The thread for space cadets!

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm really hoping we send out a fleet of spacecraft to inspect it while we have the opportunity. Like a real-life Rendezvous With Rama.

We did it for Halley's Comet though of course they had years to prepare. However, during that pass, one very mischievious engineer hijacked a satellite and sent it to flyby the comet without approval. He did attempt to return the satellite to its original mission a couple of years ago (and decades after stealing it) but the engine wouldn't start up and it flew pass the Earth never to be seen again.

 

[uppi]

It is flying away awfully fast, though. I think the opportunity was already gone before it was actually discovered.

It might be better to improve the capabilities of our telescopes so that we detect the next one while it is still heading towards us. But even then, you would probably need a spacecraft ready to go after it.

 

[Takhisis]

I'm really hoping we send out a fleet of spacecraft

Regardless of the presence of rocks from outside the solar system, I'd suspect.

Once more I have a need to justify my technobabble. How versed are you on antimatter, Mr. hobbs?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Pretty versed, especially with respect to space applications.

 

[Takhisis]

Eh, I was simply juggling the idea of having a mad scientist invent a gun that uses antimatter for ammunition that explodes on contact. I assume some sort of isolating container/grenade could be used (note that this is complete fiction so incorporating technobabble/magic/what-not is completely feasible!).

(Remember that this all comes from my questionstoaskhobbs.txt file where half- or fully-unanswered questions have been accumulating for a year, so context might be lacking).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You could do this two ways-

The antimatter can be contained in a coherent beam of high intensity radiation (think a hollow tube of laser light with an antimatter filling) that pushes air out of the way of the antimatter beam and maintains a a tight waveguide that the antimatter travels down. A side effect of this method would be intense ionizing radiation (the kind in fallout) all along the beam path and radiating outward from the point of impact.

The second way would be to shoot tiny magnetic bottles as bullets. These magnetic bottles contain and isolate the antimatter and then on impact, explode in such a manner as to force the antimatter out as a jet. This way the antimatter hits the target and annihilates instead of hitting the bottle fragments and annihilating. This method would only release radiation on impact, unlike the laser.

Both methods would use vanishingly small amounts of antimatter and would each require tremendous amounts of power to be usable. They are both also impossible but can be made believable with sufficient technobabble.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Antimatter is the holy Grail of rocketry due to the insane amounts of energy you could get out of such a system. The problem is that it takes even more energy to make the antimatter than you get out of it (by several orders of magnitude) and it is impossible to contain in quantity.

The last I read they are able to create and store such small quantities of anti-hydrogen that they cannot even test if it obeys the normal laws of gravity.

 

[Takhisis]

Regarding impossibility, there's already a system of inter-planetary gates which mean that in effect you become a tachyon (you can move between gates in a few seconds or less and arrive a good many years before your image does). Which is impossible in the Real Life setting we're playing in, isn't it?

But those work on rules and the energy restraints would make the weapon prohibitively expensive (it would have worked as your second option, magnetic fields containing explosives). For that cost it would simply be easier and cheaper to issue a thousand people with shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have no issues with impossible technologies, mind you. I just didn't want to give the impression these things could be made.

I had the same thought about the energy use - it would make much more sense to just have a large quantity of lesser weapons. I didn't say anything though because I didn't want to discourage you. You certainly could go with an antimatter gun as a stylistic choice. There's nothing wrong with that but that's the authors call as to wether or not it fits the story.

Yes tachyons Stargates are impossible. Do you have a system for the tacyons to be converted back to regular matter? How does it work?


Star Trek teleporters would be awesome and as long as they don't violate light speed (and they didn't until Wrath of Khan '12). I don't think they would be impossible, just impracitcal like antimatter guns.

Oh if you wanted to out an antimatter cannon on a large starship, that is much more plausible than a handgun.

 

[Takhisis]

Yes tachyons Stargates are impossible. Do you have a system for the tacyons to be converted back to regular matter? How does it work?

