Spacescifi

Regarding scifi space war VS reality again: Stealth Is Overrated? No I am not going to quote what atomic rockets says. What I will say is that there is another option besides stealth that is arguably better. Deception. If space nations have the resources to burn spend on a massive war in space, then they certainly have resources to be deceptive while doing it. In fact, given how hard it is to be stealthy in space, deception is one way that you can actually surprise your enemy. For example consider thus scenario: Space fleet A is coming from planet A to attack space fleet B at planet B. Space fleet B's ships ALL look the same. But are they? No. They all have the same enhine nozzles, but some high different combos of propellant and reactors. And some have missiles, while others have nothing but squishy padding and an engine. Still others are hollow and lightweight. Really spacefleet won't even know what space fleet B can really do until it's ships start showing their hand. Kind of like playing poker. Or Stratego. The only thing you need to pull this off is multiple engines on each ship... or an engine that can throttle from low to high really good. What do you think?

It's not for thrust. It is to generate electricity for ionization of the air. If all I wanted was thrust then project pluto is the answer. I am trying to find a solution to the OP. Whatever might work... could work. Even if not efficient. Really though... I think combining the technology of project pluto with the ionized plasma jet somehow could be quite the air vehicle. Someday... future.

Not if you do not try no. Electric windmills exist. Now I honestly do not know what it would take to generate enough wind for the power required. My guess? A rocket stage booster and have blades sideways cutting into wind to get windpower for free. It will take a long, long blade, and probably several staged boosters because of weight. Would look very cool though. Look at the double flying blades of death with a blue plasma plume behind the fuselage!

Wait... could we not use a long helicopter blade spun by the reactor to generate the needed electricity? Last I checked turbines and fans share some things in common, one being that BOTH can be harnessed to generate electricty. Just about any motion can. I can even do it on an electric rechargable bike! The only working fluid we have that we don't have to pay cargo space for is air. May as well use it to our advantage. I am betting we can use some way to use the local air to generate the energy. Barring that? Batteries that hold vaster amounts of energy than they do now... which also makes them more combustible.

That maybe can be solved with nuclear reactors. Really though... probably would be radioactive, but it could probably work. I mean the TWR is going to be low no matter what, so large wings 747 style and nuclear airbreathing to boot with the microwave induced plasma may be enough. And if we ever figure a more efficiebt way of antimatter production and atorage then it is a given that we can do the plasma jet thing. Still going to have low TWR though, since air lacks the mass flow density of liquid or solid propellant.

TWR has diminishing returns when you get into really high tonnage. Let's say we want to fly ship that is 5000 tons. It would defintely take multiple engines to pull that off, and big nozzlee at that, unless someone really rather put on hundreds of smaller nozzles ala kerbal.

A joke it is then. Per the usual.

And if the debugger is corrupted? IRL I am guessingg it does and can be made to happen. Nevermind the fact that if you allow free will without immediate interference that is a 'bug' just waiting to happen. What happens when the debuggers tell you to get lost and stop telling them to debug?

Assuming this is not a joke... We both know programs can be corrupted. I mean... what happens when the program is corrupted? They will follow it. You need to debug. How?

You were right. With the booster for the tomahawk. You were quite thorough but there is one thing you did not know that is worth considering. The scifi drive still uses engine nozzles. Look like this: Note the reflective nozzles. Because the scifi drive is propelled via momentum transfer of FTL energy rays, so the nozzle size should effect the thrust. Bigger nozzle, more thrust flow? Smaller nozzle, less thrust flow? Right? Just one more way to manipulate the thrust for smaller vessels without killing everyone perhaps? Maybe... perhaps one IRL factor I did not take into account is waste heat and kinetic energy. Any rocket exhaust with enough kinetic energy AND mass to provide such high thrust might melt the nozzle. Unless it was more mass flow flowing through than energy, in which case the engine is going to leave shockwaves and craters in it's wake on every launch and landing. If it is more energy than mass flow providing the thrust, then we would need a lot of heat rejection equipment to prevent the engine from overheating. Won't change much about the shockwaves and craters. Except now they are smoking from all the heat.

Some of you have seen the original Tron, and know it deals heavily with the idea of humans creating a living entire universe in their own image. So... for fun, you get to recreate a universe. A universe sandbox if you will. You can make anything you want, adjust the laws of physics, make mutiple scifi aliens.... whatever. But before you start you must make three rules encoded into the universe that EVEN you won't have the power to break. Unless you wipe everything out and start over... but that's no fun so... Anyway... what are your three rules you must follow? Mine are: 1. I cannot be partial or prejudiced based on how creatures look or their habdicaps to decide who I will favor or smite. Like I cannot say I will smite all the fat or disabled ones just because. 2. I will predict the future when it will benefit someone you care about, but rarely if ever do it. Don't make a regular habit. 3. I will set deadlines if and when I decide to do anything and I will always give advance notice so people can choose to be ready for when I do. What are your three rules? Bonus:

For what it's worth Scotius, the drive is for and from... Did not see the need to mention it at first, as they are humanoid, but behavior itself is definitely skewed and bent far more toward accepting, providing, and supporting responsibilities. Does not mean everyone of them is what you would call a 'good guy'. It just means I don't automatically paint a whole fictional race as villians. If anything I like to give them positive qualities and show how those can be used both for good and evil.

