Need help with my Sci-Fi

[Stark]

Are you serious? Lifting populations or cargo in and out of a gravity well is trivial in hard scifi now? I hate to harp, but it isn't trivial in fucking GUNDAM, which has laser swords.

[Dr Roberts]

Yep if it's large enough you can grow crops keep animals recycle water and oxygen and get power with solar panels. Also as it is permanently stationary or relatively stationary then you can easily employ the rotational gravity.

[Stark]

I think Metahive is clear pretty ignorant about space habitats, but that's not uncommon.

Amusingly in space things like industry and pollution are easily solved, becuase you can put them outside the population areas.

[Batman]

Are you serious? Lifting populations or cargo in and out of a gravity well is trivial in hard scifi now? I hate to harp, but it isn't trivial in fucking GUNDAM, which has laser swords.

I positively fail to see how GUNDAM is in any way shape or form relevant, but I didn't say 'trivial'. I said it would no longer be a concern, and it 'can't' be any more otherwise large scale colonization of the solar system would not have been possible.

[Dr Roberts]

How so without magical handwave technology like molecular synthesizers? We are talking about space stations having to accomodate possibly millions of people here after all. Where do you put all the stuff needed to produce the resources for all those people? Where does all the waste go? Just litter the orbit with it?

Burn it and release the fumes outside perhaps and the cost of lifting things in to space is a lot cheaper with the use of space elevators and other methods with the production of antimatter is more efficient and cheaper remember please that it is still the future.

[Batman]

How so without magical handwave technology like molecular synthesizers? We are talking about space stations having to accomodate possibly millions of people here after all. Where do you put all the stuff needed to produce the resources for all those people? Where does all the waste go? Just litter the orbit with it?

Franky if you if you have the technology and resources to build that kind of space habitat what's stopping you from simply dumping all your waste into the sun? So it'll take a while getting there. Who cares? You're rid of it, as long as everybody is informed of its trajectory there's not going to be any accidental collisions, the sun's lifetime is reduced by another femtosecond or so. Either we have spread across the galaxy by the time she blows or we have not.

[Metahive]

I positively fail to see how GUNDAM is in any way shape or form relevant, but I didn't say 'trivial'. I said it would no longer be a concern, and it 'can't' be any more otherwise large scale colonization of the solar system would not have been possible.

It doesn't matter that they somehow managed to get all that stuff done because the somehow is what's under scrutiny here.

Burn it and release the fumes outside perhaps and the cost of lifting things in to space is a lot cheaper with the use of space elevators and other methods with the production of antimatter is more efficient and cheaper remember please that it is still the future.

It's still an enormous amount of waste either way, especially if you waste all that oxygen only to burn garbage. I thought it was all recycled? Also, "it's the future" doesn't say anything, since what exactly that future contains is all in your head until you deign to share with us.

Maybe you should make a list of advanced technologies that pertain to your universe first, just so that everyone's in the same boat here.

[Dr Roberts]

...With all the energy the sun puts out, solar power is really all you need unless you want to store some for a smaller package, like some types of ships. (Ships can be solar powered too if they work in the inner system though!)

Antimatter is for fuel not for power generation I did mention solar power. Ships also utilize solar sails if need be.

[Metahive]

Molecular synthesizers aren't magic handwave technology. I have a set I carry around everywhere I go, and I have some other large ones in my windows.

You know what I meant, Star Trek style matter replicators. If you want a comfortable life on a space station far away just synthesizing some water, air and bare-bones nutrients isn't enough.

You can also use big industrial processes to do other stuff, or for some tasks, do it by hand. Space is different than Earth living in a lot of ways, but this isn't fundamentally one of them.

I would argue that logistics get a helluiva lot more important in space than they're already here on Earth.

Antimatter is for fuel not for power generation I did mention solar power. Ships also utilize solar sails if need be.

If it's fuel, it's implicitly for power generation.

