Spacescifi

I am fishing so I am not sure. Could we somehow combine minimag orion (without the bomb) and lightcraft emission tech?

Just wondering if magnetic fields could enhance the thrust of a lightcraft? Air is mostly nonreative with magnetic fields, until it is ionized anyway. I even thought it could enable efficient SSTO's....so long a fleet of laser zepplins was around to keep the distance not too far to keep zapping away on the lightcraft engines. A propellant feed would increase thrust too. Provided a super strong magnetic field on the light engine.. like a scifi level of 50 Tesla...could that not help a lightcraft to conserve rocket propellant while relying on laser induced air plasma and magnetic fields to clear most of the atmosphere? Say... 80 kilometers up?

Fascinating. I am not sure what an orbital ring is, but I suspect it is like a space elevator that is built in geostationary orbit. Only a ring right? For anyone who does not know, all geostationary orbit means is that an object is just far away enough from Earth and is at a sufficient speed that it circles (orbits) the Earth within a 24 hour period. Which is a big differencs compared to circling every 90 min as stuff does in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). That means for space elevator applications, all you need is a mass heavy enough in geostationary orbit and bunch of cables connected to Earth and bam! We just made Jack and the beanstalk for reals! Or at least as real as possible. Assuming an orbital ring is what I think it is, it would cost likely decades of resources to construct, maybe a century or more to finish it. Only a super dedicated space programcl could do that.

Are you saying that you helped inspire KSP? Awesome! I think the ultimate goal of some scifi writers is to make a dream reality... either with a tangible book or a tangible game that can be enjoyed. Since that is easier to become than a billionare with the funds and permission to try for reals.

No offense taken... I was only trying to save on fuel. Alright... I am not giving up though. So nuclear first staging is poor I know. What if we put a nuclear reactor to power an MHD generator for the jet airbreathing rocket booster? Essentially Ayaks powered by nuclear power. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaks That's the best I can do, is it worth a shot? And yes... I am deadset on putting a nuclear reactor on a rocket one way or another, even if it is just powering MHD for the airbreathing. Beyond this, I think airbreathing with MHD is the key to better boosters and SSTO's.

Good point. So reusuable nuclear airbreathing propellant injection boosters perhaps?

Perhaps... it matters not whether or current understanding is correct. I think personally it all depends on what the writer's intentions are. If they want wish fullfillment then they can and should do cursory statements about fictional technology, which is appropriate since delving into technobabble based on total wish fullfillment that falls apart under scientific scrutiny is a complete waste of time. Who cares? It's a wish fulfilled, follow the plot. Or my personal favorite, cursory questions that answer the how's and why's with more questions, leading the reader to wonder what it would take to do what they read about or if it was possible at all IRL. For example: "How come your rocket nozzle looks like a flashlight? Why does it blow like a rocket? Why does it not have a glass cover?" "It's a Q-rocket it expels quotons, which are what you get when you accelerate photons beyond lightspeed, convert them into metal mass, and then use the metal as a light emitter.... that happens to also have enough momentum to propel whatever we want, so long we scale up fo it). As for the glass cover, I think you know what would happen... same thing if we capped a rocket nozzle with it and blasted it."

SpaceX tends to blow away the competition as far as actually building and launching reusable rocketry goes. Then I noticed what Branson has been up to and I thought... why not combine the two concepts the two billonaires have promoted while adding a bit of my nuclear enthusiam to the mix? I am beginning to think the whole concept of Earth launched SSTO's wasteful, as I think there is a much better alternative. Here's my idea: Build a flying nuclear airbreathing suborbital vehicle. Note this is NOT an SSTO by any means. What it is is a large cargo aircraft on par with a passenger jet, only designed to fly at suborbital speeds by using whatever mix of turbofans, turbojets, pulsejets, shock cones, and aerospikes that it needs. Step one: Launch using a nuclear airbreathing propellant mixed powered sled that moves the suborbital cargo plane 500 MPH on the ground, upon which the the suborbital craft detaches and flies away using it's nuclear thermal airbreathing propellant injected turbo linear aerospike engines (like the venture star's). Step 2: Let the suborbital craft go suborbital then release 50 tons worth of spaceship. So whatever craft that is along for the ride needs to weigh no more than 50 tons, and some of that 50 tons must be propellant tank to reach space. Step 3: What's left of the 50 ton craft (lighter after expelling propellant) reaches orbit. Step 4: After the mission for reentry the orbiter does reentry and uses engines to rendezvous and dock inside a suborbital aircraft, which ferries it back to the planet spaceport. My conclusions: I think getting to space is best approached by making craft that are specifically designed to do one thing... help each other out. Proper heavy cargo SSTO's are dangerous, verified by the most successful version of it if it ever flew (nuclear bomb pusher plate). In other words, I see SSTO's hardly being a thing in the future, but suborbital airbreathing ferries to launch orbiters seems more economical. Build fleets of them if you want to launch enough orbiters to build a station or large orbiting spaceship faster. As making a true SSTO requires a ship to be a jack of all trades but a master of none, and both air and spaceflight demand optimization which you will never get with a proper SSTO. What are your ideas?

