|
Post by ironclad6 on Jan 2, 2018 7:21:19 GMT
I've been working away at my novel for some time now and I've realized I've not really come up with any particularly convincing way to permit my crews to survive the occasional bouts of extremely intense acceleration. This really doesn't affect game play one way or another of course but I thought it might be interesting flavor and I'd be very interested in hearing what people have to suggest. Really I don't want to rule anything in or out, rather I'd like the broadest possible contributions. I'm open to the exotic, the bizarre and to the outlandish. The only thing that matters is that it needs to be basically technically plausible so I won't be immersing my crew in olive oil, thanks. Many thanks in advance.
|
|
|
Post by newageofpower on Jan 2, 2018 12:59:09 GMT
Mind-machine cybernetics and radical physical modification. If your country is desperate, use brains-in-a-jar for crew, emplace into high G android bodies that can function at 27G.
Oh, needless to say you need a very high ISP drive to make such high acceleration practical.
|
|
|
Post by apophys on Jan 2, 2018 16:52:47 GMT
Or make your warship crew not human but AI. Electronics have much higher tolerance. (Regular humans, trained and in G suits like fighter pilots, will handle up to around 10 Earth gravities or so, for short periods. This is good enough for CoaDE, but if you need more...)
Or use remote control of warships from a distance, assuming your regular engagement ranges are less than a few light seconds.
And yes, you'll probably need some torch drive to have such high acceleration make sense to design for. Orion is a favorite (riding a sequence of nuclear bomb detonations, with a wide pusher plate at the back of the ship); the back plate can double as armor in combat.
|
|
|
Post by thorneel on Jan 2, 2018 21:49:03 GMT
The highest-g option will be to replace every single bit of organic material by machines. It can be with AI - though we have absolutely no idea how to make a "strong" AI, nor if it was really a good idea, and current-type AIs have significant weaknesses when unsupervised. It can be by taking each bit of the body and replace it with machines, as a cyborg. At some point, they may start to replace bits of the brain by machines, and at some point they may replace every single bit until the organic part of the cyborg is all gone. Depending on how it is done, the result could still be pretty much human. This is the method employed by the novel Hegemony, with the extra advantage that they can be beamed (though not copied) from ship to ship. It can also be done by copying a mind onto another support (the copy may be destructive or not). Apart from the significant ethical and philosophical issues that you may not want your novel to be taken over by, it is probably the most outlandish solution there, whatever the Singularist faithful believe, given our actually near-complete ignorance about what a sapient mind is, what a conscious observer is, and how the brain actually works to sustain one.
If you don't need such ridiculously high-g resistance from your crews (after all, the highest-g manoeuvres are probably performed by expendable drones and ordnance anyway), you can keep them more human-shaped. Current high-g counterpressure suits are a start. If that's not enough, you can put them in a liquid tank, and make them breathe an oxygenated liquid. Such liquids already exist, though they may not have been tried for that yet (not that current warplanes would need it). You can see an example in the film Abyss (do yourself a favour and watch the extended cut, which is much better). There is a scene where someone demonstrates liquid breathing with a rat, and the scene was actually made for real, with a real vat of breathable liquid. It is probably a good idea to give them a mask and/or helmet for the breathable liquid instead of simply letting them breathe the stuff they are immersed in, as their body may contaminate the fluid. The liquid should be at a density close to water. The big advantage is that water is incompressible, and the body is mostly made of it. So when compressed, it will press on the tank walls more, instead of on the body. In particular, the lungs shouldn't collapse as easily. This will probably be the first avenue to be explored if high-g suits aren't enough, as it is mostly in our technological grasp today.
