Spacescifi

If anyone saw the finale of Picard you know that somehow, much of starfleet's officers were altered so that their bodies had the potential to create cyborg implants on their own. Scifi scenario: Suppose a scifi race enjoys playing god by creating designer sentient species. One day one of the designer gets a bright idea. "Instead of trying to make AI or cyborgs with implants, why not make a species with cells that construct cyborg implants on their own?" Instead of necessarily making a humanoid body plan, they design the body wholly around whatever type of cyborg implants the cells are designed to construct. Main Question: DNA and cells already do amazing things. I do not doubt that if programmed, it could construct circuits, small computers, radios, and sensors inside a body. Do you think this is feasible? I think it is but it would I think it would be best to occur after the body has reached adulthood and stopped growing. Furthermore, cyborg implants would need electricity to run, so the body would need to be good at generating electricity as well as good at evaporatng ir dissapating waste heat from it. Might need large flapping appendages like elephant ears for that. Also any cell constructed implants would need to be made of safe metals that won't rust inside. Cyborg implants would be for life and require surgery to remove. Also in order to have enough metal to build them the creature would have to eat enough of the specific nutients and minerals required over time. Thoughts?

Not really complex because inertia is still present. As long as an object is in the atmosphere it's speed I don't think will change quickly.

Per the OP won't be super cheap. Since you need a literal ton of unobtanium as a expensive as refined uranium, which will give an hour at max to reach space to do an orbital burn before you run out of gravity cancellation field and have to charge it for an hour or less if you need it again for however long.

With timing of the charge/discharge you can. Negative gravity is kind of overpowered. Especially with no limtations. If you just 1g fall away from earth you get up to ridiculous speeds in space since it takes a great distance before Earth's gravity is much weaker than 1g. Even at LEO distnce 1g gravity strength is about 98%.

I see.... so without a pulsed fusion detonation rocket or project orion, two staging is still in use. You need either scifi or future theoretical rocketry involving fusion to get SSTOs of any high mass.

Scifi scenario: We have a natural unobtanium ore that when magnetized for a period of time will charge up a gravity cancellation field. Which can be discharged over a period of time. Unobtanium: About as rare as uranium and just as expensive. Stats: The more mass of unobtanium you have the larger the gravity cancellation field you can create. For example, a ton of it would allow you to cancel gravity in a kilometer wide sphere of influence. Refined unobtanium is expensive as weapons grade uranium and also allows for longer charging of gravity cancellation fields. You need a planet with gravity to charge it first, far away from one it would not work. Discharging: Generates the gravity cancellation field until it runs out of charge. How long? Refined unobtanium can get you an hour at max, unrefined will only get you six minutes before you need to charge again. Charging and discharging takes equal amounts of time and is done automatically. Meaning after charging you will automatically begin discharging the gravity cancellation field, since it can only be stored while charging. Since this is so, rockets only charge for how much time they need to reach orbit and no more. Utility: Launch/landing is cheaper but by how much is what I want to know? SSTOs become popular... do we even use TSTO anymore? Cool thing is you can land/launch on several terrestrial planets easily now. Also spin launch from Earth is suddenly more effective, as a way to save propellant for launch/landing. Space Market: Space resources are still expensive but now that they can be brought back to earth more effectively reaping profit off rare earth metals is easier. Stuff like platinum etc.

Unless you are doing the Star Trek thing where ISRU do it yourself is the only way to refuel your propellant. Fortunately the drive is not my only scifi gimmick. Another propellant saver is a slower than light vacuum translation drive which translates or moves space past the ship at the same rate of it's current acceleration. So just do a quick 3g burn, shut it off, and let the translation drive let you slow warp at 3g. Once dropped out of warp, speed and heading returns to normal... meaning you can get places a lot faster because you do not have to accelerate all the way there and retroburn to slow down nearly as much. So use this to get close to ice. Mine it. And refuel. Vacuum translation drive only works in vacuum though.

I think he is Russian or Canadian.

