Science Rapid Interstellar spaceflight, exploration and,colonization thread

[T.Neo]

Y'know, just because humans are never going to be idealistic, tree hugging fire-circle-singing pacifists doesn't mean you want to seek out war. fsci123 seemingly wants to see conflict so badly however, that he plans to ship otherwise totally and utterly useless tanks on his interstellar vehicles, which are undoubtedly limited in the amount of mass they can carry.

Conflict is always a possibility, but we must of course do everything in our human nature to prevent it, or at the worst, stop it. You might carry a few guns to a new planet, yes. But tanks? That is absurd.

Really? Is it inhabitable? Can we safely land a crew there and bring them back? Maybe it's a better target for a manned expedition than Burbank.

Yeah, but I'd vote for Burbank instead, unless you want to live in a small unheated dwelling made of corrugated iron and cardboard.

Factories are made from pieces of the first vessel... So are habitats communication devices and roads an farms... When humans arrive they can have a comfortable habitat to call home while they build more complex structures... I chose buses because it will be pretty bad if we go to a planet and start pumping pollutants into the atmospere by using vans designed to hold 8 people and only holding 1... Police cars to keep order... Rockets to launch sattelites for communication and weather forcasting... I personally don't believe people will be using mechs for battle anytime soon...

A spacecraft isn't something you can suddenly transfigurate into a factory or a house or whatever. And certainly not something you can apparate onto the surface of a planet with no hassle whatsoever.

Your initial society will be far too small to use buses. Buses are for mass transport. There'll be very little mass transport here; the best transport option would probably be something like a dunebuggy. Stuff that you'd want to build in-situ; instead of shipping heavy dunebuggies in your spacecraft, ship a heavy factory-seed that can be used to make dunebuggies from local materials. And can also be used to make new factories. And lamps. And asphalt. Definitely a far better option.

And police cars to "keep the order"? Really? Do you need police cars on a cruise ship? It isn't like this colony is going to be filled with thieves, murderers and rapists...

 

[Ghostrider]

Unfortunately "providing some sort of framework for people to solve disputes peacefully" works the same way schools take on the problem of kids fighting.

Big kid beats up little kid ---> Little kid complains ---> Counselling session ---> Big kid beats up little kid.

Then there's the variant when you punish BOTH fighting parties in order to deter anyone from aggression. The results is this:

Big kid beats up little kid ---> Little kid reacts ---> Little kid is punished along with big kid --- Big kid doesn't mind he's used to trouble ---> Big kid beats up little kid.

There's always the pacifist approach, works like this:

Big kid beats up little kid ---> Little kid does nothing ---> Big kid beats up little kid again and again.

Which brings us to the a less civilized but highly effective solution:

Big kid beats up little kid ---> Little kid ambushes big kid outside school grounds and pummels him ---> Big kid stops beating up little kid.

Actually my all-time favourite was this:

Big kid beats up little kid ---> Little kid hires vigilante kids ---> Vigilante kids ambush big kid and his cronies outside school grounds and pummel them big time ---> Big kid and cronies disappear from radar.

You see, violence is something to be managed carefully.

 

[fsci123]

Well being trillions of miles from earth and our natural enviroment will probably cause some sort of mental breakdown... I am not thinking about converting a peaceful ship into a military projection device but I think that there needs to be protection from animals or any other creature... Any animal will either run away from us aliens and our technology or maybe curious about our rocks(houses) to the point where they try to smash it... I don't see this colony being like a futuristic buttered-up base with 24 inch chromes... But more like what towns look like on earth... Such a colony may have a governer and mayor just like most American areas and just like previous colonies have something to keep citizens at peace...

 

[APDAF]

Why base it on the US, why not take the Marxist approch?
Then we can all work together no the same things.

 

[fsci123]

Why base it on the US, why not take the Marxist approch?
Then we can all work together no the same things.

Well pure socialism/communism is virtualy impossible because government officials will live in big houses and get better medical services... Pluss this is an American-Russian joint colony... With the US suplyin most of the money...

 

[APDAF]

Not if me or a friend do it.
What is you view on it?

 

[T.Neo]

Who says the US is gonna be supplying most of the money? Maybe by the time we fly to the Stars, Brazil will be mega-rich on sugarcane. Or global warming would make Canada a new agricultural powerhouse.

