Power Levels Versus Trying Not To Cause Excessive Enviromental Damage In Scifi....

[Spacescifi]

Several of you know well why SSTOs as depicted in SW and ST are utter fantasy.... that is, unless you want to radiate everything behind you with chernobyl exhaust from some kind of freakish nuclear saltwater rocket.

Scifi is about telling stories and what ifs though, so therein is the fiction.

The fantasy element is how vessels somehow can be the size of a automobile van and still have enough thrust to reach orbit and back without melting the engine.

Worse yet... I have seen escape pods in Star trek literally fly across a solar system to reach a planet within days at most.

On top of all this, if a ship with such a fantastic energy storage source as this crashes and explodes on a planet, somehow you don't get a nuclear mushroom cloud or worse.

Scenario: Assuming you wanted a ST or SW setting with casual SSTOs you absolutely have to ignore, make up, or figure out a realisic way of shedding the humongous amounts of waste heat such a drive would generate. This energy debt occurs regardless if the SSTO is powered by a seemingly reactionless drive or a rocket. Known physics does not allow for getting anything for nothing without incurring SOME cost in energy use and release (often expressed as heat or radiation).

Ironically the one thing you could afford to not ignore and still have a scifi story (albeit modified) is realistic power levels that match what the ships are depicted as doing onscreen. Granted, this often does require ignoring or using make believe to avoid the waste heat issue that would occur in real life. But if nothing else if power levels were at least realistic and scifi ignored or used make believe on waste heat as it often does.. that would change the plot.

Example: Han Solo wabts to visit a planet with the Millennium Falcon, yet since his vessel will explode with the force of hundreds of nukes if it crashes or blows up, instead of letting his vessel land, specialized large shuttle vessels with only enough energy stored for round trip to orbit rendezvous and back before getting a recharge at a base would be employed.

And all those fun looking aerial battles with alien SSTOs dogfighting with F-15's?

Not likely. At all. Since the moment one of the alien fighter SSTOs is downed or crashes it is going out like a nuclear explosion, wiping out friends and foes alike for several kilometers.

So you can forget mass formations of scifi SSTO fighterss mixing it up with Earth's finest air forces.

What is more likely to happen is that in the case of an invasion, Earth is just nuked into submission. Since if we have nukes now then anyone with energy storage good enough for van size SSTOs will have nukes galore and even better. So you can forget the scifi laser beams and just let the biggaton explosions wash over you until humanity raises the white flag.

No it's not fair, and no it does not make for an ending people generally want

And yet... it does follow the whole survival of the fittest concept. Meaning whoever deserves to survive (by being the most able to adapt to cope with and overcome challenges/dangers) will.

It just takes time. And time alwats reveals tye truth, sooner or later.

 

Edited June 30 by Spacescifi

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Several of you know well why SSTOs as depicted in SW and ST are utter fantasy.... that is, unless you want to radiate everything behind you with chernobyl exhaust from some kind of freakish nuclear saltwater rocket.

Scifi is about telling stories and what ifs though, so therein is the fiction.

The fantasy element is how vessels somehow can be the size of a automobile van and still have enough thrust to reach orbit and back without melting the engine.

Worse yet... I have seen escape pods in Star trek literally fly across a solar system to reach a planet within days at most.

On top of all this, if a ship with such a fantastic energy storage source as this crashes and explodes on a planet, somehow you don't get a nuclear mushroom cloud or worse.

Scenario: Assuming you wanted a ST or SW setting with casual SSTOs you absolutely have to ignore, make up, or figure out a realisic way of shedding the humongous amounts of waste heat such a drive would generate. This energy debt occurs regardless if the SSTO is powered by a seemingly reactionless drive or a rocket. Known physics does not allow for getting anything for nothing without incurring SOME cost in energy use and release (often expressed as heat or radiation).

Ironically the one thing you could afford to not ignore and still have a scifi story (albeit modified) is realistic power levels that match what the ships are depicted as doing onscreen. Granted, this often does require ignoring or using make believe to avoid the waste heat issue that would occur in real life. But if nothing else if power levels were at least realistic and scifi ignored or used make believe on waste heat as it often does.. that would change the plot.

