Spacescifi

Rotational gravity is a simple concept, but how one implements it matters more. There are two ways I will discuss, radial rotation (rolling) and tumbling rotation (pitch). Radial Rotation: This is the what most think of when they think of rotational gravity. Yet it has some challenges. As you know, all the weight in the torus is pulled toward the perimeter, thus the walls must be strong enough to support that weight at 1g if that is the gravity desired. It is arguably cheaper to strengthen the walls with heavy material, but spaceships must be lightweight, so some lightweight but strong and expensive material would likely be used instead. Also, larger radius rings are ideal for gravity, as smaller radius ones just are'nt due to disorientation. Yet larger radius often requires more mass, and once again we are confronted with the long drawn out process of orbital construction, since lifting something that heavy all at once is not economical. Tumbling rotation: what I like is that only the rear and front sections of a rocket need to be strengthened, since the middie will be zero g during rotation anyway. So less hull reinforcement is required I believe, leading to cheaper and more readily produced rotational gravity. Even if built in orbit it not need be a 100 meters radius, only a length of about a 100 meters.

Not to totally derail the thread, but I am asking you.... what paperwork would you eliminate from work and government if you had the power? I know much information must be recorded, but what would you eliminate if you could? I would eliminate all those forms you have to sign to verify. Instead I would send a link to a website that explained all you were giving the right to sign for in PLAIN ENGLISH, not legalise. You would be required to link up and read the information and also be quizzed on it to ensure you know what you signed up for. If you fail the quiz, then you must retake it a week later. But when you sign... I would only make you do it once!

One discussion and one scenario here. Discussion: Blocky/angular spacecraft are actually practical, and also arguably easy to design en mass than curvy shaped hulls. That is what I will go with for my scifi, since a large fleet should not spend lots of time on hard to shape hulls when they can make simple ones faster. Although flats and edges do not like pressurization, who said I would pressurize the ship cabin? Only when landed on an Earth world, for breathing, but before launch it would depressurize the crew cabins. Where would the crew be in space? An inflatable bouncy house within the depressurized crew cabin. It's also a plus that it is naturally cushioned so any g-force would not hurt you if you fell into an inflated wall. Would be fun too. Scenario: Scifi often features earth-like worlds and the warp/jump drives to travel to them. The rocket equation still is a challnge though, since landing a large vessel SSTO will almost certainly use up mosrmt fuel resrves while slowing to land. So if you landed on an Earth-like world with say, medival Europe tech humanoids, where would you go to refuel propellant? Rivers, oceans, and lakes can be used to extract LOX/LH but the process will likely take days to extract enough in tons, maybe a week or two. Technically a rocket can burn any propellant, but some are more difficult to store and others corrode the engine. So methane could also be a choice, but I do think oceans are hard to miss and easy to spot beaches nearby for landing near. The engine is a functional Nuclear lightbulb rocket with 2 rows of nozzles in the rear. And landing thrusters under the belly fore and aft. Thoughts? Solutions? Potentially risks or dangers? You may discuss.

And therein lies your story! It is always interesting to learn that the people who were greatly talented or smart people were often also flawed in other ways (Mozart was poor at managing his finances so he ended up begging his friend for money several times). By the way... tell me more about the boss character type scientist. Lemme guess, he is some person is really strict because he can lose his job if his lower scientists working undet him screw up right?

Fictionally the persobalities could still make it interesting. One scientist may be charismatic while another may be more of a bookworm, and still another one who might be very critical. And when you get a group of guys together, one of them will always be a joker.

Are you a scifi creator? Otherwise this is just talking heads... fun, but nothing produced. As for your question, the answer is... hard? I mean in life science is the product of generations of development. It's something that can better be displayed in moments of discovery to development and last to production. Even then the science does not end. We have cars and rockets and still have ways of making them more efficient via science. It's only corporate interests to make maximum profits and safety concerns that prevents major redesigns. Science is related to technology, so technology implies a certain mastery of various sciences. Basically, unless you're willing to do enough research over several hours, you won't know or understand the associated technology and sciences that a fictional civilization should have available to them if they have the capability to do specific thing.

So that is a possible mechanism for how the field works? Fusion would be required, since the remaining mass must either fuse or else explode violently? Can you in theory fuse any two atoms? I think so, but in real life it requires a star's worth of pressure and mass.

