Spacescifi

For me it is their behavior. How it is different from humanity. Some will seek to answer the why via popular ideas, but I am only interested in their ongoing goals. To a large degree that fits their behavior, since in my work, each fictional race I tailor made for a specific purpose which drives them to do what they do. There still is room for individuality within this too, so everyone need not act exactly the same. What about you? What fictional alien concepts do you find most interesting and why?

This video below is informative, as it a test drive of a nuclear lightbulb. What I learned: 1. Thrust is still kinda weak. The drive needed boosters to get to orbit. In space no less. This is no SSTO unless your cargo load is very, very, light. 2. It does not like long burns, as the heat load goes up so high that you need to radiate the heat away somehow. 3. The main positive is that it does not burn through it's propellant/fuel quickly, but considering the fact that constant acceleratiom at fast speeds (1g) will likely overheat the engine sooner ir later, you would have to coast plenty of times inbetween anyway. Increasing travel time. I know KSP is not totally realistic, but I tend to think this assessment is more correct than many of the more rosy predictions of the nuclear lightbulb. Basically it seems like an improvement over the NTR, but at the price of not being able to tolerate long constant burns. He did mention that with sufficient radiators even long burns would be possible, but such inertial mass tends to cut into propellant even more during retroburns, offsetting the speed advantage by requiring more propellant in the long run. It's funny realky from a worldbuilding fictional perspective. I was half tempted to write a fictional alien race who could use open cycle NTR abd orion pusher plates without any radiation effects on their health. Yet because I did not want to get into the research of that... I did'nt. Still... it would be nice if that stuff did'nt kill us. Or if we could make a clean, fallout free orion.

If a disc glided nose first that may provide optimum slow down while not giving too much g-force. Really, it seems that there really is no one size fits all vehicle for space travel, unlike in scifi. A saucer may be more optimal in a thinner atmosphere like mars to help slow reentry faster. Really though, I think spaceship class types of the future could be named after what planet they are rated for reentry for. A spacecraft rated for Earth reentry is Terra class, while one rated for Mars reentry is Martian class and so on. Orbital ships would be optimized as well. Space travel really does not seem to favor jack of all trades crafts.

Rocketry is really complex when you weigh the balance of thrust vs how long your propellant will actually last. LH would be fine to use as you say, but I would only keep just enough to use it all up, since if this is an interplantary trip (the moon), it will be vaping away in the tank the whole time anyway. Metallic liquid methane would be a great scifi thrust propellant though, inasmuch it would be more dense compared to the less dense liquid methane. I am all for simpler designs, popular scifi art tends to mislead, so blame my choice of intake fans on that and minimal knowledge of them. Use nuclear lightbulb to augment the ducted airflow for thrust. I would be fine with intake ducts, is'nt that what a ramjet is anyway? Or maybe a scram jet? No... it's simpy what it sounds like... an open duct way leading to the nuclear lightbulb chamber no? At any rate I know project pluto had an intake duct, but also fan blades if I recall correctly. But it was not designed for space orbit anyway. Why saucers? Star Trek fever I guess, and I love the look. In spite of their drag, or perhaps because of it they do offer some benefits: Reentry can be slowed faster by entering belly first. More drag. In order to avoid those expensive heat tiles I could pull an Elon Musk idea and design the hull to 'sweat' to cool. Basically it pumps water or some cool liquid within the outer hull and sprays it outside to cool the hull of the vessel as it reenters the atmosphere. And it looks cool for scifi stories. But do not get me wrong. If I do a saucer, it had better be functional.

