Recent content by RedDwarfIV

A larger station would also have the option of having less important things like monopropellant or waste water tanks around the outside as a crumple zone. If it's a wheel-shaped station for gravity, then the habitation areas would be well out of the way of the shuttle docking bay.

I like that idea. I'll point out though, the ISS is a pretty fragile structure. It was built in modules, only loosely connected, and it's really very thin. It would probably be possible to build a station capable of handling an impact of 68 tonnes of shuttle, but you would probably need a much...

That would be good, but I'm afraid my Google skills were not enough to unearth such a paper. In any case, the power requirements were cut by changing the shape of the warp ring to a fatter doughnut, then adding a second ring. IIRC, anyway. Depends on how big the space station is, and how strong...

More fair points. But as far as I'm aware, the power requirements went from "literally all the energy" to "the mass-energy of Jupiter" to "the mass-energy of a Voyager probe" http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html...

I'm sorry, I'm not that good with maths. Though taking the figure for how many kilograms of antimatter one terrawatt could produce over a year, converting it to tonnes, then times by 14 (0r 220, if the other source was accurate). 14 terrawatts: 46,620,000 tonnes 220 terrawatts: 732,600,000...

Fair points. Mercury is too close. As for the inefficiency of making antimatter, that's not really an issue. Antimatter is a battery, rather than a fuel source. If you have the power to spare for making it, and you need something with very high energy density, why not make it? Since I brought...

If there were any humans on-site (and the Luna Ring plans say there would be) then they would have constant gravity. Presumably by this point there would be at least some colonies on Mercury anyway, probably at the poles where there's water ice. To do the same for a space installation, you would...

Putting them on a planet means you can use in-situ resources to build and repair the panels and production facilities. A lot of resources would be needed. I think the 1018 number came from me copy and pasting it. I didn't notice.

I ask because in the book I'm writing, most interstellar spacecraft have Alcubierre-White warp rings. The more power you put into them, the faster you can go. Most of the spacecraft with warp rings use fusion plants to get power, but I was planning to have couriers use antimatter so they...

Ah. Thanks.

If you were to cover the equator of Mercury with solar panels, then used the poles for antimatter production, how much antimatter could you make in a day? http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=22962 This site makes some interesting points about how the cost of producing antimatter could be lowered...

I am a 20 year old male from the UK, I am interested in engineering, and I like the sci-fi genre. I'd have put "BTEC level 3 diploma in engineering" on the "highest education" thing, but it wouldn't let me. The reason I'm here is that I'm currently writing a sci-fi book that's fairly hard on...