Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Space Liners

How about this theory: space liner is not a univer...

2011-12-25T06:08:29.707-08:00

How about this theory: space liner is not a universal term and depends heavily on a certain implementation of spaceflight (one that isn't very popular because it assumes spaceships will be too big and expensive for personal use), but every spaceship of the line with a certain size is a battlecruiser.

Also, the Starcraft battlecruiser unit seems to make up half of the image hits.

=Milo= I'd say, for round-trip missions, ma...

2011-11-22T22:22:52.910-08:00

=Milo=

I'd say, for round-trip missions, maximum three months to get there and three months to come back.

Compromise!

As a flat statement, I don't think you will...

2011-11-22T20:21:59.841-08:00
As a flat statement, I don't think you will ever see a mission lasting longer than 3 months.

By way of a major quibble, ISS crew missions are six months.

Having said that, I tend to regard three months as the standard for routine travel. (Which makes going much beyond Mars problematic without Really Advanced propulsion.)

Does anyone else remember those rare shots on Baby...

2011-11-19T06:01:57.591-08:00
Does anyone else remember those rare shots on Babylon 5 of the inside of the centrifuge section? Big honking parkland.

Now, I'd expect to see both mechanical life-support and a lot of biological life-support (Biospheres).

The biospheres are there to provide primary O2 and food generation, and the mechanical systems are there to supplement that.

As a flat statement, I don't think you will ever see a mission lasting longer than 3 months. Yes, the Age of Sail trips lasted longer, but they stopped every so often (usually every 4-6 weeks at the longest). The longest deployment-without-port-visit I know of is in the neighborhood of 3 months. The longest deployment-with-port-visits I know of was 13 months, and it resulted in an abysmal morale and the retirement of the officer in charge!

http://www.podiobooks.com/podiobooks/search.php?ke...

2011-11-16T05:21:50.684-08:00
http://www.podiobooks.com/podiobooks/search.php?keyword=golden+age+of+the+solar+clipper

Speaking of space liners... Newbie author writing a series called A Trader's Tale set during the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper. In a distant future a young man finds himself without home or kin and decides to seek his fortune in the interstellar trade fleet.

The books are available for pay via amazon in print or on kindle and an audiobook production is available for free from the author. You can get it on iTunes.

It reads like a Heinlein juvenile and this is meant as no faint praise. Check it out.

I thought that the use of Mass Drivers to alter...

2011-11-15T22:43:05.954-08:00
I thought that the use of Mass Drivers to alter the orbits of the Asteroids would be less energy intensive

It is, though it can still take a lot of energy, plus you lose more of the asteroid.

"100 meter rock". I'll assume a cube, 1e6 cubic meters, 3e9 kg rock, 1e10 kg metal. Absent anything else to push off of, the most energy efficient way is to blow off half of it a single explosion. Say v=1e4 m/s, that's 3e9*(1e4)^2/2= 1.5e17 J.
momentum = mv = 3e13 kg*m/s.

If one wants to keep 90% of the rock, at 1e4 m/s, that's momentum of 2.7e13, which needs to be balanced by the other 10% at 9e4 m/s. Energy = 2.7e9*1e8 + 3e8*81e8 = 2.7e17 + 24.3e17 = 27e17 J. Lots more!

US energy budget is 3e12 Watts or 1e20 J/year.

Low-energy mass-driver's not that good for station-keeping, you'll run out of asteroid over time. OTOH station-keeping doesn't need as big delta-vees. Not sure about cycler orbits.

I think the whole asteroid-moving thing is hugely ...

2011-11-15T20:47:38.982-08:00
I think the whole asteroid-moving thing is hugely over-rated. If you want to commit genocide, don't bother with a 50 year Rube Goldberg project, just turn the keys on the nukes.

But I tend to broadly agree that if (and only if) your setting can have liners, as distinct from 'utilitarian' transports, you probably have a space economy extensive enough to support deep space warfare.

To paraphrase "Time, energy, or infrastructur...

2011-11-15T20:47:15.572-08:00
To paraphrase "Time, energy, or infrastructure; pick any two" when dealing with moving asteroids around. :)

Ferrell

Ray McVay: "I see your point. I thought t...

2011-11-15T17:13:51.497-08:00
Ray McVay:

"I see your point. I thought that the use of Mass Drivers to alter the orbits of the Asteroids would be less energy intensive, especially if the move is done over the long term. I read of a similar scenario on the Atomic Rockets website."

If you're moving asteroids around, you're doing so to bring them to market, not to set them up as space stations. Also, I think the people who got all excited about mass drivers moving asteroids either didn't do much math or seriously underestimated the required energy.

"Look...if you could put even a 100 meter roc...

2011-11-15T17:01:20.774-08:00
"Look...if you could put even a 100 meter rock into a cycler orbit, then provide enough thrust from time to time to keep it there, you'd have so much energy readily available that you wouldn't need cyclers in the first place."

I see your point. I thought that the use of Mass Drivers to alter the orbits of the Asteroids would be less energy intensive, especially if the move is done over the long term. I read of a similar scenario on the Atomic Rockets website.

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewarintro.php#id--Orbit_Guard

Ray McVay: "What about resource denial? E...

