Semi-OT: A General Tech Question Thread for me :)

[Starhawk]

Howdy all it's me Starhawk with a question for all you techno nerds and nerdets I have a question for ya'll on Ship's Powerplants in Sci-Fi and WTF it all means.

Now the reason I ask this is because while writing up a tech sheat for my Icaran SuperDreadnought (just for kicks) I had it like this

main power plant generates 100 Terawatts

each turret micro reactor provides 2 Terawatts of firepower per cannon per shot (meaning a total of 6 Terawatts from each main turret per broadside)

Now in ST we hear Riker claim that the Enterprise D does not generate even ONE Terawatt of power and he is astonished to come across a Terawatt powersource.

Now here's where it get's tricky:
In Babylon Five's Tech guide a Narn G'Quan heavy cruiser (not the most advanced ship in B5) Generates 37,500 TERAWATTS!

Now given that Bab5 is considerably less advanced than anything in ST (Aside from First Ones and Minbari) how is this power measurement come across?

Also being that Icarans are much more advanced then any ST race (cept maybe the Pre Voy Borg) I figured a 100 Terawatt powersource for a ship 3 kilometers long that bristles with weapons and has null space shielding would be reasonable but am no longer sure of this.

Any of you guys able to answer what is a reasonable power generation ratio for a ship with energy weapons, shields and powerful drives? Especially considering I read somewhere that the Entire PLANET EARTH only generates a few hundred Terawatts at any given time.

[Renegade 13]

Essentially, since it is SF, you can say whatever the hell you want to say and no one can say you're wrong! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif That's the beauty of it. 100 Terawatts sounds good to me.

[Starhawk]

lol I was looking for a more "scientific" answer like just how much IS a Terawatt on the grand scale of things other then the obvious in "numbers of watts" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

A heck of a lot of juice, that's what. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[dogscoff]

Invent something, makes things much easier. In one of my sci-fi shorts (War feed four) one of the characters mentions a "4000 BlatterWatt Phased Polaron Array".

http://www.dogscoff.co.uk/fiction

[El_Phil]

As the old joke goes: Watt/what is a unit power? Not actually accurate or indeed that funny. Hey ho.

A watt is a joule a second and a joule is the work done when you apply a force of one newton over one meter. A newton is the force required to accelerate one kilogram at one meter per second every second. Hope all is clear. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif However all that doesn't really matter.

Usefully. A lightbulb is 100 watts, which is mostly heat only a tiny amount is light. Your PC will have a ~300 watt power supply, again mostly heat. Are you seeing a pattern emerging? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Heat disperation is a major factor, especially on energy weapons with thermal blossoming etc. That will sap alot of your power ~90% is not uncommon on lasers.

Other points: Riker is an idiot, so we can't trust anything he says. At all. The man is a goon. B5 ships are huge, as in several times bigger than your average Trek ship so would need more power being bigger.

A smallish nuclear attack sub will have a 200MW nuclear plant for all it's needs, crew of ohh 100 or so and about 90m long. Of course a sub doesn't have power weapons, shields or artifical gravity, but its as good a starting point as any.

US total generating capacity is about 850/900 GW installed. Use is around 3500 Terrawatt hours/year. So your ship will generate over a 100 times more power than the whole of the US, just to put in into context. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Finally one ton of TNT is 4.2 Gigajoules of energy, as it all comes out at one time joules is right. Now a gun can't be measure in watts unless its a continuous output gun. Eg a constant beam of 500 joules would be a 500watt gun. Fudging through it a 6TW turret might fire for a couple of seconds so for each second it fires it produces 6,000 gigajoules. Now if 90% is wasted as heat, etc. 600 GJ might hit the enemy. So that means each turret hits the enemy with a force of 142 tons of TNT.

The above is quick and nasty but, I think, fairly solid. However it's not alot in the grand scheme of things, I do recall someone working out that the trek quantum torpedo is around 128 MegaTons of TNT. That was off at, another place.. A place where people who need a new hobby and to see some sunlight post alot.

This is a long confused post so if any of it is rubbish or needs clarification please say so. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[NullAshton]

Power usage for the Enterprise D at a speed of Warp 9 is 1519 megajoules a second... Average. So, a megajoule a second would be a million watts. So the Enterprise D would use up about 1.5 gigawatts. Okay, another example of how Star Trek physics are screwed, right now one nuclear power plant has enough power to run the Enterprise D at warp 8...

[Starhawk]

WOW thanks for the help guys http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif As far as the "Lasers" they're not heat based weapons for Icara as they are not true Lasers I just didn't have a good name to throw in and didn't want anything like "atomic ray gun" lol I suppose an Icaran weapon would be more akin to a Fusion beam.

Anyway as some of you know I am planning on writing a book (after much practice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) and I think I'd like to get into some of the techno stuff in the book right away and maybe make a tech manual eh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



Question 2:

Okay so we all see on Star Trek and Bab 5 and yadda yadda that Artificial gravity is the ultimate sign of the advanced uber race well I have a question regarding this.

As we have seen in such things as Babylon 5 Earth Alliance and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident rotating sections is the poor mans way of getting gravity on a starship, so my question is this why if it is as simple as a rotating section does the US not crank out space ships with rotating sections?

[El_Phil]

'Laser' was an acronym. 'Light Amplified by the Systematic Excitation of Radiation.' given that visible light and IR are all part of the electro-magnetic spectrum it doesn't really matter what part of it, your going to get energy losses.

One question you should consider, what is a fusion beam? Ohh it turns up all over sci-fi, but what is it? A beam of particles undergoing fusion? It just sounds wrong, aside from being inherently impossible of course. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[El_Phil]

Starhawk said:
Question 2:

Okay so we all see on Star Trek and Bab 5 and yadda yadda that Artificial gravity is the ultimate sign of the advanced uber race well I have a question regarding this.

As we have seen in such things as Babylon 5 Earth Alliance and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident rotating sections is the poor mans way of getting gravity on a starship, so my question is this why if it is as simple as a rotating section does the US not crank out space ships with rotating sections?



What on earth do you want gravity for? It will massively increase the cost and complexity of said ship and remove the only reason for doing research in space, zero gravity. Other than that a space lab is just really expensive and not as good normal.

Seriously a rotating section on the shuttle, or the next version, would be horribly expensive and almost certainly decrease payload. You'd be chucking hundreds of tons of extra weight into space, just to make life a little easier for the shuttle crew. No real advantage and massive costs.

[Slick]

some SI prefixes:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Factor Name Symbol
10E24 yotta Y
10E21 zetta Z
10E18 exa E
10E15 peta P
10E12 tera T
10E9 giga G
10E6 mega M
10E3 kilo k
10E2 hecto h
10E1 deka da

10E-1 deci d
10E-2 centi c
10E-3 milli m
10E-6 micro µ
10E-9 nano n
10E-12 pico p
10E-15 femto f
10E-18 atto a
10E-21 zepto z
10E-24 yocto y
</pre><hr />

so to answer your question, a terawatt is 1000 gigawatts; or 1,000,000,000,000 watts (12 zeros).

edit: typo

[dogscoff]

Many of your questions (and many more) are answered a tthe excellent http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html - which basically looks at the physical limitations of engineering (as they are currently understood) and applies them to all the essential aspects of spacecraft design. It's an invaluable read for any aspiring scifi author who hopes to write with a degree of scientific credibility.

There is a section there headed "artificial gravity" that answers your latest question quote neatly, as well as frequent references to power requirements in the propulsion and weaponry sections.

[douglas]

Starhawk said:
Question 2:

Okay so we all see on Star Trek and Bab 5 and yadda yadda that Artificial gravity is the ultimate sign of the advanced uber race well I have a question regarding this.

As we have seen in such things as Babylon 5 Earth Alliance and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident rotating sections is the poor mans way of getting gravity on a starship, so my question is this why if it is as simple as a rotating section does the US not crank out space ships with rotating sections?


First, artificial gravity is only really useful for manned spacecraft, and the most important reason for sending people into space nowadays is so that they can perform experiments in zero g. Having the whole ship rotate would make those experiments possible only at the center of the ship, and having just a section of it rotate would cost extra. Also, and perhaps most important, the rotating section would have to be BIG in order to avoid seriously disorienting the astronauts. If you've ever been in a centrifuge and looked away from the center, you'll know what I mean. The human perception system does not handle that kind of rotation very well.


El_Phil said:
What on earth do you want gravity for? It will massively increase the cost and complexity of said ship and remove the only reason for doing research in space, zero gravity. Other than that a space lab is just really expensive and not as good normal.


Nothing except artificial gravity can prevent muscles from atrophying and bones from weakening during extended stays in space. Even with highly rigorous exercise regimens, astronauts that stay in space for months, or maybe even weeks, aren't even able to stand up on their own when they return to Earth. The whole human maintenance cycle evolved around the assumption of gravity always being present, and the human body has a distinct tendency to deteriorate in long term weightlessness.

[Slick]

As we have seen in such things as Babylon 5 Earth Alliance and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident rotating sections is the poor mans way of getting gravity on a starship, so my question is this why if it is as simple as a rotating section does the US not crank out space ships with rotating sections?



Not entirely sure but here are some reasons I can imagine:

- the "zero g" environment is preferred for lots of things:
-- some experiments are specifically designed for zero g. Yes, you could place them at the exact center of the craft, but true zero g only exists at a point.
-- making the robotic arms and mechanical things requires much less power/strength. If there were centripital forces needed to be overcome, in practical terms, this means more weight=more money=less payload for other things.
-- reorienting the ship/craft takes less thrust. To overcome gyroscopic forces created by rotation requires more fuel =costlier, less payload, etc.

- the "gravity" will decrease to zero at the center; making it somewhat cumbersome to manage placement of things. (see 2001: Space Odessy for a pretty realistic portrayal)

- in order to simulate earthlike gravity, either the rotational speed or the radius must be increased. But in general the size of the ship/station would need to be larger to make "gravity" somewhat uniform; =costlier, etc.



Perhaps if humans were to undertake a long space journey there would be another solution to simulate artificial gravity. Picture this: A large spacecraft with a huge funnel "scoop" in the front. The scoop would catch residual hydrogen to use as fuel and accelerate at 1g toward the destination. This way the crew lives under 1g all the time. At the halfway point, the crew section and the engine (not the scoop) is rotated 180 degrees and the ship is decelerated at 1 g for the remaining half of the trip. The crew still sees 1g toward their feet during the second half of the trip. I just thought of this, so there are probably a million things that make this just as impractical. (edit: like exceeding the speed of light in a short time...)

[douglas]

Slick said:
Perhaps if humans were to undertake a long space journey there would be another solution to simulate artificial gravity. Picture this: A large spacecraft with a huge funnel "scoop" in the front. The scoop would catch residual hydrogen to use as fuel and accelerate at 1g toward the destination. This way the crew lives under 1g all the time. At the halfway point, the crew section and the engine (not the scoop) is rotated 180 degrees and the ship is decelerated at 1 g for the remaining half of the trip. The crew still sees 1g toward their feet during the second half of the trip. I just thought of this, so there are probably a million things that make this just as impractical. (edit: like exceeding the speed of light in a short time...)


Constant acceleration at 1 g is the perfect solution - if you can find enough fuel. Trying this over any significant distance (astronomically speaking) would require a truly colossal amount of fuel if you carry it all with you, and your collection array would have to be incredibly large to gather enough on the way. Interstellar matter density is typically on the order of 1 atom per cubic meter IIRC.

[Suicide Junkie]

Slick said:
(edit: like exceeding the speed of light in a short time...)

Not to worry, though.

Relativistic time dilation and length contraction will ensure you reach your destination (regardless of if it's a finite distance or not) before that happens.

[Slick]

Crunched a few numbers:

At 1g, you could accelerate for 353.8 days and still not reach the speed of light (barely).

During that time, you would travel 2.85 E12 miles (yes, Starhawk, that's teramiles http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif )

So if you would start decelerating at 1g at the halfway point, you could travel ~5.7 E12 miles (just under 1 light-year) in 2 years.

[Renegade 13]

Not bad at all.

[Starhawk]

Hey thanks for that link I've always been a fan of space ships and the like (as you can probobly tell lol) so that web site will probobly keep me entertained for hours http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

One reason I've asked some of these questions is because the first book of the Icaran series (hopefully I can write a series http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I have a plan for 3 books) would cover their earliest days of space travel within the Sol system and I was considering ships with rotating sections toward the aft section of the ship for the sleeping quarters and the like while the duty stations were all in zero g.

