C2C - Galactic Era

Tech: Planetary Colonization (IMHO, this tech is too late)

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You know since the Lunar Colonization was moved earlier we could move planetary colonization earlier too. Just as long as colonizing worlds beyond our solar system stays in the Galactic era. So like ...

Blue = New

Planetary Colonization
Req Tech: Planetary Exploration AND Solar Propulsion AND Asteroid Mining AND Lunar Colonization
Location: X100 Y3

Lunar Tourism
Req Tech: Lunar Colonization
Location: X101 Y1

Magnetic Sails
Req Tech: Asteroid Mining AND Internal Shockwave Engine AND Lunar Tourism AND Solar Propulsion
Location: X102 Y1

Planetary Extraction
Req Tech: Planetary Colonization
Location: X101 Y3

Planetary Manufacturing
Req Tech: Planetary Extraction AND Lunar Manufacturing
Location: X102 Y3

Planetary Trade
Req Tech: Magnetic Sails AND Planetary Colonization AND Lunar Trade
Location: X108 Y15

As you can see only a few requirments get changes and its mostly moving them to new locations.

EDIT: I applied these and it seems to work fine. See the SVN for them in action. I also found some techs covering up other techs and fixed that while I was there.

agreed on all of them, good job

What's Solar Propulsion btw? Solar Sails, Ion Thrusters or something else?

Oh and do you also think that the TH era has a lot of very strange techs? All those "put two polysyllabic words together" techs.

Faustmouse said:

What's Solar Propulsion btw? Solar Sails, Ion Thrusters or something else?

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Yes Solar Propulsion means Solar Sails. Under the original idea they were suppose to help reduce matiance in the inner solar system. Magnetic Sails were the next step up.

Faustmouse said:

Oh and do you also think that the TH era has a lot of very strange techs? All those "put two polysyllabic words together" techs.

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Some, but most we can work with and eventually fill in. MrAzure had some very creative ideas of the future.

Hydromancerx said:

Yes Solar Propulsion means Solar Sails. Under the original idea they were suppose to help reduce matiance in the inner solar system. Magnetic Sails were the next step up.

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Ok, just to be sure.
Solar Sails won't be very usefull for manned flights in the inner solar system though.

Hydromancerx said:

Some, but most we can work with and eventually fill in. MrAzure had some very creative ideas of the future.

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maybe then it's just my lack of vocabulary that makes them appear very strange to me

Faustmouse said:

<snip>
Solar Sails won't be very useful for manned flights in the inner solar system though.


<snip>

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Why do you say that? They should be as useful as any propulsion device "in the inner solar system". More sun exposure more efficiency.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

Why do you say that? They should be as useful as any propulsion device "in the inner solar system". More sun exposure more efficiency.

JosEPh

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One simple reason: They need a LONG time to accelerate. Which means longer travel time, which results in more needed life supports, which results in more mass, which in turn means longer time to accelerate.

JosEPh_II said:

Why do you say that? They should be as useful as any propulsion device "in the inner solar system". More sun exposure more efficiency.

JosEPh

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They used focused solar light to thrust them (from behind) and while they can take quite a while to get up to speed, once at speed they can theoretically use the fact that they're whirring through a vacuum to hit near light speed. I personally think they're probably an awful idea in general because I don't find it too realistic to think that we can focus the light that accurately at the great distances they're intended to travel. The slightest jiggle or wave energy or even gravitational pull on the photons themselves would make even a computerized system struggle to stay focused on the sail at many lightyears away. And then there's also probably more resistance in the 'void' than anticipated, making the light a paltry thrust source in comparison to the slightest 'dark matter' or other resistance. Just... probably a fantastic idea in general that I'm surprised NASA has so much faith in to be honestly considering the thing.

And it's kinda a one way trip to deep space... any takers?

Either way, Faustmouse is right that they would hardly be anywhere near up to speed on this light propulsion by the time they exited the solar system on a long distance flight - they'll probably need another propulsion mechanism to get them moving fast enough to get out of the system with any efficiency in the first place and where the other propulsion mechanism cannot produce further speeds, the light beam would slowly take over. So for inner system travel they'd be no more useful than any other ship and probably less due to lesser cargo hold space.

From what I have read solar sails are considered good for large cargo handling. Bigger bits of stuff that mass accelerators and like wind sails they can be used for almost going against the wind if you are using the solar winds. Yes they are slow but it is a small constant acceleration which is better than what we currently use which is basically single burn at the start.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

From what I have read solar sails are considered good for large cargo handling. Bigger bits of stuff that mass accelerators and like wind sails they can be used for almost going against the wind if you are using the solar winds. Yes they are slow but it is a small constant acceleration which is better than what we currently use which is basically single burn at the start.