Generally though, Marxism might be nice in theory, but in practice, it's pretty much always lead to totalitarian dictatorships.

Version one is keeping order in the society. You do three things:

1. Select colonists least likely to lose it.
2. Ensure a psychological atmosphere to combat stress.
3. Utilise a system of rule similar to that on a warship, at least at first.

On the other hand... aliens, yeah... but one must consider:

1. Tau Ceti is unfortunately a place where you're unlikely to find advanced life due to the more frequent meteor impacts.

2. There could be multicellular life, that is nothing like animal life on Earth- for example, a planet with a highly competitive ecology of organisms rather like slime molds, sponges, fungi and lichen could be just as complex and amazing as our own, yet have no possibility of evolving any intelligent species.

3. Intelligent species are likely to be rare; one should note the time during which an intelligent species has been on Earth, versus the time during which there has been no intelligent species on Earth.

4. Intelligent species are likely to be simple; again, compare the amount of time during which there has been technological civilisation (or any civilisation) on the Earth, versus the time that there have been subsistence societies but no civilisations. An intelligent species could also be limited by its ability to manipulate- dolphins lack hands, for example, so any intelligent progeny of theirs would have trouble manipulating the world like we can.

5. If there is an intelligent species on the planet that you don't know about, even if they are technologically very simple and also low in number, then your exploratory efforts are really, really poor.

6. Tanks to battle stone age cultures are pointless, and tanks to battle an alien ecology wrap themselves around absurd. Organisms die easily and they don't shoot back at you. You don't need a tank; just a Land Rover and a nice rifle.

Or bugspray. Or a pair of garden shears- those landsponges are slow movers, you can easily tip them over, lop off their pseudopods, and they'll go nowhere.

 

[fsci123]

Well as for the US just trust me the US will be prosperous even 100 years from now...

As with wild-life im not saying these creatures are intelligent but are curious enough to sniff around looking for food in our bases... There equivalent of ants could be gigantic creatures who are 20 floors high...

 

[T.Neo]

I never said the US would not be prosperous. I was just saying that it's entirely possible (probable, in fact) that other countries could be prosperous as well. Maybe more prosperous than the US, maybe less prosperous than the US... but prosperous nontheless.

Biomass is biomass and creatures just don't grow to be 50 meters tall. Even when you remove gravitational limitations. That's something out of a B-movie, not reality.

If organisms come and sniff for food, either shoot them (with rifles!) hide your food (inside homes and fridges!) or discourage them (with electric fencing!).

 

[fsci123]

I never said the US would not be prosperous. I was just saying that it's entirely possible (probable, in fact) that other countries could be prosperous as well. Maybe more prosperous than the US, maybe less prosperous than the US... but prosperous nontheless.

Biomass is biomass and creatures just don't grow to be 50 meters tall. Even when you remove gravitational limitations. That's something out of a B-movie, not reality.

If organisms come and sniff for food, either shoot them (with rifles!) hide your food (inside homes and fridges!) or discourage them (with electric fencing!).

Well we had dinosaurs that grew pretty tall... With less gravity their tallest creatures could still be tall... And im pretty sure a few rifle bullets wont even get close to killing a creature the size of Amphicoelias...

 

[APDAF]

Best bring a RPG-7 or a LAW.

 

[T.Neo]

"Few rifle bullets"? You haven't seen this rifle!

If you really want, you can pack a machine gun. A nice 12.7mm machine gun, or a minigun, would turn an unfortunate Amphicoelias to a gruesome mess.

Remember that such large animals were exceptional even in their day, even with the generally increased size of organisms. Add to that the fact that these were herbivorous and evolved such great bulk partially due to their lifestyle. And the fact that they weighed only around 20 tons or so, or something like that, because if they were any heavier, they probably wouldn't be able to survive.

Their bones were hollow, just like their living relatives, the birds. This sort of extensive pneumatisation means that sauropods could be very light for their size and they could have breathed more effectively.

All of which contribute to the organism being far more fragile than it looks.

Bringing a tank to "combat" such organisms would be total, utter nonsense. It'd be beyond overkill!

EDIT:

Or bring an RPG or a LAW. That'd be fun, poor creatures...

 

[fsci123]

Well like i said earlier we dont know the nature of alien species as we have no good evidence of what they look like... Unless we visit a planet with life or an ETciv comes to earth we will have no clue...:facepalm:

 

[Dambuster]

Yes, but this is pretty much a game of probabilities, backed up by some basic logic.