Magic. And it's not all fireballs and hippogriffs. E.g. chemistry and alchemy are distinct albeit related sciences. The object being transported (imagine, for the sake of brevity, something like Roland Emmerich's Stargates) will not actually experience a change in state. It's more as if you had a magic-powered wormhole anchored between two specific points each on a planet.

Oh if you wanted to out an antimatter cannon on a large starship, that is much more plausible than a handgun.

Yes, but actually nobody bothers to build a starship, not only because technologically they aren't there yet, but also because there's no profit in it when you can use a spell and move to a planet 100 light-years away in a few seconds.

Having little to no space-faring meant that I had to work out how to make a sort-of-Internet and telephones work without satellites, mind you. Given that our RL system depends on huge undersea cables anyway it's not that hard to extend the concept.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I thought of a way to make a plausible antimatter gun. You could make the bottles tap of a tiny portion of the antimatter, let it reaction with a bit of matter and use the waste heat to power the containment cycle.

This is similar to how open-cycle rocket engines work. They take a portion of the fuel and a portion of the oxidizer and burn them. They then take the energy that results and use it to power the pumps that make the whole rest of the engine work. Then they dump the exhaust overboard.

More advanced engines funnel that exhaust through a mini rocket nozzle with it's own gimbal and in this way they can have roll control over the rocket using vectored thrust from the turbine exhaust and the main engine itself. Yet more advanced engines dump the exhaust back into the main chamber and completely burn it, making it a more efficient cycle.

Then there are the smart lads over in New Zealand that use batteries to run the whole engine and all the pumps instead of tapping off gas and burning it. That's the most efficient cycle possible.

Yeah you're right about undersea cables replacing satellites. In addition to wired networks, you could build and all-wireless network without satellites. It won't be as robust as one with satellites but it would definitely work.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Blue Origin launched their third rocket and second capsule. They are gearing up for commercial service in late 2018/2019. I think they will end up beating Virgin Galactic to market despite a much later start. I really hope space tourism takes off.

Here is the rocket coming in for landing:

Spoiler :

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes tachyons Stargates are impossible. Do you have a system for the tacyons to be converted back to regular matter? How does it work?

Doesn't the math for a stable wormhole require "negative energy" to somehow exist? I remember reading about that, but best I can tell it might as well require magic or a jrpg macguffin. I remember in Wing Commander they had tachyon guns that allegedly worked by slowing tachyons down. Even as a kid I wondered why this weapon would then be more effective than the standard lasers, flak, or plasma-based weapons. Even accepting the premise of them, it struck me as a weird way to use them.

 

[uppi]

Antimatter is the holy Grail of rocketry due to the insane amounts of energy you could get out of such a system. The problem is that it takes even more energy to make the antimatter than you get out of it (by several orders of magnitude) and it is impossible to contain in quantity.

Currently it does require about 1 million times the energy to create antiprotons (which you need for stable, neutral antimatter), but that is because the process right now is rather crude. The technique right now is to smash atoms into a wall at high energy, which results in all kinds of stuff, including a tiny amount of antiprotons, which are then filtered out. Most of the energy goes into the production of all the other stuff, including other antiparticles. So if you could either find or create a resonance that enhances antiproton creation and/or suppresses creation of all the other stuff, the process could be quite efficient in theory. In practice we don't know how to do that, but efficient production of antimatter would be a much easier sell with technobabble than tachyons.

Also, impossible to contain is a strong statement. Again, there is no fundamental reason, why antihydorgen couldn't be stored in quantity. At the moment, the production is just way to small to try any of that.

The last I read they are able to create and store such small quantities of anti-hydrogen that they cannot even test if it obeys the normal laws of gravity.

Oh, they can test it. The results aren't just very good, yet - there are bounds on the gravitational interaction of antihydrogen, but these still include the possibility of them falling up instead of down.

 

[Cutlass]

In a recent scifi novel called Saturn Run an alien species uses long term automated systems to create anti-iron, apparently magnetic containment would work better that way. And the energy available in Saturn's rings could power the system. So while it may be extremely costly in energy to create it, the only 'cost' to the creators was in building and siting the system. After that it ran by itself without further input.