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You don't have to go "against the wind" as you pretty much wanna go tangential to the trajectory of your current celestial body to reach others. So you are almost always "Crosswind".

Also, you need to slow down. Yeah sure...your up to speed...but guess what, you need to now turn your ship around, and start firing the enginge to slow down at some point. You need to plot a trajectory that takes you into the orbit you want. You need to account for the fact at high enough speeds, just hitting a hydrogen atom could damage stuff. You need to account for heat. You need to account for fuel supplies.

Also, solar sails need very power lasers to be practical. After all, if your going to be bringing all that weight(and therefor that means more energy is needed to move it), you better be getting as much as possible out of it. Lasers can be used once your too far away for the Sun to provide any use. Of course, you still want a big engine in the back.

The Venture Star from Avatar is actually a very good example of a ship for interstellar travel

Those red things?
Those are radiators. The thing is, they have no where to dump heat in a vacuum. They have to store heat on board, and it has to slowly dissipate. It takes two weeks.
Those orbs are fuel containers.

That mirror is important. This thing actually uses a Sail...but not to harness the Sun. Instead, It uses to accelerate out a Massive laser thats on earth(to allow it to use convention likely to help keep cool.) This provides it a lot more power to accelerate with. The mirror is because the laser, being powerful enough to send this ship to Alpha Centauri, would incinerate the habitable areas(more the people in it, not the ship itself). It's there to reflect the light from the laser such that it doesnt kill the people on the ship. To slow down when reaching Pandora, it uses first a matter/anti-matter engine. One it slows down enough, it uses a fusion torch to go to a low Detla-v orbit, to allow the Valkyrie Shuttles to head to Hells Gate. Heading back to earth Reverses it. Fusion torch to needed speed, AM/M torch to reach a viable speed to get to earth, Giant Laser to slow down, fusion torch to insert into orbit.

The Cargo bay is where that object thats detached from the ship is. It's also the Shuttle Docking Station. Which is what said object is.
The part with two long poles, and objects at the end near the front(maybe) near the mirror is the crew areas. They rotate. This ship cant run itself without human input, so some of the people on board have to stay out of cryo. Cryo being that part just behind those.

The engines are likely on the oppiste side from the mirror.

Now, notice something. The area with people, cargo, and just anything alive is tiny compared to the Radiators.

The propulsion section is massive. The payload is tiny. Also not that the dominating feature isnt engines. It isnt fuel...it's the radiators. The issue we will have at the start will be heat.

I think I should tell you guys that nasa or physicsists has already working on a warp drive math and/or physics based on the real scientific aclubare warp drive theory. this was used for the sci-fi television series star trek. check out the physicsis'ts teams current work. they were able to shrink down the mass or energy needed to have a warp drive. this warp drive in theory works bye making the space in front of the aclubare spaceship get smaller while the space expands behind the spaceship allowing the space ship to travel at great distances threw space and in theory it is faster then the speed of light. you may want to use this for the galactic era space travel

Civ4newbie said:

I think I should tell you guys that nasa or physicsists has already working on a warp drive math and/or physics based on the real scientific aclubare warp drive theory. this was used for the sci-fi television series star trek. check out the physicsis'ts teams current work. they were able to shrink down the mass or energy needed to have a warp drive. this warp drive in theory works bye making the space in front of the aclubare spaceship get smaller while the space expands behind the spaceship allowing the space ship to travel at great distances threw space and in theory it is faster then the speed of light. you may want to use this for the galactic era space travel

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This would be at Folding Space tech and Space Creasing tech. Note the diffrence between Solar Sails and Folding Space is basically the difference between a sailboat and a nuclear submarine. If not more so.

Actually, reading the last 2 pages again made me think, that if you would build a colony entire from resources found there, you don`t have to occupy your terrestrial cities at all, making those colony buildings effectivly costing 0 ...

Faustmouse said:

Actually, reading the last 2 pages again made me think, that if you would build a colony entire from resources found there, you don`t have to occupy your terrestrial cities at all, making those colony buildings effectivly costing 0 ...

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How do you mean? If your sending a spaceship then it would cost to load and launch the ship.

Yes, but the idea was to have a somewhat selft-assembling colony. You would only sending one mission to bring enough equipment there so that the colony can start mining and manufacturing more robots to increase growth. After that, everything needed is produced there, so you don`t need to send further shipments. The only thing required on earth is a controll building with some people in it - which shouldn`t cost maintenance actually.

Well that's sort of how the Mars Colony Wonders work now. They have a very large cost to build, which represents the effort to load up and send out the craft to the colony. Then they have a large maintenance for the early eras. However as techs are discovered the maintenance is lowered more and more until they are actually making a profit thought the goods and info they are sending back to Earth.

