Writing Sci-fiction Graphic Novel need advisement in space travel

[cruggero]

Writing Sci-fiction Graphic Novel need advisement in "space travel"

I've used VASIMR rockets as a reference and cited them as precursors to what now allows "rapid stellar travel" at say Earth to Mars in forty eight hours. Any advice on how this could be at least theoretically possible?

 

[cruggero]

I'll directly post a dialogue bubble that I've used to explain this within the story.

 

[cruggero]

"October, 2014. Terra-Cotter revolutionizes magneto plasma rockets by hybridizing thermal syncs and cyclical cyclotron resonance to decrease Earth Mars transit to forty-eight hours."
Am I on the right track here?

 

[ghwellsjr]

Don't you at least want to make the trip take longer depending on the relative positions of Earth and Mars so that if they are on opposite sides of the solar system it will take a lot longer (and cost a lot more)? In fact, you probably don't want to travel too close to the Sun so instead of making a bee line for Mars, you would travel more or less along a curve that would always take you farther away from the Sun. Every two years, Earth and Mars are relatively close together and 1 year later they are the furthest apart. Sounds like some interesting drama could unfold: round-trips to Mars for a six-month period but after that you have to stay on Mars for a year and a half or pay a huge premium to get back home.

But as far as you technology goes--it sounds far out so who's going to object?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Using a link like this we see that for less than 48 hours Earth-Mars at median distance requires a constant 4g acceleration (with a flip round to decelerate halfway) which would require, taking the Isp of VASIMR to be 12,000, roughly 1000 parts fuel for every 1 part ship.. It seems highly unlikely that this breakthrough would happen by 2014 seeing as a small test engine is planned IRL for the ISS. The biggest problems with a VASIMR engine is the supply of power and the waste heat. This severely limits the thrust and acceleration that a VASIMR can give. If you rewrite it to something like 2030 and suggest a travel time of a few weeks that may seem more realistic.

Also in the other thread (in the GD forum) you were talking about interstellar flight. VASIMR is nowhere near the technology required for this!

 

[Janus]

To get to Mars (at closest Earth-Mars distance) in 48 hrs would require a thrust of 1g (accelerating for half the trip and decelerating for the other half).
Since VASIMRs are typically of much lower thrust, I have to assume that it is this where the major improvement occurs.

However, even using a high end estimate for the ISP( an indication of rocket efficiency) of a VASIMR,(50,000) Your ship would require ~35 kg of fuel for every kg of ship to make such a trip in the given time frame.

 

[ghwellsjr]

In science-fiction, you're allowed to invent impossible technology, aren't you? But you're not allowed to rearrange the solar system, are you?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

In science-fiction, you're allowed to invent impossible technology, aren't you? But you're not allowed to rearrange the solar system, are you?

It depends on how http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction" you want your sci-fi to be. If you want it to be realistic inventing magic propulsion drive X that runs on handwavium isn't going to cut it.

 

[cruggero]

What's a realistic time frame for the output I've seen mentioned here? I'm working with a 300 year span. Also a Terra-formation process which I assume would take centuries. As to my story, I want it to be as rooted in reality as I can possibly make it. It creates a better formed "suspended disbelieve". I don't want to use fanciful words just to make it seem sci-fi. I want it to BE science.

 

[cruggero]

What would you suggest then? What feasible impetus system? Anything currently existent, or theoretically possible that doesn't defy physics?

 

[ghwellsjr]

Nope.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

What's a realistic time frame for the output I've seen mentioned here? I'm working with a 300 year span. Also a Terra-formation process which I assume would take centuries. As to my story, I want it to be as rooted in reality as I can possibly make it. It creates a better formed "suspended disbelieve". I don't want to use fanciful words just to make it seem sci-fi. I want it to BE science.

This is going to be hard. We are nowhere near the technology and science needed to even hypothesise about terraforming, even if we did it would require fantastic industrial power (orders of magnitude above the Earth today) and would probably still take millennia.

What would you suggest then? What feasible impetus system? Anything currently existent, or theoretically possible that doesn't defy physics?

It depends on what you are wanting, interplanetary or interstellar and how long in the future you want these technologies to exist? For interplanetary you could propose a VASIMR drive that can do the Earth-Mars in a matter of weeks/months and propose that such systems exist ~2050-2100. I'm not saying this is likely, but you may get away with it for SF. For interstellar I agree with ghwellsjr, there is no feasible way.

 

[ghwellsjr]

For interstellar I agree with ghwellsjr, there is no feasible way.

I was talking about his original question of going to Mars in 48 hours. That will never happen.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I was talking about his original question of going to Mars in 48 hours. That will never happen.

