Primitive Offworld Spaceships Will Probably Be Made Of...

[Spacescifi]

Concrete. Source could regolith, from the moon or any other celestial body without an atmosphere.

I think concrete may be easier to manufacture offworld than metals.

Both will likely be helped with centrifuges, but bulk metal manufacturing requires more overall than bulk concrete manufacturing.

 

Concrete spacecraft would make OK orbiters and moon landers. Earth reentry is not for them though.

Kind of funny to think the first offworld built spacecraft could be a whole fleet of ships made from lunar clay.

Truly lunar craft.

 

What do you think?

One more relatively reachable use of space resources.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

 

[Rakaydos]

5 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Concrete. Source could regolith, from the moon or any other celestial body without an atmosphere.

I think concrete may be easier to manufacture offworld than metals.

Both will likely be helped with centrifuges, but bulk metal manufacturing requires more overall than bulk concrete manufacturing.

 

Concrete spacecraft would make OK orbiters and moon landers. Earth reentry is not for them though.

Kind of funny to think the first offworld built spacecraft could be a whole fleet of ships made from lunar clay.

Truly lunar craft.

 

What do you think?

One more relatively reachable use of space resources.

Concrete usually has problems with vibrations, and rocket engines usually have a lot of rattle. Have you run the numbers for how much vibration your concrete spaceships can take?

[jimmymcgoochie]

Concrete is a bad choice for several reasons- it takes a lot of energy to make; is heavy (bad for the rocket equation); isn’t that good at taking the kinds of forces you’d get from space travel (it’s good for compression but bad for tension and tends to shatter if you hit it hard enough); and it requires copious quantities of water and the right kind of sand or sand-like materials, which would be better used in other offworld activities like keeping humans alive, making fuel and building surface structures either on or under the ground.

Mars is a good place to make steel- plenty of iron and carbon around to do so assuming that a suitable smelting system that doesn’t need oxygen can be created; elsewhere you could try making aluminium or ceramics depending on what local rocks and ores are available.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

7 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Concrete

I think you might be able to turn the regolith from your asteroid mining operations into concrete to use for Habs, but why a ship?  

Too heavy to turn. 

(have someone heave a concrete block at you and then ninja it aside... Kinda hard to shift) 

[kerbiloid]

Concrete rocks.

Rocks are metal oxides.

Mostly alcali.

[SpaceFace545]

worked for them

[Shpaget]

Ok, now you've got to be trolling us.

[MKI]

The words "primitive" and "offworld spaceships" shouldn't go together.

We should be talking about all the dumb lame metals we use right now. Since ya know... we just started going to space and are still "primitive" in terms of galactic timescales.

 

[Scotius]

Paper. Or rather plates of plant fibers glued together with adhesive, then pressed into required shapes.

Lightweight, surprisingly strong, cheap (if you have enough hydroponic farms). Also, because it's organic, it provides a bit of extra radiation protection.

[cubinator]

Concrete will crumble to pieces under the vibrations of a rocket engine. It's fine to build the launch pad out of it, or structures for your habitat, but not a rocket.

[kerbiloid]

Launch pad.

Spoiler

Mobile version.

Spoiler

Launching Starlink

Spoiler

Service tower

Spoiler

On-ground ASAT.

Spoiler

Arleigh Burke with Aegis.

Spoiler

Optical communication system. Also PAPI.

Spoiler

Mission control room.

Spoiler

Boca-Chica.
Prototype test #465.

Spoiler

 

[Spacescifi]

On 8/10/2021 at 6:34 AM, jimmymcgoochie said:

Concrete is a bad choice for several reasons- it takes a lot of energy to make; is heavy (bad for the rocket equation); isn’t that good at taking the kinds of forces you’d get from space travel (it’s good for compression but bad for tension and tends to shatter if you hit it hard enough); and it requires copious quantities of water and the right kind of sand or sand-like materials, which would be better used in other offworld activities like keeping humans alive, making fuel and building surface structures either on or under the ground.

Mars is a good place to make steel- plenty of iron and carbon around to do so assuming that a suitable smelting system that doesn’t need oxygen can be created; elsewhere you could try making aluminium or ceramics depending on what local rocks and ores are available.

 

Hmmm.... the moon has alluminum, yet smelting and forging is best done on a lunar base equipped with centrifuges I think.

Smelting and forging requires water on earth does it not?

The moon has some ice, but use will be torn between industrial and human drinking water.

 

At any rate the larger the moon base the more alluminum that could be stored away.

 

Alluminum make okay spaceship hulls.

 

Don't know about nozzles or engines. Likely require lower heat engines or else.

[kerbiloid]

In 1889 the primitive human civilisation has awarded Dmitry Mendeleev for his outstanding achievements with chemical scales made of pure gold and pure aluminium (which costed more than the gold to that date).

The golden hulls are cheaper for the primitive civilisations.

[Dientus]

Here's a thought that I myself keep going back to and I am certain others have heard about this before as well.

Biological ships.

Living ships that are grown and changed through DNA manipulation. Hold on, stop laughing for a second and think tardigrades. They may be microscopic but can withstand some very extreme heat, cold, radiation and pressure.

 

So now the primitive part, how to manipulate DNA without modern gene splicing and editing techniques. You do it the same way that mankind did to dogs 30,000 years ago, or cats 8,000 years ago. It's already been proven that this can be done a lot quicker when it is targeted such as the famous Russian experiment.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/famous-fox-domestication-experiment-challenged-66817

May sound far fetched but it if you could get the animal to the point of surviving in space (which, by the way is actually plausible. Real space creatures could potentially exist already.. admittedly very doubtful to be the large Scifi type but nonetheless) then you need a way to get it out of Earth's atmosphere.