I've also heard people saying that within my lifetime we'll probobly see the earliest stages of Space based colonization and therefore military expansion (early infantry security forces and primitive space warships) from the Super Powers, I don't know if this is at all true but it could be very interesting (and probobly somewhat scary) to see it come true.

[Hunpecked]

Slick writes: "At 1g, you could accelerate for 353.8 days and still not reach the speed of light (barely)."

In a Newtonian universe, yes. In our relativistic universe, however, the ship's speed can asymptotically approach c, the speed of light, but never reach it. Meanwhile the ship's mass increases, its length decreases, and time slows down for the ship and its crew. For an entertaining look at relativistic space travel I recommend Poul Anderson's 1970 novel "Tau Zero".

[El_Phil]

You will never see infantry in space, not even super shiny mechanised space marines 'o' doom. Planets are very easy to slag with just kinetic weapons making invasions a waste of everyones time. You'd have to kill every weapon system capable of shooting down a shuttle/drop pod/etc before a landing. Once you've done that why not just take out the land forces from orbit? Or just say 'Give in or we kill you.'

Ship boarding is equally pointless, by the time you've supressed the enemy ship enough to board it, you can just threaten it into giving up. Plus it's probably a flaming (as the internal oxygen burns up) wreck from end to end and so not worth boarding and easier just to analyse the wreckage.

Kinetic energy weapons, although not dramatic and so on, are the way forward. 1/2 mass x velocity2 produces ridiculous energy very quickly thanks to that squared. Rail Guns are the way forward!

[Starhawk]

LOL El-Phil that sounds like the theory people used when we first got the A bomb and some goons in the senate wanted to disolve the army and navy because "Hey we can always just nuke em"

If you think about it you will always need a ground pounder because yeah you can just destroy the colony outright but then what was the point of even fighting for it? Land, population and money would be against the whole "Just glass it and recolonize it" theory.

[Renegade 13]

Isn't there currently an international treaty forbidding the militarization of space?

In either case, you can bet that wouldn't stop any nation that wanted to do it!

[Slick]

Hunpecked said:
Slick writes: "At 1g, you could accelerate for 353.8 days and still not reach the speed of light (barely)."

In a Newtonian universe, yes. In our relativistic universe, however, the ship's speed can asymptotically approach c, the speed of light, but never reach it. Meanwhile the ship's mass increases, its length decreases, and time slows down for the ship and its crew. For an entertaining look at relativistic space travel I recommend Poul Anderson's 1970 novel "Tau Zero".



Yes, I learned the same equations in college decades ago. I never mentioned that it would be practical, just that it would be possible - and speed is not the only relativistic limit approached at c. I just posted that as an interesting tidbit because when I calculated it, I found it a little astonishing that you could accelerate for almost a year at 1g and not exceed the speed of light. Therefore it would work in a Newtonian or relativistic universe, but be practical in neither.


As far as "entertaining" space travel, I like the "infinite improbability drive" in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[El_Phil]

Starhawk said:
LOL El-Phil that sounds like the theory people used when we first got the A bomb and some goons in the senate wanted to disolve the army and navy because "Hey we can always just nuke em"

If you think about it you will always need a ground pounder because yeah you can just destroy the colony outright but then what was the point of even fighting for it? Land, population and money would be against the whole "Just glass it and recolonize it" theory.



Not glassing, just slagging any millitary unit from orbit. If you control space you will control the airspace, then just scale up any air superiority doctrine. Now crowd control and whatever you will need, but that is a police job, not a millitary job.

I seriously can't see any role for a ground force in space. They wont be fighting any organised millitary force, that can easily be taken out from space/air. Hell we've seen what modern air power can do, now imagine that but massively scaled up. Any organised land force is just a selection of targets to space based weapons.

So your not fighting enemy forces on the planet, what do these troops do? Put down any opposition on the planet perhaps. No. Against irregular forces your best weapons are political, getting the planet not to oppose you in the first place. If the majority of a population want you out you will lose, no millitary force can change that without getting very bloody hands and doing some unpleasent things. Even then that just gets the population to fear and hate you. Yes they stop, but only until they can build up strength to hit you again.

Besides such things are so far in the future with such totally different tech and physics it's impossible to predict. Hell its worse than that, there's a whole extra dimension. Space and orbiting weapons change things more than airpower and we've barely scratched the surface of possibilities. Try getting Henry V to predict how the Gulf War would be fought is probably a good parallel. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Renegade 13]

Ah, but what do you do when the regular military forces are stationed in the cities with millions of civilians? Doesn't sound like you could take them out from orbit without frying a few hundred thousand civilians at the same time...which would cause the already mentioned political unrest and turn all the population against you. Which, as you pointed out, would mean you've lost the planet.

[El_Phil]

So they're hiding among civilians. What are ground troops going to be able to do about that? Other than wade in and take horrendous casualites and hit lots of civilians as well.

If you can't identify what is a civy target and what's millitary using sensors, satellites and UAVs what magic device do men on the ground have? And don't say eyeballs, just have a man watching the output of your sats and UAVs for the same effect, but at a fraction of the tonnage.

[Arkcon]

Regarding spinning to generate gravity, a group of engineers have written a website over {here}. (http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/armageddon.html) They pretty much rip on bad physics in general, and the link above is to the movie Armageddon, where they spin-up Mir to make Bruce Willis feel more at home.

[Renegade 13]

Hey, I love Armageddon! I didn't want to know it's physics were totally screwed! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif Even though it was obvious...

[Starhawk]

Armageddon sucked something serious man http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif and yeah the phyisics were obviously totally screwed not to mention the question of how they got two shuttles designed specifically to take out a meteor they only discovered what a week prior? As far as I recall the current rather unsophisticated shuttles we have today (in comparison to those ones) took months to build lol.

Oh and to El-Phil as far as urban warfare goes if modern US and British level forces are any indication a decently trained army would do rather well without taking all that many losses in comparison to those they inflict on their enemies. And air power HELPS win wars it doesn't win them all by it's self as Clinton proved by randomly attacking various countries during his administration with missiles and fighters lol...now assuming that a soldier of the future will have even more advanced body armor then what we have to day odds are it would be a rather interesting ground battle lol

[Kamog]

Wow, I thought that it's surprising that it would take so long to approach the speed of light accelerating at 1 g, so I tried the math and you're right! I guess light is really really fast!

speed of light in vacuum, c = 299792458 m/s
acceleration of gravity = 9.81 m/s (approx)

# of seconds needed to accelerate from 0 to c:
299792458 m/s
/9.81 = 30559884 sec
/60 = 509331 min
/60 = 8488 hours
/24 = 253.7 days


Armageddon wasn't a bad movie, it was pretty good. Also, beautiful Liv Tyler was in it! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Slick]

Thanks for backing up my calcs, Kamog. Here's a real geeky approximation an old physics prof told me 20+ years ago and somehow I still remember it:

a pretty good approximation of the number of seconds in a year = pi x 10E7

I use this for "quick &amp; dirty" approximations. Frequently the pi cancels out with something else and people wonder how I can do that kind of math in my head.

I don't know why I remember that one and still use it till today even though it makes no real sense that pi has anything to do with units of time, but it just works out that way and somehow my brain finds it easy to remember those kinds of silly numbers.

[dogscoff]

The infantry vs orbital bombardment debate reminds me of a very interesting article written by Iain M Banks about his Culture novels.

Here an extract:


The thought processes of a tribe, a clan, a country or a nation-state are essentially two-dimensional, and the nature of their power depends on the same flatness. Territory is all-important; resources, living-space, lines of communication; all are determined by the nature of the plane (that the plane is in fact a sphere is irrelevant here); that surface, and the fact the species concerned are bound to it during their evolution, determines the mind-set of a ground-living species. The mind-set of an aquatic or avian species is, of course, rather different.

Essentially, the contention is that our currently dominant power systems cannot long survive in space;




And here's the URL: http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm

[El_Phil]

Starhawk said:
Oh and to El-Phil as far as urban warfare goes if modern US and British level forces are any indication a decently trained army would do rather well without taking all that many losses in comparison to those they inflict on their enemies. And air power HELPS win wars it doesn't win them all by it's self as Clinton proved by randomly attacking various countries during his administration with missiles and fighters lol...now assuming that a soldier of the future will have even more advanced body armor then what we have to day odds are it would be a rather interesting ground battle lol



Why a ground battle? You still haven't explained this. You've got constant total surveillance of the planet, you can project power to any point very quickly. Why drag several thousand men through space to a planet at a fairly high cost when they provide no big leverage?

Yes body armour will probably get better. So will the weapons, there is no unstoppable weapon or unbeatable defence (or not for long anyway. ABM shields and alike could have been developed earlier but were banned.)

Urban warfare against civilians mixed in with insurgents is bloody, I think the couple of thousand dead US soldiers would agree. And that's one part of one country, luckily the far north (Kurds) and south (British knowing what their doing and not shooting eveybody) are fairly quiet.

It also comes down to why you want to conqueror said colony I think. Again why? Realisticaly any space yard/refueling base(if such things ever exist)/etc will be orbital to avoid wasting fuel on going in/out of the planets gravity well. If it's a levy of materials you want, diplomats backed by the big guns of the fleet do it better.

Various scenarios :
1. Conventional millitary force: Take 'em out from space
2. Insurgents in citys: Going to be messy using troops and it wouldn't work anyway. The only way to win anyway is a political solution, no country has ever put down an insurrection with out popular support. So offer the population a good deal, isolate the extremists and sit safe in your orbital base losing no people. If the entire population is up in arms against you, you can't bring enought troops to supress a planet. If it's only a small minority then the planet's security forces can take care of it.
3. Hidden conventional force: Wait for them to move, then blast 'em from space. Assuming your ground penetrating radars, IR, etc equipped UAVs can't sniff out their hiding places.

A root my question is: What unique ability do grunts bring that you can't do better with unmanned equipment? I just can't see the reason to massively enlarge your fleet with troop ships, extra logistics, more food, oxy, etc for minimal gain of capability. What's the big advantage?

[Hunpecked]

"Armageddon" set out to prove that Hollywood could make an even stupider save-the-earth movie than "Deep Impact". Unfortunately, it succeeded.

They should have just shot a two-hour video of Liv Tyler. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[El_Phil]

They were out around the same time weren't they? At least in these parts. Hence the advice, you wanted the first half of Armageddon for Mr Willis firing golf balls at Greenpeace, then walk out to miss the awful ending. You then walk into Deep Impact halfway through to catch the special effects at the end.

[Hunpecked]

Yes, one of those Hollywood bandwagon things. As I recall, it happened again with "Mission to Mars" and "Red Planet" (don't get me started!). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Starhawk]

Okay El-Phil first off US Casualties are not "A Couple thousand" it's just over 1,000 in a period of what threee YEARS? Compare that to the several THOUSAND terrorist casualties and your talking about a good ratio.

US Military has unfortunately killed some civilians (AS HAVE THE BRITISH) they have hardly "Shot everything" and for the most part civilian loses are inflicted by the Terrorists. The only reason British forces aren't having as many problems is also the fact that they are ocupying the less resistant parts of the country (go figure eh)

People die in war, civilians die in war and that's the way it will be forever no matter what and Urban warfare even with casualties is markedly better then simply dropping weapons from orbit and killing anything that even TRIED to show resistance.

The point of warfare is not usually the extermination of the entire enemy populace or even mass casualty infliction because the fact is your idea of simply taking any formation out from space would be even more "politically FUBAR" than sending in ground troops who yes may kill some civilians but will have a better idea of what they are actually shooting at.

I mean for all oyu know your orbital strike would be taking out a massive cluster of refugees with a military escort?

The problem is Air Power (OR Space power) probobly will never win wars because politics simply is not the answer to everything you know, as Starship Troopers (the book) pointed out, for every group that wants to solve something with politics another group will want to solve it with military force and usually the political element loses because they're too busy trying to talk.


Think about it this way El-Phil if say another country had a warship over your city would you just go "Aw what the hell I'll switch sides" Just because they ask you too? NO you probobly wouldn't because you didn't want to be part of that country in the first place and say you've got people in your city that want to fight back (even assuming you rolled over) now do you want that warship turning your city to slag just to get that handful of folks that wanted to fight back? Troops on the ground would provide them the option of going in without having to massacre the entire city and yeah ground losses would probobly be heavy on both sides but probobly a lot better then simply bombing everything from orbit.


Now lets go into another reason ground troops are far better than simply bombing the hell out of your target, they can think for themselves they know who and what to shoot at and are a lot less likely to cause an accidental bloodbath than a guy aboard a ship who just spots a mass of people and decides to open fire on them.

