Alternate Ship Design Systems

[mike wightman]

That would be a similar situation to the Blue Planet history
A wormhole/jumpgate? is discovered on the edge of the solar system that leads to the Lambda Serpentis system, 35 light years from Earth.

It takes months for ships to reach the wormhole and the colonists/passengers are carried in cold berths.

Also of note, in the original Imperium game the jump routes allowed travel from system to system but nowhere else. Almost as if the ships were following wormholes rather than the later Traveller jump drive.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Also of note, in the original Imperium game the jump routes allowed travel from system to system but nowhere else. Almost as if the ships were following wormholes rather than the later Traveller jump drive.

Or that deep space jumps are difficult or impossible limiting you to jumping to well known and/or massive bodies to precipitate you out of jump space. But that's just my own little heresy

 

[TKalbfus]

I think Sedna is a good location for the first Stargate, I believe its orbit ranges from 3 to 10 times Pluto's average distance from the Sun. Sedna is toward its closest point in its orbit when it was discovered. There may be other unknown planets in elliptical orbits aroung our Sun. Something with the mass of a moon may be orbiting Sedna and causing it to rotate so slowly, it can't be spotted by a telescope, so maybe its a wormhole opening. One thing that allows us to send large ships there would be a Space Elevator. A space elevator made out of carbon nanotube ribbons is launched into orbit and unrolled so that it reaches the Earth and also reaches upward to about 66,000 km for counter-balance. This allows NASA and other organizations to orbit larger spaceships than what was other wise possible. The space elevator was established by 2020 and space colonies were soon established. Low thrust-high efficientcy electric engines propelled spaceships to the planets and one ship eventually reached Sedna using a nuclear-electric Vasmir engine. The probe was thrown off course by the gravity of the stargate in orbit around the newly discovered planet. A quick flyby revealed a bubble like object about 20 km in diameter, with stars shining from inside. At one point a very bright star was seen inside this bubble. Radar probes detected no object in that location, but the stars as seen through the bubble shown rather clearly. The probe enters the "bubble" as it draws closer, the bubble of stars expands outward until it fills half the sky. The stars on the outside are pushed aside as the circle of the bubble gets larger. The telemetry of the probe at first redshifts as it falls in and accelerates, and then it slows down at the point where the "bubble" fills half the sky.

The stars on the outside crowd inward creating its own bubble as the probe falls away from the new bubble, it accelerates and then it meets positive gravity and slows down again. Earth's sun can be seen inside the new bubble and the probe transmits its telemetry through it which is received on Earth. the probe detects a yellow star and an orange one about 20 AU away. The starfield is simular to that around Earth, but careful measurements have detected a displacement of 4.4 light years. Around 2030 a manned spaceship arrives and a base is set up. About the year 2033 the first wave of colonists arrive bound for Alpha Centauri. These colonists consist of the very wealthy and employees of NASA, ESA, RSA, JSA, the Chinese government as well as of large corporations. A planet is discovered with an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere in orbit around Alpha Centauri A. The total distance of the journey is about 200 AU from Earth to Sedna Stargate to Alpha Centauri A III. Investigations on the planet Sedna lead to ruins that point out the locations of additional stargates in orbit around the Sun, each one is orbiting an as yet undiscovered planet in a 3 t 2 orbit around the Sun. Further stargates are discovered orbiting Alpha Centauri. How does that sound as a setting?

 

[Straybow]

Well, it sounds better than the inverted FTL scheme earlier.

2200 would be more likely for "space elevator." It would only become practical if there is already an orbital population and production base to serve. Lunar bases for cheap Ti and Al are an easier way to bootstrap a translunar space program.

Economics says nothing like that will happen by 2020. We might have a second generation shuttle by then, or maybe not. :nonono:

 

[Drakon]

Ah, but none of those economists are FLYING WITH BURT RUTAN ON MONDAY! Starship One is launching June 21st not only into suborbital flight, but history as the first commercial space craft. If successful, (along with the subsequent flight within 2 weeks) this would change things about as much as the Wright Bros flight. And win Scaled Composites the X prize.

Economics says that sometimes people will do things for reasons best left to non-economists to fathom. They may be right that we won't have a sufficient population in orbit by 2020, but with Starship One, I ain't gonna take that bet. Its 15 years, and who knows what dreams may come in that time frame.