Yes. Many things can be throttled... as well as many that cannot.... like the sun for example. It's not like you can turn it off and on. You either kill it or let it live. We have hardly reached tge point where we have created anything that cannot be shut off or throttled, something that can only be destroyed to stop it. Yet to do so would be to copy some of the most powerful things we know of in the universe.

It is ironic that giving a free pass as it were for space travel WON'T make it easy for us even then. Here we go. So this is a scifi scenario: We have a scifi drive that has a very high thrust to weight ratio and can accelerate virtually indefinitely (so long there is electricity). It uses said drive to reach orbit and also land SSTO style. The thrust cannot be throttled down, so to reduce overall thrust from killing human occupants with excesdive g-force, the mass of vessels is increased accordingly to reduce engine thrust. The overall thrust of the drive can be calculated by the fact that if you put it on a tomahawk missile the missile would accelerate at 900g. More than enough to obliterate it in the air. Tomahawks weigh this much: Mass 2,900 lb (1,300 kg), 3,500 lb (1,600 kg) with booster So the question is... how massive do we need to make our spaceship to lower the ridiculilous amount of thrust to enough to reach orbit and also travel around interplanetary? The true irony is that the lowest you would want the acceleration to get is 4g probably. Which is enough to reach orbit and more than enough for interplanetary. Yet constant acceleration at 4g? No thanks. At best maybe you just coast to the moon and cut out a big enough rock to tow so that you can reduce thrust to 1g. Otherwise we are talking 4g engines that cannot be throttled down. That's all I can think of. What about you?

Whaa-t?

Shhh.... rumor has it he is not the only well known scifi commentator that does. Nyrath is known to occasionally drop by.... but I do prefer Scott Manley any day of the week. Same goes for Isaac Arthur.

Well the other option is a giant pusher plate and AM bombs, but that is only marginally better. I think laser ablation boosting stations from the moon are an optimal way for space ships to fly fastest. Since if it can move a planet....

The limits of the rocket equation really show itself when large mass payloads are involved. Like this: For example consider this: We want to move the moon, so we put big enough rocket nozzles for the needed mass flow on the moon, and then power the mass flow propulsion with antimatter. So the problem here is the age old problem of high thrust vs high efficiency of the engines. Either you get high thrust with high mass flow and run out of lunar propellant fast, or move at a snail's pace by doing the ion drive way... only with antimatter since we are pushing THE MOON This whole concept is a bit ridiculous I admit, but if a civilization has the ability to put constant acceleration engines of 1g or higher on planets to push them... I think that easily puts them pretty high on the The Tsiolkovsky Civilization Scale (earlier post thread). Anyways, what do you think?

True scientific discoveries often don't match assumptions based on outdated theory still on paper and in use. But I digress. Follow the evidence where it leads. Accept nothing else. If and when humans or our machines ever reach Proxima, the plants we plant (which will require locally found or imported oxygen) would likely be that color. But given the danger of the flares, I am guessing one would need a shielded habitat, or else it will be wrecked when the flare hits. Other solar systems do not easily support life like our own. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.space.com/amp/42196-red-dwarf-star-hazflare-bad-news-life.html

Most of softer science scifi varieties have this: Glowing engine ports with no apparent rocket nozzle at all, leading me to wonder if there is, or ever will be a legit reason to embed the nozzle into the ship's hull? Like I know why we do not IRL. 1. Saves room on disposable staged boosters. 2. Dumps nozzle heat into the air during launch, otherwise the ship itself absorbs that heat, which unless it can be converted to do any work really does the ship no favors. Any legit reason why one would do embedded nozzles besides doing it because scifi does it? Possible reason? If you have a heat rejection or absorbtion system system much better than the dumping radiant energy or conducting it to the air, then I suppose it would make plenty of sense. What would be definitely fiction for our current abilities is any unibtanium that could actually provide that capabilty. Which would probably make most thermal damage the toughest resistance buff such a ship would have. Just layer the hull with unobtanium.

The predecessor if the violin was the viola de gamba (AKA viol). So old it's new kind of charm going for it. I will break with the pretty lady playing the violin trope... just because I can.

Both. Scifi angle: Not the most plot friendly way to get to space, but it is arguably also the only realistic design I will use besides the fictional ones, which are more numerous and common. Orions are viewed as dinosaurs, living museums of an old age by higher civs Realistic angle: Shows how practical the idea truly is. If it is both practical and can work IRL, reasons for not using it in scifi go down dramatically.

I see... well thanks for being polite. You strike me as someone who won't became adversarial easily, but nonetheless enjoys debating, which as I have read is very much part of the culture from the homeland. Being witty and mockery is too... RT mainly does it to US and the rest of the EU. Back to the discussion, I never intended them as landing legs. They will not touch the ground when pulled back. The pusher plate is the landing leg. Practical? I dunno. But I think it can work given a level ground plus how heavy the plate is.

Bending is poor design unless that's just mocking. Pistons can retract straight into the ship no problem at all. Or to save space for payload they can even be put outside the ship and slide up so that is against the sides of the hull. Reusuable booster rockets for launch can be insided the ship and used for partway launch before pulse detonation of Orion.

Ha. That was a joke right? It's difficult to pay attention to the music when... the pianist looks like she is seconds away from a wardrobe malfunction. I suppose if american classical leaned very heavily on you-know-what selling that may make classical more popular. Just not in a way I would prefer.