Often when writing scifi, reality presents problems that cannot be solved using real or even theoretical stuff we could make using rare stuff we know exists. So the solution often is to surrender to the fiction part of scifi to grease the wheels of plot. On some level I view that as defeat, but on the other hand... there is a positive way to view it. Inspiration: Make fictional tech we can strive to make real one day that does not exist right now. Sure you will get plenty wrong, but someday, somewhere, some human WILL make a close facsimile. Because humans are just THAT good at science if you give them enough time. So I guess that is the ultimate difference between fantasy and scifi. Scifi has the option of giving us something to strive for to build even if it seems impossible, whereas fantasy seems more along the lines of wish fullfillment rather than inspiring to build anything. Superheroes for example... are a sub-catergory of fantasy.

@Just Jim I've been thinking about this one a lot... and I'm not sure if I wrote Emiko Station for any of those reasons. Maybe 1 & 2 a little... but not 3... I was never interested in a profit. Mostly I wrote it because I just like writing... a lot. There is no other driving motivation. I just enjoy thinking up stories, and once I have a good one, I like passing them on. I suppose that falls into the second a reason a little. I can't deny I love that people enjoy reading it. But I think I would have done it whether anyone payed attention or not. It's a little hard to really put into words, but I suppose the bottom line I wrote Emiko just because it was fun for me... plain and simple. The rest just happened. In a way writing is part of the arts, just like music. Like musicians, we enjoy our craft more the better we get, and we also derive pleasure from sharing our work with others and having them also enjoy it. It can be a win-win if balanced with other necessary responsibilities of life I say that because there was a time years ago where jumped into writing with little research pn the craft at all, and found it endless and frustrating... yet also fascinating. Even addictive to the exclusion of other necessary things. Ironically, it is possible to write too much and tire of it even if we enjoy it immensely. Just like tasty food. All things in moderation, too much of anything ruins everything else.

Nice. Care to show some links? PM me if you don't wanna broadcast it.

It would take nothing less than a miracle to change human nature. For what it's worth, the evil version of my instinctually responsible scifi race is a type of evil we know all too well. They are essentially staunch hedonists, that have gone so far as to transfer their heads into machines that can bio-print ANY made to order mortal body they choose that is in it's vast databanks, and insert their brain into it. They also are connected by a kind of scifi virtual world, where hedonism of all kinds, no matter how extreme or gross thrives. They did this primarily for their own safety, since one can seemingly 'die' or be 'killed' in the name of hedonism in the virtual world, but in the real one it is permanent However time and time again their virtual pursuits spill out into the real one one way or another.

I see. So the only way using IRL known tech to make large cargo/passenger SSTO will be to do it in pairs. Ship one gets to orbit. Ship two is full of propellant and refuels ship one for a future landing somewhere. The more full tank ships you have the more landings and launches you can do. There will or should always be tankers on the ground and in orbit for refueling to refuel the passenger spaceship as needed. This also means that fuel tankers are... well... disposable. So in a way... we never stopped staging. It's just with fuel tank ships. Right now I see a proper SSTO as a hybrid of pusher plate and airbreathing turborocket technology. An initial propellant lift off and then the bombs do the rest. Refuel with tanker in orbit go (or warp scifi style) where you wanns go and rinse and repeat. EDIT: For maximum reuse I suggest a few tankers with ISRU machinery. Essentially SSTO's that can go down, make fuel, reload a grounded ship, reload itself, and get back to orbit. A tall order? Yeah... buy it is also necessary.

True... but the same alien attack scene should get wrecked by even IRL forces... so long they had sufficient prep and knew what they were up against. Thos flying aliens are huge slow targets that anti-aircraft guns and missiles could bring down. And radar can detect a swarm of targets that big far away. Nuclear air burst anyone? Poor tactics are a staple in scifi it seems, using ancient tactics with fictional weaponry.

