Spacescifi

I do not subcribe to the idea that a ship with the power to do FTL should ever land anywhere. The safer thing to do is make a large FTL carrier that non-FTL ships dock with. Then warp/hyperjump to the next system over, park the carrier in orbit about a light second away from the destination planet and let the docked vessels disembark. Consider spaceships to be the solar system equivalent of drop ships, while the FTL carrier is what actually takes them between systems.

About how powerful of a bomb would the battery be if nearly fully charged and the ship crashed on Earth? Why do I ask? My intuition told me that even though massive fully charged batteries could be made, designers avoid that since vessels mainly use sublight engines for hopping on and off world. In space they either cruise off inertia or use some variation of warp or hyperdrive to get around faster. So the idea is that four hours of charge at 1g for a 200 ton vessel is considered an acceptable risk. A 1 ton battery? No way. Maybe on a moon military industry base but that's it.

You have a point... not gonna lie. Yet without massive rotating habs or 100 meter long tethers for rotation I do not see any large populations living in space. I am actually less fond of the idea from a scifi perspective, since it is far easier to colonize an Earth clone since those seem more common in scifi than reality. Living in space is hard... since you have to recycle everything in a virtually closed ecosystem except for occasional supplies and constant shipments of LOX and LH. So long Earth clones exist I do not see ever a large population living on any space station. Since Earth clone life is better.

Oh but I do! Too easy otherwise. Getting energy is work and should never be too easy. I guess this finally completes my search for a star wars type drive that can casually SSTO anywhere and back a few times at least without replacing it's batteries (because obviously recharging is never going to happen as you need mega structures or satelite swarms charging across a broad area... none of which a lone spaceship can do. What I do like is it totally eliminates the headache of ISRU... which is complex because it requires planning all your trips and knowing exactly where you are going. It does not really allow for much in the way of unpredictability outside of where you are supposed to go or fuel up. Since you literally design engines around the fuel you expect to find where you are going... and if you screw that up you are doomed to die in space if no one comes to save you. Also IRL you get a distress call from another ship you will probably say "Yeah we heard ya, but we do not have enough fuel to get you and get back." Or "We cannot take all of you guys because we do not have enough supplies so decide who can come over to us before we get there." I do have one more question you may enjoy calculating. A starship is 200 tons, and has enough energy stored in it's mass energy batteries to do 1g for 4 hours, but can do 5g at reduced travel time since it will use up it's energy faster. The Question: How heavy would the mass energy batteries altogether weigh? Remember unlike normal batteries they can store a maximum of electricity that equals their mass... no more or boom! I suspect that overall this should be quite space efficient and well in line with the Star Trek/Star Wars ethos of having relatively small power packs compared to what they power. In contrast to real rockets which are like giant fuel tanks with stuff strapped on as an afterthought. I guess the main difference is that due to the sheer energy density of the super batteries, you really do not want to crash the ship as it would give off a blast rivaling the high yield of an antimatter bomb. And you can forget escape pods saving you if your ship is about to blow up... since the sheer radiant energy would fry even escape pods flying away from the blast.

In a scifi setting electrical power can be converted directly into thrust by way of repulsor rays (emitting exotic visible light with extremely repulsive force). Thrust is increased by 25% by using mirrored nozzles without power input. The only issue is power. Since no propellant is actually used, only electrical power, a lot of power will be needed. Good news: We have scifi mass to energy batteries... which unlike normal batteries can literally store their own mass's worth of electrical power. Meaning a kilogram fully charged would weigh 2 kilograms. Don't overcharge or it will explode... same goes if you overheat it. Generating the power: Biggest power source I know of is the sun. Trouble is... I honestly think even if you covered the surface of the moon with super efficient solar panels it would take probably decades before the mass to energy batteries would store enough power for high thrust applications. So you would need massive space industry to support a smaller space fleet.

With advanced rocketry you are probably relying most on monopropellants since you neither need nor want oxidizer because antimatter or fusion etc is shooting the propellant out rather than a chemical reaction. The price you pay at your industrial scale asteroid and moon bases is well illustrated below. So you get several tons of hydrogen from ice. Great. What are you going to do with all the leftover oxygen? Let it leak out into the void? You don't need it. Storing it for later use would just require continual enlargment of your storage facilities. Chemical rocketry though uses both the oxidizer and the propellant so no waste. Question: Would it even be wise to try to use liquid oxygen as a monopropellant? I know oxidizer would wreck a nuclear reactor so that is not an option... might work with a fusion reaction though and antimatter works with everything. Any way beyond using old chemical rocketry in the far future to make use of the excess oxygen instead of wasting it to the void?