Example: Han Solo wabts to visit a planet with the Millennium Falcon, yet since his vessel will explode with the force of hundreds of nukes if it crashes or blows up, instead of letting his vessel land, specialized large shuttle vessels with only enough energy stored for round trip to orbit rendezvous and back before getting a recharge at a base would be employed.

And all those fun looking aerial battles with alien SSTOs dogfighting with F-15's?

Not likely. At all. Since the moment one of the alien fighter SSTOs is downed or crashes it is going out like a nuclear explosion, wiping out friends and foes alike for several kilometers.

So you can forget mass formations of scifi SSTO fighterss mixing it up with Earth's finest air forces.

What is more likely to happen is that in the case of an invasion, Earth is just nuked into submission. Since if we have nukes now then anyone with energy storage good enough for van size SSTOs will have nukes galore and even better. So you can forget the scifi laser beams and just let the biggaton explosions wash over you until humanity raises the white flag.

No it's not fair, and no it does not make for an ending people generally want

And yet... it does follow the whole survival of the fittest concept. Meaning whoever deserves to survive (by being the most able to adapt to cope with and overcome challenges/dangers) will.

It just takes time. And time alwats reveals tye truth, sooner or later.

 

You should read Footfall by Larry Niven

[Mikki]

The audience for hollywood sci-fi doesn`t care anyway for physics, why bother?
And people who know the fallacies just enjoy the show mostly and relax for ninety minutes.

A good story is more important, the tech is sci-fi anyway.

[kerbiloid]

Just open a door to another multiverse instance of the Earth and its universe, and drop all your heat, gas, and water wastes there.

Thus, you will be having starwaresque plane-sized interstellar spaceships for the cost of global warming, air pollution, and ocean acidation in their world (but who cares?).

Wait... All of that had begun simultaneously with the SW and ST franchises...
It can't be... Are we that "another Earth" used for wastes from there?

[Mikki]

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Just open a door to another multiverse instance of the Earth and its universe, and drop all your heat, gas, and water wastes there.

Thus, you will be having starwaresque plane-sized interstellar spaceships for the cost of global warming, air pollution, and ocean acidation in their world (but who cares?).

Wait... All of that had begun simultaneously with the SW and ST franchises...
It can't be... Are we that "another Earth" used for wastes from there?

The interdimensional landfill is a great idea, and it sounds remarkably convenient. Full support from here.

[kerbiloid]

The famous Soviet/Russian sci-fi writer Kir Bulychyov (known for his Adventures of Alice) had a novel 18 times, where the developed civilisation totally polluted its world, and killed the ecology, but happily discovered the time travels, and evacuated back into the past, where the nature is still alive and fruiting.

Though, the then-future "present" stays polluted, so once they have reached the poisoned time, they have to jump back again, to the more distant past.
They kept doing it 18 times, until they reached the primordial ocean with invertebrates and algae.
(And at this time their representative asked the humans to help with invertebrate cooking or so.)

So, we can also use time portals to move our wastes either to the Carboniferous, when the coal deposits were actively forming, and it was anyway warm, or to the far future, when the Earth has already become another Venus, so things can't get worse.

Basically, we need 300 mln years to any direction.

This raises a question: aren't the coal and oil deposits made of the future human carbon wastes thrown back in time.

Edited June 30 by kerbiloid

[Spacescifi]

4 hours ago, Mikki said:

The interdimensional landfill is a great idea, and it sounds remarkably convenient. Full support from here.

Nah... thst opens up a host of other problems and questions really... such as why are they not using such powerful tech in other ways? Sure one can make up a reason, but the more one has to weaken the potential of a scifi technology to limit hiw uber it is the less real it already seems to me.

4 hours ago, Mikki said:

The audience for hollywood sci-fi doesn`t care anyway for physics, why bother?
And people who know the fallacies just enjoy the show mostly and relax for ninety minutes.

A good story is more important, the tech is sci-fi anyway.

True... and yet one can make some unique plots on occasion by following even a sliver of real life physics as I showed

Edited June 30 by Spacescifi

[Mikki]

31 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Nah... thst opens up a host of other problems and questions really... such as why are that not using such powerful tech in other ways? Sure one can make up a reason, but the more one has to weaken the potential of a scifi technology to limit hiw uber it is the less real it already seems to ms.