2011-11-15T14:46:48.110-08:00
Ray McVay:

"What about resource denial? Even a small asteroid could hold enough conflict metals that it's capture at the beginning of it's cycle could mean billions of high-grade available to the invader's war machine when the asteroid swings back 30 months later..."

I misunderstood what you were talking about. I thought you were talking abot a simple clycling habitat.

Look...if you could put even a 100 meter rock into a cycler orbit, then provide enough thrust from time to time to keep it there, you'd have so much energy readily available that you wouldn't need cyclers in the first place.

Your assumptions have to be consistent, see. If you're using cyclers, you don't have a lot of energy. If you're putting rocks in desired orbits, you've got at least semi-operatic levels of controllable energy, and probably operatic energy. IOW, you can have torchships or nuclear electric/thermal, but not both.

"Who would you need to protect them against? ...

2011-11-15T14:11:55.667-08:00
"Who would you need to protect them against? What possible strategic advantage could their capture or elimination realize? Nobody and none, AFAICT."

What about resource denial? Even a small asteroid could hold enough conflict metals that it's capture at the beginning of it's cycle could mean billions of high-grade available to the invader's war machine when the asteroid swings back 30 months later...

Ray McVay: "Would a pair of asteroid cycl...

2011-11-15T10:39:13.716-08:00
Ray McVay:

"Would a pair of asteroid cyclers between Earth and Mars count as enough infrastructure in the 'significant overseas trade' catagory?"

Who would you need to protect them against? What possible strategic advantage could their capture or elimination realize? Nobody and none, AFAICT.

Space war outside of Earth's orbit, aimed at Earth-facing resources, will have to wait for extensive international expansion into the interplanetary environment, to the point that serious commercial concerns and positions are affected.

"As I'm sure Rick and many other know, de...

2011-11-15T10:29:17.642-08:00
"As I'm sure Rick and many other know, dedicated warships are a symptom of significant overseas trade. They don't exist for their own reasons. So we might be able to say that warships are not capable of becoming characters without an infrastructure of commercial ships, maybe even some liners."

Would a pair of asteroid cyclers between Earth and Mars count as enough infrastructure in the 'significant overseas trade' catagory?

As I'm sure Rick and many other know, dedicate...

2011-11-15T09:47:50.405-08:00
As I'm sure Rick and many other know, dedicated warships are a symptom of significant overseas trade. They don't exist for their own reasons. So we might be able to say that warships are not capable of becoming characters without an infrastructure of commercial ships, maybe even some liners.

I associate "land battle fought at sea" ...

2011-11-15T09:26:29.172-08:00
I associate "land battle fought at sea" with how the Romans dealt with the Carthaginians. They didn't try to master tactics like ramming and oar sweeping, they focused on grapple and boarding. Naval equivalent of "you may be good with that rapier but now I've got you in a clinch".

Left out Jean-Remy's point - which would have ...

2011-11-14T12:45:00.021-08:00
Left out Jean-Remy's point - which would have been very appropriate to Veterans' Day / Remembrance Day. But that would be a whole post!

SpaceShipTwo / VSS Enterprise, IMHO, is a truly br...

2011-11-14T12:43:06.581-08:00
SpaceShipTwo / VSS Enterprise, IMHO, is a truly brilliant demonstration of 'sell the sizzle, not the steak.'

On warships and sea war in the age of boarding, I think that the 'land battle fought at sea' trope is seriously mistaken. The better ship, better handled, controlled the engagement up to the moment of (firm) contact.

And even when it came to hand-strokes, a boarding fight was dominated by the unique 'terrain' of floating platforms. Much of the training that makes for a good army, such as ability to change formation facing, is irrelevant or entirely different at sea.

One example of how the trope is misleading is the medieval tactic of lashing ships together to form a single fighting platform. It seems 'unseamanlike' and damned un-English ... until you think about actually DOING it on open water, in the presence of the enemy.

Ray McVay said:"That's an interesting que...

2011-11-12T09:58:24.497-08:00
Ray McVay said:"That's an interesting question...the definition of a pleasure cruise, as apposed to the monstrous 5-day vacations we have today to Mexican resorts, seems to fit the Enterprise. By the same token, will a trip on an Orion lite to one of Bigelow's inflatable stations count as a cruise to a resort destination?"
More like an elaberate taxi cab ride...

Ferrell

"...unless SpaceShipTwo, VSS Enterprise is al...

2011-11-12T09:08:06.501-08:00
"...unless SpaceShipTwo, VSS Enterprise is already a Space Liner."

That's an interesting question...the definition of a pleasure cruise, as apposed to the monstrous 5-day vacations we have today to Mexican resorts, seems to fit the Enterprise. By the same token, will a trip on an Orion lite to one of Bigelow's inflatable stations count as a cruise to a resort destination?

=Milo= Jean-Remy: "Rick may deplore ou...

2011-11-12T06:46:22.146-08:00
=Milo=

Jean-Remy:

"Rick may deplore our bloodthirstiness, but on my part I have trouble forseeing a future in which we do not find a way to export our main product since the dawn of history, War, out into space."