Troops are population control, just because you put a ship in orbit and maybe they go "Okay we'll join you" the second you leave they'll probobly snicker and go back to serving their own country and your little police force will get slaughtered.

A garrison of heavily armed soldiers will definately make any resisters think more about the military power that first took them over to begin with and will probobly make them feel a litte more wary then a few cops.


Also your not thinking about the fact that we in the modern day could effectively do what you suggest (Just sit there with a fleet and take out any formations you see) but it's not an effective way to fight a war because yeah you've got ships there HELL we have nukes that could level an entire country and yet people still resist.

WAR is the failure of politics your looking at it too much like "Oh talk solves everything" it doesn't so odds are anyone who wanted to fight you in the first place won't simply roll over and pout because your politico's are sitting up in orbit with a fleet.

Also planetary weapons batteries may be in place and your getting warships into range of their weapons could get your fleet destroyed so launching a few hundred troop shuttles may get a few of them destroyed and a lot of ground troops killed but once those troops hit the ground they could proceed to take out the weapon platforms OR even keep them intact for your own forces to use after the planet falls.

To bring my little rant to a conclusion, GROUND TROOPS unlike a space bombardment CAN take out a target in the middle of a city with minimal civilian losses while firing ANY Weapon from orbit that's not the size of a pea would probobly level a city block and ruin your little "Let's talk" idea right there.

Add this little quote to that for another example of what ground troops can do that air or space power may not:

During the first Iraq war an Iraqi soldier told a US Soldier he gave up to that when the air force bombed them "We lost a few men and a couple of tanks, but when your ground forces came in we lost the entire brigade in a single afternoon."

Basically you can HIDE From air or space power or do things to make it so they can't simply drop stuff on you, you can't hide as easily from a ground force intending to hunt you down and kill you.

[El_Phil]

OK the US has lost under 2000 soldiers since the campaign started for starters
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4132058.stm

Given that in both the north and the south the coalition was welcomed, why has everyone in Baghdad start shooting while Basra stays quiet? Could be the difference between troops in berets patroling and men in tanks threatening anybody who looks shifty? I think it might you know.

Right I never said slag the place. I said 'selectively target' Clearly you've never heard of precision bombing. You know when the US can amazingly accurately hit Chinese embassys because they mis-read street maps. Now I'd say it's reasonable that sensors will get better, they aren't going to get any worse that's for sure. So you can just take out the target in the middle of the city, without risking any of your men.

Ah silly me. You can't ever hide from ground troops, no ground troops have ever been ambushed or surpised! Hush my mouth I keep forgeting the amazing stealth defeating abilities of human eyeballs. If your hiding stuff, it's harder to hide from radar and decent sensors than an eyeball.

For evey Iraqi who said that you can't find dozens who said 'Most of our unit was killed by B-52s we never even saw.' because they all died or ran away to avoid capture.

Finally name a time when anyone has taken down a rebellion when the majority of the population supports it? Ever.
That's why you have to talk. It's a simple fact. Sending in ground troops just gets them killed and the population still don't like you, in fact probably like you less.

Unless the majority is on your side you will spend the rest of time fighting a losing guerilla war until it's not worth your time or blood. Bear in mind this is just 'I don't want to be ruled by country x' not 'Species x'. If you can offer a decent deal 'We leave you alone just give us the same amount of ore (maybe less to sweeten the deal) you gave the old goverment and we'll just stay in orbit and leave you alone.'

You try an opposed landing against a population that doesn't want you there... **cough** Vietnam in space **cough**

[Taera]

If you have the 3d model of that ship you can make a 3d detailed schematic. I did something similar once, heres an idea for you:

[Starhawk]

Hey El-Phil congratulations for crossing from civilized discussion into snide *** rather foolish and obvious political crap that you started the last time I brought up a discussion that had nothing to do with the overall war in Iraq and this time I will not rise to your attitude that US soldiers are some how inferior to your "gods almighty" royal army buddies and btw this is my last reply to you on that subject at all as you are obviously sure yours is the only possible solution to anything in the world I'll let you keep on wrongly thinking that. The British have made plenty of stupid mistakes and I won't start debating something like that since you are either too immature or too arrogant to look at anything other then the way you want to see it.

And what I was referring to is that your "precious all seeing sensors" will probobly never exist as there is always something to counter it you'll need troops on the ground for that sort of thing because yeah they might be ambushed but they'll be a lot more capable of fighting back then simply blasting to bits a whole forest to get one squad that might be hiding from your sensors.

Oh and "Hush my mouth" Radar doesn't detect organics very well......(rolleyes)

You want a "clean bloodless" war for whoever is attacking that ain't gonna happen no matter what you do.

BTW Vietnam was a political FUBAR on many levels the US had it's hands tied and if it hadn't things probobly would have turned out much differently as they would ahve been able to pursue into Louse and Cambodia and kick the hell out of the viet kong there it had nothing to do with "Landing against opposition" we were opposed in WWII and won and many other invasions have won look at the formation of Rome, France, Spain, your beloved little Brits all of whom forged empires on the Blood of people they invaded and conquered who didn't exactly want them there, it was thanks to internal fighting and or streign of wars only that those Empires broke up.

Hmmm Taera that's a great idea http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif that would definately be more detailed and look impressive plus it would help me get some better ideas on it for the books so I don't do the typical Trek technobabble where one thing can work this week and suddenly be totally different the next (Transporter ranges anyone? phaser abilities eh lol)

[Renegade 13]

Alright, I've only just read the first couple sentences of the last few posts, but I'd suggest taking a little time off from this particular discussion, and perhaps getting the thread back onto it's original heading??

[Will]

Indeed. Starhawk, you should edit out some of the stuff in your last post, or else a moderator will probably be forced to lock this thread. Looking over the discussion, Iraq didn't come into the discussion until you (meaning, Starhawk) brought up Clinton to bring the discussion into recent/current politics. El_Phil didn't have to throw in the current analogy for orbital invasion of an unwilling population, but you need to realize that it was _you_ who opened that door, not him bringing it into an "unrelated discussion".

[dogscoff]

Agree with Will.

To address the style of this quote from Starhawk rather than the content:


Hey El-Phil congratulations for crossing from civilized discussion into snide *** rather foolish and obvious political crap that you started the last time I brought up a discussion that had nothing to do with the overall war in Iraq and this time I will not rise to your attitude that US soldiers are some how inferior to your "gods almighty" royal army buddies and btw this is my last reply to you on that subject at all as you are obviously sure yours is the only possible solution to anything in the world I'll let you keep on wrongly thinking that.




If you're going to write a novel, you're going to need to more full stops. Here, have some of mine........................

[El_Phil]

Well as I appear to have touched a nerve I will apologise. That was a somewhat baiting post, which I probably shouldn't of phrased it a bit better. You live and learn.

What I will say is this, anything like this is so far in the future it is beyond anyones ability to predict or even guess at. Well you can guess but you'll probably be wrong. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[NullAshton]

You people change topics too fast.

[El_Phil]

Change is good, stops things festering. Like yoghurt.

[Starhawk]

Yeah yeah I know doggie http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif, I am working on my writing already I just got a little ticked and unfortunately when I do that I type as well as I talk http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Eh no Problem El-Phil you are right about the fact that it's probobly so far in the future none of us will ever be right about what will be there.

[El_Phil]

A little.. Jesus or a tricycle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif
Remind to steer clear if you ever get very ticked. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Hunpecked]

Starhawk writes: "you are right about the fact that it's probobly so far in the future none of us will ever be right about what will be there."

Actually it COULD be happening right NOW just a few light years away. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Seriously, though, given the uncertainties of future technology it's probably better to confine ourselves to the fictional Space Empires game "universe"; those of us who enjoy using troops can try to rationalize the use of ground forces (actually air/land/sea forces) in that limited context.

Off the top of my head I can think of two possibilities to start:

1) Suppose most of the planetary population would rather be "red than dead", but government and/or military officials insist on "death before dishonor" (as, for example, the Nazis and Japan's military at the end of the Second World War). Suppose further that it's impossible to take out all the die-hards from orbit without taking most of the planet along with them, but ground troops can accomplish the mission.

2) Suppose that, for whatever reason, domestic politics requires a sincere attempt to minimize "collateral" casualties, as for example with the US in Iraq, 2005 (as opposed to Japan, 1945). If SE IV sensor/weapons technology makes space-based pacification excessively bloody, then politics, rather than military considerations, may dictate the use of ground troops instead. Obviously this isn't in the game itself, but players can role-play, and fiction based on game events can include it.

Game-based fiction can also include interstellar politics, e.g. neutral empires that would likely join the enemy out of fear if the player glasses too many worlds. A writer may also use a low-casualty policy to explain the relative ease of winning the loyalty of captured populations in the game: suppose the Terrans, for example, capture Pyrochette worlds with troops, but the Pyrochette AI nukes its own (former) people just to nail a few occupying Terrans. That might not convince every Pyrochette to love the Terrans, but it might produce enough Quislings to make planetary occupations a lot easier.

[Renegade 13]

Starhawk said:
Yeah yeah I know doggie http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif, I am working on my writing already I just got a little ticked and unfortunately when I do that I type as well as I talk http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



If you ever need someone to proof read (and add appropriate punctuation where necessary), just let me know and I'd be happy to do so.

[Starhawk]

LOL thanks Renegade......I think http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

Anyway I sort of explain the use of ground troops in my story as a sort of "WE always have and always will" mentality on the part of the Icarans because afterall sometimes the way you fight wars can become just as much of a "tradition" as your music and other cultural tidbits.

Also given Icaran weapons not being uh "precise" enough you don't really want an SD firing it's guns in "surface support" because you'd likely blow a LOT of stuff up that you didn't want to. (not that their sensors are bad it's just they don't have the mega adjustable phasers of ST)

Yet another good reason they deploy troops is because on a domed colony you can't really take out targets on the ground without killing everyone off.

[kerensky]

to help with the orbital bombardment debat, I thing taht you should all go here (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20010910.html)

[El_Phil]

I was going to suggest url=http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20040308.html]This[/url] as decent on ships drives and silly accel, and why you need compensation.

Then I realised that the entire Schlock archives is so great that you should just read all of it.

[kerensky]

I'm currently trying to read the entire archive and have covered nearly a year snd a half in three days. Only three more years worth of archives to go!!!

[Starhawk]

Howdy folks new Tech questions:

Question 1: "Fusion Beam-AKA I-Laser" okay I was wondering if it is possible for an energy weapon to basically be so powerful that when it comes in contact with a physical material it is able to create an unstable fusion reaction (i.e a small fusion explosion).

Question 2: Okay so I know my shields are a little bizarre (I.e subspace wrapped around a ship) So how about this, a multi-layer shield system:

Layer one will be a "kinetic bubble" that pretty much uses the (gravity focusing generator) GFG to create a gravity field around the ship much like it does when it enters a warp point, except that this gravity field in normal space serves to slow down the incoming bullets to the point where they are no longer effective.

Layer two would consist of an energy field that renders what last kinetic force generated by the impact of a slug useless and provides protection against incoming energy fire.

Layer three is simple "rad shielding" to protect the ship from the high amounts of radiation that would no doubt be generated by space combat and energy weapons.



Okay now thanks to the nature of the energy shield when the energy of weapons and the shield collides you get a rather big "light show" basically as the two energies mix you get the occasional burn through that sends an errant strand of energy into the ships' hull causing damage.

[Slick]

Are you asking if theses would work in real life or for a fictional stroy?

For fiction, anything goes of course.

For real life (sorry to be so negative):

Q1: Unfortunately not. Most elements won't fuse to begin with [only those lighter than Fe are even possible], and adding lots of energy tends to make things fly apart whereas fusion requires containment with high temperatures and pressures. So, in short, no.

Q2a: We haven't the foggiest idea on how to manipulate gravity other than moving giant masses around so a gravity field generator is fictional.

Q2b: "Energy" field? Energy is a concept, not a physical thing in itself. It is a quantity which in essence means "the capacity to do work", and since it is not it is not a physical thing, it is meaningless to form it into a shield.

Q3c: This one is the closest to something that we could do. Some "rad" [radiation] is comprised of charged particles and thus can be shielded by a strong magnetic field. The earth is protected from nearly 100% of all cosmic radiation of this type by its magnetic field. There are uncharged kinds of radiation which would be unaffected by a magnetic field. Gamma (or any electro-magnetic) rays, neutrons, neutrinos, are some and there are many more examples. For most of these, some solid shield is required. Neutrinos, for example, are so penetrating that they could penetrate a light-year of lead; but on the positive side, they go right through you and your ship and cause no damage.

