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Building Starfleet The Hard Way


Spacescifi

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4 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

michael_by_william_black-d8eudqd.jpg

 

 

I meant TV and movie scifi.

I will smile the day I see this in a movie or TV. I have waited years for this.

DiscoveryOrion.gif

I think the reason directors won't do it is because they presume the audience is dumb about rocketry.

 

I say tha is even MORE of a reason to use it. Teach em something about space travel. Rather than feed them technobabble lies like SW and ST.

 

 

Edited by Spacescifi
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i dont think you would need pulse detonation with an antimatter engine, a steady state engine would be better (mostly because you are not dependant on a large mechanical shock absorber to not die). airbreathing antimatter engines may also be possible. 

though i think if we were going to have fleets of orion/antimatter/torch ships, it might be a good idea to launch them from a moon base. slow plasma tugs can handle the earth orbit <-> lunar orbit cargo transport and reusable chemical rockets can do the launching (say starships or skylons). i think its a lot more economical to keep the reactor on the ground making chem fuel than it is to put it on the ship for some kind of exotic propulsion, and if you are using hydrolox you have a more or less closed fuel cycle that is environmentally friendly (no carbon, no nuclear waste products). while it might be a good idea to keep your expensive antimatter motherships in space, and rely on reusable shuttles for planetary operations, landing them on planets and moons with no existing population should be ok so long as its safe and practical for the ship to do so. 

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3 hours ago, Nuke said:

i dont think you would need pulse detonation with an antimatter engine, a steady state engine would be better (mostly because you are not dependant on a large mechanical shock absorber to not die). airbreathing antimatter engines may also be possible. 

though i think if we were going to have fleets of orion/antimatter/torch ships, it might be a good idea to launch them from a moon base. slow plasma tugs can handle the earth orbit <-> lunar orbit cargo transport and reusable chemical rockets can do the launching (say starships or skylons). i think its a lot more economical to keep the reactor on the ground making chem fuel than it is to put it on the ship for some kind of exotic propulsion, and if you are using hydrolox you have a more or less closed fuel cycle that is environmentally friendly (no carbon, no nuclear waste products). while it might be a good idea to keep your expensive antimatter motherships in space, and rely on reusable shuttles for planetary operations, landing them on planets and moons with no existing population should be ok so long as its safe and practical for the ship to do so. 

 

Well how would you get the Orions to the moon to launch them from there later?

Using chemical rockets to launch boost orion battleship type heavy vessels into orbit will be imposs.. I mean hard. Like really hard.  I don't even wanna look at the stagin monstrousity on that thing.

 

Seems to me the easiest approach for launching an Orion to orbit is to boost it into the air via a rail or rockets enough to clear the space center safely.

From there on it's AM triggered pure fusion bombs to orbit.

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19 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Well how would you get the Orions to the moon to launch them from there later?

Using chemical rockets to launch boost orion battleship type heavy vessels into orbit will be imposs.. I mean hard. Like really hard.  I don't even wanna look at the stagin monstrousity on that thing.

 

Seems to me the easiest approach for launching an Orion to orbit is to boost it into the air via a rail or rockets enough to clear the space center safely.

From there on it's AM triggered pure fusion bombs to orbit.

you dont ship an orion, you ship orion parts, or make them in situ. logistics dictate whether they are built on the lunar surface or in orbit depending on where the bulk of the materials are sourced. building it in earth orbit might be possible, but i would use something other than the orion  to get it a safe distance from the planet. and launching the first orion from earth is probably fine, but if you are going to have a fleet of them the moon is a more sensible and practical place. doing an antarctic launch is probably fine if you don't do a gravity turn and just go for escape velocity (i usually do this when launching an orion in ksp). so load your foundry, mining equipment, base modules and portable uranium processing plant on that first orion to bootstrap your moon base. do it on a regular basis though and you might run out of penguins.

i also don't think we have reached the theoretical maximum that is possible from a chemical rocket. i dont even think we are in diminishing returns territory yet. its just we dont currently have a need for anything larger than our current launch vehicles. but in the future when you are building your star fleet, then you definitely have a need for another tier of heavy lift rockets. if starship turns out to be the c-130 of rockets, then what will our an225 of rockets look like? rather than send a single big delivery it might be better to do it like a colony of ants would go about building an ant hill, which wouldn't be too unfeasible if we have fully reusable launch vehicles. 