True... and yet one can make some unique plots on occasion by following even a sliver of real life physics as I showed

I am sure a fan of sci-fi (see for above mentioned reasons), and i can look over questionable plot devices if the plot itself carrys a certain quality for the reader or viewer. What i cannot take for sci-fi are SW or Strek and alikes, which are merely fantasy in my eyes, mirroring certain historic events like the age of exploration or some 20th century politics and their conflicts in another environment.

"Making things up" is literally the essence of sci-fi writing or cinema, making it good enough for a broad audience is a success.

At least the goal of good entertainment should be achieved when people pay for it.

I think your take on "hard sci-fi" is admirable, but also the most difficult, and as we could see in "The Martian" or "Interstellar", even hell bent cinema struggles here and there with details people can discuss about for years.

I haven`t seen "Dune" by now (!) but what i know of is that it doesn`t revolve much about technology rather than some kind of politics mixed with magic. 

Here we are again. 

[Spacescifi]

38 minutes ago, Mikki said:

I am sure a fan of sci-fi (see for above mentioned reasons), and i can look over questionable plot devices if the plot itself carrys a certain quality for the reader or viewer. What i cannot take for sci-fi are SW or Strek and alikes, which are merely fantasy in my eyes, mirroring certain historic events like the age of exploration or some 20th century politics and their conflicts in another environment.

"Making things up" is literally the essence of sci-fi writing or cinema, making it good enough for a broad audience is a success.

At least the goal of good entertainment should be achieved when people pay for it.

I think your take on "hard sci-fi" is admirable, but also the most difficult, and as we could see in "The Martian" or "Interstellar", even hell bent cinema struggles here and there with details people can discuss about for years.

I haven`t seen "Dune" by now (!) but what i know of is that it doesn`t revolve much about technology rather than some kind of politics mixed with magic. 

Here we are again. 

 

I don't mind make believe scifi tech, but I think (my personal opinion) that the side job of scifi in addition to telling a great story is to tell the what ifs and fully exploit any scifi tech they have as well as utilize it logically. Rather than holding back or using it in the most inefficient or inane ways to level the playing field with guys like us modern day humans who are still messing around with chemical combustion to go places.

Edited June 30 by Spacescifi

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Just open a door to another multiverse instance of the Earth and its universe, and drop all your heat, gas, and water wastes there.

Thus, you will be having starwaresque plane-sized interstellar spaceships for the cost of global warming, air pollution, and ocean acidation in their world (but who cares?).

Wait... All of that had begun simultaneously with the SW and ST franchises...
It can't be... Are we that "another Earth" used for wastes from there?

Well if you have good and cheap fusion, lots of orbital solar  or some other less plausible power source you remove most of the pollution issues who is power production, Its also make it easier to get rid if normal waste. 
And you need this power sources for fast interplanetary ships anyway.  Ignoring stupidity like escape pods who is also fast interplanetary ships, this make its an small passenger craft docked to mothership not an lifeboat.  
Yes see lots of uses for that  small passenger craft. 

[Spacescifi]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Well if you have good and cheap fusion, lots of orbital solar  or some other less plausible power source you remove most of the pollution issues who is power production, Its also make it easier to get rid if normal waste. 
And you need this power sources for fast interplanetary ships anyway.  Ignoring stupidity like escape pods who is also fast interplanetary ships, this make its an small passenger craft docked to mothership not an lifeboat.  
Yes see lots of uses for that  small passenger craft. 

 

Well that's just it is'nt it? We cannot have cheap and reliable nor even compact fusion due to the sheer heat involved to generate it. Cold fusion would be perfect for scifi SSTOs if we could do it. Nonetheless I still don't think we could get away with a small launch vehicle or SSTO fighter plane using even scifi cold fusion.

The reason being that the electrical energy gained from the cold fusion would still need to be converted into heat to shoot propellant out. And the only way such heat won't melt your thermal exhaust chamber is if you have a high enough mass flow of propellant to dump the heat onto. Which means big tanks and really good turbopumps to pump the fuel at an effective rate for shedding the waste heat.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Well if you have good and cheap fusion, lots of orbital solar  or some other less plausible power source you remove most of the pollution issues who is power production, Its also make it easier to get rid if normal waste. 