Now, of course the argument could be made that right now our understanding of physics is too rudimentary to perform these things and one day in the future we will be able do all these and more. If that's the approach you wanna take, then it falls back on fiction until we actually do figure it out.

As Jean Luc Picard once said: "Things are only impossible until they are not."

Personally, I'd prefer to read a fictional version which is made believable by providing some, but not exacting, detail such that the reader assumes it works by some not-yet-understood-to-earthlings technology. Just enough detail should be used so as to make the reader believe it is more than PFM. Most of the better SciFi writers approach future technology this way. I'd like to read the finished product.

PFM = trade language meaning "Pure F****** Magic"

edit: can you say a-b-c???

[Starhawk]

So a high energy say Graser would more or less tear something apart on contact on a nearly molecular level right? OR would it just cause a massive explosive reaction?

Because I was thinking since I have never really described the I-laser in my stories I could either make it just that a HIGH level laser with nearly 0 energy loss, I could make it a graser or something similar, or I could just make it a highly charged AP stream http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Q2a: Well this is assuming a race that knows how to manipulate gravity fields, in fact their FTL travel relies entirely on the field of gravity manipulation as they require a gravity field around the ship when it enters the warp (else wise nasty things happen to the crew), so I was thinking since their ships use GFGs in that sense they may as well generate a grav field around the ship to protect them in combat.

Q2b: I was actually thinking something along the lines of of an Electromagnetic shield or something like a force field except on a larger scale.

Another possibility is something similar to a shield I read about once where the shield "generators" basically used the energy of incoming fire to "recharge" the shield up to a point where it overloaded the unfortunate side effects of this shield system however was that when the shield "failed" it imploded, crushing the ship it's self.

Q2c: Thanks I was figuring a strong Magnetic field to prevent the radiation from killing the crew and at the same time explaining it within reason.


I generally hate PFM tech like "transporters" and "replicators" and a myriad other Star Trek tech (don't even get me started on Lightsabers) because I want to make a tech base that is obviously far more advanced then anything we could understand and build yet not so far out people think "bull crap" the second they read it.

[Slick]

Yeah, I really think the trick is in making it believable to the usually well educated SciFi reader without giving away too much detail that would let the reader realize that it wouldn't work, or would conflict with something else. This is harder than it seems at first. I would think the author should work out "the way things work" conceptually in the universe of his story before writing so that there is a consitency throughout as well as allowing future sequels/installments to pick up the story without having to reinvent all the technology. The story should focus on being a "good story" over the fancy techs. George Lucas once said that essentially if the story isn't good, it won't be saved by special effects. This is probably even more true in written stories over movies.

[Starhawk]

Well realistically are Anti-Proton stream weapons even possible according to physics?

The shields are easy enough to explain since I think I'll just stick to calling them "void shields" and just describe the multi-layered system that it functions on while not necessarily giving away all the hows and whys.

[Slick]

Anti-protons exist. Containing them is very difficult, but again, possible. And since they are charged, they could be accelerated into a beam pretty easily once you solve the containment problem, so yes, they are possible.

[Starhawk]

Thanks slick so from now on my I-lasers are now officially just extremely powerful AP stream weapons http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[douglas]

There are a few major problems with anti proton beam weapons.

First, a stream consisting entirely of negatively charged particles will spread out very quickly if it has any significant density. This problem could easily be solved by making it a stream of anti hydrogen instead.

Second, and much more important, simply throwing antimatter at any sort of shielding system that can easily block purely kinetic weapons without resorting to just putting a big block of material (i.e. armor) in front of them will easily neutralize any stream of antimatter that isn't massive enough to penetrate the shield regardless of whether it's matter or antimatter. In particular, gravitic or any sort of energy or force field shielding will not provide any material for the antimatter to annihilate with. If you can send enough antimatter at high enough velocity to get through the shield, why not spare the expense of antimatter and just throw big rocks instead? You'd be able to throw a whole lot more of them for the same cost if you just used ordinary matter.

The only way to solve this problem is to send some matter along, too. While this solves the problem of how to get the energy release of matter-antimatter annihilation despite the enemy shields, it brings up a whole new problem of how to get it to happen at the target, rather than halfway there where it would dissipate harmlessly. There are two ways I can think of to do this.

First, send two separate streams of matter and antimatter, carefully targetted to intersect at the target. The problem here is that the two streams would have to be EXTREMELY tightly focused and incredibly precisely calibrated for range. Even if you managed to pull this off, the initial energy release as the tips of the streams intersect would almost certainly push much of the remaining material off course to where it would either not annihilate at all or would do so too early.

Second, you can send the containment system right along with the antimatter, set to fail on arrival. This is the only feasible sounding solution I can think of, and it would require improbably cheap, small, and efficient antimatter containment systems.

[Starhawk]

Hmmm idea here Antimatter stream contained within a matter stream with a "stasis" field of sorts keeping the two coherent yet not in contact until they hit the target? Remember a race 2,000 years more advanced then us with MUCH better energy focusing technology.

[Baron Munchausen]

Actually, the comparison of a particle beam to any other 'matter' projectile is not necessarily accurate. The force of the impact is a combination of the mass and the velocity of the impact. Larger projectiles will of course do more damage at the same speed, but practical considerations of technology (and scale) might make it much easier to increase the total energy of impact by using a particle beam to get extremely high velocity with a tiny mass. Accelerating larger 'solid' projectiles to produce equivalent energies might be much more difficult, and the 'cost effectiveness' curve might be very different.

[Starhawk]

Well that and the fact that chucking a rock up to lightspeed would require a rather large barrel lol, especially depending on the size of the rocks being chucked.

[douglas]

Big rock vs stream of particles doesn't really matter. My point was that if you can get the stream going heavy and fast enough to penetrate the shield, it should be trivial to give it enough velocity over the minimum to do some major damage just from the impact. Adding the explosion from matter-antimatter annihilation is just extremely expensive overkill.

[Starhawk]

Not really "expensive" if you consider that by time this became a standard weapon it would probobly not cost any "money'per shot would it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[El_Phil]

Whilst there is no "overkill", there is a "waste of munitions" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Starhawk]

As a wise man once said "The best way to kill is overkill." or something to that effect either way the military tends to like overkill weapons for a reason they not only ensure the job gets done but they scare the holy bejezzers out of anyone who is in front of them lol

Thats like explosive bullets definately overkill yet they are the "wave of the future" lol

And no "waste of munitions" as the ship isn't firing off munitions it's just using energy which reactors can replace which is another good reason for all my ships to have mini reactors in the turrets http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Waste of munitions comes into play if I decided to use solid shot however, not to mention THAT would require money and the need ot buy more ammunition while with an energy weapon you buy it once pay for maint work and it's there for ever (until it's blown up) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[El_Phil]

Explosive bullets, being banned and all, probably aren't the wave of the future. :p

I'd also put money that the guy who said that wasn't paying for all the wasted muntitions and then got killed when he ran out of bullets. Now excessive force is good, but using a tac nuke to kill a tank is 'waste of munitions' for instance.

[Starhawk]

They are not banned actually because they are being planned for the OICW (I don't know what it's X-number is) with air bursting and explosive rounds to peirce body armor.

And it's also the opinion of a lot of authors and even some "real" military people that like it or not explosive rounds are going to have to come into play to more easily bypass such things as body armor.....and those nagging terrorist types who are so hocked up on drugs you can pump a mag into them and have em still shooting at you heh. Can't do that when you explode http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Also 50-cal rifles fire "explosive" rounds.

Now White phospherous (Sp?) rounds were banned because they didn't increase kill they just burned horribly and crippled people in ways that are just not settling thinking about.


As far as "waste of munitions" well as I kind of said "waste of munitions" only counts when you have munitions if on the other hand you had a weapon with nearly unlimited fire then you wouldn't much care along those lines.
Thats like if you gave me a tank with an endless supply of ammo you can be darned sure I'm shooting every grunt, tank and mean looking rabbit I can with DU rounds hehe.

[El_Phil]

Depends what you call an explosive round. Hollow points are explosive rounds, as are mercury/glycerol cavity rounds. Both of which are out under the Geneva Convention.

Of course as that doesn't cover cops or spies, no problem.

On the other hand if by explosive round you mean 'small grenade' then your OK. The OICW is a standard 5.56 NATO ammmo gun, with an attached 20mm grenade launcher. This fires 20mm grenades. You can, I suppose, stretch that to be an explosive round, but its a grenade to anyone else.

[Starhawk]

I remember reading that it fires "air bursting bullets" out of it's primary fire not it's 20mm grenade launcher. Possible that the author meant that it was 20mm AIRBURST grenades not "bullets" but I don't know.

And no I mean minni explosive warhead in a bullet sized package that some folks in the army are already working on, right up there with the "smart bullets" though I haven't found any info on either project in a while since some of what I read was a little overly mathfilled for my tastes hehe (I really don't want to know the physics of an exploding smart bullet lol)


i thought NATO was 7.62mm as that is what the M-16 fires?

Damn they just keep making their bullets more pansy as they go lol

[El_Phil]

Sticking an explosive warhead in a bullet is very non-Geneva Convention. As in massively so. Still no reason you couldn't do it. Hell you could probably fudge around the convention with some legal kung-fu if you really wanted to. Or just issue it to cops and spies not the millitary.

NATO, and the M-16, are 5.56mm. The M-16 has always been that caliber, since the first prototype actually. :p

[Baron Munchausen]

Starhawk said:
I remember reading that it fires "air bursting bullets" out of it's primary fire not it's 20mm grenade launcher. Possible that the author meant that it was 20mm AIRBURST grenades not "bullets" but I don't know.

And no I mean minni explosive warhead in a bullet sized package that some folks in the army are already working on, right up there with the "smart bullets" though I haven't found any info on either project in a while since some of what I read was a little overly mathfilled for my tastes hehe (I really don't want to know the physics of an exploding smart bullet lol)


i thought NATO was 7.62mm as that is what the M-16 fires?

Damn they just keep making their bullets more pansy as they go lol



You are probably thinking of this:

http://mae.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=Archives&amp;Subsection=Di splay&amp;ARTICLE_ID=148187&amp;KEYWORD=new%20small%20arms %20weapon

It fires 'programmable munitions' that will burst in mid-air at exactly the distance required, effectively letting soldier's shoot 'around corners' at enemies behind cover. When this becomes available 'urban warfare' will become a very dangerous activity indeed for anyone taking on US forces. It's interesting that they don't call it a 'grenade' but just a 'munition'. It's probably best described as a very small guided missile anyway.

[Starhawk]

Thanks for the info BM that's probobly why the guy's work I read just called it a "bullet" because the military its self doesn't call it a grenade.

M-16 is a pissy little 5.56? lol I got my AKs and my M's confused hehe the AK series fires 7.62 because the Russians prefer a heavier punch, interesting.

Oh and El-Phil as far as the subject of Kinetics vs Energy weapons goes I've done some reading inspired by your points and I find it interesting to note that in effect an "energy weapon" is still using Kinetic kill principles it's just different somehow.
I think a gravity based anti-bullet shield could slow down a bullet and reduce it's KE enough for the armor to stop the actual damage, however I do after reading agree with you that it could simply not stop ALL KE without using so much energy its self that the shield would require as much energy as the ship's entire systems.


Now on to the plausibility of shields using gravitic principals that doesn't actually require "physics defying" technology as it simply involves (not simply but you know what I mean) a race learning how to create an artificial gravity well around the ship. And I think you'd need to learn how to manipulate gravity to shoot a black hole at someone (and you said that's quite possible) so hehe.


As far as gravity without constant acceleration or rotation goes, no my ships don't have rotating sections but they are very often accelerating and the compensators drain off enough of the gravity effects to give the crew 1g on ship while the ship may actually be going 200 gravities.

However to not "fudge" that too much (using your favorite word lol) the compensators don't have infinite drainability and the faster the ship accelerates the more G force gets through to the crew so for an SD going 600 gravities the crew would be getting slammed with 5 G.

I know the very principal of an inertial compensator "defies physics" but at least here I'm trying to make one slightly more reasonable then the ST infini-compensator right http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

And the reason I get mad at you El-Phil is because I don't like being talked down too simply because I'm younger then a lot of you folks, if you are going to say something is "utterly impossible" give me more reasons then just "because physics says so" okay, like WHY physics says so.

I mean to be honest physics is a head-in-vice sort of science because you've got newtonian, relitivistic and some third one I can't remember lol and all of them have different principals and crap so it's hard to keep track of it all right http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[El_Phil]

The explanations are never simple, or the details of it aren't, and in general people do tend to go 'Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!' and run off screaming at the concepts. The maths are worse. You can simplify things, but then you risk lose the meaning. "Things should be as simplified as far as possible, but no further." Einstien I believe.