Both birth control and colonization of space. In fact... when anyone does act irresponsibly it is due to mental handicaps. Again... they do not have a utopia, both good and evil individuals exist. I guess the real difference with us is that good and evil tend to segregate, but like us, both sides tend to think they are right, and going to either side will eventually alienate a person from whatever side they belong to.

I read some of the PDF... fascinating. Just curious, what design changes would you make to the craft if Gov let you stick in as many nuclear reactors into it as you like but addes one requirement: The SSTO must have a crew capacity of 15 and a cargo payliad capacity of 40 tons. Right away I am thinking the craft woud need to be bigger and heavier. Also, if you take the original design and intergrate nuclear thermal does that enhance psrformance at all?

Reason 1 more or less.

I think for the same reasons humans do anything, although it varies based on priority. 1. Attempts to find answers or solutions to difficult or impossible challenges or problems. 2. To be well liked by other humans. 3. To profit in some tangible way. Why do I write scifi? Primarily number 1, followed by 2 I suppose, even though I won't sacrifice my ideals for it, and last of all profit, since writing is hardly the best way to make a profit. What about you? Why do you write? Which of the 3 reasons mostly?

Not all accept that that will happen IRL in the future. Humans can't even predict the weather with 100% accuracy let alone world events that happen suddenly. And in scifi, such a future is by no means a certainty. It's up to the writer and whatever they wish to make happen. EDIT: That said, my scifi universe still has problems of it's own. They are not utopias, but some civilizations have less issues than ours IRL.

No. In fact the only scifi novels I read cover to cover were abridged versions of The Time Machine and The Strange Tale of Jekyll and Hyde. My inspiration for this post comes from knowledge and from checking out online what passes for ST nowadays.

I think you misunderstand my intentions. It is not my purpose to write about flawed humanity acheving immortality on their own. As you mentioned and I agree, things are'nt right with humans for us to use such power responsibly. No. It is my purpose to write about scifi alien humanoids who were born biologically immortal. Their behavior won't be exactly like humans, at least with regard to responsibilty. They will either be responsible, or choose to refuse responsibility, but they will never take up any responsibility and not do their best to carry it out. In fact, they never make mistakes due to negligence, only due to being misinformed or because of outright sabotage. In the story they have warp technology and constant acceleration engines.

"I kept dreaming of a world I thought I would never see. And then, one day I got in..." Kevin Flynn-Tron Legacy

Have not read it, but a cursory google search revealed that with a cure for death, people begin to escalate bad forms of behavior until death is inevitable. Truth be told, the only way living forever can work is if good wins and evil loses. So long they exist together, death is not far away, whether people do not die from aging or are killed. Death follows evil like a glove fits a hand. They go together.

Do not know how often this concept is explored in scifi, yet I will provide my view on it. Biological Immortality: How and what happens depends solely on the writer. So do not be surprised if in it you see views and attitudes that support and promote what the writer or writers ACTUALLY think about immortality. It seems it is a popular trend for writers to view immortality bad and death good. If any scifi writer/creator has shown otherwise I have yet to see it. Nonetheless I will explore the results of biological immortality... as in being born that way. 1. Population control will be necessary eventually. It may even provide a legitimate reason for space colonization 2. Rule or ruin... the homeworld. You know all the stuff humans worry about? If a civilization lived forever they would either have a solution for their problems or keep looking for them. If they have solutions, they will have less problems than us. Of if they do not have solutions, then their civilization will likely either die permanently or be punctuated by several extinction level events followed by rebuilding only to do it again and again. A rather vicious cycle of death and rebirth with no end in site. Is immortality bad per se? Is death what defines being human? The popular answer is yes. That is the kind of stuff some scifi promotes. Nonetheless like all life, it is not so much existence as what is done with it that counts. Cutting it short just ends existence, even if one can live forever otherwise and act, feel, and be... alive Feel free to discuss.

Really? Why so? Conservation of momentum? Please explain. I know if you drive a car to 100 on a treadmill and put on the ground it will still go 100 until you hit the brakes. Wait... I think I just answered my own question. Speed equals momentum. Period. The only counter to this is when speeds are matched, which is why I can walk around in a van driving 60 mph and jump up and down without being sucked into the wall. Of course if the van accelerates rapidly I will start to be pulled backward. And your right about the constant acceleration at 1g. That would also mean that it would help for all the RCS thrusters to have the same fictional drive. Beats rockets soundly... just not something we can achieve IRL as of now.