An intermediate step is surgery, to make them partial cyborgs. You can do lots of things there: stronger bones, muscles and joints, bracing, replacing fragile organs, possibly even reinforcing the brain structure if you are absolutely certain about what you're doing (the brain is a messy place you don't want to tamper with in general).
|
|
|
Post by zorbeltuss on Jan 3, 2018 19:38:29 GMT
If that's not enough, you can put them in a liquid tank, and make them breathe an oxygenated liquid. Such liquids already exist, though they may not have been tried for that yet (not that current warplanes would need it). Perfluorodecalin, and other perfluorocarbons have a a big downside (and a few smaller that I will not bring up), it has roughly double the density of normal human tissue, more or less only reversing the strain of a high acceleration maneuver.
|
|
|
Post by tangentialthreat on Jan 4, 2018 4:00:38 GMT
Project Rho on accelerationtl;dr if you're lying on your back on a cushioned couch you can survive short bursts of 30 g. And about AIs or uploaded crews... I've seen flawless targeting and navigation all done in a few kilobytes. Where humans (and human-like intelligences) thrive is solving unexpected problems. Stupid bots are only inhumanly good at games with defined rules. If you find a way to change the rules of the game then you can win. Otherwise any form of intelligence is just extra baggage.
|
|
|
Post by thorneel on Jan 4, 2018 20:44:33 GMT
Indeed, and that's why humans would probably do command, maintenance, and (hopefully) decision to open fire. Some of those can be done from the planet, but there would probably be at least a few humans in command ships and tenders. Those may still need high acceleration to evade attacks.
|
|
|
Post by Kerr on Jan 5, 2018 0:05:19 GMT
As far as I know three things wouldn't really work in his setting. -Remote control: The weapons have ranges in the light second range, light lag would probably result in dozens of seconds to minutes of delay. -Cybernetics: Socio-political reasons -Fish tank: A clear no from ironclad
|
|
|
Post by ironclad6 on Jan 5, 2018 4:35:33 GMT
As far as I know three things wouldn't really work in his setting. -Remote control: The weapons have ranges in the light second range, light lag would probably result in dozens of seconds to minutes of delay. -Cybernetics: Socio-political reasons -Fish tank: A clear no from ironclad Thank you all for your contributions. I'm most surprised that research has been done all the way up to 30 gravities. It rather resolves my problem considering no manned craft can actually accelerate that fast. The fish tank is an interesting idea but falls down on two major issues. It's incredibly heavy and no acceptable medium has yet been discovered without really profoundly unpleasant side effects in humans. I'll concede it's kind of a fun idea I just don't think it would ever actually work.
|
|
|
Post by matterbeam on Jan 5, 2018 10:23:25 GMT
You hold the body in a liquid-filled chamber, and connect the blood flow from major arteries to a pressure regulator. Under high G, the liquid-filled chamber increases its pressure so that the fluid pushes back against the body and prevents pressure mismatches from damaging the body (such as eyes popping or legs swelling). The blood flow pressure regulator prevents blood from draining out of the head or bursting blood vessels.
With this control over fluid pressure, the body can handle continuous high G until the tissues tear, which happens at much higher G than simply blackout does. For example, trained pilots can hold themselves awake even at 11G. With more advanced pressure control, sustained 20G might be possible.
Either way, if you need your crews need to survive even harder accelerations... you might not be putting crews in the right place. Depending on the effective range of weapons, having a 'control' ship crewed with humans 300000km (1 light-second) behind the main fleet of drone ships is a wise decision.
|
|
|
Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 5, 2018 17:41:33 GMT
If the liquid has the right density, full immersion (with liquid filling respiratory pathways and so on) will allow surviving quite stupid accelerations - up to the point where density differences between individual tissues overwhelm circulatory system or structural integrity - at this point there is little you can do for crew that is still more or less organic humans. I don't think it would be necessary to manipulate pressures directly, I wouldn't expect enough of gap between the moment where it is unnecessary and one where tissues fail anyway, and it would be a medical and engineering nightmare.
Liquid breathing may be a dud, due to density problems - you need a good oxygen carrier, with right density that doesn't murder the lungs - but you can always just go with the density and biocompatibility, opting for extracorporeal blood oxygenation to satisfy the actual 'respiration' part - you might need some implants for that but they would be rather minimal and you'd probably want some like neural interfaces anyway.