As for the gravity when a ship stops or is at constant speed your crew should be floating around. Now this isn't really very neat, honour guards drifting around the room, coffee drifting towards the screens etc, but it's the way it goes.

Just as a side point, I do remember something about G force tolerance being massively variable. A big naval aviation study ,if I recall, had variance from 2.5 to 7.5 for blackouts in pilots/personnel. Of course you'd hope it was the pilots at 7Gs and the cleaners at 2.5 but still.

[Starhawk]

Well someday maybe someone will figure out how to create a gravity field so for the sake of keeping things nice in this story I'll just assume that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I Know not very "scientific" but I don't want to have to deal with the even more complicated and pain in the butt problems that come about when you have rotating sections.

[El_Phil]

Nothing wrong with a rotating section, except when it stops rotating of course...

Now I remember a name 'Alistar Reynolds.' anyone read any off his stuff? There's a guy who takes things seriously. As in journeys take years/decades as light speed is the limits and people have to wear exo-suits when the ship accelerates at high Gs. Masochisticly hard science really.

[Starhawk]

Trust me El Phil I've read a few different opinions on the "problems" that come in with rotating sections, which is in part why I asked about that idea here.

I've heard any number of things like friction, amount of power required yadda yadda that people threw at one another as to why or why not rotating sections would work.

[kerensky]

Rule number 37: There is no such thing as overkill. There is only "Open Fire" and "Time To Reload".

[El_Phil]

Given the choice between floating into scalding hot coffee when the ship stops accelerating or a rotating section I know what I'd choose... Full on artificial gravity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

If you don't like rotating sections then perhaps consider the rotating ship. An idea I got from a Heinlein book, essentially the enire ship 'rolls' along. No friction or bearings to think about, full gravity for the whole ship (admitedly variable strength, but you can't have everything) it seems clever. I haven't put that much thought into practical issues, but none are jumping up at me right now.

[Wolfman77]

Wouldn't a rotating ship require alot more thrust to accelerate. Manuverability would also be greatly reduced, I believe, as it would be harder to change directions. Another problem turning when spinning is that the thrusters to move you into a turn would be rotating and would create a couple of problems, depending on how much you wanted to explain.

They would need to be pulsed on ond off in a serial order to keep thrust on just one side of the ship.

If you wanted to go farther into it, then that wouldn't work either as each thruster would still fire in an arc, not just at one point. It would be massively unstable.

I can't think of any way to explain around this, and there may be other problems I haven't thought ofas well.

[Starhawk]

Yeah like firing weapons lol think about it if your ship is rotating a cannon that was locked onto the enemy a second ago won't be after the ship rotates.

Also grav "plating" works for me for now as just looking at an Icaran ship it's clear there's no room for a rotating section in the design (see attached).

As far as constant acceleration goes I agree with you there it would suck to float into something if the ship comes to a sudden stop lol

[El_Phil]

Wolfman77 said:
Wouldn't a rotating ship require alot more thrust to accelerate. Manuverability would also be greatly reduced, I believe, as it would be harder to change directions. Another problem turning when spinning is that the thrusters to move you into a turn would be rotating and would create a couple of problems, depending on how much you wanted to explain.

They would need to be pulsed on ond off in a serial order to keep thrust on just one side of the ship.

If you wanted to go farther into it, then that wouldn't work either as each thruster would still fire in an arc, not just at one point. It would be massively unstable.

I can't think of any way to explain around this, and there may be other problems I haven't thought ofas well.



How to solve that? Computer controled constant correction. Modern aircraft (F-22, Eurofighter) are 'dynamically unstable' airframes. You kill the computers and the plane goes out of control. Similar thing with this. Or just pre compensated burns, you allow for the fact the thruster is moving when you calculate the burns. You know all the factors that will affect the stability so it's calcuable, with fast enough computers.

Weapons however are tricky, it would depend on how fast the outer edge of the ship is spinning, which would depend on how much gravity you want in the ship and how big the ship is.

OR the ship rotates round its axis of movement. The main engines are mounted on the 'hub' of the ship as are your forward firing main weapons. Simplifies some of the problems certainly, if not solving all of them.

[Wolfman77]

Yup, computers could do the trick there. And with some sort of Thrust vectoring you could control it's tendancy to pitch throughout each burn. It would still have poor manuverability though.

Nice ship, btw. I guess these problems won't matter for you ship much but they are still fun to discuss. Grav plating sound ok to me, but then I'm ok with just about anything in sci-fi. At least there are not any commonly accepted theories that prohibit it from functioning (well none that I'm aware of anyway).

[kerensky]

As far as shooting while spinning, I don't knw if this came from a book or video game, but the ships spun to keep gravity but when they went into combat or needed to do some tricky maneuvering, they killed the spin and everyone strapped in or floated.

[El_Phil]

That would work as well, the problem would be the inertia. Just because you stopped powering the spin doesn't mean it will suddenly stop, there's no resistance (or practically none) in space so you have to apply power to stop the spin. Not a big problem granted, you got it spinning in the first place after all.

Gravity plating. Wonderfull and how do you propose for this to work? Last I checked you needed mass for gravity.

Lets see how you would get this. OK use Newtonian gravitational theory, its fine for practical stuff involving small fields. And its a hell of alot simpler.

So to get earth strength gravity you need about 6E24 kilograms, or the mass of the earth, at a distance of ~ 6400 km. This isn't really practical to lug around, but your plating is on the floor! Say under a few cm of carpet (or funky futuristic space floorboards) lets say its 1 cm down. So you only need 9E15 kgs of mass to create that much gravity. Tricky. Oh and it's unidirectional so your crew on the deck below are being attracted to the ceiling.

Frankly I can't see how you can ever get that into plating and then directional. But I'd like to hear this theory that would be fine.

[Baron Munchausen]

In order for humans not to be disoriented (dizzy) from the rotation, a rotating structure must have a cycle time (complete rotation) at at least one minute. In order to get 1 g of acceleration in a 1 minute rotation time you need: 33 feet per second * 60 seconds = a wheel 1980 feet in circumference. (approximately 650 feet across) Since any 'upper' decks within that radius will have correspondingly less g, they'll have to be 'storage and utility space' and only decks that far out or farther will be regularly inhabited. So you'll need pretty large ships for a 'routine' 1 g environment. I suspect that colonies will eventually be built that have this level of gravity but I doubt that many moving ships will.

The balance factor is another sticky problem but I suppose it's more solveable than the sheer size requirements. In order to rotate effectively the ship/structure will have to be relatively balanced, but of course it will never be perfectly balanced. Various controls can be used, including thrusters and internal movement of material, like stored water or other fluids. Even with computer controlled pumps moving fluids around you can't have a response time or a margin of error that can handle humans running around doing their daily business. Another reason that rotating ships will probably be impractical but colonies will be important enough to deal with the problems. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Wolfman77]

I never said I could explain it. Only that "there are not any commonly accepted theories that prohibit it from functioning (well none that I'm aware of anyway)."

Currently, it is generally accepted that gravity is mediated by a particle called a graviton. I admit, there is no solid proof of its existence, but then science has relatively few proofs when compared to theories. If we assume the graviton does exist, then it is not that much of a stretch to think that with 2000 years more science, that someone might figure out how to control it without needing all that mass.

If you have proof that the graviton does not exist, then please share this information with the rest of the scientific community so they can spend their time on other theories.

If you do not believe that science will ever explain anything not already known, or pose new questions never thought of, then you will always nit-pick science fiction, and never gain anything from it.

Just as a note: Newtonian gravity works OK on large scale, but breaks down at smaller scales. It does work for your example, however, because with newtonian gravity that is considered large scale. Small scale is considered less than the width of an atom. But then, I'm just being nit-picky. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Hunpecked]

What strikes me most about this thread, with its frequent emphasis on what's "really" possible, is that once you assume "warp" space travel (i.e. as in the SE IV game), 21st Century science goes out the window. Perhaps it would be more productive* to speculate how the "warp" travel already built into the game can explain other game features. Example: For in-system travel, why not replace Newtonian acceleration/deceleration, with its inconvenient mass/energy/velocity/fuel limitations, by a continuous "micro-warp" drive with constant velocity (very convenient) and whatever limitations you like? BTW, this is somewhat similar to the "stutterwarp" in the Traveller role-playing game, which is based on, yes, REAL science, i.e. [begin handwaving] quantum tunneling [end handwaving]. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Or take the "Alderson Drive" in the Niven/Pournelle novel "The Mote in God's Eye". The "warp points" in this fictional universe arise from an as-yet-undiscovered "fifth force". Presumably the discovery of this new force would lead to a whole new branch of physics and many practical applications, but to my knowledge the authors made no use of this technology beyond interstellar travel. If so, then I'd say they missed a good opportunity.

Back to SE IV. You want "shields"? No problem! Apply the same game technology used for interstellar travel to generate a "warp field" around your ship that "warps" incoming matter/energy harmlessly AROUND the vessel! Now for game/story purposes you may want limits on how much "incoming" can be deflected (leaky shields) or you may want "incoming" to "use up" shield/warp energy (consumable shields). Your weapons can be modified shield projectors that create a long thin warp field (as opposed to a short fat shield) along which you can fling projectiles, photons, anti-protons, etc. toward enemy vessels. Since warp fields defy "conventional" physics your "beams" don't scatter and efficiency is so amazingly high that minimal cooling is required. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Just as the first lasers led to multiple practical applications in telecom, weaponry, medicine, computers, chemistry, physics, etc. I would expect a fictional scientific breakthrough to affect many aspects of a scifi story.


*by the phrase "be more productive" I mean "waste time more efficiently" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[El_Phil]

Well hunpecked the thing is if 'warp points' are just wormholes then your still probably OK in modern science. As long as you dont go FTL locally during your trip through the warp point your OK it's 'just' a distorion in the local spacetime.

Still its a nifty theory.

Are Gravitons really generally accepted? There was me thinking it was just part of the attempt at transfering quantum mechanics to gravity. There are many other quantum theories of gravity that involve no gravitons. I'm not saying they don't exist, similar quantum theories work in many other fields. But existing quantum graviton theorys are nastily convuluted, contrvied and internally inconsistent at the moment. Of course they could straighten out, or the correct theory could be that convoluted.

Still with gravity being mass, momentum and energy, taking Einstein's theory of gravitation as right of course, it doesn't matter what particle does the work, you still need those three to get gravity. Just because you can put a name to something does mean you can create it easier.

Why is this? Gravitons are just messenger particles, they don't create the force they just pass it on. So to create the gravitons you have to create the force, so you have to create that much gravity which is no real net gain. Or that is my understanding anyway.

[Suicide Junkie]

Energy loss via gravitational waves can be seen in binary pulsars like PSR 1913+16 (http://astrosun2.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses//astro201/psr1913.htm)

Gravitons are to gravity waves as Photons are to light waves.

[dogscoff]

because they didn't increase kill they just burned horribly and crippled people in ways that are just not settling thinking about.




But exploding people doesn't bother you..?




How to solve that? Computer controled constant correction...
Weapons however are tricky,




Sounds to me like a good excuse for fighter combat.

[Starhawk]

dogscoff said:


because they didn't increase kill they just burned horribly and crippled people in ways that are just not settling thinking about.


But exploding people doesn't bother you..?




Yeah of course exploding people in RL bothers me because it's still terrible but at least when you explode you ain't hurting much and it's a LOT better then feeling parts of your body melting LITERALLY inch by inch ain't it? I'd rather not see anyone die of any kind of bullet though.



How to solve that? Computer controled constant correction...
Weapons however are tricky,




Sounds to me like a good excuse for fighter combat.



Good point about fighter combat http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif assuming they'd have weapons powerful enough to hurt a capital ship's shields/armor or whatever.

[kerensky]

Hey Starhawk, remember my Deliverance class system defense fighter bases? The ability to launck two hundred, 40kt, corvette cals fighters in one combat turn is definently enough to hurt a capital ship, or two, or three.....

[Starhawk]

LOL yeah those uber fighter stations of yours http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif they'd probobly help destroy a few cappys thats for sure.

I designed a "carrier" flag monitor that can launch 58 75kt fighters at a time, and 5 of them are capable of destroying a Superdreadonught, and oh yeah the flag monitor carries 189 so that's 37.8 SDs dead if I could get all my gunships there unschathed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Hunpecked]

El_Phil writes: "Well hunpecked the thing is if 'warp points' are just wormholes then your still probably OK in modern science."