The waste heat is still a problem. Entropy, the heartless she-dawg.

Even if make the reactors more efficient, they are anyway made of material materials, which get warmed.

So, if place the heat source onboard a space object, the object needs radiators (and their area grows proportionally to the square of size, while the mass (and thus the required power) - to cube).
The solid radiators will reach the melting point, the droplet radiators - the boiling/sublimation point, any of them - the thermal ionization point, and this limits the space reactor power with tiny values.

If produce a lot of energy on a big massive planet with ocean, like the Earth or to some extent the Mars, the closer the total energy production gets to what the sunlight provides, the more comparable the warming becomes. This limits total energy production with values, incomparable to the total sunlight income.

The same about the sunlight orbital concentrators. They would increase waste heat production at the powered body, thus don't differ from local reactors in sense of global heating.

So, without any kind of (inter/hyper/extra)dimensional heat sink, like the parallel world or the time machine or the portal to gas giant, and so on, any attempts of local energy production are so limited, that can't radically change the world.

[domenprevc]

The immense waste heat generated by such propulsion systems would be catastrophic without a realistic method of dissipation. While sci-fi often sidesteps this issue for narrative purposes, grounding power levels in plausible physics could enrich storytelling. For instance, envisioning specialized shuttles for safer planetary visits, or reconsidering aerial battles with SSTOs due to their potential explosive risks, adds a layer of realism. Ultimately, sci-fi's charm lies in exploring possibilities while respecting scientific principles.

[Mikki]

...If i was a sci-fi writer (which i`m not for any god`s sake huh), i`d convince the reader that humans discovered by chance how to manipulate the higgs field (tapping in on dark energy eh ), enabling large vessels with large enough fusion reactors to literally bypass c in any direction and speed. After realizing that previous assumed paradoxes regarding inevitable timetravel and issues with causality don`t happen as expected, things... get nuts.

*insert any plot of your liking*

At some point humans meet some aliens with pretty insane techlevel and get lectured from said aliens with the fact that free will is a myth and the future allready happened. Asked about their goals the aliens just mention that tapping in on dark energy just increases the amount of it and accelerates the expansion of the universe and they admit that they have literally caused the foreseeable demise of all things together with some other species they met themself (and exterminated casually) along the way.

So, the aliens ask the humans to give up on the nice tech, stop exploration and instead seek for ways to halt the apocalypse.

Clearly the humans disagree and plan to annihilate the whole species, convinced the aliens just gaslight the humans into submission.

*Huge interstellar war erupts*.

 

 

 

Edited July 1 by Mikki

[magnemoe]

On 7/1/2024 at 3:17 AM, Spacescifi said:

 

Well that's just it is'nt it? We cannot have cheap and reliable nor even compact fusion due to the sheer heat involved to generate it. Cold fusion would be perfect for scifi SSTOs if we could do it. Nonetheless I still don't think we could get away with a small launch vehicle or SSTO fighter plane using even scifi cold fusion.

The reason being that the electrical energy gained from the cold fusion would still need to be converted into heat to shoot propellant out. And the only way such heat won't melt your thermal exhaust chamber is if you have a high enough mass flow of propellant to dump the heat onto. Which means big tanks and really good turbopumps to pump the fuel at an effective rate for shedding the waste heat.

With good fusion you either use the charged particles to electricity or let them out the back for trust, yes this has losses, who increases your trust but lower ISP. 
Yes you also get heat you have to deal with, most realistic fusion rocket designs has an engine who is just shielded magnets as most heat and neutral particles escapes.
For power you mostly want to use the heat for more power unless you need lots of power fast for energy weapons or similar. 

[Gargamel]

On 6/30/2024 at 4:52 AM, Mikki said:

The audience for hollywood sci-fi doesn`t care anyway for physics, why bother?
And people who know the fallacies just enjoy the show mostly and relax for ninety minutes.

A good story is more important, the tech is sci-fi anyway.

It doesn’t have to be plausible if you hide and ignore the implausibility of it.    Warp speed works cause they don’t try to explain it in the open.    They don’t have to explain it cause it’s just routine stuff for the characters.    And if it’s routine for the characters, it should be routine and ubiquitous to us too.  
 