[Dr Roberts]

@metahive I think you know what I meant by fuel firstly also have you NLT heard of the Water and oxygen recyclers. And yes k also feel you can transport resources easier in this future setting when you can engage in full scale war.

[Stark]

Jesus Metahive. Antimatter is like a battery; high density power storage. It doesn't generate power becuase you won't get as much out as you had to put in. The huge multi-kilometre mirrors and solar systems are where the power is generated.

And once people are in space, moving around (in the earth-moon system) is pretty easy. Once the area is full of habitats with functioning biospheres, it's definitely easier than jumping onto a Saturn V or having a supertech space elevator. All your industry won't even be inside the habitats, so it can benefit from environmental isolation whilst literally being within throwing distance of the habitat. What industry I particular do you see as being difficult?

[Dr Roberts]

Fun fact about a space elevator: most the concepts for ones on Earth can only support cars going up at a speed that IIRC gets them to the station in about a week.

Taking a full week just riding the elevator is a huge pain in the ass. Space elevators might be useful for some tasks, but general passenger transit on Earth probably isn't one of them.

(I have other concerns with the idea too, but this is the big one.)

Like if the cable breaks.

[Number Theoretic]

Does anyone here also have any links to good Hard Sci Fi's?

While not exactly a story website but rather a collection of general info on sci-fi tropes and formulas which assess how realistic they are, i found Atomic Rockets to be particulary helpful. Also, hard-sf author Peter Watts likes to put background info from some of his novels online, at http://rifters.com/ . I even heared, that his novels are available for free on the web, maybe even at his homepage but i haven't found it because i was just looking for background info about the ship in his novel "Blindsight".

Concerning artificial gravity: Drooling Iguana mentioned using constant acceleration earlier. Alastair Reynolds uses this in his Revelation Space novels, where they have starships that accelerate steady at 1 g until they come close to the speed of light. And btw, reaching 0.9c at 1 g acceleration takes time: about a year.

@Destructionator: Using an elevator for a week can indeed be a pain in the ass, but you could use it to transport cargo into orbit. And who knows, maybe some companies offer to transport your hibernation coffin as a piece of cargo and perhaps it is even the cheapest method to get into space. Once in orbit, your coffin can then get transfered to a robot cargo ship which transports you and all other pieces of cargo to Venus, Mars, Jupiter or whereever you want to go.

[Stark]

I love when people use 'hard scifi' and '.9c' in seriousness. :v

Even putting aside elevator issues, getting in and out of a gravity well always costs an assload of energy. Moving around in orbit is much 'cheaper' in this sense, where even the cities themselves can be moved (slowly) quite cheaply.

[Metahive]

Jesus Metahive. Antimatter is like a battery; high density power storage. It doesn't generate power becuase you won't get as much out as you had to put in. The huge multi-kilometre mirrors and solar systems are where the power is generated.

Stop nitpicking. Also, by that definition nothing ever generates power due to the second law of thermodynamics.

And once people are in space, moving around (in the earth-moon system) is pretty easy. Once the area is full of habitats with functioning biospheres, it's definitely easier than jumping onto a Saturn V or having a supertech space elevator. All your industry won't even be inside the habitats, so it can benefit from environmental isolation whilst literally being within throwing distance of the habitat. What industry I particular do you see as being difficult?

All that require resources not available on whatever planet the space station hovers above. That's the whole stumbling block for an aspiring, self-sufficient colony. We are talking about a war scenario after all here.

[Stark]

Wow, you're a fucking moron. The society is generating power from the sun, and using antimatter as efficient storage - OH EMM GEE NITPICKING!

I think you're fundamentally ignorant of the scale of 'space station' being discussed, but why would you build space habitats over a planet with no useful resources? Why should this be a metric for 'hard scifi'?