Thank you for the thorough analysis. I never considered the g-forces radial gravity would have on the sidewalls. They would likely need to be built extra strong to not break the ship apart under it's own weight. It is always interesting how reality is often different and more awesome than what we see in scifi. I like it! Yeah, it would be better do pitch based spinning as it is cheaper to strengthen the rear and front of the vessel than it is to reinforce all the sidewalls. Likely less weight that way too. Would make for some odd deck arrangements though, since the middle of the ship would be zero g. Who knew? Tumbling rotation is cheaper and less wear and tear on a ship's hull compared to radial rotation. Unless the structure is huuuge. But that is not ideal for a rocketship. Gravity is an ironic thing. It's one pf those things where scaling up is actually good for structural integrity, even though getting stuff off a planet to simulate gravity via rotation is made difficult because of gravity in the first place. I am at the point where I finally realize that tumble rotating rocketships are overall superior to radial rorating rings or saucers, unless you scale up by a whole lot. Even then a rocket shape is still likely superior. As it generates less drag leaving the atmosphere and won't necessarily require orbital assembly via multiple launches.

Often the method to transform one element to another involves heat reactions. What if we had a kind of forcefield that could remove and collect specific atoms or neutrons from an element at will. An atomic extractor field of sorts. What could you do with it? What kind of technology could you develop? Could it be applied to space travel? Rocketry?

I agree. Evolution is popular and widely accepted as a fact, not merely as a theory, so that leads to assumptions that there might be life on Mars or other worlds. Since it is widely accepted that provided that certain conditions exist, life will just find a way to exist via random chance making a cell with the will to survive and the ability to reproduce and access to a food supply, along with survival of the fittest. Mars appears to be dead by all accounts, and it is only implicit trust in evolution that makes anyone hope or suspect otherwise on Mars or any other far flung world.

Among other things in scifi, worldbuilding is an opportunity to 'fix' things you do not like in society, and insert them into the fictional civilization/alien race of your choice. Or not if you choose to copy humanity. So what things would you 'fix' in a fictional society/alien race that you do not like in real life? Me? No more paperwork and adverisements. One card ID for everything. All that extra mail would no longer exist, as well as all that wasteful packaging. Reusability would be stressed, and food and other items would be apportioned out by workers to customers, so a totally different store setup. Granted, it may take a behavior pattern different than humanity in some ways to pull off, but I don't care, it is a fictional society or alien civilization. So what about you? What things about society would you 'fix' in scifi? EDIT: Some advertisement is a good thing, but not the excess of today. I would bring back the town cryer tp wherever people gather in public outside.

So say you are on mars right now in a habitat module and you have a rover and even a rocket to reach a ship in orbit to go back home. You also have a bunch of extremophile specimens with you (alive). Options you have 1. Put them on Mars and put life on a world that appears to be totally dead. 2. Search for life on Mars. 3. Run science tests on extremophile lifeforms from earth in closed martian test environment. Which do you choose? If me, I would choose 3 in a heartbeat.

Right there with you. If I had a theme song to do describe my life long battle with this it would be this song. Although in my case, the real reason is often fear of failing, which causes me to 'hug' myself by doing whatever comforts me instead. That said, I wish and hope to come off victorious in my battle, as the song, at least as it applies to me, would suggest. What's your song?

Science is fun, but I can tell you without exception that for most all Earth life (barring any exceptions I am unaware of), none will do as well off Earth as they do on Earth. As it is humans need a lot of help to do the basic stuff they take for granted on Earth off Earth. Just surviving requires a lot of technology.

Science? The goal of science is knowledge is it not? The dictionary defines science as experimentation with the gaining of a knowledge as the goal or something like that I once read. So an even deeper question I would ask you is this. what questions do you want science to answer for you in space or mars or the moon? Many we have already answered. What is left to answer is how well can humans live on the moon or mars, and the answer we know already is that it would be hard, but not impossible. The main question that people in the science media keep bringing up is are we alone in the universe? Yet that is not what they are asking. What they are really asking is, are we alone in a universe that fits our definition of what we think life to be like? Answers to questions we never asked might be far more rewarding than than the answers to questions we keep asking.

Meanwhile an Arnold Schwartzaneggar type Commander astronaut is calling the other astronauts not real men/women as they lay down in the 1g 10 ft diameter cylinder. He walks around and toughs it out a few hours a day, gradually increasing the length over time as he grows accustomed to it. Meanwhile the the other 29 astronauts crawl around the cylinder like the 'babies' they are... according to the Commander anyway LOL. Granted the other astronauts would also be laughing at Commander toughguy when he upchucks his lunch trying to adjust to the differential gravity.

As a kid I kind of wanted to go to space. But given what we know, what are the pros and cons? Cons: Long interplanetary mission? Either use contraception or get a vasectomy, or just do not do it. Increased cancer risk, weird toxic plants grown in martian soil that require filtering to eat. Ditto for Lunar soil probabably. Pros: Fame. Money. Fun in space (you know what I mean) with significant other, just tie down or you will hit the wall. Can't think of anything else.