Some will say waste heat no matter the energy can be managed as long as you burn enough propellant to get rid of it. In practical terms what that means is more rocket nozzles/ engines, since there is a practical limit to how fast you can pump propellant into a reaction chamber, but there is theoretically no limit except practicality for how many nozzles or engines you put on an SSTO. In scifi SSTO VTOL belly landers/taker offers are commonplace. Yet if you apply IRL science and math to them one quickly realizes that the energy required to fly to space without using up most or all of the propellant on a 300 ton SSTO would also melt the engine... unless you used disposable staging at lower efficiency but then it is no longer SSTO. The secondary problem of using greater fuel flow to solve waste heat issues of heavy scifi SSTOs is the fact that it trades one problem for another. The whole point of a scifi SSTO is to try and take 10% propellant mass and get to space without using most or all of it up. So for a 300 ton SSTO that means 30 tons of propellant to get 270 tons of SSTO to space orbit without exhausting all or even most of it. Instead you would only use 10% of 30 tons to reach orbit, which is 3 tons. If you increase your propellant flow you run out faster and you will need more than 10% propellant, which eventually means your spaceship is back to a large propellant tank with a tiny payload... which defies the entire point of a heavy scifi SSTO. Scifi ways of dodging waste heat: If you don't want to waste more propellant just add extra energy to propelling it. Normally this is limited by how much heat an engine can tolerate... but what if the reaction happened OUTSIDE the engine? Scifi Scenario: Scifi rocket nozzles are like super batteries that can store enough electrical energy to equal their mass/weight at maximum. They can convert the stored energy with 100% efficiency into tactile kinetic energy. In practical terms what this means is a liquid sprayer down the throat of each nozzle sprays propellant down the inner walls of the nozzle. Yet when the nozzles' tactile kinesis is activated the propellant squirted down them is moved so fast it ionizes and become a plasma plume as it exits the nozzles. Main Question: It costs no waste heat to convert the stored electrical energy of the nozzles into tactile kinetic energy... because of scifi conceit. Yet I am also aware that moving propellant fast enough to heat it would ALSO heat the nozzle from the sheer heat the propellant is generating as it is accelerated out the nozzle. So have I dodged the waste heat bullet with my scifi conceit? Or have I just made the matter much worse? Meaning that the plasma plume is so hot it begins to melt the nozzles... which releases all their stored electrical energy at once with a blast that would wipe a small country off the face of the earth. I dunno.. I would like to think that the heat on a rocket nozzle from a plasma plume thrusty and efficient enough to burn 3 tons of propellant to orbit carrying 297 tons of propellant/SSTO could be managed with regenerative cooling but I dunno. Granted if we use multiple nozzles... like 16 you divide that heat by 16 so it's not as much. Or maybe it requires a hundred... I dunno. Or maybe 3 tons is just unrealistic and I would need to use more to reach orbit, like ten tons... and just refeuel in orbit with a fuel tanker. Thoughts?

Neutrino emission... so THAT is how Superman and Supergirl fly lol.

Why? Simple. Mass is like a dense form of potential energy. It is possible to do the same things we use mass as an energy source for as we do using radiant energies... but radiant energy by it's very nature requires either longer charging times or a massive charging infrastructure already in place. Mass does not require ANY charge time since it is compact and dense as an energy source. As a bonus it makes a good way to dump waste heat too. So you know how scifi-starships flash out when they hyperjump or go to warp? Imagine if that required and burned or vaporized propellant each time? That's where the flash comes from! Meaning in order to jump safely you need enough propellant to dump heat and create the flash effect. Because if you don't your hyperjump will be suicide. You will make the jump alright... as a blinding flash of light with your ship's atoms scattered across the void. Also means jumping from solar system to system and harvesting propellant is absolutely necessary to make the next jump. As well as calculating jumps correctly... since jump too far from a star system and unless you have an uber photon drive or equivalent you won't reach it for millions of years.

Edit: Interestingly you could use them in a beam to communucate through solid rock. Want to send a message through to the other side of the planet? No problem! Use a a neutrino radio and so long someone on the other side of the planet has a neutrino receiver and you aimed right you're golden.

I know little about neutrinos other than that they pass through everything all the time. What if we could capture and store a bunch of them to use as an energy source? Would that make it safe? Scenario means we must both have a means to capture and absorb large amounts of neutrinos as will as release them as heat or radiant energy. Could this be a safer alternative to fusion or antimatter? Only requires high tech?

Oh we are in scifi territory already. I just wondered about the energy cost of it all. But I can live with it if gravity plating only tracks the immediate crew positions. That said, we are in the realm of gravity generation and control. One interesting superpower we could emulate if we could do that is tactile kinesis. Moving mass over the gravity generating object anyway we wish. If done fast enough you could use it for rocketry... very simply too. Just get a tank of any liquid you want and pump it into a sprayer down the throat of a rocket nozzle made of the tactile kinetic nozzle. Which would accelerate the liquid so fast it would become a relativistic plasma plume the nozzle accelerated it. Basically an artificial gravity nozzle insteas of a magnetic one. AG drive: Pros: Any propellant you want will work. Cons: Awful lot of power to power it.

I see. So to save power a more sensible scifi floor gravity plate would be smart. After all people need gravity... nothing else does. So gravity plates would only provide gravity within the immediate radius where a person is standing or lying. Meaning if you throw something beyond it would float off till it hit a wall.

If you were to meaure the force gravity is exerting on a typical floor inside a house with a bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen inside, how much electricity would it take to provide the power to to match that force? I am not speaking by rotation. This will be either a hillariously high amount of energy to match the force gravity is providing per second on the floor or something less jaw dropping. Will be amusing either way to learn.

The problem is they don't have to grow a thousand, the ship has a whole colony on it. Meaning probably a thousand or more. They have superhuman endurance since they swam for miles to attack the human ocean base. And hunters with spears vs an army of alien monsters that shoot foot long spikes with accuracy? Doubt hunters alone prevail. Aliens use some strategy besides.

Let's suppose a thousand of them reach land and start reproducing? They are not easy to kill and have a rate of fire faster than your average musket man. Peasants are an expendable resource... that the aliens both feed off and feed their queen with, who likely eats a lot to power her ridiculous birthing rate.

