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Post by kaiserwilhelm on Feb 22, 2017 22:11:17 GMT
How did qswitshed calculated material abundance. Does someone know
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 22, 2017 23:17:51 GMT
There are estimates based on spectral analysis.
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Post by kaiserwilhelm on Feb 23, 2017 0:09:58 GMT
There are Z estimates based on spectral analysis. ah okey and they are on the internet ? |
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 23, 2017 1:21:36 GMT
Y
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Post by thorneel on Feb 23, 2017 10:18:01 GMT
He used the abundance of chemical elements in the Solar System, as seen for example here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements#cite_ref-croswell_4-1There were a few additional factors, like extra costs for fissionable enrichment, hydrogen being a pain to move around and extra costs for "nanostructured" materials like fibres, but for elements, this is the basis. Which gives us some funny results, like radon being allowed despite having a half-life measured in days. To be fair, the cost is equally ridiculous, so I prefer to see it as an Easter egg. When mods are easier to work with, I would love to see a "standard" mod emerge where cost of elements is balanced with their accessibility, side-products of other industries (nuclear fission products) or mining (palladium) are cheaper and heavily used industrial material (Boron is love, Boron is life) is more expensive. |
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Post by Rocket Witch on Feb 23, 2017 11:33:10 GMT
And people say fluorine is rare... why is lithium so cheap? |
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Post by thorneel on Feb 23, 2017 15:21:21 GMT
And people say fluorine is rare... why is lithium so cheap? Fluorine being such a devil's brew may be for something there. And lithium is even cheaper due to its low density. On the other hand, I have a harder time explaining why potassium and selenium are about the two cheapest solid materials in the list... |
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Post by Rocket Witch on Feb 23, 2017 16:07:37 GMT
And lithium is even cheaper due to its low density. Isn't low density bad because it requires more space and worse mass fractions for transport? |
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Post by ash19256 on Feb 23, 2017 16:40:03 GMT
And lithium is even cheaper due to its low density. Isn't low density bad because it requires more space and worse mass fractions for transport? Except it's also ridiculously lightweight per cubic meter of pure lithium, which makes it very easy to transport if you can make monolithic blocks of it. |
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 23, 2017 17:10:13 GMT
Isn't low density bad because it requires more space and worse mass fractions for transport? Except it's also ridiculously lightweight per cubic meter of pure lithium, which makes it very easy to transport if you can make monolithic blocks of it. I definitely agree with this, on the basis that large chunks of refined materials can be stored externally on vessels. You don't need to box up some lithium and have it in a pressurised compartment on board. Heck, you could attach a rudimentary guidance system and propulsion unit to a chunk of material and send it on it's way. |
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Post by ash19256 on Feb 23, 2017 20:29:50 GMT
Except it's also ridiculously lightweight per cubic meter of pure lithium, which makes it very easy to transport if you can make monolithic blocks of it. I definitely agree with this, on the basis that large chunks of refined materials can be stored externally on vessels. You don't need to box up some lithium and have it in a pressurised compartment on board. Heck, you could attach a rudimentary guidance system and propulsion unit to a chunk of material and send it on it's way. About the only problem might be structurally durability, but that can be solved by a magnesium (or boron) frame being built around the lithium block, which is still a lot cheaper than needing to build a pressurized container for something, or a boron nitride container for a sub-critical mass of something. Or an actively cooled container for something like polonium-210, which IIRC doesn't have a critical mass, it just gets really goddamn hot if you don't actively cool the stuff. |
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 24, 2017 1:23:57 GMT
I definitely agree with this, on the basis that large chunks of refined materials can be stored externally on vessels. You don't need to box up some lithium and have it in a pressurised compartment on board. Heck, you could attach a rudimentary guidance system and propulsion unit to a chunk of material and send it on it's way. About the only problem might be structurally durability, but that can be solved by a magnesium (or boron) frame being built around the lithium block, which is still a lot cheaper than needing to build a pressurized container for something, or a boron nitride container for a sub-critical mass of something. Or an actively cooled container for something like polonium-210, which IIRC doesn't have a critical mass, it just gets really goddamn hot if you don't actively cool the stuff. Structure is unimportant; you'd always ship using MPD/Ion for efficiency. The structural load from MPD level acceleration is extremely low. |
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