Since this planet gets whacked by large asteroids every few million years, that's probably going to be a bit of a hamper on the evolutionary process, meaning it probably won't get very far along it. It follows that any life forms you do find (the chance you'll find life is pretty low, I'd guess) will probably be quite small - just look how long it took large lifeforms to evolve on Earth (I don't know how long, but it will be far more than a few million years).

 

[T.Neo]

We can speculate based on the science we know. Scientific speculation is far better than "they could be big and carnivorous and have three heads and three eyes and three toes and maybe some green glitter on their backsides" or whatnot.

The organisms there might even be pretty impressive for a planet that gets a K/T every 5 million years or so; overall, the ecology could adapt with such frequent events- organisms more likely to survive them, would survive, and repopulate the planet. And they might even radiate a bit in the interleading time. But gigantic animals? I have my doubts.

 

[fsci123]

Well about fuel... This rocket is fusion... I realy hated the ideal of antimatter I hated it since i was eight... So I have been thinking about muon catalysed fusion... And the fusion will be proton proton chain...


Now remember do not try to convince me to use antimatter unless you have a solid logical arguement as I am no more interested in using antimatter than a blind horse is interested in having sexual relations with a fruit fly...

 

[T.Neo]

Seriously fsci123? What's so wrong with antimatter?

I can think of various reasons why antimatter would be problematic to use in an interstellar spacecraft, but honestly, "I hated it since I was 8" isn't a very good one...

As far as I can tell, muon catalysed fusion is pretty difficult to do unless you can produce and use muons effectively enough (which we don't know how to do).

The logical arguments for antimatter are energy density and specific impulse, which is far higher than for fusion.

Maybe a good compromise, would be an antimatter catalysed engine- using relatively small amounts of antimatter to initiate fusion in fusion fuel. But you will still have a lower exhaust velocity, which means you will have larger amounts of propellant, which means you'll need a larger ship...

 

[fsci123]

Seriously fsci123? What's so wrong with antimatter?

I can think of various reasons why antimatter would be problematic to use in an interstellar spacecraft, but honestly, "I hated it since I was 8" isn't a very good one...

As far as I can tell, muon catalysed fusion is pretty difficult to do unless you can produce and use muons effectively enough (which we don't know how to do).

The logical arguments for antimatter are energy density and specific impulse, which is far higher than for fusion.

Maybe a good compromise, would be an antimatter catalysed engine- using relatively small amounts of antimatter to initiate fusion in fusion fuel. But you will still have a lower exhaust velocity, which means you will have larger amounts of propellant, which means you'll need a larger ship...

I've been designing rockets or at least thinking about them since I was 8 and I knew then that antimatter is super expensive and releases most of it's energy as gamma and x-rays... I have a feeling that muons can be produced much more cheaply than antimatter...


And as for you saying Canada being a possible powerhouse... Canada is more likely to be annexed by the US than ever become any global player... I personally have my anger against England for not giving us Canada when we revolted...

 

[T.Neo]

Well, let's put it this way: I've seen several propulsion concepts that use antimatter. I haven't seen any propulsion concepts that use muon catalysed fusion.

I designed spaceships as an 8 year old, too. Those spaceships were horribly implausible, and the spaceships I design today, are still horribly implausible- it's just that I've improved slightly. :rofl:

You want to ignore the gamma rays. If you use light materials you can actually let most of the gamma rays slip through your engine structure and out into space. What you want to do with an antimatter drive, is harvest charged anihillation products, such as little particles called "pions", for thrust.

Yes, antimatter is extremely expensive to produce, it's difficult to store, etc. But for interstellar flight, that might just be worth it.

If muon catalysed fusion is less considered than antimatter, of all things, then you know that it's either (a) impossible, (b) extremely difficult to achieve practically, or (c) not woth it at all.

 

[fsci123]

Well I think muons are more easily stored and harvested... Muons last a few nano seconds or something like that but i heard that muons traveled into the atmosphere of extraterrestrial sources and the only reason they survive is they are traveling so fast like 0.9999999999999c that they can last a minute longer... So if you figured out how to accelerate the muons in a toridialar structure you may be able to keep them there long enough to be used for catalyzation...