Since we discussed that modern humanity should and would thrash the whitespikes without even needing a time travel device... I was curious if Napeleon era Europe could stand a chance? Per the plot the aliens break out of their spaceship in Siberia and start ravaging and multiplying from there toward the rest of Europe and will eventually swim across to Britain if they conquer enough. Does Napeleon and Europe stand a chance or is humanity doomed to being snack food for alien hordes? What does Napeleon and Europe have? Rifles that must be reloaded with each shot. Given the fact that modern guns are almost an inconvience for whitespikes, musket men will struggle against them The only thing I think would do well would be cannons.... and strangely, bayonet charges as well as swords. The battle will be a total mess of machismo versus an alien horde. Very. Very. Messy. And did I mention bloody? That too.

Let's assume you have a torchship that specifically requires water to even operate like a torchship (other propellants won't give the same performance due to the scifi nature of the drive the ship uses). What ways could you refuel it it? I will list a few and you may expound upon or add to this. 1. Scooping ice into an open cargo bay by flying through Saturn's rings. Use cargo bay bots to haul the ice into a processor which melts it and separates water from minerals. The minerals you can chuck back into space unless you want them. This is fairly easy... but the distance is the only real challenge. 2. Have refuel depots on worlds or moons with abundant ice. Torchship water tanks would SSTO to orbit and dock and refuel an orbiting torchship. Then another Torchship tank would be sent to grab the near empty one to bring it back to the depot. 3. Try and find a comet or icy asteroid. Processing it will be harder due to all the rubble. Interestingly... places with little or no water would have a much smaller if any manned presence at all. Unless a fleet of water tank torchships are sent ahead in advance to orbit them for spacehips to dock with later. So I guess I learned something new. You other boldly go into the unknown looking for Saturn-like rings for any easy refuel, or you sent an entire fleet of water tank torchships to a place with no water. The second option is far more expensive since you may not recover the water tank torchships, and even if you did it would be a long and expensive process. So in conclusion if you have torchships... refuel depots and Saturn's rings are the easiest ways to refuel.... but Saturn is so far away. Asteroids and comets may be closer but are harder to process the water due to all the rubble. So while we poop waste, a torchship finished processing water from a comet or asteroid is going to be 'pooping' minerals and rock debris that it does not need or want.

This is a nobel mathematical effort and a well made point. Yet I had no intention of FTL energies being super high, nor for a torchship to literally fly out of a solar system and somehow survive all the tiny stuff hitting it as well as oort clouds around it and the next system over. FTL jumps could involve a risky manuver that involves interacting with a star that provides the energy for you. Cloaking devices become necessary or otherwise a big asteroid as a shield in the short time before jumping so the ship would not burn up. Jumping from star to star essentially. Infrasfructure already in place like stargates would be safer.

By now I actually do know what kind of scifi drive wilI use (fictionally photon-like drive that trades the massive heat for pure repulsive force... thus it's heat is not an issue). Drives may be fictional but I prefer that the energy required to pull off such feats to be more realistic. Thus the thread... and knowing that makes a difference in a given setting.

This post was not about overly energetic exhaust.... besides, doing what you suggest does nothing about the vast potential power in the ship's powerbanks, which if blown up would be catastrophic (especially given the scifi trope of FTL jumps being powered by spaceships). My OP was an attempt to justify landing large SSTOs without them being so potentially deadly no that no one would.

When I say compact and high energy powerbank, I mean something literally small enough to carry (about the size of a baseball bat). You can stash multiple powerbanks inside the ship's core generator, and remove them just as easily. Gutting the ship as you call it is anything but. It is literally just stashing away a bundle of powerbanks crew can carry on a shuttle. The engines are never removed but they need the powerbanks to function... so it is good the powerbanks are small and very energy dense.

This is something I thought was a show stopper but it really is'nt. We can take for granted that in popular scifi the powerbanks/generators that spaceships use are energy dense, even on par with matter/antimatter annhilation. They also compact. Which is a bonus that lends itself toward safe landings for heavy SSTOs. Of course you will have to make something up or else deal with radiation exhaust... since with it landings won't be safe. But if you can fudge out the radiation aspect you're fine. Anyway it dawned on me that if you have a compact high density power source on your starship that lets you perform like a torchship and do FTL hyperspace jumps... no way you want to land with it onboard... but neither do you have to. Solution: Have several lower energy powerbank backups for landings. They have roughly just enough energy to deorbit, land, and reach orbit.... once. Meanwhile you stash the rest of your compact powerbanks in an orbiting small shuttlecraft, which waits for the mothership to rendezvous with it in orbit later. This thus solves the problem of trying to land a spaceship with doomsday energy levels... since you are stashing all of that in low planet orbit in a small shuttle instead. So shuttlecraft are essential to spaceships with high energy compact powerbanks... since they are the perfect place to stash the explosive powerbanks when you want to land the mothership without the potential of wiping out a country. Instead of that at worst if your ship blows up it will be like a Tsar bomb or close. Which while still dangerous is a lot better than wiping out a whole country.