Or if you have time and obsess over it you can literally watch the cooking and adjust it accordingly. Of course... I mainly cooked breakfast and spaghetti and burgers... all of which cook so fast you really can just eyeball it... except the noodles anyway.

So basically chatGPT is essentially an idiotic M3GAN that spits out facts but does not actually think.

Yes tungsten can get really hot... no where near enough to SSTO off LH though I think. Still... provided the hydrogen won't ablate it (do not see why it would, oxidizer probably would though), it could provide thrust and as you said the uber repellant nozzles could do the rest. Don't electric arcs tend to ablate resistojets though? That is a problem with long term reliability because it would have to be replaced regularly.

I see... lower performance equals easier ignition.. zero countdowns, and a lot of mileage... which is the converse of what high performance entails.

So that is why automobiles are so reliable? Room temperature monopropellant AKA gasoline? Hmmm... I did not realize that was why rocket launches were complex. So I guess the standard hydrolox rocket engine would take time to either chill the propellant or something before lift off. I already know. It is still interesting and humbling to know that reality is rarely ever simple. What happens is that when I learn reality does not allow for something... I just skip it and use fiction. I really thought I could at LEAST use chemical rocketry even if the repellant nozzles are total fiction. But turns out I cannot even do that it seems... since no room temperature propellant I know of has the heat capacity of cryogenic propellants. So back to just using total fictional engines with anti-grav ray exhaust.

When I get in my car, I never do a T-minus countdown to when I turn my car keys to start the engine. Why? Because I expect the engine to run properly, and with regular maintenence over several months between I know it will. If only chemical rocket engines were like that! The Scenario: I am using my uber mono-repellant exhaust nozzle idea in conjunction with plain old chemical rocketry. I want my chemical rocket engines to be more reliable than todays. No countdown... just ignition and go. No more explosions on the launch pad or engine failures midflight. Would making the engine of heavier more durable materials be the way to go? I could certainly afford it given the uber thrust I have available. Why do rocket engines fail? Could we not build one on the ground that would not fail? Would it have to be heavier? Could you avoid countdowns and just go like an automobile? I get that IRL we have to make rocket engines as light as possible, but that is not an issue in this scenario since the nozzles themselves are generating uber thrust to the exhaust.

Ya know... I just realized something... the fact that the uber repellant nozzle is accelerating the exhaust will add heat to it.. right? Which means it will be going so fast it will probably be ionized anyway.

Atomic level engineering... I dunno. The nozzle is paired with the exhaust of choice so that it only repels that specific exhaus which it is designed for. The electrical charge thing I added so that the energy does not come from no where. Like always... adding any sort action/reaction/consequence to scifi leads to a more serious setting than the usual cowboy in space with a spaceship setting.

Scenario: Apparent rocket based drive equipped vessels regularly SSTO to and fro from planets. Two stage to orbit no longer is used at at all... since even heavy vessels can SSTO. Radiation pollution from exhaust is not even an issue since exhaust is NOT radioactive. How is this even possible? Indulge me a bit in my imagination if you will. I do like this idea and think it is one of my better ones... since you can literally take ANY chemical rocket today and pair it with it and it would work! Mono-Repulsive Rocket Nozzles: All rockets blow out hot gas. Imagine if a rocket nozzle could be designed so that it would passively repel the exhaust as it shoots out much faster than the engine is shooting it? The only requirement is that nozzles are paired to only repelling one type of exhaust. This means that if your exhaust is hydrolox then guess what? That is the only propellant you can ever use with your nozzles and expect a big increase in efficiency and thrust. This means you absolutely need hydrolox... fortunately water ice is common in space if you know where to look. Amount of Thrust: Is based upon how much energy each nozzle contains and how much of it is being used to repel the exhaust. This can be adjusted via computer controls. Nozzle Energy Source: Nozzles are provided energy via electric charging. Unlike normal metals, mono-repellant nozzles can charge enough electricity to equal it's own mass as translated into energy. So once a 3 kilogram nozzle was fully charged it would weigh 6 kilograms. Basically the nozzles convert their electrical charge directly into repulsive thrust toward the exhaust with no lost energy middleman. Thrust efficiency: On par with antimatter/matter annihilation. Which means less propellant used for higher thrust. Thrust can be throttled as to how much energy you want to exhaust from the nozzles at once. In theory you could exhaust all your nozzle energy at once, but that would be hundreds of gees and kill everyone on board as well as damage certain ship components. Good for RKVS though. Dangers: The nozzles are cryogenically cooled, but if they were ever heated enough so that they began to melt that would release the nozzle's stored energy with a catastrophic explosion equal to however much energy is stored in the nozzle. PS: Never fly too close to the sun. You WILL die. Also try to avoid getting your nozzles zapped by an uber laser... because again... that is like an insta-kill. Due to safety regulations nozzles are rarely ever fully charged (because who really needs multiple nozzles with their weight's worth of energy on par with matter/antimatter annihilation). Missiles: Would dominate such a setting. Who needs fighters when missiles are cheaper? Instead you would get missile buses.... carriers of missiles to fire them off at closer ranges. Missile range and acceleration would be ridiculous since it would use the same nozzles the starships use. Consequences: No Han Solos. Ships powerful enough to make TSTO obsolete are city wreckers. Thus every ship is government or company owned. End of story. Anytime you get a ship like this it has bom-like energy stored so it must be treated that way. Challenges: Charging a nozzle via electricity enough to equal antimatter/matter levels of energy would take forever using modern tech. Fortunately scifi settings have access to greater energy production abilities. At best if Spacex starship were given mono-repellent nozzles it could use them so long they had charge... but it lacks the power to properly charge them. You would need nothing less than a scifi industrial powerplant to properly charge the nozzles in a reasonable amount of time.