Edited by Nuke
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21 minutes ago, Nuke said:

you dont ship an orion, you ship orion parts, or make them in situ. logistics dictate whether they are built on the lunar surface or in orbit depending on where the bulk of the materials are sourced. building it in earth orbit might be possible, but i would use something other than the orion  to get it a safe distance from the planet. and launching the first orion from earth is probably fine, but if you are going to have a fleet of them the moon is a more sensible and practical place. doing an antarctic launch is probably fine if you don't do a gravity turn and just go for escape velocity (i usually do this when launching an orion in ksp). so load your foundry, mining equipment, base modules and portable uranium processing plant on that first orion. do it on a regular basis though and you might run out of penguins. 

 

Making an Orion ISRU from moon resources?

That seems far more expensive in time and resources than just boosting orions off Earth to the moon which we can do.

 

No one really talks in depth about how one actually goes about the process of smelting and refining and shaping metals on the moon, but I have researched before. And I can tell you for sure that will still need to ship plenty of resources from Earth to add to the moon resources to make an Orion.

We simply do not... as far as I know, have the ability to make a quality Orion using ONLY moon regolith. If anything they would be of poorer quality compared to Earth built Orions. Probably full of radioactive dust too.

 

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25 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Making an Orion ISRU from moon resources?

That seems far more expensive in time and resources than just boosting orions off Earth to the moon which we can do.

 

No one really talks in depth about how one actually goes about the process of smelting and refining and shaping metals on the moon, but I have researched before. And I can tell you for sure that will still need to ship plenty of resources from Earth to add to the moon resources to make an Orion.

We simply do not... as far as I know, have the ability to make a quality Orion using ONLY moon regolith. If anything they would be of poorer quality compared to Earth built Orions. Probably full of radioactive dust too.

 

at some point you are going to need the logistic infrastructure large scale colonization efforts will require. doing that sooner rather than later is going to have considerable long term payout. 

shipping the large number of nuclear pulse units alone would require a perfect success rate, as any mishap there will be a huge ecological disaster. thats really something that should be manufactured on the moon. besides when everyone and their mother has their own orion ship, you are going to need gas stations in as many places as possible. 

Edited by Nuke
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2 hours ago, Nuke said:

at some point you are going to need the logistic infrastructure large scale colonization efforts will require. doing that sooner rather than later is going to have considerable long term payout. 

shipping the large number of nuclear pulse units alone would require a perfect success rate, as any mishap there will be a huge ecological disaster. thats really something that should be manufactured on the moon. besides when everyone and their mother has their own orion ship, you are going to need gas stations in as many places as possible. 

 

Alright lets consider what the moon has to offer as a fuel station.

 

Regolith for hundreds of kilometers. Which has what? Iron, aluminum, oxygen, other stuff too in concentrations I am not aware of.

So how does that translate into rocket fuel? Well the oxygen can be useful, although I am not sure how many tons of regolith one must process to get enough oxygen.

Aluminium oxygen rocketry is ok but not great I read, and iron... never heard anyone consider it for propellant.

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You know, I was just thinking; imagine being the alien race that comes to Earth to take over, but when they arrive we have a whole fleet of spacecraft chock full of nuclear bombs we're using as propulsion. Even if they outnumbered us, I would have to wonder if they'd consider turning back.

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58 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

You know, I was just thinking; imagine being the alien race that comes to Earth to take over, but when they arrive we have a whole fleet of spacecraft chock full of nuclear bombs we're using as propulsion. Even if they outnumbered us, I would have to wonder if they'd consider turning back.

Again, I recommend reading Footfall by Larry&Jerry (Niven and Pournelle)

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2 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Again, I recommend reading Footfall by Larry&Jerry (Niven and Pournelle)

Already did! It was pretty good, I think I read it a year ago or something like that. It's on my shelf. But I wonder what the reaction would be to a bunch of them in a fleet

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4 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Already did! It was pretty good, I think I read it a year ago or something like that. It's on my shelf. But I wonder what the reaction would be to a bunch of them in a fleet

 

Mine would be like.... hmmm, they appear to have pulse plate detonation drives like us, but they do not apoear to use antimatter bombs like we do. Do they have jump drives like us? Does not appear that they do. Let's use gravity of another world to match our velocity to their world, then we will surprise them.

Jump drive right into their atmosphere near the ground and land, bypassing their fleet.

 

As for the orbiting fleet, let us see how they cope relativistic antimatter particle beams.

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3 hours ago, Spaceception said:

But I wonder what the reaction would be to a bunch of them in a fleet

It is at this point they might consider integration rather than extermination. An Earth with such natives is clearly more valuable and productive than an Earth without.