[Simon_Jester]

Franky if you if you have the technology and resources to build that kind of space habitat what's stopping you from simply dumping all your waste into the sun? So it'll take a while getting there. Who cares? You're rid of it, as long as everybody is informed of its trajectory there's not going to be any accidental collisions, the sun's lifetime is reduced by another femtosecond or so. Either we have spread across the galaxy by the time she blows or we have not.

From an energy conservation standpoint, it may actually be easier to fling stuff into deep space than into the sun- flinging stuff into the sun requires a delta-v of tens of kilometers per second to cancel your orbital speed around the sun.

About the only thing you really need to be able to dispose of like this is radioactive waste, I suspect- which may be less trouble to get rid of than to use, although even then storing it in a crater on the moon is probably just as good a plan as anything else.

[CaptainChewbacca]

If you don't want lots of spin, I'd suggest you do magnetic shoes but have the sleeping chambers be in a centrifuge. Some amount of gravity is good for us, and spending 6-8 hours a day in simulated gravity would counteract a lot of the negatives.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem with space mining, or one of them, is rare earths. Where are you getting the selenium, cadmium, et cetera, for solar panels?

Those are subject to the same problems as uranium- they're not universally available, and geologic processes can be really helpful in concentrating the minerals into accessible forms.

[NoXion]

The problem with space mining, or one of them, is rare earths. Where are you getting the selenium, cadmium, et cetera, for solar panels?

Those are subject to the same problems as uranium- they're not universally available, and geologic processes can be really helpful in concentrating the minerals into accessible forms.

If my understanding of solar system formation is correct, wouldn't Mercury be a good source of such materials? A small, but dense rocky planet rich in metals with plenty of sunlight for solar power. Even if the rare earths aren't initially accessible, you wouldn't have to concentrate the local sunlight all that much to drive a solar thermal plant. The lack of an atmosphere also means one can use mass drivers on the surface of Mercury to send cargo pods elsewhere in the solar system.

[ThomasP]

Jesus Metahive. Antimatter is like a battery; high density power storage. It doesn't generate power becuase you won't get as much out as you had to put in. The huge multi-kilometre mirrors and solar systems are where the power is generated.

Stop nitpicking. Also, by that definition nothing ever generates power due to the second law of thermodynamics.

The OP says he's using antimatter for fuel rather than power generation and you go into point-scoring mode with that devastating "lol still making power technically!" but you want to pull the "stop nitpicking" card?

Jesus christ.

[Metahive]

The OP says he's using antimatter for fuel rather than power generation and you go into point-scoring mode with that devastating "lol still making power technically!" but you want to pull the "stop nitpicking" card?

All I do is disputing that there's a fundamental divide between "fuel" and "power generation" (ever heard about coal power plants?). What's so devious or disagreeable about that? Saying that "fuel" can be used for power generation I don't regard as nitpicky, saying that "power generation" can only ever refer to power plants I however do.

Let's say you are around Venus. You can skim the atmosphere to easily pick up shitloads of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and smaller amounts of other elements. (actually you'd get carbon dioxide, but chemistry with enough input energy - from the sun - will let you break it down)

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding here about what I'm skeptical of. I think I'll sum it up thusly:

Can every planet in the solar system have equally sized populations and industries with negligible interdependence to the extent of making a "fair" war between them a feasible idea as per the OP's scenario and be within the confines of plausible technological advancement from our point of view today? That's the question I'd like answered. Thank you.

[Number Theoretic]

If the OP's nations in the solar system possess fairly advanced material processing science, AI and robotics technologies, i'd say population and industrial power don't correlate. Destructionator already hinted at an abundance of resources needed for a fair industrial base in the solar system. So i'd say yes, the OP's scenario could support a "fair" war situation that could support an interesting plot.

[Metahive]

That they could do all those things if they had only all those wonderful technological miracles at their disposal is out of the question (although I'm still mighty skeptical about the whole "fair distribution of resources" thing), but that's why I asked if those represent plausible technological advancements from our point of view today. Just what kind of advancements would mining and processing tech have to undergo to make the OP's scenario feasible for example?