I see, why do you say that?

 

[ghwellsjr]

I see, why do you say that?

I thought you and Janus both indicated that it would take many times the mass of your ship in fuel to carry out such a mission. And did you calculate the energy required to escape Earth's gravity and the energy to land safely on Mars?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I thought you and Janus both indicated that it would take many times the mass of your ship in fuel to carry out such a mission. And did you calculate the energy required to escape Earth's gravity and the energy to land safely on Mars?

No to the latter question but on the subject of the impracticalities I was trying to indicate it would be highly expensive to do so, not necessarily that it would never happen. It is conceivable (but probably not with a VASIMR) that in the future we will have rockets capable of accelerating at the required level for the required time, whether or not we do it though is another question.

 

[Aimless]

I thought you and Janus both indicated that it would take many times the mass of your ship in fuel to carry out such a mission. And did you calculate the energy required to escape Earth's gravity and the energy to land safely on Mars?

The amount of mass required depends on the length of the journey, the acceleration desired, and impulse of your engine. So, you should work in reverse. Figure out how long you want your journey to be and the acceleration needed to achieve it (as mentioned above, Earth to Mars in 48hr at minimum separation requires around 1g constant accel.) and decide how big a fuel to mass ratio you are willing to tolerate for the sake of your story. That will give you the impulse you need.

From there, it's up to you to figure out a physical process capable of providing sufficient power to your engine. A VASIMR is probably not the technology you want, but I could imagine a mid-term future variant that generated a fusing plasma might get you closer to the types of impulses you need. And, if that doesn't work out, there's always Project Orion to fall back on.

 

[pervect]

If you have a variable specific impulse rocket, the good news that in general you can minimize the amount of energy it takes to accelerate at 1g for 48 hours straight, by setting some mass ratio that you want to use (say 90% fuel), and then adjusting the exhaust velocity / specific impulse you need so that you achieve this with the lowest amount of energy.

The bad news is that this minimization is still a fantastic amount of energy.

To see this, just calculate the final exhaust velocity you get if you accelerate at 10 m/s^2 for 48 hours. This is 1 728 000 meters/ second.

Now, calculate the amount of energy it takes per kilogram to accelerate something up to this velocity.

That's .5 m v^2 / m = .5 v^2 = 1 492 992 000 000 joules / kilogram

This assumes 100% rocket effeciency, which is unrelasitic. But will serve to give you some idea of what you're talking about.

You should do what your plot demands, but as far as the real physics goes, the problem is (and always has been) getting the needed energy / energy density. Saying that you have a "vasimir rocket now", isn't going to really answer how you suddenly got a power supply that could put out a trillion joules per killogram - you can think of that as 1kg supplying about 41,000 megawatt-hours.

It also doesn't explore the ramifications on society that access to this sort of energy would logically have - and it would be interesting,but probably not fit in with the plot you're trying to write,to speculate about what society would be like if such extreme concentrations of energy were available (especially at a reasonable price).

Cheapness is implied (from the plot plus a bit of logic) by the fact that people do this, rather than use less energy and take a week for their trip.

 

[cruggero]

Keep in mind that the story is revolved around the Sol system, so we're looking interplanetary. Also that there are numerous posts for fueling which I call way-stations, they're kind of like your universes "road side diners", and that everything's done from a branched out perspective. E.g. set things around Mars, move to Jupiter, then to Saturn, so on and so on. So it's like a systematic expanse that's build upon establishing the necessary things needed to fuel and equip then go further. Also, the "Company" responsible for these technological advances are indeed a "fantastic industrial power". It's written in the lore that they at one time accounted for over a third of the worlds job market and nearly half of the economic market via subsidization and uncountable satellite corporations. "Talk about too big to fail". They make GMC look like the entirety of the worlds banking firms. Imagine if they all went bankrupt.

 

[cruggero]

Additionally this "Company" does in fact leave the Sol system. I haven't quite figured whether or not I'm going to have them in another system or just on some massive planetary sized space station. This is because they were pushed out due a war.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Keep in mind that the story is revolved around the Sol system, so we're looking interplanetary. Also that there are numerous posts for fueling which I call way-stations, they're kind of like your universes "road side diners", and that everything's done from a branched out perspective.

Any way-stations between Earth and Mars are going to be in orbits around the Sun that are just as hard to land on and take off from as it is to take off from Earth and land on Mars. Otherwise, how do you expect to transfer supplies when there is a huge velocity difference between your ship and the way-station?