 

[TKalbfus]

2200 would be more likely for "space elevator." It would only become practical if there is already an orbital population and production base to serve. Lunar bases for cheap Ti and Al are an easier way to bootstrap a translunar space program.

Economics says nothing like that will happen by 2020. We might have a second generation shuttle by then, or maybe not

Your too pessimistic, we already have a material that's strong enough to make a space elevator out of, we haven't quite got the weave to make the nanotube ribbon that's strong enough for space elevators, but that's coming, it certainly isn't so hard to do that it will take 200 years to achieve. In the year 1804 we barely had industrial steam engines. So the analogy is what we got now to Steam engines to intergrated circuits to whatever we would have in 2200. You you suddenly think we've entered a technological dark ages just last year that's going to last the next 200 years? What a sweeping statement!

I think 2020 is a realistic timeframe for developing the material considering what we've accomplished so far. Once the material is created, we launch a roll of it into orbit and then we unroll it. The length of the ribbon is 66,000 km, and the ribbon is extremely thin, much thinner than paper. Once the ribbon is unrolled and hanging from space we attach a climber to it, and it climbs up the ribbon bringing up another ribbon of equal length with it. This process is repeated over and over again and the ribbons are bonded to increase strength and lift capability. Now we attack much bigger lifters to this thickened ribbon, and these can haul significant loads into orbit. These massive payloads will allow large scale propulsion technology which heretofore have gone unused. One example of such is the Mass Drivers that Gerard O'Neill championed in his book. "The High Frontier" If we are going to get serious about space, we've got to find a new way to get there.

 

[Drakon]

I would have to agree about the material science stuff. Although I am not sure we have the materials now, we do appear to be close.

But there is another aspect of this that does not get alot of play. Just because we can do something does not mean that we will, or even that any opposition to the idea is unjustified.

Have you read "Red Mars"? Part of the plot discusses a rebellion on Mars and an attack on their bean stalk. Its brought down, and does a LOT of damage to the planet, just the cable wrapping around the globe. Any design for a bean stalk would have to include some kind of system that would allow the stalk to "fail gracefully" i.e. without ripping a gash around the planet.

Failures in equipment happen. Things break down, need repair or replacement. And some folks just like blowing things up. All these factors have to be guarded against and if the worst comes, must allow that system failure to not overly impact the rest of the enivornment, the ecology, or get a lot of folks killed.

So even if we could do this, will we? Will there be sufficient political will to allow it to occur (Or is this a lack of will kind of thing?) And just because someone raises an objection, doesn't mean they are wrong, stupid, backwards, luddites or what have you.

 

[TKalbfus]

Have you read "Red Mars"? Part of the plot discusses a rebellion on Mars and an attack on their bean stalk. Its brought down, and does a LOT of damage to the planet, just the cable wrapping around the globe. Any design for a bean stalk would have to include some kind of system that would allow the stalk to "fail gracefully" i.e. without ripping a gash around the planet.

This Space Elevator is not what you think, for one it weighs only 26 pounds per mile and it is a ribbon of material 6 inches wide initally, if it falls it will fall like a newspaper, not a meteor.

It is 62,000 miles long. The whole thing weighs 806 tons, that's it!
This kind of gives me an idea for another spaceship. You have a 100 ton nuclear reactor on top and a 100 ton landing pod at the bottom of the ribbon. The ship can land on a planet simply by unrolling its ribbon and going into orbit around the planet's equator. The pod touches the ground, while the atomic fission reactor remains in space with its nuclear rocket at the top of the elevator. The whole ship is 62,000 miles long and the middle part is iin orbit, while the bottom does not move relative to the planets surface. If the ship fires its rocket, the pod takes off.

 

[SanDragon]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Have you read "Red Mars"? Part of the plot discusses a rebellion on Mars and an attack on their bean stalk. Its brought down, and does a LOT of damage to the planet, just the cable wrapping around the globe. Any design for a bean stalk would have to include some kind of system that would allow the stalk to "fail gracefully" i.e. without ripping a gash around the planet.