In short early space colonization is expansive but later space colonization is actually profitable.

In short early space colonization is expansive but later space colonization is actually profitable.

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We agree here.

Cost and maintenance is only true if you support your colony regulary. That is somewhat "ok" to do for Mars and Venus, since they are easy to reach, especially if you don't need to care about manned ships.

Mercury on the other hand is different: It is so deep in Sun's gravity well that it takes lots and lots of fuel to get there (which is why there were so few space probes). You don't want to run regular support launches to it. And you don't have to. As pointed out, once you have a basic setup, it can pretty much self-assemble your colony site. No further launches required.

So maybe it would be best here to set up your expensive colony and after X turns you get the beneficial buildings for free... while realsitic, it takes a lot of the fun out here...

Just to clear up a bit of... confusion about the solar sails and magnetic sails - with my own thoughts on the subject.

Solar sails are effectively electromagnetic despite their naming difference simply because of the radiation it absorbs. They would theoretically be made with metamaterial as a base instead of a silicon wafer, absorbing all the electromagnetic waves, which in turn would increase the kwh ratio from the standard 29% limited to silicon to - oh I don't know, let's say 80%. A good number close to a chloroplast's energy efficiency. Now with this in mind, the difference between a solar sail and a solar panel is that solar sails accept radiation at an angle better than head on allowing for much more accurate angling of diffusion for unabsorbed radiation, giving a wind through the sails effect. Despite popular belief of using solar radiation as a type of wind through metallic sails, that is really only done at a small scale. Were it used as the actual means of transport, said vehicle would need a stabilizer as a sailboat uses a keel in the water to stabilize itself against the wind.

As for Magnetic sails, the sails are actively magnetized, either attracting or diverting radiation. When the ship is getting from point A to point B, it can either accept radiation with a staggering 99% efficiency, thanks to things like a better metamaterial or bending nearby radiation to be absorbed that it otherwise wouldn't have. Now the real kicker for Magnetic sails would be its design. Since a magnetic sail can revert its magnetic field on a whim, it can also effectively use radiation like wind through a sail. However unlike wind through a sailboat's sail, the radiation is electromagnetic (duh) allowing a triple-sailed configuration on the mast to not only funnel radiation for momentum, but the magnetism would act as a stabilizer, disallowing the craft from simply being blown downwind.

Now as sails, these glorified solar panels would be able to change between being as flexible as cloth or rigid as carbon fiber and bend accordingly. Also, as sail efficiency increases, energy containment would need to become better as well. Sure there can be radiators that store heat, but then there's just too many systems that a craft can become too cumbersome just trying to convert energy between three or four different types. A giant battery isn't in the question as not only are they incredibly heavy, but they also have a lifespan and would undoubtedly be obsolete. So what's left? Not much really, but playing through XCOM: Enemy Within, there's a substance called Elerium. As described in the game, Elerium is an inert substance that when is 'bombarded by certain particles' releases antimatter. Of course, that would seem like an incredibly stupid thing to do with a solid substance - if that antimatter came in contact with the elerium, wouldn't it simply blow up? So for my own purposes for Celestium(Yes I'm still working on that) I came up with Kaladium.

Now, Kaladium is a synthetically created gas element that has nine electron shells that fell in line with an atomic stability pattern over the synthetic table of elements. However, Kaladium itself is nothing special except that it allowed physicists to experiment on the effects of hyper-ionization. Where an ion can be missing or contain a few extra electrons, hyper-ionization is where an atom with more than eight electron shells has between five or all of the electron shells missing. When studying these effects, it was discovered that the substance became highly volatile, and as a gas, easy to pressurize a container. As an ion, Kaladium becomes Kaladide. Kaladide, in all its unstable glory, can cause fission, fusion, and on occasion antimatter spontinuity. With the nuclei of each atom violently reacting to one another, a constant magnetic force is applied to it within a toroid to pacify clashing nuclei.

As radiation from the sails is gained, it's absorbed by the electrons of the Kaladide, raising their energy tier. As the electrons gain energy, they move faster and further from its nucleus in the next shell. Eventually when the ship is in the outer skirts of the solar system and needs power from storage, the system can absorb the vast amounts of high-intensity gamma being spewed out by the Kaladide electrons constantly trying to jump to a lower energy tier. This gamma can then be used in any number of ways. Its electromagnetic properties could be used to make electricity or the photons could be smashed to create antimatter (only on the largest ships) which would be used for fuel as ion or antimatter thrusters respectively.

While taking a shower I had an idea about costs of colonies:

You could make an arcology building that costs -500 and -100 per population. And then add some buildings that require Pop 6 or Pop 13 and bring in lots of gold. This could model the growing costs of a bigger colony and the long term gain you get from it.

That could be a good solution.