Also, Jupiter and Saturn are not fit for landing on, but some of their moons might be and, of course, there are plenty of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter that you could land on.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Also that there are numerous posts for fueling which I call way-stations, they're kind of like your universes "road side diners", and that everything's done from a branched out perspective. E.g. set things around Mars, move to Jupiter, then to Saturn, so on and so on.

The economics of this could be interesting. As the years go by the gap between the various planets (not forgetting asteroids and useful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)" you can see where the planets are and will be. If you can think of a clever way to wright it you could explore how the economics of travel time changes over the decades would shape interplanetary commerce and politics.

EDIT: forgot to mention that this is all assuming you can come up with a valid idea of how to make money out of space. I don't know of any author, scientist or businessman who has come up with a good proposal that doesn't rely on A) a very small niche tourist market or B) supplying a service for government funded space programs.

Additionally this "Company" does in fact leave the Sol system. I haven't quite figured whether or not I'm going to have them in another system or just on some massive planetary sized space station. This is because they were pushed out due a war.

I can't get my head around this. This would be like Boudica and her Iceni escaping the Romans by flying to the moon. The technology needed to go interstellar is orders of magnitude more advanced that interplanetary.

 

[cruggero]

The residences around Jupiter and Saturn are not planet-side, I know they're gaseous. Jupiter was particularly interesting because of moons like Io, Ganymede, and Callisto which I've put settlements on "figuratively". There are various outposts that orbit these areas as well. One of my more interesting settings is on Ceres. There's a "domed" city on surface that's extended by tethered asteroids that have been mined and hollowed for residential districts and what not.

 

[cruggero]

Profit gained in space is made by mining and cultivating resources like minerals or mineral fuels for example. This is done to stabilize resource shortages on Earth. A premise I've worked on is ice cultivation. For water. It's kind of like the platinum resource, very expensive and in high demand. Additionally some settlements are little more than agricultural ones. Like whole land-clearings meant for food production which is another precious commodity.
*Ceres is a big ice mine in manner of speaking.

 

[cruggero]

I've thought about making a setting within the asteroid belt made by a interconnected mazes worth of asteroids into a colony centered around a space station. Conceptual, still revising the first book of four. With second book written in 1st draft stage, first book in 2nd draft.

 

[ghwellsjr]

The residences around Jupiter and Saturn are not planet-side, I know they're gaseous. Jupiter was particularly interesting because of moons like Io, Ganymede, and Callisto which I've put settlements on "figuratively". There are various outposts that orbit these areas as well. One of my more interesting settings is on Ceres. There's a "domed" city on surface that's extended by tethered asteroids that have been mined and hollowed for residential districts and what not.

I've thought about making a setting within the asteroid belt made by a interconnected mazes worth of asteroids into a colony centered around a space station. Conceptual, still revising the first book of four. With second book written in 1st draft stage, first book in 2nd draft.

If you want to be scientifically accurate, you can't tether smaller asteroids to Ceres. If they are close to Ceres and exactly the same distance from the sun as Ceres is, then they will eventually be attracted to Ceres and contact it. And if they are farther or closer to the sun, then they will move away from Ceres. But you could have them orbit Ceres, in which case they will not be tethered, but you will have to stablilize their orbits because any other bodies in other orbits will cause them to deviate. Here's an idea: you're mining products on these asteroids so when you need to do an orbit correction maneuver, you launch a massive package towards Ceres and if you do it at just the right time, it can keep the asteroid in a stable orbit. (It probably wouldn't really work but it at least shows that you're thinking about the problem.)

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Profit gained in space is made by mining and cultivating resources like minerals or mineral fuels for example. This is done to stabilize resource shortages on Earth. A premise I've worked on is ice cultivation. For water. It's kind of like the platinum resource, very expensive and in high demand. Additionally some settlements are little more than agricultural ones. Like whole land-clearings meant for food production which is another precious commodity.
*Ceres is a big ice mine in manner of speaking.

What minerals exactly? I really don't see how there's a market argument for mining in space compared to Earth, what minerals to you see running out on Earth that would be profitable to mine in asteroids/planets? And I'm really confused as to why water is a "platinum resource" you know there is 1e18kg of water on the planet right?

Thinking through the fact that there is terraforming technology in your setting I don't see why people would leave Earth for agriculture, for a start to grow a farm on another planet would require either extensive terraforming to make the necessary ecology or the industry needed to mine and refine for hydroponics. It would be much more economical to use technologies like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming" , floating farms, terraformed deserts for farmland etc etc.

