the mid 2020s and no manned mars presence before the 2030s. A hopeful NASA estimate for HOPE put it in the 2040s. I doubt twenty years after that we would had done much more than a Venus base, a nuclear rocket, or so.
The time for that had long passed, IMO, when the Soviets failed to present a threat in further space with the N1 failures. If they had launched a man to the Moon, I could see the US dust off some plan for a Lunar base; thereof the Soviets might had done a manned Venus flyby or Martian landing by 1980, then we might had seen another base on Mars by the mid 80s or 90s; and then by *now* we could had been where we might be in two decades.
The situation for warfare in space is tied directly to what happens on Earth to at least springboard it. The Martian Republic isn't going to fight Venus over the antimatter farms if neither exists. Anything that's too close to Earth can be shot down by a gen 4 fighter with a ASAT. Anything farther has to at least be capable of industrial and agricultural self-sufficiency *and* growth potential.
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Post by EshaNas on Nov 3, 2017 2:07:37 GMT
Ooh, I see. That gives me a lot more juice.... That gives you death star levels (not quite, but hey, you can sterilize an entire planet in the same time span) for a one megaton ship with "interesting" levels of acceleration. Well not 1 megaton; just something a bit like 10-100 or so range mw range nuclear reactors for a 21st century vessel. Are beam cores really that darn OP? I just selected them because 1) fast and 2) that a new paper came out giving them 12 tesla range magnets, making them far more 'feasible'.
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Post by EshaNas on Nov 2, 2017 22:05:10 GMT
As in using some of the antimatter beam core itself tie into power production? I had, admittedly, barely touched that. You use beam core designs, which focuses charged particles out of the nozzle, those particles could be converted into electricity at efficiencies of 90% using Direct Conversion. Ooh, I see. That gives me a lot more juice....
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