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1 hour ago, DDE said:

It is at this point they might consider integration rather than extermination. An Earth with such natives is clearly more valuable and productive than an Earth without.

 

That would be the normal choice, even for my creations, but since he specifically mentioned an invasion... I showed how a scifi typical trope race could handle Earth realistic space forces with relative ease.

 

If for intergration instead, they could trade some tech for some antiquated (by their standards) Earth spaceships, upgrade them with jump or hyperdrives, and then sell them to budget spaceship dealers who sell to the poorer alien folk.

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20 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Alright lets consider what the moon has to offer as a fuel station.

 

Regolith for hundreds of kilometers. Which has what? Iron, aluminum, oxygen, other stuff too in concentrations I am not aware of.

So how does that translate into rocket fuel? Well the oxygen can be useful, although I am not sure how many tons of regolith one must process to get enough oxygen.

Aluminium oxygen rocketry is ok but not great I read, and iron... never heard anyone consider it for propellant.

i thought we were building a fleet of orions? the only propellant you need is uranium, which i believe has been found on the moon. you would probably need to refine that, burn it in a reactor to produce plutonium and refine it further to make it weapons grade. what other consumables you need for that process, im not sure which could be locally sourced. but they are certainly safer to stick on a rocket bound for the moon than nuclear pulse units. as for antimatter, thats certainly not something i want to mass produce on earth or anywhere near it. 

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2 hours ago, Nuke said:

i thought we were building a fleet of orions? the only propellant you need is uranium, which i believe has been found on the moon. you would probably need to refine that, burn it in a reactor to produce plutonium and refine it further to make it weapons grade. what other consumables you need for that process, im not sure which could be locally sourced. but they are certainly safer to stick on a rocket bound for the moon than nuclear pulse units. as for antimatter, thats certainly not something i want to mass produce on earth or anywhere near it. 

 

Rocket fuel is more likely, it seems the uranium on the moon is scanty.

 

New Moon Map Shows Uranium in Short Supply

By Charles Q. Choi

First Published 9 years ago

 

 

 

 

A map of uranium levels on the lunar surface, as measured by the Kaguya mission. The highest levels are at 2.1 parts per million (ppm) at Copernicus crater (C). E and W stand for the east and west highlands on the far side of the moon; A, the Apennine Bench; I, Mare Imbrium; J, Montes Jura; S, South Pole — Aitken Terrane; and T, Mare Tranquillitatis. <a href=http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/new-moon-uranium-map-100622.html>Full Story</a>. (Image credit: N. Yamaexcrementsa et al., Geophysical Research Letters)

Anew map of uranium on the moon has revealed the lunar surface to be a poorsource of the radioactive stuff, but it could help solve mysteries as to howthe moon formed.

Thisnew moonuranium map dampens hopes of a nuclear power industry on the lunar surface,researchers said.

Proponentsof lunarbases and future lunar colonies have long pointed to many of the moonsminerals, along with water, as being useful to support such efforts.

"Forgetthings like uranium mines or nuclear reactors," said cosmochemist RobertReedy, a member of the Kaguya science team and a senior scientist at theTucson-based Planetary Science Institute. "The concentrations are very farfrom being of commercial levels."

Uranium on the moon

Thenew map was created using data from Japan's Kaguya spacecraft, which launched in 2007. The spacecraft found uraniumon the moon, along with other radioactive elements, with its advanced gamma-rayspectrometer.

Kaguya crashedinto the moon's surface at the end of its mission last year.

Thenew moon uranium map clearly shows the element is not abundant on the moon. Inmoon rock, it appears in quantities less than in many Earth granites.

Moon's early history

Still, by analyzingthe ratio between the naturally radioactive elements uranium and thoriumscientists may yield new insights into the formation and evolution of the moon's surface. In the new map, significant variations in theratio between uranium and thorium were revealed.

Forinstance, averageuranium abundances could differ by some 60 percent between the east and westhighlands on the far side of the moon, while thorium abundances between thoseareas varied only 10 percent.

Thesenew findings suggest the formation of the lunar crust might not be as uniformas had long been thought.

"TheKaguya gamma-rayspectrometer team wantsto finish getting maps for as many elements as possible before drawing detailed conclusionson the Moon's history," Reedy said.

 

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.space.com/amp/8644-moon-map-shows-uranium-short-supply.html

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9 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

it seems the uranium on the moon is scanty

KREPP with thorium seems like a superior bet. Initial uranium would have to be imported, but locally-bred U-233 would suffice for bombs.

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