I lack even a layman's understanding of "wormholes". From the Wikipedia I gather that it's all theory so far and usable wormholes may or may not be possible. In other words it's still sci fi, though with a possible but not solid theoretical basis.

Personally I doubt that wormholes, if they even exist, are usable for FTL travel, for the simple reason that no ET species has to our knowledge taken over the entire universe. Yeah, yeah, we could be alone, we could be in an interstellar "wildlife preserve," etc. But I get the distinct impression that our universe is just not very friendly to many of our cherished sci fi concepts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Starhawk]

Or generally speaking the universe is really freaking huge and what are the odds of an interstellar empire just happening to bump into us?

I mean for all we know our universe is a war torn hell hole, or a rather "earthlike" concept of nations empires and yadda yadda that are sometimes at peace and some times at war.

Either way I doubt they'd need to pay much attention to us just yet anyway, now if and when we ever get space ships we may bump into a few of them and either get squashed or just get out there and form our own little nation states.

Yah never know but I also doubt that every species out there except us is unified like we see in Sci-fi either.

[El_Phil]

Hunpecked said:
In other words it's still sci fi, though with a possible but not solid theoretical basis.

Personally I doubt that wormholes, if they even exist, are usable for FTL travel, for the simple reason that no ET species has to our knowledge taken over the entire universe. Yeah, yeah, we could be alone, we could be in an interstellar "wildlife preserve," etc. But I get the distinct impression that our universe is just not very friendly to many of our cherished sci fi concepts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif



There is nothing against wormholes, which is better than any other form of FTL travel. There is no physical evidence of them, but theoretically they are fairly solid as the conclusions/solutions to various Einstienian equations. If you can actually find them, if they go the right place and if you can even enter them are the questions and the answers will probably be No, No and Not a chance. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

The big advantage of wormholes is that you don't actually travel faster than light. Yes you travel great distances in less time than you would, but you don't bugger around with causality and relativity while doing so. Not that there aren't seperate possible problems, but none in that league.

The universe is somewhat large, you do know this right? This is just one of several problems with your 'Nothing rules the entire universe, so there is no way to travel quickly.' That is possibly the worst argument against FTL travel I have ever, ever heard. So hopefully its a joke. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Starhawk]

LOL hey remember buck rogers the Draconians conquered 3/4ths of the universe lol my question why stop there? I mean come on an extra 1/4 of the universe can't really make that big a difference can it?

For that matter the Draconians had battleships the Earthers had fighters if they were so bent on conquering us why didn't they?

And they never showed hyperspace so anyway lol.

Ah it was a stupid show though Erin Grey was mmmmmmm hubba hubba http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


Anyway I want to know what PROVES time slows down for something going faster then light, considering we never get anything to go faster then light how can we ask it?

[douglas]

Starhawk said:
Anyway I want to know what PROVES time slows down for something going faster then light, considering we never get anything to go faster then light how can we ask it?


Theoretically, time would actually go backwards for something travelling faster than light. As far as I know, current mainstream science considers actually testing such a hypothesis to be theoretically impossible.

Time slowing down as things approach the speed of light has been tested quite thoroughly, however. Just one result from a very quick google search is right here (http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae611.cfm).

GPS systems have to take at least one, maybe both, branches of relativity into account to give accurate positioning data. If they didn't, all GPS systems would be at least several meters off and might not be very confident about your precise position.

[Starhawk]

Well with all respect and I know this will probobly make me sound a bit uninformed but I mean for all we know the Muons are not in fact having any sort of time dialation there could be other things we are not aware of yet affecting them.

However that is just one theory of mine and maybe others but I digress http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif there are any number of "loopholes" folks can think of to actually going FTL anyway.

[douglas]

Yes, the delayed decay could be caused by some unknown factor, but why postulate a new mystery when the current theory predicts not only the qualitative effect observed but also the exact quantitative effect to well within experimental measurement error? Both general and special relativity have been tested extensively many times, and the experimental results have never disagreed with the theoretical predictions without a flaw being discovered in the experiment's procedure, despite scientists striving for the smallest margins of error possible.

[Suicide Junkie]

Theoretically, time would actually go backwards for something travelling faster than light.

Actually, the square root of a negative number is not negative, but rather *imaginary*.

Presuming it makes any sense at all; instead of going backwards in time, you'd go perpendicular, or "sideways" in time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Renegade 13]

Considering that some scientists belive we live in a "multiverse", perhaps going sideways in time would work. Travel into one of those infinitely "other" universes.

[Starhawk]

Or it would not have any time dialation effects at all and you would just happen to get someplace else at the same time you left which is an interesting theory http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Imagine that "Ladies and gentlemen we are leaving at 12:01pm September 24 and proceeding 50 light years the trip will take x amount of time)

Say a week later "Ladies and gentlemen welcome to destination B 50 light years away, the time is 12:01 september 24th thank you for flying paradox air."

Possible http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

I like the Fedex suborbital option.
Pickup by 8am in New York, Delivery in Japan by 5pm the Previous Day.

[Starhawk]

Well as a wise man once said "Time is Relative"

[El_Phil]

Starhawk said:
Or it would not have any time dialation effects at all and you would just happen to get someplace else at the same time you left which is an interesting theory http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Imagine that "Ladies and gentlemen we are leaving at 12:01pm September 24 and proceeding 50 light years the trip will take x amount of time)

Say a week later "Ladies and gentlemen welcome to destination B 50 light years away, the time is 12:01 september 24th thank you for flying paradox air."

Possible http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



My official position: Temporal Mechanics is very very bad for the health and should never be dabbled in more than necessary.

However time does slow down as you go faster in exact accordance with relativity. Hell, even at Mach 2 the effect is mesaurable. Take two atomic clocks, synchronsie them and stick one on a concorde. Compare the two when they land and you will find that the land based one is ahead.

As for FTL, you have asked for explanations, so here they are (but simplified, of course http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif). You cannot go FTL in a universe that has causality and relativity. Causality is simply cause and effect, something has to make something happen. Relativity is time slowing down, and eventually reversing, as you approach then pass light speed. If you can go faster than light, you can go back in time. If you've traveled in time you muck up causality hugely in a variety of, hopefully, obvious ways.

[Starhawk]

Well there is one flaw in your theory and that is that The Concorde fleet is grounded bwahahahaha I just defied physics http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif. lol j/k

Seriously though I definately understand the whole atomic clock deal I'm just sayin' lord knows what else might effect this thing other then "time dialation" yah know? At least as we think of it. Not saying your wrong obviously but that whole "time and space" area of science is as you said best avoided for the sake of human sanity and health lol

Well good thing about the "FTL" in my story (even when and if I can get good enough to write a book, all I'd need is an editor like most authors http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif) is that it's "warp points" (name to change trust me) which are actual "folds" in space which don't actually make you go FTL so much as temporarily exist in two places at once and then fully "materialize" in the new place. Unfortunately this has rather bad effects on human orientation leaving earlier generations with "jump shock". Though as stated with my newer chapters the newer generations of GFGs are better able to compensate for this and thus little to no jump shock.

[El_Phil]

In comparison to breaking cause and effect I think we can safely say every other possible problem is minor.

[Starhawk]

Really I've heard that fold space is actually a simpler proposition compared to "warp" and "FTL" speeds, for that matter the Bab 5 and HH "Hyperspace" might be an even more accurate form of what FTL may look like in the future if we ever get it.

Oh and El_Phil as far as internal gravity goes I've read up on some stuff and other folks think that all it would take to get internal gravity is to have a "hyper dense" alloy or material located at the bottom of the ship to create a "pull". What is your opinion on this please http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[El_Phil]

Hyperspace is shaky, partly the theoretical existence is very much conjecture. More seriously getting into a 'higher level' dimension whatever you call it would be tricky. More tricky would be getting back to the one you came from.

Wormholes could, maybe be used for backwards time travel depending on layout and a variety of other things. This is a bad thing and so travel through them would be impossible, ie they'd collapse as soon as you try and use them. If your wormhole is so arranged that you don't time travel it has more chance of working.

On the grav plating, the density gets ridiculous. As in 1.5E9 kg of mass beneath 100mm beneath your feet will give you ~1g. In real numbers thats 1.5 million tons of material compressed so much the centre of this mass is 0.1m under your shoes. I think you'd agree the density starts getting ridiculous. There's also the point that is unidirectional and falls off with distance. So if it's just at the bottom then your upper decks have much lower gravity (it's a squared law so double the distance and the force drops by 4.). If you have plating per deck then the crew will be attracted to the ceilings, not as strongly as too the floors, but enough to be very disoreintating and bad for the body. Imagine being weakly torn apart all the time.

Gravitons... It's a logical extension of quantum mechanics so they probably do exist. Probably. But they're only 'messenger' particles, you need the source of the gravity for them to be created, so they don't really solve the problem.

[AgentZero]

For 'anti-gravity', correct me if I'm wrong, but does an object's gravitational pull also depend on it the speed of it's rotation? ie: If the Earth had the same mass but spun faster, we'd have higher gravity?
Unless I'm totally wrong about that, then gravity could be created on a ship by placing sphere's of same undetermined high-density material underneath the floorplates and spinning it really fast. Of course that would really only work for the top deck of the ship, since the deck under it would have 1g pulling up and 1g pulling down, ergo zero G. This could be countered by having the spheres on Deck 2 spinning fast enough to create 2g and thus 1g pulling up and 2g pulling down works out at 1g downwards. Not sure whether that would be noticable to people or not, but either way it'd get really tricky the more decks you had since you'd have to account for the gravitational pull of more and more decks above you, and also said pull would be a bit variable since as you got further away from a given deck it's pull would begin wane, and lets not even talk about the decks below you pulling down.

Of course, take a tip from a fellow writer and don't bother explaining anything at all. Think about all the things that would have been considered science fiction 2000 years ago (assuming they had scifi, that is): Cars, Planes, Guns, Computers, Phones, Movies, CDs, DVDs, etc. Now, pretend you have a basic understanding of English but have never heard of any of the above. Is there anything about them that suggests what they are? Exactly my point. You tell your readers that your SD is armed with X number of Grasers, and they won't know what you're on about until someone says 'Fire Graser battery one!' Then they know it's a weapon and that's about all they need to know. Plus if you're not getting all scientifc, it lends you far greater poetic license.
Example: Compare &amp; Contrast
"Fire!" Ordered the admiral.
The TWS Daedalus shuddered as she fired a full broadside of micro-fusion anti-proton beams into the enemy vessel, causing the atoms of it's hull to be instantly repelled from each other, and the whole ship was blown apart.

OR

"Fire!" Ordered the admiral.
The TWS Daedalus shuddered as she unleashed energies that rivaled the wrath of gods and the full might of her broadside sliced through the enemy ship's shields, ripped through it's armor and devastated the interior. Within seconds the enemy vessel was overwhelmed and exploded in a brilliant flash of light.

Now, example 1 might be 'scientifically' (I know it's a load of bollox, but bear with me) but example 2 sure sounds a lot better, doesn't it? And it doesn't reveal a single thing about how any of the technology actually works.

Cool, huh?

[El_Phil]

AgentZero said:
For 'anti-gravity', correct me if I'm wrong, but does an object's gravitational pull also depend on it the speed of it's rotation? ie: If the Earth had the same mass but spun faster, we'd have higher gravity?




Sorry but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Gravity is just mass and distance, Newton theory anyway. I'll admit to being shakier on Einstinean theory, but I think it's the same there. In fact if the earth spun faster you'd feel less gravity as there'd be a higher centrifugal reaction force offsetting the gravitational pull, so effective gravity would be lower.

But I completely agree with your other point, #2 did sound so much better. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Of course, take a tip from a fellow writer and don't bother explaining anything at all. Think about all the things that would have been considered science fiction 2000 years ago (assuming they had scifi, that is): Cars, Planes, Guns, Computers, Phones, Movies, CDs, DVDs, etc. Now, pretend you have a basic understanding of English but have never heard of any of the above. Is there anything about them that suggests what they are?

Car = Auto-mobile = "Thing that moves itself"
Comput-er = "Thing which does math"
DVD = Digital Video Disk = "technobabbled, (moving pictures/technobabble) on round, flat thing"
Tele-phone = "over-a-distance, and phon, meaning Sound; voice; speech."

Hrm... the "understandability" of the names might just be more closely related to the age of the technology relative to the plot's "now", rather than the age of the reader relative to the plot's "now".
At least in english.