 

 

[Nuke]

life ultimately exists to allow entropy in shallow energy gradients that are normally out of reach of the usual cosmic forces. the universe hates energy gradients so much that it created life, and further a life form capable of expanding the gradient significantly and then flattening it out over time.  at which point life can no longer exist. it is thus in the universe's best interest to scatter life everywhere, bringing with it insatiable want and a lust for war such that energy gradients elsewhere can be flattened.

therefor the concept of an energy neutral society is ignoring the laws of physics entirely.  we can live large consume everything and push advancement fast enough that we have more energy gradients to exploit. eventually with an entire galaxy, maybe universe at its disposal until one day we cant find any still burning stars to orbit.  or we can live simple boring lives in sustainable numbers, bring in our maximum yeild, minimum resource crops, live in our naturally cooled/heated homes. pile together in winter and strip naked in summer. and do that "forever" generation after generation with the final ones wondering why the sun is getting bigger. in end both civilizations die. the latter perhaps never leaving their original planet, the former after expanding rapidly and to great numbers. more lives lived and more time to solve problems and a lot more resources too. it is a more interesting place to live, if one was inclined to do so.

its really only problematic when the species in question only has one planet at their disposal. you only really need your biosphere so long as you cant live without it (cant manufacture it). what we dont want to do is burn a world we currently need. maybe dont start dismantling the crust just yet, but do work on your space program.

Edited July 2 by Nuke

[darthgently]

12 minutes ago, Nuke said:

life ultimately exists to allow entropy in shallow energy gradients that are normally out of reach of the usual cosmic forces. the universe hates energy gradients so much that it created life, and further a life form capable of expanding the gradient significantly and then flattening it out over time.  at which point life can no longer exist. it is thus in the universe's best interest to scatter life everywhere, bringing with it insatiable want and a lust for war such that energy gradients elsewhere can be flattened.

therefor the concept of an energy neutral society is ignoring the laws of physics entirely.  we can live large consume everything and push advancement fast enough that we have more energy gradients to exploit. eventually with an entire galaxy, maybe universe at its disposal until one day we cant find any still burning stars to orbit.  or we can live simple boring lives in sustainable numbers, bring in our maximum yeild, minimum resource crops, live in our naturally cooled/heated homes. pile together in winter and strip naked in summer. and do that "forever" generation after generation with the final ones wondering why the sun is getting bigger. in end both civilizations die. the latter perhaps never leaving their original planet, the former after expanding rapidly and to great numbers. more lives lived and more time to solve problems. it is a more interesting place to live, if one was inclined to do so.

What if we've done all this before and the reason we see no aliens is that in the last iteration we advanced so much that when heat death was nigh and voracious alien enemies from every galaxy were trying to wipe each other and us out to hang on as long as they could, we figured something out.

We figured out how to escape, in the form of a life reproducing algorithm encoded at a subspace level into a newly forming bubble universe budding from the dying one.  And we specifically encoded the algorithm to leave out the advanced aliens this time. 

Let's just say we needed some alone time after that last clasterfrack at the end of time.

Edited July 2 by darthgently

[JadeOfMaar]

On 6/30/2024 at 3:19 AM, Spacescifi said:

Scenario: Assuming you wanted a ST or SW setting with casual SSTOs you absolutely have to ignore, make up, or figure out a realisic way of shedding the humongous amounts of waste heat such a drive would generate. This energy debt occurs regardless if the SSTO is powered by a seemingly reactionless drive or a rocket. Known physics does not allow for getting anything for nothing without incurring SOME cost in energy use and release (often expressed as heat or radiation).

As one or more folks have said: Good storytelling takes priority over realism. But also, a well-written scifi (however soft it chooses to be) has a well-defined set of boundaries for what the fantasy tech is truly capable of, and consistently avoids overstepping these boundaries and resists the plot bunnies or precludes the plot holes, otherwise the fans will get angry, point them out, and start packing eggs and tomatoes to throw at the author.