 

Just food for thought.

Edited August 12, 2021 by Dientus
correction

[SpaceFace545]

27 minutes ago, Dientus said:

Here's a thought that I myself keep going back to and I am certain others have heard about this before as well.

Biological ships.

Living ships that are grown and changed through DNA manipulation. Hold on, stop laughing for a second and think tardigrades. They may be microscopic but can withstand some very extreme heat, cold, radiation and pressure.

 

So now the primitive part, how to manipulate DNA without modern gene splicing and editing techniques. You do it the same way that mankind did to dogs 30,000 years ago, or cats 8,000 years ago. It's already been proven that this can be done a lot quicker when it is targeted such as the famous Russian experiment.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/famous-fox-domestication-experiment-challenged-66817

May sound far fetched but it if you could get the animal to the point of surviving in space (which, by the way is actually plausible. Real space creatures could potentially exist already.. admittedly very doubtful to be the large Scifi type but nonetheless) then you need a way to get it out of Earth's atmosphere.

 

Just food for thought.

It took humans tens of thousands of years to make a pug, bet it would take millions to make a spacecraft. In all seriousness biological ships are a fun idea to toy with.

[Dientus]

12 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

It took humans tens of thousands of years to make a pug, bet it would take millions to make a spacecraft. In all seriousness biological ships are a fun idea to toy with.

Maybe not millions, but your point is most definitely not lost on me.

[SpaceFace545]

6 minutes ago, Dientus said:

Maybe not millions, but your point is most definitely not lost on me.

how exactly would a biological spacecraft even move? expulsion of gas? 

I also feel that maybe a completely biological spacecraft would lie in the realm of sci fi but maybe a biological computer could be interesting. Like the navigators from dune.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Dientus said:

Biological ships.

Spoiler

 

The problem with the bioships, though, is that they are DNA which is protein which can survive only below hundreds of °C.

***

Though, maybe giant tungsten-rich mushrooms?

Also a regolith-eating mushroom  looks like a proper way to build a lunar base (if compare it to the NASA lunar base competition).

***

If the thinking is a quantum process specifically connected to a highly-organized organic matter, maybe a hyperjump biodrive is possible.
You tell the ship brain where you want to go, it thinks you are there - and you are there.

[Dientus]

6 hours ago, SpaceFace545 said:

how exactly would a biological spacecraft even move? expulsion of gas? 

I also feel that maybe a completely biological spacecraft would lie in the realm of sci fi but maybe a biological computer could be interesting. Like the navigators from dune.

Mobility in space through any natural means I would imagine would be very slow. Moving along solar winds or other space phenomena could be problematic outside of a solar system.

 

Quite a few years ago I remember reading about experimenting with creating an actual computer created from brain cells. I don't never know what happened to that experiment or if it produced anything useful or not and can't seem to find reference for it.

 

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Though, maybe giant tungsten-rich mushrooms?

Also a regolith-eating mushroom  looks like a proper way to build a lunar base (if compare it to the NASA lunar base competition).

Fungal terraforming, among other uses, are being studied now which you know.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-travels-most-surprising-future-ingredient-mushrooms/

 

I think just the fact that life living in the vacuum of space would fall into a "primitive" way of doing something since the process happens naturally and unaided.

 

Hmm, maybe a hybrid of technologies could solve problems on both sides. But I think at that point it is no longer "primitive" per se.

[monophonic]

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The problem with the bioships, though, is that they are DNA which is protein which can survive only below hundreds of °C.

***

Though, maybe giant tungsten-rich mushrooms?

Also a regolith-eating mushroom  looks like a proper way to build a lunar base (if compare it to the NASA lunar base competition).

Is it really necessary for the biological part to travel to space? I say use something like coral animals or maybe insects that have been bred and/or genetically manipulated to grow into specific shapes and make their exoskeletons out of something suitable for the purpose.

So take one shed starshipbeetle shell and install a few raptorcoral husks at the bottom. Okay, for the control computer you might need something living. Dogs are known to learn many tricks so pick a breed for a starting point. Make sure there is a well protected place in the ship for the - quite literally - ship's brain to sit in. Then just go play fetch with asteroids or something!

[Dientus]

44 minutes ago, monophonic said:

Is it really necessary for the biological part to travel to space? I say use something like coral animals or maybe insects that have been bred and/or genetically manipulated to grow into specific shapes and make their exoskeletons out of something suitable for the purpose.

That's an idea to grow ship hulls but with it not being alive itself and it taking more to get it space worthy, would it still fall under a primitive category?

 

[StrandedonEarth]

Primitive Offworld Spaceships Will Probably Be Made Of...
 

Chewing gum, baling wire, and duct space tape 

[monophonic]

15 hours ago, Dientus said:

That's an idea to grow ship hulls but with it not being alive itself and it taking more to get it space worthy, would it still fall under a primitive category?

 

Perhaps it could if done by selective breeding only as that process dates back to prehistoric times. Direct genetic manipulation certainly wouldn't be primitive at least by today's standards. What would be considered primitive at the time there are colonies on other planets that would consider themselves to be primitive is up to anyone's imagination.

[Rakaydos]

Organic life is anti-standardization.

The more standardized it gets, the easier it can be attacked by paracites and diseases, so individuality is a survival trait. That's literally why sexual reproduction outcompeted asexual reproduction.