When something new comes out, it gets a name that explains its purpose. After a couple years, long names like to collapse into acronyms. And after more years, the names get slanged-down into a syllable or two with no explanatory effect at all.

[Starhawk]

Agent zero GREAT advice you too El Phil (and El sorry about my earlier pigheadedness I am just trying to get a harder sci-fi then say star trek but softer then this one series where it takes decades to get anywhere and where energy weapons and all the like are heat based like Lasers. (I know lasers are technically not "heat" but they do tend to melt and burn rather then tear and explode whatever they hit).

And I thought gravitons were another Star Trek technogidgit like their "Tachyon scanner" and "Phase Cloak" stuff, I guess I learn something new every day http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Well SJ the thing is I suppose after a while I-laser would just get shortened further to IL or I-Las (that has a nice ring to it, say it with me Eye-Laz lol) so I guess you have a point to that terminology is subjective to who's using it and when.

BTW anyone ever heard of Induction weaponry? I tried a google search and got jackloads of porn (I dont know how Induction + Weaponry= Teen nudist camp but hey) so anyone got any idea of what exactly an "Induction Weapon" is and how it works?

I can't remember what sci-fi I heard/saw/read it from but it sounded strange as when I hear "Induction" I think "being brought in on" or "being initiated".

[kerensky]

Here's a link on industion beam thingies (i think)

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1984/jul-aug/roberds.html

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/DARHT-one.html

[Hunpecked]

Starhawk writes: "Or generally speaking the universe is really freaking huge and what are the odds of an interstellar empire just happening to bump into us?"

El_phil writes: "The universe is somewhat large, you do know this right?"

I also know a billion years is a long time. Given FTL travel and a few billion years' head start, the entire known universe is well within reach of one intelligent species. Note that any restrictions put on FTL travel to keep this (these) species out of our neighborhood also work against our own exploitation of FTL technology.

Granted, the "no contact" observation can also be interpreted as evidence against the existence of other intelligent, expansionist species--though we really need only one besides our own. Given the relative ease with which life developed on Earth--within a few hundred million years--and the "really freaking huge" size of the universe, what are the odds of that?

So no, this is not a joke. There are a number of possible explanations for this observation, but it remains a fact that has to be explained. And even if it can be plausibly explained, it's unlikely the explanation will be consistent with the kind of Space Empires-ish universe so popular in sci fi.

Note also that real science is a double-edged sword for sci fi: while future breakthroughs may confirm that FTL travel is both possible and practical, science may also shut the last theoretical door on FTL.

[Starhawk]

Yeah but for sci-fi that would be boring http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif


Well possibility is that we are the oldest sentient species, anyone ever consider that? No....why? Because it just isn't something we get in our puny little heads (mainly I think it started as a way to shut out the Creationist religions who say man came first so Evolutionists just said LIKE HELL) but anyway seriously even from my opinion (I'm a christian so I tend to think with the bible here lol) even if we acknowledge evolution as a creation factor.
Why is it not possible that we are the oldest race yet to acheive sentient status? I mean if you look at evolution it is supposed to have taken our ancestors a few hundred million years to acheive sentient status so maybe other planets got started a little after us http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif


Also possible: There ARE other expansionist races out there they just might not be in our block of the galaxy, so maybe if and when we get out there WE will be the expansionist Empire crushing all in our wake.


I am not joking here either btw.

[Suicide Junkie]

Even if you can't go FTL, you could still colonize the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years from here.

IIRC, the assumptions were along the lines of:
- Travel at 10% of light speed
- 100 years per colony ship launched
- 500 years after landing for a colony to industrialize and send out its first colony ship.
- Goal of sending a colony ship to every star in the milky way.

[douglas]

Did that model take into account the possibility of multiple independent colony efforts going to the same stars, or was it assumed that it would all start with one master plan of chains of colonization that all colonies would have uncorrupted versions of? There's also the matter of how many colony ships would actually find livable planets to colonize at their destinations.

[Wolfman77]

Here is one site I found that talks about it.

http://www.ibiblio.org/astrobiology/index.php?page=future05

It assumes 25% light speed and done in under 100 million years. Also assumes a few other things.

[Alneyan]

Speaking of contact, aliens and the like: are we currently ready to detect alien spacecraft in our vicinity, or could they slip past us unnoticed?

Consider that such a ship enters our system tomorrow, and uses technology comparable to ours (and within the boundaries of science as we know it): do we have the technology to (indirectly) detect that something is amiss? If so, is this technology currently used?

Oh, and just for kicks: am I right in thinking we would be hard to detect ourselves? SETI would be a clear give-away, if someone else was doing the same thing, and our satellites might allow detection; is our activity on Earth detectable without going up close?

[Hunpecked]

Starhawk writes: "Well possibility is that we are the oldest sentient species, anyone ever consider that? No....why?"

This is of course one of many POSSIBLE explanations, as I suggested earlier. However, since solar systems capable of supporting terrestrial-type life almost certainly formed billions of years before our own, it SEEMS unlikely. I use the term "seems" because with only one data point we can't actually calculate the odds. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif Of course in a sci fi setting with many alien species, the more aliens, the less plausible it is that humans are first, or even comparably advanced.

Isaac Asimov has used the "humans first" premise either implicitly or explicitly in several of his stories, notably the "Foundation" series, his short story "The Last Question", and his novel "The End of Eternity". In this last novel, humanity squanders its head start by wasting 10 million years (a cosmic eyeblink) using temporal technology to "improve" human life on Earth, which inadvertently postpones interstellar travel until too late.

These are all great stories despite their failure to deal explicitly (or convincingly) with the "FTL yet humans first" paradox. If, however, an author makes a good effort to resolve the paradox, thereby at least making unlikely premises more self-consistent, then so much the better.

[Hunpecked]

Suicide Junkie writes: "Even if you can't go FTL, you could still colonize the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years from here."

I remember seeing something like this in Carl Sagan's 1980 TV series "Cosmos", with a similar time scale. Presumably intergalactic distances are too great for "practical" STL travel (except perhaps by robots), but that just changes the problem from "first in the universe" to "first in the galaxy".

As for how we would detect advanced interstellar ships, presumably an expansionist species would colonize our solar system, or self-replicating robots would exploit it until all resources were consumed.

As for "them" detecting "us," I read somewhere that the Earth is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky. In Sagan's novel "Contact" the ETs respond to a TV broadcast of the 1936 Olympics.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Isaac designed a story universe shortly before his death in which humans were the newest and seventh species with FTL. It's called 'Isaacs' Universe' and there's some anthologies set in it. I've read three, I think. Pretty good.

Asimov described the Foundation series as '...a galaxy-wide lense to view humanity through...' - Near as I can remember.

[Starhawk]

Well I sort of stick mainly to humans only in my story as you can tell, I only had three "Xeno" species and they were primtiive compared to the comparable humans (I don't know why but thats how it worked in the game so it was great for my story) and if and when I right a book set in the latter "Fourth Empire" Icarans and they encounter aliens they'll probobly be roughly equal to Icarans.

Though one thing I would have is a "give and take" technological "equality" for example the Icarans have good weapons while the Xenos might have excellent drives considering unlike Star Trek I doubt every race would be researching along the same lines as one another forever.

[El_Phil]

To give at least one writer in ST credit they had worked a little that way, I remember something along the lines of Romulans swapping cloaks for Klingon engines. It is very tricky to make a sustained story where one side is massively out teched, ohh sure short stories or one offs (The B5 stuff in the EA-Minbari war for instance) but for a whole string of series its hard work.

The colonisation thing is still a bad argument, even if every habitable planet near us is colonised we be hard pressed to notice. While the signal from the 1936 Olympics was stupidly strong and sprayed everywhere to cover for poor tech, the signals from the 2004 Olympics probably would struggle to leave the solar system in any strengh, if at all. So SETI has to look for a relatively narrow window of signal, unless people start sending signals for you too look for. Even then needle in a haystack doesn't come close to describing the problem.

[Hunpecked]

Given a billion years of FTL "they" could colonize, explore, or stake out every planet in the known universe. If for some reason "they" only live nearby, perhaps they'd come over just to see what's causing all the radio pollution. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Being serious for a moment, it seems the Earth itself sends radio signals ten times stronger than Jupiter's and much stronger than humanity's:

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF6/612.html

Assuming that a strong magnetic field is essential for life (deflecting all that ionized radiation), that alone might attract some attention. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Using current technology, a radio telescope at the distance of the star Vega would need to be about half the size of the mean Earth-Moon distance to pick up TV signals from Earth:

http://www.computing.edu.au/~bvk/astronomy/HET608/essay/

Presumably it wouldn't require a single dish that size; a Very Long Baseline Interferometry setup of the proper size might do the trick. Military/scientific signals are more powerful, but probably too directional and/or intermittent to draw attention.

Of course given a billion years of research and a working FTL principle, all bets are off. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Baron Munchausen]

El_Phil said:
To give at least one writer in ST credit they had worked a little that way, I remember something along the lines of Romulans swapping cloaks for Klingon engines. It is very tricky to make a sustained story where one side is massively out teched, ohh sure short stories or one offs (The B5 stuff in the EA-Minbari war for instance) but for a whole string of series its hard work.

The colonisation thing is still a bad argument, even if every habitable planet near us is colonised we be hard pressed to notice. While the signal from the 1936 Olympics was stupidly strong and sprayed everywhere to cover for poor tech, the signals from the 2004 Olympics probably would struggle to leave the solar system in any strengh, if at all. So SETI has to look for a relatively narrow window of signal, unless people start sending signals for you too look for. Even then needle in a haystack doesn't come close to describing the problem.



Assuming they are even using radio...

Who's to say if other species might develop on planets with different conditions where radio doesn't function so well and so isn't adopted as a widespread technology? And who's to say that the [/i]culture[/i] might not be different and they might not want to be found by -- or to find -- anyone else 'out there'?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Maybe they found us, and there's a folder somewhere labelled 'Another boring species that calls it's planet 'Dirt'. I am never getting out of this office. Man, I bet Harry in the next cubicle gets a promotion before me, and he picks his nostrils. Hint hint hint. Filled, year 348248249. Man, I'm old.'

[dogscoff]

Another cute FTL trick to explain away the "why aren't the skies crawling with advanced spaceships" question is the "everyone gets it at the same time" hypothesis. This may or may not be scientifically plausible (I bet you could crowbar it into semi-plausbility if you were really determined) but it fits very nicely into the SE4 universe. It goes something like this:

Literal FTL is impossible. Warp drives, gravity drives, hyperspace- it's all bunk. The only possiblity for FTL travel is a wormhole, but they require insane quantities of energy to create artificially, and few- if any- civilisations are lucky enough to get one within range of their home system.

Therefore, all the sentient species in the galaxy/ universe develop in isolation. Some are still swinging around in what pass for trees on their planets bashing one-another with rocks; others have fully exploited their homesystems, cruising along at the stagnant peak of their civilisations and are just now thinking about sending STL probes or colonisers to nearby systems; others are just at the chemical-rocket-powered dawn of their interplanetary era, blah blah blah.

Suddenly, one day, it all changes. Some mysterious event occurs. Perhaps an unbelievably ancient and advanced species on the other side of the galaxy has harnessed some unimaginably powerful energy source and started tinkering with artificial wormhole creation; perhaps some not-quite-so-advanced race found a natural wormhole and started screwing around with it; perhaps it was some as-yet unhypothesised natural cosmic phenomneomeneon that suddenly decided to take place all on its own. Maybe God, having collected enough insects, decides to stick them all in the same jar and see who gets eaten first. Who knows? All we know is that somewhere, a single event kick starts a galaxy-wide chain reaction. A network of wormholes (*cough*warp points*cough*) begins to spread across the galaxy. Wormholes are springing spontaneously into being, stretching out from gravity well (star system) to gravity well. Each system that is touched by this network spawns one or two or three more wormholes, creating an exponential expansion from the unknown point of origin. The whole thing happens quickly. One day, humanity is all on its own, minding its own business, busily mining the asteroid belt and bombing one another over who gets to stick a flag in Europa. Overnight, a big, blue, wierd, great wobbly thing appears in space just outside Pluto's orbit, and then a few days later more appear. Suddenly, the human race is just a few jumps away from other star systems and other races who, despite being at hugely varied levels of technological development, all find themselves at the dawn of FTL travel at almost precisely the same moment in the galaxy's history.

It's at about this point you either start up se4 and click "new game", or start writing.

And if you use that, I want a free copy of your book. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Hunpecked]

Dogscoff is right about the need to synchronize FTL introduction in fictional universes such as SE IV. In fact, if you also make this FTL tech the basis for STL propulsion, weapons, "shields", communications, etc., then all intelligent races start at essentially the same tech level, whether they've been in space for a year or for a million years.