Possible solution.... get only short astronaut crew 4 ft and greater but not at 5 feet.

Richard and Mortimer? I do not follow. What is that?

Ha. So essentially we are talking a combo of man vs self, man vs society, and man vs his environment. Since all 3 factors are what make a man VS car scenario likely. Society because society has put car rules in place that defying is not worth the trouble, so you comply, even though difficult at times. Self because who knows if you hate your car but fix it anyway because maybe you're saving up for a new one? Environment vs car needs no introduction though.

By 'danger I was implying situations where having a little extra muscle would be an asset...namely, physical confrontations. As for security in general the sex matters less, since it firearms do not require a lot of muscle, nor does monitoring screens. The main issue with long duration crews though is babies. Maybe they really should just send families and be done with it. Since that may cut down on the baby potential. From what I read of western colonization of the Americas, the Spanish crews were mostly male and had a lot of babies with the natives, so is no wonder why spanish is spoken nearly everywhere english is. The british/english on the other hand brought families and were more likely to enslsve the locals than have babies with them. For this analogy to apply to a Mars mission though, I think the British way is better, since otherwise you will have a bunch of really frustrated guys on a several years long mission. Stuff happens. I have read. In the Antiartica research station I have read they have a mixed crew of male and females. I have read that they get large orders of.... stuff that prevents pregnancy.. That is what isolation does to males/females long term. If it os just males, things get weird sooner or later, read this: I found the crossing the equator 'ceremony'to be quite disturbing, but it also illustrates how bored these guys are that they think this gross stuff is fun https://www.google.com/amp/s/taskandpurpose.com/life-submarine-raunchy-cramped-occasionally-smells-like-sht/amp/

Pregnant launch. One and a half years of coasting to Mars.

Two scenarios here: Scenario 1. You have some variation of a nuclear rocketship on it's way to mars. In order to keep the crew of 30 healthy the rocket begins to roll/rotate. The crew has a hollow cylinder area ten feet wide, and the rocket spins up to 1g. Could the crew function well enough in this environment for 6 months or longer? I know it is not ideal since gravity will be stronger at the foot than the head, but some g is better than zero g I say. I also know it will be disorienting, but can't they just tough it out? There are worse things in space after all. Scenario 2: A female crewmember is about to give birth to twin baby girls, but in this case it is another spacecraft without provisions for gravity as it coasts a year and a half to mars. For the sake of discussion, this ship is fully radiation shielded, the only challenge now lies with... how in the world do you deliver twins in zero g?! This will get messy folks... please stay appropriate as the thread will get closed otherwise.

Good points. Now I would like to discuss genders on a realistic starship. IRL it is predominantly male, but what reasons are their to include females (besides being an equal opportunity employer)? I guess what I am asking is, what jobs on a starship are females an ideal choice for, since I am being pragmatic and no nonsense about this. Two roles comes to mind. Pilot: Females reportedly make good drivers, getting in less accidents overall compared to to males. I dunno, maybe they are more careful. CNA: Do you really want a big, burly man man-handeling you off to tuck you into your hospital bed? Not to mention other duties that get up close and personal? That's all I can think of. For security though, males are ideal, especially if the danger level is high.

IRL the trend is for small crews, due to the limitations of rocketry and the resistance that gravity gives. In scifi though crews may range up to a thousand or more for a single large spaceship. So I was thinking, does a spaceship really need all that crew? I think it really depends on the tech level. 1. Realistic: Tiny crew. A few tons payload. Spaceship is an orbit to orbit vessel with a lander. 2. Scifi: Tiny crew with orbit to orbit vessel, small payload, has SSTO landers. 3. Imaginative Scifi: Large crew, the large ship is an SSTO. So even in scenario 3 there must ve a reason, like an earth-like world to drop off passengers, in which the standing crew would be far less than the passenger readout. Or colonization of an Earth-like world. For that matter, I do not ever see people signing up by the thousands to go to the death worlds of the solar system (any place other than Earth). When you consider that the plantd s grown need special filtering or else they kill your immune system, it just does not seem worth it. Plus the plants grown are not even green! They are some weird yellow unhealthy color. Now if it was an Earth-2 colony then yes. For missions like the Enterprise though it does not make sense to ne. Large crews I do not understand. Unless it is a bunch security, since science experiments should not require a thousand people unless you are running tests on them. Unless those transporter accidents are a lot more common than starfleet reports and large crews compensates for that....