If you're going to be physically accurate about vessel design and thermodynamics then here are my 2 cents:

• Forget the idea of tiny SSTOs. If it's powerful enough then it needs to be very large for its concerns with fuel volume, heat dissipation and energy capture (panel surface area if beamed power is involved). An overly small vessel will have poor fuel mass ratio to the mass of ship systems and any heat sources will easily melt because they lack physical mass to withstand their thermal mass.
  • Alternatively, don't always assume they are spaceplanes and can and should launch or land horizontally. I'm trying to devise things for such for a scenario in my own worldbuilding right now.
• As an SSTO the ship should have two engine types: The mid-spec vacuum rocket with lower thousands Isp that can safely operate near the base or station the ship is visiting; The air-breathing plasma engine for efficient, powered flight. Hopefully no one tries to do an SSTA and include the usual gamma-spewing, long-haul fusion drive also. Anyone who plays KSP should know the horror of SSTA design and should know that it only works in KSP.

 

On 6/30/2024 at 3:19 AM, Spacescifi said:

Example: Han Solo wabts to visit a planet with the Millennium Falcon, yet since his vessel will explode with the force of hundreds of nukes if it crashes or blows up, instead of letting his vessel land, specialized large shuttle vessels with only enough energy stored for round trip to orbit rendezvous and back before getting a recharge at a base would be employed.

How do you define this "energy storage" technique without still being prone to epicly exploding when it takes acute, heavy damage?

This is a good case for fission tech. A pebble bed reactor can enable thermal engines with Isp's of 1X00s and favorable TWR in vac and in atmo. See such engine tech as Project Timberwind and "Scorpion" hybrid arcjet.

 

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

With good fusion you either use the charged particles to electricity or let them out the back for trust, yes this has losses, who increases your trust but lower ISP. 
[snip] most realistic fusion rocket designs has an engine who is just shielded magnets as most heat and neutral particles escapes.

Using the charged particles alone for exhaust works the other way around. They grant higher Isp and lower thrust because they're no heavier than Lithium atoms and they carry the remaining energy of the fusion reaction (which is hopefully > 70% of that total energy). Apparently, all scifi, even Expanse, miss the mark with nozzle types. They don't know about magnetic nozzles and will tend to have a solid, Space Shuttle looking nozzle. Or if they do know, they choose not to because a solid bell nozzle is relatable. In addition, magnetic nozzles are very bad for aerodynamics. The annular blade shields and overall hollow form will cause lots of vortex drag and even get itself torn off at high speed in thick atmo.

[Nuke]

im really ok with intelligent aliens being rare. like a couple per galaxy at any given time. more stuff for us. lots of unstaked claims out there.

as for landing starships the solution is quite simple. dont. use rocket shuttles, reusable post spacex kit. using chem engines with reactors on the ground operating in safe conditions splitting water. then we build massive shipyards on the moon or in orbit in places where there is no moon. leo becomes a nuclear exclusion zone. solar powered plasma tugs put you up above the nuclear exclusion zone where you rendezvous with a station or nuclear ship. ships with really nasty drives might be excluded to orbits outside of geo. interstellar vessels would probibly be limited to solar orbit higher than the highest habitable world or major colony, plus some exclusion zone, and ships crossing said exclusion zone will likely be fired upon. its really going to be an infrastructure based system much like world travel is today.

[Spacescifi]

49 minutes ago, Nuke said:

im really ok with intelligent aliens being rare. like a couple per galaxy at any given time. more stuff for us. lots of unstaked claims out there.

as for landing starships the solution is quite simple. dont. use rocket shuttles, reusable post spacex kit. using chem engines with reactors on the ground operating in safe conditions splitting water. then we build massive shipyards on the moon or in orbit in places where there is no moon. leo becomes a nuclear exclusion zone. solar powered plasma tugs put you up above the nuclear exclusion zone where you rendezvous with a station or nuclear ship. ships with really nasty drives might be excluded to orbits outside of geo. interstellar vessels would probibly be limited to solar orbit higher than the highest habitable world or major colony, plus some exclusion zone, and ships crossing said exclusion zone will likely be fired upon. its really going to be an infrastructure based system much like world travel is today.

 

This. It is logical and does not require absurd thinking.

 

For example I could drive an armed military tank on the road but I am not allowed to and for good reason.

I think limiting certain kinds of crafts/engines to certain distances is reasonable if realistic energies are involved.

Edited July 2 by Spacescifi