Of course, as others have pointed out, even at STL speeds some species should have already overrun our galaxy.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Is there a way to make a frequent random effect that makes warp points?

[Starhawk]

El_Phil said:
To give at least one writer in ST credit they had worked a little that way, I remember something along the lines of Romulans swapping cloaks for Klingon engines. It is very tricky to make a sustained story where one side is massively out teched, ohh sure short stories or one offs (The B5 stuff in the EA-Minbari war for instance) but for a whole string of series its hard work.



You can have different tech areas being superior yet still have a balanced scheme I mean for example if you have one race with excellent weaponry yet slow ships a race with inferior weaponry yet much faster ships could outmaneuver them and strafe and the like.

Now there are also areas like personal weapons, armor shields yadda yadda that could all be different yet have balanced out effects.

And it's much better then every race having the exact same power weapons and the exact same shield outputs lol

[Fyron]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Is there a way to make a frequent random effect that makes warp points?

After a fashion. You can spam the Events.txt file with open warp point events and increase the frequency of events in Settings.txt. Note that you can only ever have one event per turn.

[Wolfman77]

I tried that with spatial anomallies once. Had about 200 events in the file but they only ocured every 10-20 turns. Is that one event per turn for every empire or all empires combined?

[Suicide Junkie]

You also need to increase the chance-per-turn of an event in settings.txt.

There is a setting each for low, medium, and high event frequency.

[AgentZero]

Oi, folks, back on topic! We're supposed to be helping out Starhawk here. Just a few thoughts on 'tech balance' from my 3rd Dynasty Universe (the one Hell is for Heroes is set in. Look forward to a few new chapters this week, btw). In that universe, humanity is signifcantly more advanced than any other race in the galaxy, aside from one which is ridiculously more advanced but has little interest in the affairs of 'inferior' races. However, humanity isn't terribly aggressive in this universe, since they got lucky in the grand scheme of things and have a large number of habitable worlds. I've got a spreadsheet somewhere with all the details, but just winging it, the Terran Imperium (as it is known) consists of 2,252 habitable worlds, of which only 1,823 are colonized. In contrast, the Tauran Empire, which is roughly the same size cubic-lightyear-wise has 1,452 worlds to it's name and has colonized them all. This creates tension between the two empires, since the Taurans want to expand, but humanity isn't about to start giving away bits of it's empire, even if it hasn't really got a use for them.
Terran ships tend to be fast, heavily armoured and pack so much firepower it would liquify your brain to even think about it. The Taurans on the other hand tend to just cobble together ships with an eye towards building them quickly, rather than having them last very long once it hits the fan.
Other races have mainly been confined to a few star systems, and eargerly greet any conflict between Terrans and Taurans (yes, the name similarity is on purpose) as an oportunity to slice off a little piece of the big pie.

As for the whole whether or not an FTL race would have found us by now, I think most arguments are flawed by assuming that an alien race would have even remotely the same motivations as our own. Furthermore, while I find the notion that we are the only sentient life in the universe absurd on simple grounds of probablilty, even if there is more than one sentient race per galaxy in 99.99999999999% of the universe, ours could still be one of the many where only one sentient race has evolved.

And someone just answer one question for me because I honestly don't know the answer: Our solar system is located in one of the arms of the Milky Way's spiral, now does that make it part of the older (first to form) or newer parts of the galaxy?

[Suicide Junkie]

And someone just answer one question for me because I honestly don't know the answer: Our solar system is located in one of the arms of the Milky Way's spiral, now does that make it part of the older (first to form) or newer parts of the galaxy?

The sun is 5 billion years old.
It is a 3rd generation star; it contains heavy elements which can only be produced in superheavy stars and supernovae.

The largest stars burn up in less than a billion years. The smallest ones can last nearly forever.


http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/GHZ/GHZmovie.html
The general idea is that it takes longer to make enough heavy elements for rocky planet formation in the outskirts of the galaxy since there are fewer supernovae. But close in, there are too many supernovae, and your planets get scorched too often.

[Wolfman77]

Seems to have alot of newer stars.

"Sol is located 67 ly north of the galactic plane within a roughly 200-ly wide band that is rich in gas, dust, and newborn stars," from this page

http://members.nova.org/~sol/chview/chv5.htm

[Slick]

"north" ???

[Suicide Junkie]

Based on spin and the right hand rule, I suspect.

[Slick]

Then there would be a "south" but no "east" or "west".

[Hunpecked]

"Spinward" and "anti-spinward". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Slick]

The entire quote is more precise: "... Sol lies less than half way out (26,000 ly) from the galactic center ... on the core-ward side of one of the galaxy's spiral arms named after Orion... Sol is located 67 ly north of the galactic plane ..."

So we have Radius, direction (if you can call in the direction of Orion a true direction) and distance above the galactic plane. That's cylindrical coordinates.

[Hunpecked]

One could also give directions relative to something outside our galaxy, such as a prominent galaxy or cluster of galaxies more or less on the plane of the Milky Way. Movement around the galactic center would eventually change our position relative to this marker, of course, but differential movement would do the same with regard to stars inside our galaxy.

A Wikipedia article describes a spherical coordinate system for the Milky Way:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_plane

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Slick said:
Then there would be a "south" but no "east" or "west".


In, Out, Up, Down, East, West.

* Niven!

[Hunpecked]

AgentZero writes: "As for the whole whether or not an FTL race would have found us by now, I think most arguments are flawed by assuming that an alien race would have even remotely the same motivations as our own."

Obviously it's tough to generalize from one data point. It seems reasonable to suggest, however, that both biological and cultural evolution favor expansionism in intelligent species. Biologically, species that don't try to increase their numbers and ranges tend to get wiped out by competing organisms and/or environmental changes (ice ages, asteroid strikes, etc.). Culturally, stagnant civilizations are usually overrun by vigorous expansionist competitors. If a sapient alien species is as culturally diverse as our own (e.g. because of varied planetary habitats), even a SINGLE expansionist culture would end up determining the character of the whole race.

The same principle holds on a larger scale. Perhaps evolution for some reason favors introspective sentient species. Maybe the universe is full of "flower children" who make love (with birth control), not road trips. If so, then FTL doesn't exist, because it takes only ONE vagabond culture in ONE species with practical FTL and a billion year head start to put ALL the hippies out of business.

With STL only, the same thing should happen on a galactic scale, so I can buy the argument that we're either first or alone (more or less) in the Milky Way, as unlikely as that appears. There are of course other possibilities, some of which we've already covered.

AgentZero also writes: "Our solar system is located in one of the arms of the Milky Way's spiral, now does that make it part of the older (first to form) or newer parts of the galaxy?"

According to the article below the first stars in our galaxy formed about 13.6 billion years ago. That makes our sun, at 5 billion years, a relative youngster.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth_age_040817.html

I assume that 13 billion years ago local conditions could have led to star formation just about anywhere in the galaxy, but most "old" stars formed near the galactic center and in the galactic "halo" of globular clusters. Spiral arms are areas of new star formation that shine brighter than the rest of the galactic disk due to the very young blue giant stars within them. Our solar system has been around the galaxy 18-20 times since it was born, so our current location in a star forming region is a coincidence.

[dogscoff]

Hunpecked said:
According to the article below the first stars in our galaxy formed about 13.6 billion years ago. That makes our sun, at 5 billion years, a relative youngster.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth_age_040817.html




But according to that same article, our galaxy is almost as old as the universe. When the universe was born, it was all hydrogen- there were no heavy elements. It is the ongoing process of star-burning that turns dull old hydrogen into stuff like carbon and oxygen that we need for life. The older the universe gets, the more hydrogen is turned into heavy elements. Therefore, looking at it the other way, as you look back in time towards the Big Bang the amount of heavy elements in the universe dwindles down to nothing.
Since these heavy elements are needed for life, shouldn't the probablilty of life dwindle away with it?

Or, to put it another way, we may be among the first life to emerge, because it's not the amount of stars that have existed over the last 13.whatever billion years that matters, it's the availability of heavy elements- and they've never been more available than right now. Give it another 10 billion years and there could be life springing up all over the place, because the universe will be a much heavier place than it is now. It may even get *too* heavy for life at some point, which would mean the Drake equation would have to factor in some sort of bell curve with "suitability for life of heavy element/ hydrogen ratio" on one axis and "time since big bang" on the other.

[Wolfman77]

Sorry about the quote, I wasn't thinking about location as much as looking at the part about the newer stars around us.

Good wiki article on coordinates a few posts back.

Once the stars fuse the hydrogen into large elements, and there isn't enough left to make significant amounts of things like water. I think it will probbably work like most stuff does. We'll never runn completely out , but there will be less and less, and fewer and fewer stars being born. so the amount of habitable areas will shrink.

[dogscoff]

Since I'm in a diagrammatical mood (see Ceres thread):
http://www.dogscoff.co.uk/images/mallard.jpg

It's the goldilocks syndrome all over again. The question is, where are we on this line? The fact that we aren't yet overrun with aliens would indicate that we are on the steep bit of the climb between A and B, but who knows? Maybe we're somewhere nearer C and everyone else is just extinct already.

Actually, the line between B anc C probably ought to be far shallower and straighter, since the hyrogen-&gt;heavy element process will be quicker when the universe is young, because there's more hydrogen about to clump up and form stars.

[Hunpecked]

Dogscoff writes: "...as you look back in time towards the Big Bang the amount of heavy elements in the universe dwindles down to nothing. Since these heavy elements are needed for life, shouldn't the probablilty of life dwindle away with it?"

Absolutely. Note, however, that we're dealing with averages and probabilities here. In regions of unusually rapid star formation (galactic cores, globular clusters) the interstellar medium could be sufficiently enriched with "metals" (atomic number 3 and above) in a billion years (the most massive stars are thought to go supernova in under a hundred million years). Such regions are also pretty hostile to life (black holes, sterilizing radiation), but given the vast number of galaxies in the universe, it seems likely that suitable combinations of conditions would exist in many of them. If so, even after 4-5 billion years of evolution, life forms in these regions would have a 7 billion year head start on us. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

While researching this post I came across an interesting article from 1996:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1996/37/

Judging from Hubble images of distant galaxies, it appears that the rate of star formation in the universe peaked about 3 billion years after the Big Bang (BB), at about 10-15 times the current rate. By the time our sun was formed, some 8-9 billion years post-BB, most of the stars the universe will ever have had already been born. That means we've also already had most of our supernovas, so Dogscoff's curve (lovely diagram, BTW) should probably be skewed to the left.

[Renegade 13]

dogscoff said:
When the universe was born, it was all hydrogen- there were no heavy elements.


As far as I know, when the universe was born, it was essentially an electrically charged soup of particles. Free atomic nuclei and free electrons were everywhere, since the temperature for a few hundred million years was far too hot to allow electrons to 'permanently' bond with the free atomic nuclei. So for quite a while in there it was an electromagnetically opaque universe, until things cooled off enough to allow the first elements to form.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

...Why would all of those elements be hydrogen?

[Wolfman77]

Protons atract electrons. 1 proton + one electron = hydrogen. Protons, having the same electric charge, need to be forced together to form larger atoms. Which happened only after stars formed.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

That makes sense.

But...Wouldn't 1 proton + 1 electron = neutron?

[Wolfman77]

Sort of, if you force them together, they could create a neutron and some energy, I think. There is something that keeps them from doing that on their own, can't remember what it is off the top of my head, and need to go do some work for a half hour or so, I'll look it up when I get back here. Or you can try wikipedia if you want.

[Hunpecked]

According a Wikipedia article, right after the Big Bang there was about 74% hydrogen-1, 1% hydrogen-2, 25% helium-4, and trace amounts of lithium and beryllium. Nucleosynthesis stopped there because there are no stable 8-nucleon elements (2 x helium-4) and there was insufficient time for many triple-alpha collisions (3 x helium-4).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_nucleosynthesis

[Suicide Junkie]

Wolfman77 said:
Sort of, if you force them together, they could create a neutron and some energy, I think. There is something that keeps them from doing that on their own, can't remember what it is off the top of my head, and need to go do some work for a half hour or so, I'll look it up when I get back here. Or you can try wikipedia if you want.

You don't get energy out. You have to put energy in.

Free neutrons have a half-life of 11 minutes, and decay back to a Proton and Electron.

Neutrinos get thrown around too, but I don't think you care.

[Wolfman77]

Sorry, I had it backwards. That's what I get for being in a hurry and not looking it up first.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Ah, thanks.