Brain transplants are not a thing other than in scifi and horror movies as far as I know... likely because of the questionable ethics (somebody is going to die unless your tech is so good you can do brain in a jar stuff). However the following scenario is a wee bit different and ultimately more ideal. Scenario: Scifi gravity generators do not exist on starships. That leaves a finite number of options. 1. Persons/aliens who spend years in space have bodies adapted to it. 2. Persons not adapted rely on 2 ship tethering rotation for gravity. 3. Reset Pods: You enter and your body resets to a past saved state in time when you walked in and saved it (preferably a time you were healthy and strong). The only thing that does not reset is your brain, so you keep your aged brain so that you retain your memories. Main Questions: What effects if... if any, would having a brain older than the rest of the body have? In theory one could use the Reset pod to attempt to live forever... problem is the older the brain becomes I think sooner or later it will begin to rot and memories long before that... making a person a mere invalid waiting to die despite having a younger body. I do not know how much mileage one can expect to get out of their brain... but like they say, use it or lose it. 100-200 years? I dunno. I would like to think that a younger body could help make repairs to the the older brain but I simply do not know. So never ending education would help in keeping the brain sharp for longer periods. Thoughts?

Won't exhaust that energetic mean you would land in lava if you did SSTO with it? The more I learn the more it sounds that the only reasonable launch of a heavy SSTO from Earth is from the sea, and the only reasonable landing by a heavy SSTO would likewise be upon the sea. It also sounds like a heavy SSTO from Earth would not want to land anywhere so as to conserve propellant and resources. Instead it would rely on shuttles with chemical or solid propellants to land on airless moons. But for all Earth like worlds, landing upon the sea would be best. As it is, given extreme heat and radiation from exhaust, that is precisely why you would not land it on ANY land... whether the moon or Earth, since it would radiate the dust all around the landing site crew are going be walking around.

So magnetizing gases with lasers has been done experimentally. But for the scifi scenario we are going to scale everything further along. Scenario: A gas has been designed that has density on par with xenon, and when cooled can be magnetized to the same level as neodynium magnets. Question: Could this scifi technology be used for rocketry and even 100 ton SSTOs? My thoughts: i presume it could be used for rocketry, as magnetic forces can used instead of combustion to shoot the propellant out. Even the nozzles can be designed to give the magnetic gas one final repulsive push as it exits the nozzle.... in contrast with normal chemical rocket exhaust where the nozzle does nothing more than extract and direct thrust. The main issue: Not sure if neodynium strength gases would provide enough force to lift off a heavy SSTO. It depends on how fast the gas is shot out since we want higher mass efficiency than chemical rocketry. And that depends on power... which scifi ships have no lack of usually. Since the power to propel the neodynium strength magnetic gas to high velocities would come from a separate power generator. I guess the main advantage among other things may be a bit less waste heat... even though there is bound to be times in space where the ship has to cruise and unfurl radiators simply becausd it is not getting rid of waste heat by dumping it into the exhaust since the exhaust is cold. How it would probably look: No flamey exhaust... you can hear the rocket take off but see no plume... or would you? I mean it is cold gas exhaust... so I would not expect to see much unless moisture in the air made it look like a plume of steam? EDIT: I assume the exhaust would be invisible given this video.