This Space Elevator is not what you think, for one it weighs only 26 pounds per mile and it is a ribbon of material 6 inches wide initally, if it falls it will fall like a newspaper, not a meteor.

It is 62,000 miles long. The whole thing weighs 806 tons, that's it!
This kind of gives me an idea for another spaceship. You have a 100 ton nuclear reactor on top and a 100 ton landing pod at the bottom of the ribbon. The ship can land on a planet simply by unrolling its ribbon and going into orbit around the planet's equator. The pod touches the ground, while the atomic fission reactor remains in space with its nuclear rocket at the top of the elevator. The whole ship is 62,000 miles long and the middle part is iin orbit, while the bottom does not move relative to the planets surface. If the ship fires its rocket, the pod takes off. </font>[/QUOTE]Err... umm... Yeah, right. An 806 ton newspaper is just going to flutter down and alight like a feather.

I don't want to be under it. I wouldn't want to be under the nickel that someone tosses off the Empire State Building.

Even half of your ribbon is 403 tons... don't want to be under that either. And something falling 31,000 miles will render anyone under it into a wet paste.

 

[TKalbfus]

806 tons spread out over 62,000 miles at 26 pounds per mile (5,280 feet). No the ribbon won't flutter down, most of it will burn up upon contact with the atmosphere. We are talking about a very thin sheet of ribbon. The ribbon will wrap up around the Earth and most of it will disintergrate with hardly a puff. Just because it has a high tensile strength doesn't mean it can survuve reentry. I got all this from an article in this month's Discover Magazine, in case your curious.

 

[SanDragon]

Hmmm.. okay. I gave re-entry too passing a thought.

 

[TKalbfus]

The article said, we'd have the technology in 15 years, hence my starting date of 2020 AD. Give it 13 years of expanded Solar System exploration and the first Stargate is eventually discovered. Scramjets might also be available in that time, but who can say for sure. There are basically many kinds of space elevators, the most basic kind weighs 804 tons and is a 6 inch wide ribbon 62,000 miles long. A climbing elevator ascends the ribbon using two opposing roller pins to grip the ribbon and haul itself up at 300 miles per hour. At this rate, it would take 8.6 days to completely ascend the ribbon from Earth's surface. A more elaborate space elevator may evenually be built that is more in line with Kim Stanley Robinson's space triliogy. With a large number of ribbons hanging parallel to each other, a vertical maglev train may be built and supported by the ribbons. Accelerating at 32 meters per second per second, sqrt(327,360,000 ft/32 ft/sec) = 3198.4 seconds = 53.3 minutes exiting the elevator at a velocity of 102,349 m/sec.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Also of note, in the original Imperium game the jump routes allowed travel from system to system but nowhere else. Almost as if the ships were following wormholes rather than the later Traveller jump drive.

My 1980's era copy of Imperium said ships could travel any distance along the routes, or do multi-0year high-sublight trips (one hex per turn) anywhere, but you had to write the route before they left.

 

[mike wightman]

Yep, sublight from hex to hex (how long was a turn?). But jumps had to be along jump routes, which became the Traveller jump drive, IIRC

 

[Straybow]

I've been following Starship One. Delta Clipper showed similar progress, now abandoned. Starship One is vying for the X Prize. As long as somebody gives money away it will attract entries, but none of that makes a working economic model.

Carbon Nanotube materials: we may have them by 2020, doesn't mean they can be produced reliably to make a 62k mi ribbon that one would trust in a non-redundant orbital lift mission.

We have all the tech for maglev trains, but we don't have a business model to support building them. Some German company is building one for Guangzou, but that's a state-sponsored demonstration project that ignores economics.

 

[Drakon]

Straybow: the prizes are mostly psychological. Someone posts a prize, and an amount and that encourages others to get the prize money. So what if you spent 20 million dollars to get 10 million, you still won the prize.

But more importantly, you won a place in the history books. Now, it HAS been done. The question about whether it can or can not be done is answered.

The reason why manned space flight has been such a disappointment of late is because there is no place to go and no way to get there. Why fret and worry about stuff that is simply not doable? And even if doable, where are you going to go? Mars is a frozen desert with a thin and poisonous atmosphere. Venus, makes Hell look hospitable. Most of the moons and planets are either airless rocks, gas giants or in some other way inhospitable to human habitation. Besides all that money that gets wasted on space research can be better used some other way.