Thanks. I thought there had to be good reason why aircraft only use roof fans for VTOL. Now I know. Thanks to the knowledge of you and others, I now can create a scifi saucer SSTO that could reasonabbly fly. Currently the idea is a thick 'pancake' saucer, with a row of rocket nozzles covering the back, and now I know that the 'corners' of the front of the saucer would be where the air intake fans would have to go, as the front nose would just be hull. It would mostly be propellant and crew going up, with smaller SSTO's docking with it in orbit to offload needed gear and antimatter fuel for long haul spaceflight. We do not need antimatter to reach orbit. A nuclear lightbulb with LH can do it. Liquid metallic methane is another option though... a scifi option for launch fuel. Indeed. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jWsfzt0_PLE

The idea of a flying saucer is not new, but I wanted to know if having intake fans on the roof of the saucer is viable to suck up sufficient air for the cluster of rocket engines in the rear? Or do intake fans only work best when they are opposite the thrust hitting the forward air headon? (Note the intake fans) (Those port openings could easily be air intake fans). Engine used is nuclear lightbulb rocketry, with liquid hydrogen as launch fuel, and a tank of liquid methane for vacuum flight. Also air breathing capable due to reactor and air intakes.

I must be immune because I am adverse to it. Yet I am strongly effected by the force of gyrotity. Like a salad and a steak all at once inside your mouth. Awesome.

Active cooling only takes you say far and has limits. What are you doing? Using cryogenic propellant as cooling? Or just tanks of coolant? To lift a 1000 ton SSTO into orbit without staging, I am thinking that a lot of your mass will likely be coolant and propellant, limiting crew and cargo capacity dramatically more than any airliner jet. Ironically, this nuclear rocketry scheme would likely better be used as a set of staging rockets to launch a 1000 ton SSTO. The 1000 ton SSTO could go to the moon, and spend a day per ton of water processing from moon ice. Later it could process it into just enough LH to take off from the moon, while extracting tons of LOX too. The whole fuel processing task may take a month or more. Meanwhile crew conserves what food they have and grow fruits and veggies onboard tge ship's hydroponic garden. From there it could fly to mars, send a shuttle down with a nuclear rocket, send it back up, and go home. The only way the ship is landing on Earth is to send up booster rockets to link up with it and slow it for landing. As I doubt after the moon adventure will have enough propellant left to effect a safe landing. I see. So a proper star trek shaped vessel weighing 1000 tons launched into orbit would need a whole row of rocket nozzles along the rear wall to increase the thrust. Not like this:

There are a few areas where I really do think the universe says, "LOL you cannot do that!" But for the most part doing new stuff with science is like applying for a job. If you have the required experience (knowledge) and the skill (available resources), and you can impress the interviewer (the experiment is a practical success), then the universe is like, "Have at it, have fun, knock yourself out."

We know how fusion works. What we have trouble with is magnetic field containment and not breaking even for the amount of energy expended vs what we are producing via fusion. You have faith that we will develop a process to do what star's do... without the star's worth of mass, relying on wispy plasma and uber magnetic field control instead. I hope you're right, but material limits and physics will have it's say in the end either way. If it allows for it great. I have found that in the universe the answer to whether or not something is possible is often more like, "It depends on meeting certain criteria." Rather than a hard "No, you cannot do that!". Including things that have occurred that seem to defy known undersyanding of physics.

Kay I will concede that I was likely wring about the thrust thing. As far as I know you just need to increase the mass flow rate, likely via air intake along with propellant... which might drive up the heat load further on the quartz. Since oncoming air at high speed will be hot, not cold. Do not get me wrong. I want it to work, but the design challenges are formidable. As for fusion, i have my doubts, since how do you do it on a spacrship when it takes an entire massive facility to achieve it on Earth? All that TWR ya know? Unless our materials science. Advances and we can build future truck engine size power plants as as good the facilty size ones we use for fusion nowadays.

Physics does not make it easy, but I do applaud your research for trying to make a scifi drive that is achievable. I think our materials science needs to catch up first. Any idea what element we could engineer that has high heat loads but won't break up into radioactive compounds? Physics will likely have it's say there as well. Yet we will see what it says.

What is 'long'? Engineers conisider it a feat to sustain fusion for a few seconds even. And the magnetic field problem is just there, causing issuez for dense plasma focus I have read about. From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion Inertial confinement fusion relies on lasers to heat a pellet for fusion to occur. Currently success is eluding them unless the news has forgetten to mention it. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, many experiments were conducted in order to understand the complex interaction of high-intensity laser light and plasma. These led to the design of newer machines, much larger, that would finally reach ignition energies. The largest operational ICF experiment is the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the US, designed using the decades-long experience of earlier experiments. Like those earlier experiments, however, NIF has failed to reach ignition and is, as of 2015, generating about 1⁄3 of the required energy levels.[1]

Love is an emotion that often motivates action, ergo force. To what degree love motivates action indicates what it's focus is.