 

[JollyRoger]

The Trump moonshot thing is just a prelude to his ultimate goal . . . Uranus.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Doesn't the math for a stable wormhole require "negative energy" to somehow exist? I remember reading about that, but best I can tell it might as well require magic or a jrpg macguffin. I remember in Wing Commander they had tachyon guns that allegedly worked by slowing tachyons down. Even as a kid I wondered why this weapon would then be more effective than the standard lasers, flak, or plasma-based weapons. Even accepting the premise of them, it struck me as a weird way to use them.

Yes, it is my understanding that a wormhole would require negative energy and we have no way to create it except through the casimir effect (and @uppi correct me if I'm wrong) but at the moment we have no way to actually harness and use said energy of any practical quantity.

Currently it does require about 1 million times the energy to create antiprotons (which you need for stable, neutral antimatter), but that is because the process right now is rather crude. The technique right now is to smash atoms into a wall at high energy, which results in all kinds of stuff, including a tiny amount of antiprotons, which are then filtered out. Most of the energy goes into the production of all the other stuff, including other antiparticles. So if you could either find or create a resonance that enhances antiproton creation and/or suppresses creation of all the other stuff, the process could be quite efficient in theory. In practice we don't know how to do that, but efficient production of antimatter would be a much easier sell with technobabble than tachyons.

Also, impossible to contain is a strong statement. Again, there is no fundamental reason, why antihydorgen couldn't be stored in quantity. At the moment, the production is just way to small to try any of that.



Oh, they can test it. The results aren't just very good, yet - there are bounds on the gravitational interaction of antihydrogen, but these still include the possibility of them falling up instead of down.

Thank you for all the clarifications!

In a recent scifi novel called Saturn Run an alien species uses long term automated systems to create anti-iron, apparently magnetic containment would work better that way. And the energy available in Saturn's rings could power the system. So while it may be extremely costly in energy to create it, the only 'cost' to the creators was in building and siting the system. After that it ran by itself without further input.

I would think that putting something in Saturn's rings would be an awful risky endeavor. Why not just go to Jupiter which has a stronger gravitational force to be harnessed and much less debris? The radiation there is awful at some altitudes but still.

 

[Broken_Erika]

The Trump moonshot thing is just a prelude to his ultimate goal . . . Uranus.

So he wants to go home?
I suppose he would need to go there to report to the Emperor of Uranus that the most powerful country on Earth is under total control of Great Uranusian Empire...

 

[Takhisis]

Doesn't the math for a stable wormhole require "negative energy" to somehow exist? I remember reading about that, but best I can tell it might as well require magic or a jrpg macguffin.

Yes, I've already pointed out that it's a wormhole stabilised by magic.

My question to myself was that if they had magic powerful enough to generate anti-matter then why not just blast people altogether with it.

Yeah you're right about undersea cables replacing satellites. In addition to wired networks, you could build and all-wireless network without satellites. It won't be as robust as one with satellites but it would definitely work.

Yes, definitely. Actually I've worked that one out more or less (enough for the purposes of the story). Still, antimatter for one is out of my scope. I know what it is and how it reacts when encountering matter, but I don't have any idea of, say, the magnitudes involved.

In a recent scifi novel called Saturn Run an alien species uses long term automated systems to create anti-iron, apparently magnetic containment would work better that way. And the energy available in Saturn's rings could power the system. So while it may be extremely costly in energy to create it, the only 'cost' to the creators was in building and siting the system. After that it ran by itself without further input.

I would think that putting something in Saturn's rings would be an awful risky endeavor. Why not just go to Jupiter which has a stronger gravitational force to be harnessed and much less debris? The radiation there is awful at some altitudes but still.

But if you're harnessing a ring's energy won't it act as a sort of drag and eventually slow the rings' material enough that it cannot escape Saturn's gravity?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm kind of ignoring the material of the rings for energy uses. I do not see a practical way to get energy out of the boulders themselves, I only see them as an obstacle to avoid.

But being in the gravity well (where the rings are), would allow you to use elecrromagnetic tethers to generate huge energies from the planet's magnetosphere.

The space shuttle did this once and the tether generated so much current that it melted and snapped in half.