It seems the more simple an idea is the more scientific analysis can be brought to bear upon it Scenario: Wireless Portal gate pairs which can transfer mass between them. They must always be a paired. No such thing as a portal network that links to multiple portals wirelessly. The catch: When you pass any liquid through it freezes solid. Applications and uses: 1. May use this over and over as a kind of heat sink internally instead of relying on giant radiators to shrug off uber engine or hyperdrive/FTL waste heat. 2. You could use it to tansfer frozen propellant tanks... or just frozen propellant chunks. How in the world can you use frozen propellant as rocket propellant? Seems to me you need a reaction that won't happen as readily with it being frozen solid. Or some powerful pulse lasers to zap propellant into liquid form. Thoughts?

There is only one type of payload that really desires SSTO, and that's people. SSTOs are ideal for space imports... but export are better two staged.

Or use one of those scifi conceit gravity generators all scifi starships seem to have. Combine that with the fact that generating radiation and magnetic fields is easy by comparision and that should be enough to pull off a miracle or two. Don't ask me why gravity generators don't drag anything in their wake....

Yes I realize this. Basketballs worth of AM conversion in the fuel tank may be a bit much though. Still you get more energy produced from matter/antimatter annihilation and thus in layman's terms... more bang for your mass (better efficiency). In general using AM means you can get by using less propellant but that depends on how energetic the reaction is. The greater AM/matter reaction the more propellant is required to be exhausted to avoid destroying the engine from the extreme heat. Edit: I get it. You will exhaust whatever is in the fuel tank if I tried that. Oh well... I tried lol.

You know what I'm trying to say.... a fuel with the energy density of a reaction between antimatter/matter of it's mass. For example 8 kilograms antimatter reacting gradually with whatever amount you are willing to spare of propellant over time. Truth be told you do of not need a lot of antimatter... just a lot of propellant to mix with small amounts of antimatter. I suspect antimatter storage may be harder than generating it. Perhaps we may find ways of generating useful amounts of antimatter but will use it immediately in a flash of antimatter/matter reaction? What would be really cool is a fuel that could generate antimatter from laser pulses... meaning the laser pulse would generate pulsed uber thrust from the midst of the reaction chamber everytime. Essentially turning a bit of propellant into antimatter while surrounded in a pool of normal propellant. Via I dunno... laser pulses and a forcefield, maybe manipulating the weak force with a forcefield while laser pulsing?

Realistically we cannot do it because we do not have good antimatter storage or generation. Significantly I learned that gamma rays and antimatter are very much related. This from google: When gamma rays made by electrons interact, they can create matter-antimatter pairs—an electron and a positron. Now, scientists have developed a new trick to create these matter-antimatter pairs even more efficiently. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/test-measurement/research/article/16571409/laser-pulses-make-electrons-produce-gamma-rays-then-matterantimatter-pairs-of-particles It's from 2018 though. But it stands to reason that if mass can generate radiation... radiation can be used to generate mass. Just like water when broken down becomes separate elements but can be combined to make water. I only thought of antimatter or something like it because Scott Manley fusion rockets are a no go even if we had them due to the neutron radiation being even worse than nuclear fission. Gamma ray exhaust from rockets the atmosphere can readily absorb though... so is a less polluting choice mankind would be more willing to use. My point was more or less if we get SSTOs... especially heavy ones we have no way of lifting now... as far as we know cannot pull that off without significant radiation exhaust. Thus the ocean. Crew can use inflateable speed boats to reach the shore while the SSTO anchors at sea.

Scenario: You are running off a fuel with the energy density of antimatter... mixed with less energetic propellant... so as to give the propellant waaay more thrust than it would achieve off mere chemical reactions. Thus you are able to SSTO heavy spaceships on par with naval sea vessels for wet mass with fuel/propellant to spare. Thankfully the fuel is easier to work with than antimatter.... but like antimatter it emits gamma rays when burned out as exhaust mixed with chemical propellant. Thus the thermal combustion chambers are lined with super dense gamma reflective material. Why the ocean: Launch is easy... even with a belly lander, flipping a ship vertical in the ocean is as easy as filling the rear end up with water so it sinks and raises up the nose. Also water works fine as propellant. And it is safer for gamma exhaust to occur on the ocean instead of land. In space... where radiation is common... blasting gamma exhaust when landing on moons without atmosphere matters less given there is no habital environment to pollute.