So this is an interesting what if scenario... mainly for fiction anyway. I will describe the changes I think would happen and you may add upon it. 2019: Every human alive retains fear, joy, love, disgust, and surprise. But they all lose the the emotions of anger and sadness. After 2020 everything will revert back to normal. How crime is effected: Certain rates go down while others go up. Namely crimes of passion/murders by scorned lovers go waaay down. Strangely, some hate crimes continue, since often at their core such ones feel threatened and are motivated by fear mostly, not hate. As does gang violence for the same reason. Also the suicide rate drops dramatically. Economics: There is a spike in productivity across many economic sectors as no one comes to work distracted by sadness nor anger. How politics are effected: The USA and world politics will be different, with opposing sides playing on the public's potential fears more than anything. Less insults in the media everywhere, including the internet, since they no longer tick anyone off. Instead people start making threats and thus start getting arrested. Death: People no longer mourn at funerals, instead it is a joyous occasion celebrating the life of the deceased. Did I miss anything? What else would happen/change in 2019?

True for humans. Although human love can be directed at virtually anything. Inevitably being focused primarily on either someone, something, or the self.

K thats fine. But justifying it would be hard. Try exolaining to Picard why you need to beam up a Klingon's knife from Q'onos for scavenger hunt LOL.

Quartz may work, but I do not see it being able to survive the thermal energy needed to lift 500 ton SSTO'S (average jet liner weight). I am thinking it would have to be lightweight solution at best. Orion pusher plate thrust it is not. Only with scifi heat resistant materials could a gas core ever lift something like this with 40 crew and cargo to orbit: As for fusion: Sure magnetic fields don't melt, but they also leak plasma. Which prevents a sustained fusion reaction from taking place. Causing fusion is not too difficult, sustaining it using magnetic fields so far has proven ineffective due to plasma leakage which leads to a drop in temperature, which leads to the fusion process stopping.

You cannot just replicate all that stuff. You must actually find it, take it, ask for it, or borrow it somehow.

Except for 7 of 9. You could always ask her. Say you are on a scavenger hunt. She might comply in order to understand humanity's strange to her customs.

That is why I like the idea, as they are perfect for scifi. All you really need is unusually heat resistant materials that we do not currently have. With those, you could fly a gas core NTR up to orbit and back. Since thrust per amount of propellant burned is higher the hotter it is. In real life, thrust would be lower due to not having such heat resistant material available that would dramatically allow higher thermal energies in rocket thrust. Fusion is a dead end right now in my opinion. NTR is much more scifi and easier to achieve too in scifi. No fussing about with magnetic fields, just make a scifi heat resistant material. In real life it is easier than fusion but lower thrust unless augmented with air or certain propellants/mixes.

Not in-universe it is'nt. What's your point?

Yes and no. A phaser can be persuavive, inasmuch Seven initially seemed to have no shame anyway. Very matter of a fact.

Yes. It has to be the one in-universe that she originally wore but stopped wearing later on. I presume she left it on Voyager somewhere. For now though she is still wearing it LOL. EDIT: You will be placed in each setting so you have a chance. For the klingon knife you, a human are placed on Q'onos. For 7 of 9's cat suit you are placed on voyager in the delta quadrant. For the klingon bird of prey you are put on Q'onos again. For the phaser you are put on the Enterprise D (Picard as Captain). For the borg implant you are put on a borg cube. For each item acquired you teleport to the next location you choose in whichever order you like. And you get to keep all the items in a backpack, and can even use them to help you out to get more items later in the hunt. Enjoy!

Nuclear lightbulb drive rocket's do not have radioactive exhaust I read. Are you saying that as long as that reactor is running it will emit neutron radiation in all directions whether rocket is expelling exhaust or not? And the neutron radiation will go right through the hull into the outside environment... barring making the enitre hull neutron absorbent? Which may be impractical except with project Orion.