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Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 16, 2009 21:56:11 GMT -5
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jul 16, 2009 22:33:07 GMT -5
That is very cool. I always thought the asteroid belt was just a mass of rocks that never got the chance to form a planet. A convenient source of water for anyone who might live and work in the belt, should a story take place there.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 16, 2009 22:48:14 GMT -5
of course the rocks could be thousands of miles apart
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jul 16, 2009 23:00:49 GMT -5
Yes I know the asteroid belt is not nearly as dense as movies and TV suggest. Nuclear drives could shorten the travel time though.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 16, 2009 23:21:15 GMT -5
Imagine Earth with a backward Soviet-style economy that is forced to barter for the raw materials they need with the asteroid mining community. I am not sure how much a cabonaceous Chrondite asteroid is worth though...
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jul 16, 2009 23:34:21 GMT -5
Just goes to show how much of a failure communism is. North Korea has to rely on donations of food and money to keep functioning (of course it all goes to the government and military).
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 16, 2009 23:49:23 GMT -5
Zimbabwe and now Venezuela have shown how much an utter failure people's land reform.
Breaking up vast efficient farms into peasant subsistance farms just doesn't work. Who would have thunk it? Anyone with half a brain is who.
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jul 17, 2009 0:23:29 GMT -5
As Mark Levin says (I think he said it), liberalism (or marxism more accurately) is the philosophy of the stupid.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 17, 2009 2:02:03 GMT -5
I just updated the blog,
Citizens Unite!
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 17, 2009 21:51:55 GMT -5
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jul 17, 2009 22:49:28 GMT -5
The description of the prototype sounds like something you could build in your garage. For a story this would be a good station-keeping thruster for maintaining a position pricesely or to counter orbital decay over a long period of time.
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jul 17, 2009 22:52:51 GMT -5
www.space.com/sciencefiction/space_battleship_000121.htmlAnother nice thing about nuclear pulse propulsion is if the bad guys shoot nukes at you, you can turn the pusher plate in their direction and shrug it off (well depending on the bad guy's warhead yield and how far he detonates it away from you but it is better than nothing).
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 18, 2009 12:03:16 GMT -5
True. Maybe someone could find a way to build a repulsor ray.
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jul 20, 2009 9:35:53 GMT -5
Design Your Rocketship Part 5: A Case For Human Spaceflight
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EXPLORATION "Why not just send robots to explore the cosmos?"
Very good questions indeed. Unmanned probes are cheaper to construct and can be launched on smaller and lighter boosters, and have the bonus of not risking human life during their long journey. Sufficiently advanced robotics and computing power can do many of the jobs humans can too, so why not just rely on machines?
Think for a moment. Picture an unmanned rover landing on the moon holding a US Flag in its robotic hand. Imagine the footage of its camera showing the planting of the flag into the ground and imagine Niel Armstrong uttering his famous sentence from a control station on earth.
Does that sound special? Does that sound like a truly epic moment in human history? *crickets* I did not think so.
Sentiment aside, there are many practical reasons for human spaceflight. The most obvious is the mineral wealth the moon has to offer, especially helium three if fusion technology becomes sufficiently advanced to reliably fuse it with deuterium to get a more energetic reaction and direct conversion of the fusion energy into electricity through the protons that result from the reaction (which would build up an electric charge in the reactor that could generate a current).
The other obvious gain is the very light gravity of the moon which would allow for cheaper launches to mars and the rest of the solar system. In fact, a permanent settlement on the moon would be essential for colonization of the solar system. However, those are not the only reasons that human spaceflight and habitation in space will be essential.
A human presence on the moon and beyond means that our species would be at far less risk of extinction. When the Toba supervolcano erupted, humanity's total population was reduced to just ten thousand, and it is a matter of when and not if that we face another global catastrophe.
Humanity also faces danger from its own kind as governments gain an increasingly global reach and as long as there are thousands of thermonuclear missiles on hair trigger alert, and that is not even counting the terrorists brewing up their own means of mass destruction or the risk of a global pandemic. Space colonies could become refuge from all of that, especially as private spaceflight gets closer to reality.
What does that have to do with writing realistic space fiction? Everything. You want a plausible reason to take the risks associated with sending humans into space.
WARFARE Now, let's imagine that it is 2082 AD and the space war mentioned in the previous part is in full swing. One thing you must surely be thinking: "Why not remove the cockpit from the Falcon and let a computer fly it?"
Well, why not have machines fight wars? Obviously, it means no dead soldiers drifting in space after an exchange of fire, no mourning mothers and the emotional suffering that comes with war. Plus, machines are superior to humans, right?
Wrong. Drones have their place in warfare, there is no denying that, but robotic fighters can never replace humans. Robots do not have creativity: you have to tell them what to do and how to do it.
If your drones can be remotely controlled (and they will have a function to allow a human controller to take over), then you have an even bigger problem. A sufficiently advanced enemy will find a way to hack into the drone's communications and control system and turn those drones against you.
In addition to that, the vast distances that battles will be fought will mean lightspeed lag will have to be taken into account. By the time you sent the abort order to your robot fighters, it could already be too late.
A human crew on the other hand can respond to changing battle conditions much faster, and are less likely to follow orders blindly.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 20, 2009 14:08:22 GMT -5
Those are all very good points to take into consideration when writing science fiction. Maybe someone could start at a less advanced stage and write a story explaining how technology advances step by step?
Every story would have a different history of course.
Just a thought.
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