We will have a war in space sooner or later. I have little doubt about this, and that lingering doubt is mostly over the question of whether we'll get into space at all.

This does not mean that we'll be spending the majority of our time on the majority of our colonies fighting, nor necessarily that the war will be the most interesting thing that will be happening. It certainly won't be the only interesting thing that is happening.

But still, it's what many people want to talk about, anyway.

"...unless SpaceShipTwo, VSS Enterprise is already a Space Liner."

It's suborbital, and won't spend more than a few minutes in space. That's cheating.

That last comment got me thinking and realizing th...

2011-11-12T01:53:32.102-08:00
That last comment got me thinking and realizing that there hasn't been any form of vehicle we haven't managed to strap some kind of a weapon to. Plunk a ballista down on the deck of some kind of cargo vessel and she becomes a ship of war. Add a ram to go plow into other cargo vessels armed with ballistas and you have a ship that is no longer a cargo ship but a dedicated warship. Make them longer to add rowers to increase your speed, add ever more rowers by making them taller, add more rows, go from bireme to trireme to quinquireme and you have a nice little arms race going. As for the Space Shuttle, does it really matter that we never put a gun on it if one third of its total missions were tagged "D.O.D" and nothing more? If Sun Tzu was right, information-gathering is as much (more?) of a weapon than the blade, so are those Keyhole-11s the equivalent to strapping a weapons system to it? In even a plausible near future, I cannot imagine that something that packs a gigawatt drive will not be used as a weapon, even without strapping a gun to it (cf: Kzinti Lesson) Rick may deplore our bloodthirstiness, but on my part I have trouble forseeing a future in which we do not find a way to export our main product since the dawn of history, War, out into space. I would argue instead that War was the very purpose we got there in the FIRST place, starting with Pennemunde's rockets (a.k.a V2) which formed the basis for the US experiments which had a direct impact on the weapons technology designed to lob nuclear weapons on the other side of the globe. Apollo, the Space Shuttle and even the ISS are a mere by-product of weapon design.

I got a little carried away here, but the initial thrust of my argument was to agree with Thucydides here, in that warships have always been hero ships, even in days before they could throw 16-inch rounds at coastlines to "Interact with the environment." And since there were a couple of millenia between the Argo and the Titanic, who knows how long after Liberty Bell 7 we will have a true Space Liner?...

...unless SpaceShipTwo, VSS Enterprise is already a Space Liner.

While on that tack, I would also point out that...

2011-11-11T21:25:33.433-08:00
While on that tack, I would also point out that if you go far enough back, warships lose their interactivity status

Not sure if I'm with you on this one; the "black ships" of the Iliad are a very important part of the story (even if they are really troop carriers and landing craft in modern terminology), and that is going right to the beginning of Western literature.

We also know Mycenaean ships were decorated and named (think of the "Argo"), and should infer that something similar was probably true of the other civilizations who had ships during the Bronze Age.

=Milo= While on that tack, I would also point o...

2011-11-10T21:09:55.006-08:00
=Milo=

While on that tack, I would also point out that if you go far enough back, warships lose their interactivity status - back when boarding actions were the main weapon in the navy's arsenal, combat was mainly soldier-to-soldier rather than ship-to-ship, and not really more exciting than similar action on land. The ships themselves were also rarely sunk in these actions, reinforcing their status as settings rather than characters.

Of course, soldier-to-soldier battles are still interesting enough to write about that these ships would have seen some use as settings.

"After all, they depend on the environment fo...

2011-11-10T19:53:20.788-08:00
"After all, they depend on the environment for propulsion, and in an inherently unpredictable way that solar electric propulsion or even solar sailing wouldn't really match."

Hmm.
Spacecraft that are propelled by 'magnetic sails' interacting with the solar wind would have some advantages, but would rely on something more variable than sunlight. Perhaps there is room for story material there, with storms & lulls in the solar wind affecting when the spacecraft reaches 'port'.

Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Space Liners

How about this theory: space liner is not a univer...

=Milo= I'd say, for round-trip missions, ma...

As a flat statement, I don't think you will...

Does anyone else remember those rare shots on Baby...

http://www.podiobooks.com/podiobooks/search.php?ke...

I thought that the use of Mass Drivers to alter...

I think the whole asteroid-moving thing is hugely ...

To paraphrase "Time, energy, or infrastructur...

Ray McVay: "I see your point. I thought t...

"Look...if you could put even a 100 meter roc...

Ray McVay: "What about resource denial? E...

"Who would you need to protect them against? ...

Ray McVay: "Would a pair of asteroid cycl...

"As I'm sure Rick and many other know, de...

As I'm sure Rick and many other know, dedicate...

I associate "land battle fought at sea" ...

Left out Jean-Remy's point - which would have ...

SpaceShipTwo / VSS Enterprise, IMHO, is a truly br...

Ray McVay said:"That's an interesting que...

"...unless SpaceShipTwo, VSS Enterprise is al...

=Milo= Jean-Remy: "Rick may deplore ou...

That last comment got me thinking and realizing th...

While on that tack, I would also point out that...

=Milo= While on that tack, I would also point o...

"After all, they depend on the environment fo...