Raw materials in outer space

[wilfulton]

I'm writing a fic about a Post Apocalyptic Solar System (PASS). Some planet-sized comet came careening through the solar system and smashed Earth into space dust for no good reason. No earth, but there are several warlords spread from Kraken (the largest fragment of what was once Earth) to Pluto and beyond, all fighting over control of the solar system.

Now, from what I gather, the warlords of the inner solar system would have access to plenty of metal to build their ships out of, but the warlords of the outer solar system, where the planets become comprised of more and more ice, might not be so lucky. As such, I would anticipate such a hypothetical warlord to be building spacecraft largely out of plastics, from organic compounds that are found on the sufaces of the icy moons out there.

The warlords do sometimes trade with one another (and there is much commerce coming from Mercury, which remains independent), but are for the most part self sufficient.

So, construction of the inner solar system, metal, construction in the outer, mostly plastic, with metal being greatly prized. Thoughts?

[Sarevok]

Well the warlords could use asteroids as colonies. Mining asteroids is an idea floating around for a long time. One could envision warlords controlling space cities on surface of mineral rich asteroids. The low surface gravity of an asteroid can be ideal for spacecraft construction as the constructions materials do not need to be blasted into orbit. Also asteroids could trade with each other with easily for same reason as people and goods do not need expensive shuttling to and from orbit of a planet.

Storywise I would say resources should be premium. Warlords should try to capture enemy asteroid colonies whenever possible then destroying them. Also if the number of surviving humans is low using WMD against a colony could be considered very bad publicity.

[Ender]

Of course, the outer systems would also have a much greater mass-energy budget, as they could easily harvest light elements from the gas giants for fusion, or slowly drop the ring matter down into them to get the gravitational potential energy back. Plus they would have plenty of carbon to build with, even though it wouldn't be as good as metal for a lot of applications. But the big thing here is food - where are they gonna grow it?

[wilfulton]

The Earth is destroyed c. 2500, at which point humankind has already established colonies, probably all the way out to Pluto. I think that very little colonization has occured since the apocalypse. As for food production, I think it had already been taken care of previously by the original colonists. They have hydroponics, and the crops are artificially illuminated. Most colonies do have fusion reactors powering them, so I think greenhouses could actually manage.

Of course while the PASS does regularly use fusion reactors, they also use a lot of fission, especially for spacecraft drives. Uranium and Plutonium are, next to titanium, probably some of the most valuable metals there are.

Space combat is also heavily centered around very small, open cockpit craft that are propelled by chemical rockets. They do not stray far from nuclear powered barges, which ferry fleets between distant planets.

And oh yes, there is plenty of fighting among the asteroids.

[bekeleven]

So, what I'm gathering is that:

1. Fusion reactors are commonplace
2. They use hydrogen to create oxygen for the colonies while simeultaniously generating power through fusion (possibly)

What I'm wondering:

1. Either artificial gravity has been perfected, or alot of people are going to have bone problems.
2. Is there some way to communicate, or travel, faster than light?

[wilfulton]

1. Fusion reactors are commonplace

Not sure yet, probably many colonies, especially in the outworld would, but I think there are more fission reactors. The culture of PASS is not too terribly sophisticated, as they are typically too busy fighting amongst themselves.

2. They use hydrogen to create oxygen for the colonies while simeultaniously generating power through fusion (possibly)

Entirely possible, although I'd thought they'd mostly get the oxygen from water ice in the outer solar system. I had not previously thought of this, but don't see why not.

1. Either artificial gravity has been perfected, or alot of people are going to have bone problems.

No, the only artificial gravity comes from rotating sections, and very few spacecraft have these. Some drugs are in place to limit bone loss due to weightlessness, and I think a few humans may have been genetically engineered so that they don't loose bone mass through microgravity, but for the most part, they spend a lot of time in microgravity and are probably very weak as a result. Earth is gone, the largest fragment of it, Kraken, is a little smaller than the moon. Or shit, maybe instead of a planet-sized comet, maybe one just the size of say Pluto smashes into it, comprised mostly of methane ice, which burns up all the oxygen in the atmosphere. While it doesn't blow earth apart, it gets blanketed in a shitload of greenhouse gasses and heats up like Venus. Either way, the planets with the strongest gravity that we have to be concerned about are Mercury and Mars, and they're not much, about 1/3 G.

2. Is there some way to communicate, or travel, faster than light?

No, sorry.

I kind of thought this up mostly with what technology we have today in mind, with a few extras. For example, they do have some crude form of shields, but they are intended largely to stop micrometeors (objects smaller than a grain of sand would be pushed aside by their shields, not destroyed, just pushed aside). In combat the shields are charged up to full power, which produces an electromagnetic signature that is more visible, but they protect against lasers, particle weapons (plasma guns are common but mostly as a very short range weapon owing to the fact that once out of the containment bottle, plasma and coherency are usually mutually exclusive terms. The most common applications are pistols, which are powerful hand weapons used by warlords, and power swords, which are more or less just plasma cutters on steroids.

Ship combat involves gauss cannons magnetically accelerating marble-sized iron spheres to velocities between 1000 and 1400 km/sec. Only the most powerful shields are capable of stopping these projectiles (excuse me, pushing them aside) those on most small ships won't do enough to keep it from hitting.

Missiles are very common, from chemically propelled with a warhead holding x kilograms of octanitrocubane-based explosive , to nuclear powered weapons with a nuclear warhead (their purpose is to penetrate deep into the opposing warlord's base at high speed and detonate a 100 MT warhead inside. Hope spring's eternal. Of course naturally, if somebody has a better idea of how to make a big bang, I'm open to suggestions, founded in actual science, please.

Spaceflight times are very long, and I'm wondering about suspended animation, but I'm actually kind of leaning against it. Maybe the tech is available, but not so widely used because there is a high liklihood of once you go it, we're not guaranteed to be able to revive you or something.

And if you want to get an idea for what my ships look like, look at some old Lego space sets (from the 1980's). That would be where my ideas come from.