Up to 20G should be workable with good acceleration couches, some breathing support, and interfaces not requiring movement alone - modern day fighter pilots have the misfortune of having to sit upright with acceleration working along their long axis (because fighters derive acceleration for manoeuvres mostly from aerodynamics, meaning lift, meaning wings) - the only worse configuration would be hanging them upside down - and they can still do around 7G. In a spacecraft you can just lie on your back - you don't need to keep your head in a glass bubble looking outside - you'd probably not see much anyway while risking having your head fried by a laser or nuke.
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Apr 5, 2018 19:00:01 GMT
If the liquid has the right density, full immersion (with liquid filling respiratory pathways and so on) will allow surviving quite stupid accelerations - up to the point where density differences between individual tissues overwhelm circulatory system or structural integrity - at this point there is little you can do for crew that is still more or less organic humans. I don't think it would be necessary to manipulate pressures directly, I wouldn't expect enough of gap between the moment where it is unnecessary and one where tissues fail anyway, and it would be a medical and engineering nightmare. Liquid breathing may be a dud, due to density problems - you need a good oxygen carrier, with right density that doesn't murder the lungs - but you can always just go with the density and biocompatibility, opting for extracorporeal blood oxygenation to satisfy the actual 'respiration' part - you might need some implants for that but they would be rather minimal and you'd probably want some like neural interfaces anyway. ... Would some kind of artificial analog to blood work? I assume it has a similar density to tissue and it carries oxygen. Calling high-G submerged troops "vampires" would definitely be cool.
|
|
|
Post by ironclad6 on Apr 5, 2018 21:18:31 GMT
Now that's all very interesting...
|
|
|
Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 5, 2018 23:20:54 GMT
If the liquid has the right density, full immersion (with liquid filling respiratory pathways and so on) will allow surviving quite stupid accelerations - up to the point where density differences between individual tissues overwhelm circulatory system or structural integrity - at this point there is little you can do for crew that is still more or less organic humans. I don't think it would be necessary to manipulate pressures directly, I wouldn't expect enough of gap between the moment where it is unnecessary and one where tissues fail anyway, and it would be a medical and engineering nightmare. Liquid breathing may be a dud, due to density problems - you need a good oxygen carrier, with right density that doesn't murder the lungs - but you can always just go with the density and biocompatibility, opting for extracorporeal blood oxygenation to satisfy the actual 'respiration' part - you might need some implants for that but they would be rather minimal and you'd probably want some like neural interfaces anyway. ... Would some kind of artificial analog to blood work? I assume it has a similar density to tissue and it carries oxygen. Calling high-G submerged troops "vampires" would definitely be cool. Sure, but what's wrong with using normal one? (I mean there are some possible advantages - for starters, natural blood is is very picky in regards to what it is pumped through and by - but you'd still be replacing an insanely complex and fine tuned biochemical machinery with a crude substitute - I'd rather just invest in better pumps and tubing, especially given that oxygenation would require some high quality stuff anyway. Blood is going to be the last thing damaged by acceleration.) As for the fishtanks, they'd probably look more like rather form-fitting sarcophagi. Not too much added mass + bonus points for allowing the crew to ignore pretty much any and all crew module penetrations until after the battle.
|
|
|
Post by apophys on Apr 7, 2018 4:03:29 GMT
A possible (but extremely impractical) alternative may be to subject the person to obscenely high pressures in order for a then-supercritical breathing mixture (oxygen + noble gas, maybe xenon) to have its density become similar to water. Since oxygen partial pressure requirements are comparatively low, the vast majority (>99%) of the breathing mixture will be the filler.
This would require pressures on the order of thousands of atmospheres, requiring a very long acclimatization period for the human and seriously straining the mechanical strengths of the containment vessel (you would probably want to build it out of VCS).
Afaik, it is not known what effects this may have on a human or other animal, or even whether or not it is survivable. One certain upper limit is that water solidifies at around 1 GPa (>9,000 atm) into ice VI; you definitely don't want to solidify your crew. The highest regularly obtained pressures are with deep-sea divers going to around 50 atm (nowhere close to what you'd need).
|
|