 

[cruggero]

Hmm...What if, for whatever reason, the acidity or salinity levels of Earth's waters rose and made it toxic? There's a growing concern that our agricultural land, as it stands right now, is becoming infertile. Petroleum fertilizers are said to be the big cause. Additionally I make overpopulation a large problem. It's not so much that there's just too many people, as it is that there's not enough food/water to go round for that particular volume. Therefore, they spread out. (E.g.) The problem is (#of people > sustainable food/water supply) so relocating people to sustain themselves elsewhere would be the solution. As for minerals, David Cohen wrote an article in 2007 about this for newscientist.com, titled "Earths Natural Wealth: An Audit". It says, "There is speculation that key elements needed for modern industry, including antimony, zinc, tin, silver, lead, indium, gold, and copper, could be exhausted on Earth within 50-60 years." Now imagine if consumption were incredibly high. I mean world population has risen from 3 billion to over 6.5 billion in 50 years. There's got to be a limit somewhere down the line, who's to say what that number is or when it will occur?

 

[cruggero]

I had either a stroke of genius or absolute idiocy the other night. As far as alien planets go we've discovered what, two hundred of untold billions upon billions of planets within our universe? So say the "Company" in my story, whose gone through exhaustive lengths to get where they are and do what they've done, spends ample amounts of time locating an M-type alien planet. Or at least one suitable for terraformation. Now getting there becomes the #1 problem. In order to do this, they calculate "aim" its precise location and build a "massive generator" that supplies negative energy and exotic matter "channels it" to create a Casimir effect between Sol and whatever system the other M-type planet would be in. I believe nanotechnology plays a large role in this, so it seems to fit, and then I'd have a "doorway" to another solar system instead of needing a particular impetus process to do so.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Hmm...What if, for whatever reason, the acidity or salinity levels of Earth's waters rose and made it toxic? There's a growing concern that our agricultural land, as it stands right now, is becoming infertile. Petroleum fertilizers are said to be the big cause. Additionally I make overpopulation a large problem. It's not so much that there's just too many people, as it is that there's not enough food/water to go round for that particular volume. Therefore, they spread out. (E.g.) The problem is (#of people > sustainable food/water supply) so relocating people to sustain themselves elsewhere would be the solution. As for minerals, David Cohen wrote an article in 2007 about this for newscientist.com, titled "Earths Natural Wealth: An Audit". It says, "There is speculation that key elements needed for modern industry, including antimony, zinc, tin, silver, lead, indium, gold, and copper, could be exhausted on Earth within 50-60 years." Now imagine if consumption were incredibly high. I mean world population has risen from 3 billion to over 6.5 billion in 50 years. There's got to be a limit somewhere down the line, who's to say what that number is or when it will occur?

If you are going to suppose a shortage of X as a reason to go to space you are going to need to work out the following

A) does this resource exist elsewhere in good enough quantities
B) what is the cost of mining this material in space
C) what is the cost of doing without this mineral

I strongly suspect that there is no material that could be mined in space for a cheaper price than either inventing technology to not rely on this material or recycling intensively.

With regards to pollution of the Earth anything of that level that you are suggesting would wipe out almost all life! You are also forgetting cruggero that in your fictional world humans have terraforming technology, a side effect of this is that you can keep the Earth's ecosystem constant and stable. With regards to population growth what do you think is cheaper, transporting millions-billions of people into space or building taller buildings, denser cities and ultimately cities that are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_city" ? I strongly suspect that space is not a viable economic solution to over-population because even if you had the technology and energy to ship huge fractions of the population off world you could use that technology and energy more efficiently on Earth.

I had either a stroke of genius or absolute idiocy the other night. As far as alien planets go we've discovered what, two hundred of untold billions upon billions of planets within our universe? So say the "Company" in my story, whose gone through exhaustive lengths to get where they are and do what they've done, spends ample amounts of time locating an M-type alien planet. Or at least one suitable for terraformation. Now getting there becomes the #1 problem. In order to do this, they calculate "aim" its precise location and build a "massive generator" that supplies negative energy and exotic matter "channels it" to create a Casimir effect between Sol and whatever system the other M-type planet would be in. I believe nanotechnology plays a large role in this, so it seems to fit, and then I'd have a "doorway" to another solar system instead of needing a particular impetus process to do so.

Currently there have only been a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet" and non of these have been Earth like. I'm not sure what you mean by "M-type" as this is not a scientific classification.

As for the "doorway" proposal this is not science. You cannot travel faster than light and all speculative proposals to this effect have severe problems (as I outlined in a https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=514992&highlight=wormhole"). The Casimir effect would not allow you to build such a thing.

