SargeRho

Electromagnetic fields. We can produce these, and I'm pretty sure i read something about a magnetic field generator being developed to help shield spacecraft. Put one of those on the ground, with redundant systems, etc. of course. And if it fails, you always can go into the underground radiation shelter while someone, or a robot, goes fix it.

Single-Stage to Lunar Intercept. I think I have slightly overbuilt my moon rocket. I was planning to use the second stage for the TMI, then enter orbit and land with the descent stage. Instead, I got to a 13km periapsis of the Moon with the first stage, and used the second stage to enter orbit, then de-orbit and do most of the landing. The lander set down with nearly full tanks.

@AngelLestat Trains kill people when they crash, as do aircraft, and underground centrifuges on Mars. We have no data on the effects of 1/3g, and only several days at a time of 1/6g. We know how the human body reacts to 1g and 0g, but we don't know how extended periods between those two, or above 1, will affect the body. The only way to find out is to test it with humans.

@AngelLestat Radiative cooling. What is it with you and centrifuges? If something happens and the centrifuge jams, people will die. It's an unnecessary risk.

That's a lot of moving parts. It would be a lot more reliable to spin the entire ship, either in the tumbling pidgeon style, where the ship spins end over end, and has the engines located at the center, or building something like the HOPE spacecraft and spinning it along its axis, providing both ullage for the fuel, and artificial gravity for the crew.

Long-distance transportation, like, between cities, or if it's large enough, between districts would be done with hyperloops or maglev trains, within the city, by foot, with elevators, electric scooters and cars, and maybe the occasional exoskeleton. I can't say how long it would take to build, decades until it can feed itself at least, probably a century or two before it can actually be called a city. Power is produced using solar panels and nuclear reactors, and outside of the city, people would use pressurized rovers with a special "door" that prevents dust from getting inside the city or the rover, and with suit-ports in the back. The rovers would either be electric or using methane and oxygen.

1: I'd say Terra Sabaea or Terra Sirenum, these are 2 regions near the equator that have some abundance of water, you don't really want to colonize the poles. 2: All of them. Martian dirt is full of Titanium, Iron, Silicon, Aluminium, Nickel, and all sorts of other metals. 3: A martian city would probably be composed of a LOT of greenhouses, and several garden domes. Sleeping quarters, and a lot of the living areas would likely be located underground for radiation protection. Think this: https://gwendolynhoff.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/mars-city.jpg , just at much, much bigger scale.

From what I could find, 100-1000kw energy input. The thrust isn't all that high, according to Atomic Rockets, between 103N in low gear, and 13.8KN in high gear, with a specific impulse of 5140s. A ship using a low gear ship would have a wet mass of 90mt, and a payload fraction of 63%. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#id--Pulse--Inertial_Confinement--Magneto_Inertial_Fusion

We have, actually, at least far enough to build a fusion drive. A fusion engine doesn't need to produce power, and can very well run in pulsed mode. What we haven't mastered is fusion power. This here is the type of reactor one might use for a Fusion pulse rocket.

NASA's working on NTRs, and the technology behind NTRs already exists, since a functioning prototype was tested *decades* ago.

Possibly. One of the members of MSNW is working at Helion Energy, who are building incrementally better prototypes of pulsed fusion reactors, based on the design of the Fusion Driven Rocket. My guess would be that they've decided to just do that for now, and maybe develop the FDR as an offshoot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion#MSNW_Magneto-Inertial_Fusion_Driven_Rocket I haven't seen any news about it in a while though.

Actually, parts of a Fusion engine have already been tested, and if I'm not mistaken, we actually do already have the tech to build a Z-Pinch fusion rocket.

Titan, only moon with a dense atmosphere, and lakes of rocket fuel.

What about orbit to surface transport? If LiftPort's estimate of 100 tons for a lunar space elevator is correct, then might it not make sense to set one up, before a colony, so that you can transport more material per launch to the Moon, and less fuel needed for the descent to the surface, since it would likely take a while before a lunar colony would be in a position where it could export materials?

A lot worse. With glass splinters flying everywhere.

I read somewhere that the thrust and drag balance eachother out at around .2c, I think it was on Atomic Rockets, I'm not sure. But the idea of the magnetic sail comes from there.

You could carry the fuel needed for the initial acceleration along.

A lunar space elevator is tricky since you can't build one to lunar stationary orbit, instead it'd go to the EML1 and/or 2 points: I don't know how stable they would be, but I doubt bolting some ion engines to the stations would be much of an issue.

The Moon, but since it's not an option, Mars. Because we have the materials to do both already. A Moon elevator cable would apparently weigh only 100 tons.

The black hole wouldn't actually be all that large. I think 660000 tons was the optimal mass, that's comparable to a fully loaded supertanker. The gravity of that is negligible.

While the LIGO is effectively a giant michelson-morley detector, the aether isn't the only thing it can detect. The Aether has been thoroughly disproven.

The Kapisi is 563 meters long, you can get the size of the Baserunner by putting it next to a coalition carrier. Edit: I did some screenshot analysis with PS. A Baserunner is just over 50 meters long, putting it around 165-170 feet.

The borg have a hive-mind, steered by the queen. Assimilation is the process of converting non-borg into borg, it means 'to make similar to', in this case to the borg.

Not really. The first one doesn't have constantly rotating hinges, instead it has swivels for the ion engines, which point along the center of rotation when spun up. The second one, while having hinges, doesn't have much running through them other than electricity.