Another day, another spaceship post.
As Jonathan Beverley pointed out, the two primary problems with spaceships are:
1. Holding in the air.
2. Preventing radiation.
To hold in the air, you need rounded everything. To prevent radiation, you need tons and tons and tons of rock.
I am envisioning a spaceship that's all rounded like a sphere and made up of around 6 x 10 ^ 24 kg of mostly rock & water.
Other than not having a lot of maneuverability, what problems are there with this big ole' spaceship?
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I beg to differ, the two primary problems with spaceships are:
ReplyDelete1. Too many places for the Alien to hide
2. That the warp drive opens a gateway to the hell dimension
Your first problem is that it's an entire planet. Earth is 6e24 kg.
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side, you don't need a hull to keep the air in...
I love you guys. You get me.
ReplyDeleteIsn't there a way to use magnetic fields to disperse most of the radiation? Or does that only work if you have an atmosphere to begin with?
ReplyDeleteBut if we're going with rock-and-water shielding, it needs internal structural support and isn't very expandable. I imagine your spacefaring team hollowing out a new asteroid when they get too big, not unlike an interplanetary hermit crab.
ReplyDeleteI think sensors and engines and weapons outside can be handled with wired interfaces through the rock.
And if you leave the Alien bait in the engine room, those two problems mostly take care of each other.
Again, there are two problems with radiation shielding.
ReplyDelete1. solar wind, especially solar storms
2. comic rays
Shielding type 1 is not that bad. Magnetic shielding is possible, and has the advantage that you can dial it up and down to match current solar output. Hybrid designs might even be possible.
Shield type 2 is currently impossible. Way too much power, or way too much mass. Also, we don't put astronauts that high up, so we don't know how bad it really is. (ISS orbits way below the Van Allen belts)
You're right, I do need something regarding a magnetosphere to keep out a bunch of radiation.
ReplyDeleteSo what's what I need, is a huge ball of mostly rock and water, with enough metals aligned right to produce magnetic poles.
That sounds reasonably difficult. How long do you think it'd take to make one?
Not long. All the hard work is in the fjords.
ReplyDeleteDepends strongly on how you get your material.
ReplyDeleteFinding decent sized asteroids, hollowing them out, installing infrastructure, and capping it with electromagnets is one way.
Making two big metal geodesic domes and pouring a sea in between them? Now you mostly need something to keep the water from boiling out, but if you don't mind space rocks in your outdoor pool they also work as kinetic shielding. Major difficulty is getting that much water into space. I suspect for a spaceborn people, water is a precious commodity.
Actually, with good robotics and solar energy collection near the asteroid belt, you could probably automate 90% of the process with von Newman machines. Then you basically need to find a rough asteroid of the right size and "furnish" it with life support and hardware.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, because I can't resist.... "2. comic rays" Dane Cook radiation is very difficult to deal with.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, all the talk of water shields made me think of some of Reynolds' work where the ships use huge ice shields as a source of easily molded/replaced ablative armor.
The degree to which I would like to spend my time on G+ discussing crazy spacehips and crazy improbably spaceship civilizations would be difficult to overstate.
ReplyDeleteInstead, I have to think about work work work. And contract negotiation isn't nearly as much fun as spaceshiiiips.
In this case it appears that you're using gravity to hold in the air, rather than anything else.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I'd also love a spaceship that's more like the merchant Marines, with a rank structure, profit payouts, and bunks. Firefly is an obvious example.
ReplyDeleteIt's also fairly unrealistic, but so are super tankers.