 

[cruggero]

Earth like planets is what I mean by M-class. I don't know where I got it from. The casimir effect I talked about was along the lines of creating a wormhole, similar to what Einstein had talked about. I've also heard Hawking mention it once or twice. I believe its basic principal is folding the distance between to points and "punching a hole through it".

 

[cruggero]

But if the planet size cannot sustain the population then why waste a terraforming process on a planet that's;
A.) all ready populated.
B.) running low/out of natural resources.
C.) already fits the conditions necessary for human life?

 

[cruggero]

On the matter of efficiency, how can you account for individual consumption? If there isn't enough food and clean water to go around then how do you efficiently supply it? The population would be in upheaval. I understood that our natural resources are finite. Keep in mind too that within the story this isn't happening in the course of a couple decades, it's several centuries. If the population is at 6.5 billion now and was 3 billion 50 years ago then your looking at a x2 increase every 50 years. I know it's not a hard number, but it could go up into the tens of billions at that rate.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Earth like planets is what I mean by M-class. I don't know where I got it from. The casimir effect I talked about was along the lines of creating a wormhole, similar to what Einstein had talked about. I've also heard Hawking mention it once or twice. I believe its basic principal is folding the distance between to points and "punching a hole through it".

Like I said it's not a scientific term, sounds like SF. Wormholes are purely speculative physics, whilst interesting they would not help you in your story if you want to keep it as scientific as possible. Firstly they require the generation of exotic matter with negative mass (this may not even be physically possible) which the Casimir effect will not provide, secondly a wormhole doesn't punch a hole through space nor does it fold space. It links two points together but you would still have to drag one wormhole to the required destination. This would involve you having the ability to move objects with black hole like masses.

But if the planet size cannot sustain the population then why waste a terraforming process on a planet that's;
A.) all ready populated.
B.) running low/out of natural resources.
C.) already fits the conditions necessary for human life?

A) Exactly! It's got billions of people on it already and huge industrial resources. Put it another way, if you are in a city that is falling apart would you rather 1) use your resources and technology to fix the city or 2) send out trucks to the other side of the world costing millions of dollars per kg to try and build a new city there?
B) What natural resources are you talking about? With better technology and efficient recycling there would be no need to run out of anything because you make everything (cars, buildings, clothes etc) out of materials that can be easily recycled.
C) I proposed terraforming because there are areas on Earth that would millions of times more economical to terraform than other planets such as deserts, oceans, mountain ranges etc. Plus you proposed that in your story the Earth was getting polluted, if you have terraforming technology you can easily fix pollution.

On the matter of efficiency, how can you account for individual consumption? If there isn't enough food and clean water to go around then how do you efficiently supply it? The population would be in upheaval. I understood that our natural resources are finite. Keep in mind too that within the story this isn't happening in the course of a couple decades, it's several centuries. If the population is at 6.5 billion now and was 3 billion 50 years ago then your looking at a x2 increase every 50 years. I know it's not a hard number, but it could go up into the tens of billions at that rate.

Resources are finite but with the technologies necessary for what you are proposing (access to cheap energy orders of magnitude above what the world produces now, industrial output orders of magnitude larger, science far far beyond what we have) you could conceivably build a sustainable, eco-friendly and fully recyclable civilisation. As for population growth the fact that population has expanded so much doesn't mean it will. In developed countries growth has massively stagnated and is declining in some places because A) we don't need kids for work B) we reasonably expect kids to reach adulthood so don't have more to compensate and C) it turns out that equal rights and education for women plus contraception means that they don't spend all their life popping out sprogs for men.

Even with population growth though it would be far easier for your hypothetical civilisation to use their huge industrial power and scientific knowledge to terraform the Earth for maximum population density. If you can build cities in space you can easily build them on and under the sea, there's a hell of a lot of space on Earth. With the technology you are suggesting supporting trillions of people would be easy.

 

[cruggero]

Interesting, and I totally agree with you on all of this. I'd hope this is how we'd use these kinds of advancements. I'm stuck in the mind frame of using this for my narrative which is a, gloomy outlook. I'm not sure if I mentioned that this "Company" is more or less my antagonist. I'm a psychology major. I found an interesting correlation when researching Kohlberg's (Moral Reasoning Theory) between MTR and capitalistic ideals. Taking into account an individuals ethical view; some people who've obtained a lot of, let's say power, can/have exhibited a divergence from rules that counter their benefit and choose to ignore or break them. So this "Company" is like a worst case scenario of when "profit seeking goes bad". They act under a guise of concern for greater humanity and never really share this technology, they use it for their own profit, not others. They're not worried about saving Earth so much as having control. Reforming humanity into their own version of how humanity ought to be.