Interstellar debris

[fleventeen]

2 hours ago, Minmus Taster said:

This ship seems to have some sort of heat shield on the front, I don't really see any reason it would be there other than for debris protection:

See below:

On 4/15/2022 at 1:39 AM, Vl3d said:

Original Daedalus solution: "the ship would be protected from the interstellar medium during transit by a beryllium disc, up to 7 mm thick, weighing up to 50 tonnes. This erosion shield would be made from beryllium due to its lightness and high latent heat of vaporisation."

I ran some numbers the other day, and the impact energy of a 2.5g object (about the mass of a US penny) moving at 12% of the speed of light is equivalent to about 400 tons of TNT (and that is quite a small object).

I highly doubt that it is feasible to use physical armor to protect this thing.

2 hours ago, Ozzy.R said:

You can also employ active protection systems. Like, an array of really powerfull lasers for vaporizing the debris and either a really powerfull radar or lidar system for tracking them. You could combine this with a (or multiple) static shield for dealing with small debris and save the lasers for debris that are to big for the shield to safely handle. And for anything bigger you just need to move out of the way, which isn't to bad because the bigger something is the easier it is to see it from far away. 

I am pretty sure that some form of active method is the only way to do it. The original project mentioned something similar, but I have a hard time imagining how it would work the way they explained it there. 

It would be interesting to work out how far and how small of an object we could realistically expect to detect/track, as we still struggle to detect small objects even near earth, and we may run into physical limitations at some point. The craft is moving so fast, that you really need to ability to see things coming up unbelievably far out in order to actually be able to do something about it, and even colliding with a very small object would be catastrophic.

I am working out a way to estimate the probability of impacts, using some assumptions about debris density and stuff. I will post what I find here.

 Also, if anyone wants to see what moving at 12% c is like, check out Space Engine.

Edit: Upon further thought, how would you even protect the sensitive radar or lidar system, which would no doubt have to be exposed to the interstellar medium in order to detect objects?

I suppose if you created a sufficient screen or cloud of matter well ahead of the vehicle, it may dissipate and spread out the incoming energy.

Edited April 18, 2022 by fleventeen

[Vl3d]

I think this post is also very relevant here:

 

[Ozzy.R]

This guy did a video on interstellar traval. As far as I know it is the only video on youtube that takes a good look at it: 

 

[Davi SDF]

If there is asteroid debris simulation, then i hope we get some really BIG shields for it, i don't want my ship to be randomly destroyed because i couldn't spot a 5 meters asteroid in Interstellar space.

[Laxez]

On 4/14/2022 at 3:50 AM, jaf said:

When travelling at reletivistic speeds even a grain of rice could be fatal to your starship that is why Project Daedalus has that "sheild" at the front of the second stage, my point is what do you think about interstellar debris in ksp 2.

i think that the shield you see, is not for some sort of anti collision device, is for protect the passengers for the high amount of radiation that the angine makes

[kerbiloid]

If use the MiniMag Orion Z-pinch engine (idk about KSP2), where the fusion pellets (or fission charges) are compressed by X-ray beams or so until to start of reaction conditions, we can turn around the ship after acceleration phase and use same X-ray emitters to vaporize and make dissipate any rock on the way.

If have a greenhouse to farm algae and produce cellulose and starch, everything but proteins can be grown onboard.
The required proteins can be stored onboard, it's just a thousand of tonnes for the generation ship crew of 100 and a century long flight.

What we lack, is a fridge and incubator to grow a million of Kerbals after arrival.

Spoiler

And a heatproof CPU to support 1 000 000 Kerbals in RAM.

 

[DunaManiac]

I see interstellar debri as part of random failures, which I'm firmly against, or at least I would support making it optional if its included. In my eyes it wouldn't add anything new to the game and instead cause rage quits and force you to quickload more often.

[MechBFP]

4 hours ago, DunaManiac said:

I see interstellar debri as part of random failures, which I'm firmly against, or at least I would support making it optional if its included. In my eyes it wouldn't add anything new to the game and instead cause rage quits and force you to quickload more often.

Exactly, another instance of game play over realism.

Edited April 24, 2022 by MechBFP

[SciMan]

On 4/15/2022 at 4:39 AM, Vl3d said:

That would be way too heavy for the engine to push.

I think you missed the part where the ice ball is a mix of Deuterium and Helium-3 ices (in the right ratio to be used directly as fusion fuel). So conceptually it works out to "put your fuel reserves in front of your squishy crewmembers and mission payload".  That means that despite the high mass of the ice ball, your shielding mass is ZERO, because you already counted that mass when you totaled up your Fuel mass.

And any KSP player worth their salt already knows the solution to "that would be too heavy". MORE BOOSTERS! In this case, it means simply making the interstellar engine bigger, or using a cluster of interstellar engines instead of just one of them. Something that I was already planning on doing in any case, if they let me.

Now that's really only needed if you're expecting to be doing FAST interstellar travel, aka at relativistic velocities (above 0.7c). At those speeds, just the interstellar medium is something that needs to be swept out of the way before the vessel goes screaming thru it, otherwise the relative velocity difference means that those hydrogen atoms in interstellar space would become high-energy cosmic rays (even tho it's the ship that's moving, not the hydrogen, Newtonian physics says there's no special reference frames so it doesn't matter which one's moving and which one's not, only the difference between the two).

At lower speeds, and with robotic probes, the 50 ton 7mm thick disc of beryllium would probably be good enough, since the electronics are presumably not as sensitive to radiation as crewmembers.

Oh and interstellar space isn't really that full of literal asteroids that need to be vaporized and/or steered around. About the biggest piece of solid matter you'll find is 1mm diameter, tho at those velocities the energy yield of a collision with such a piece of debris would indeed be quite destructive (therefore the ball of ice to shield you).
Protection from the interstellar medium would be readily accomplished by a combination of magnetic fields and a high energy laser fired ahead of the ship to ionize the interstellar medium (the magnetic fields are what would actually push it out of the way).

Edited April 25, 2022 by SciMan