At least this is the perception. And perceptions count a lot here. We don't try to do things we think are impossible. We try to do things we believe might be possible. Whether that perception or belief is accurate, well, we don't know until after we have tried.

The key point is the trying. Then we can find out whether it is doable or not. This is the real meaning of yesterday's flight. Not that Paul Allen, Burt Rutan and Mike Melvill are in a position to win the X-prize. But that these guys have THEIR OWN SPACE SHIP! They are not a government, they are not a nation and they have no ability to tax a single sole. They did it on their own dime.

Burt has talked about space tourism, and whether that is viable I don't know. I will tell you I would go in a heart beat. Don't even ask, you'd have footprints up one side and down the other as I ran you over for a chance to get aboard.

Right now there is no "there" to go to. Yet. But then we did not have a way to get there before. Now we do.

Economic's fundamental principle is the law of supply and demand. Demand is solely pyschological. Sometimes we file some desires away because they are impractical, like my own dreams of space flight after I found out I needed glasses. And sometimes, like yesterday, things we thought were impossible, some smart SOB proves it wrong, and those old dreams become demands.

As for the Delta Clipper, it was a NASA project, and I never got the feeling NASA was really supportive of it, that they were more interested in Lockheed's entry. The explosion, and the landing gear failure did a lot to silence support for that project, (unfairly in my opinion) and Mac Dac did not have the wherewithall to continue the project on their own dime, versus NASAs. But then Mac Dac has investors that might get upset at such a 'waste' of money.

Which I think is a shame. Even if the Clipper were not great for this planet, it would be just what is needed for the moon.

 

[TKalbfus]

I agree with Drakon, government projects are conflicted between providing pork for their constituents and actually getting things done. The problem is that pork is expensive and it goes against the goal of making space cheap and inexpensive. Government is directed by politicians and politicians wantn to bring jobs home to their districts. Unfortunately jobs created in a project make the project more expensive, if government is looking for ways to hire more people. Building a cheap transport system is looking for ways to hire fewer people to make it less expensive. The Shuttle by contrast requires a large standing work force and that's they way the government wanted it.

 

[TKalbfus]

On the other hand, then the goverment bean counters come in and wonder why were spending taxpayer's money on the Shuttle when it does so little for the amount it costs. The problem is that those who want pork determine how the program develops, while the attention of the bean counters are only intermittant. The only thing the bean counters can do is get a program cancelled, they can't make an efficient program because there are too few bean counters. If a program gets cancelled, that's just fine for the pork pushers since all they really care about is jobs, not necessarily getting things done. So the pork pushers start programs and make them as expensive as they can and the program runs for a while until the bean counters notice and then the program is cancelled. That is what happened to most NASA attempts to build cheaper transportation. For the Apollo Moon program, cost was not an issue and the bean counters were not listen to until after the first Moon landings, it was only then that Apollo became a "Moondoggle" and was cancelled. Since all the public cared about was getting there first, it wasn't cheap once accomplished, and it could only be done first once. There will never again be another first manned landing on the Moon.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Drakon:
This is the real meaning of yesterday's flight. Not that Paul Allen, Burt Rutan and Mike Melvill are in a position to win the X-prize. But that these guys have THEIR OWN SPACE SHIP! They are not a government, they are not a nation and they have no ability to tax a single sole. They did it on their own dime.

Burt has talked about space tourism, and whether that is viable I don't know. I will tell you I would go in a heart beat. Don't even ask, you'd have footprints up one side and down the other as I ran you over for a chance to get aboard.

And if they actually launch to space, NASA and the FAA can hit them with some serious fines... You have to have NASA approval for any trans-atmospheric flight from US soil. And the FAA governs all non-trans-atmospheric flights in the US...

The administration doesn't want civilian competition... it makes the "Showing the flag" mode of NASA look bad.

Not that I wouldn't go, either...

 

[TKalbfus]

Well they did go into Space. The FAA and NASA define space as beginning at 50 miles altitude, they went to 62.5 miles or the European definition of 100 km. No fines so far. Your theory that its a government conspiracy that prevents us from going into space is kaput.