Recent content by Strato Incendus

Since I understand my story and setting have reached a "critical mass of complexity" - too much context information I could ask any human forum user to process quickly enough - I've consulted ChatGPT. I just thought some of you might be interested in the results? :D Of course, no guarantee for...

That's why this element is still one of the more "soft sci-fi" bits of my setting 😅 . And I'm still thinking about changing it to something else, since the ship overall is fairly "hard" worlbuilding - so a "soft sci-fi" element can easily feel inconsistent with the rest.

Just saw this example and it prompted me to revive the thread (does half a year count as "reviving"?), since my story features such a gun demonstration. Keyword being "demonstration"; I think weapons are one of the things that are the easiest to show, rather than tell. My guns have three lethal...

I'm reviving this thread since I just stumbled across this video: Interestingly, they also claim here that power supply and communication on Earth would break down, much like from a solar flare - which is something I had asked about previously in this thread. And the loss of communication with...

Thanks a lot for your reply! Indeed, the star I have in mind, WR 104, will likely create a hypernova when the stars it’s comprised of collide. This star system however is so far away that the nova itself will not be a threat to Earth (and will obviously also move more slowly than the gamma-ray...

Whether I actually let a gamma-ray burst hit the solar system in my sci-fi story or not, at least the looming threat of this event will shape the plot in major ways. Therefore, I need to accurately predict the effects of such an event on not only Earth itself, but also the rest of the solar...

Ah, you mean if the planet "lies" on its axis, kind of like Uranus does? :wink: So if I understand correctly, this scenario would indeed be a case of the planet "rolling" on its orbit whenever it flips. Would that be less threatening to life on the planet overall? 🤔 I just figured this...

Thanks for your fast response, @DaveC426913 ! Of course, not ALL of the day- and night side will flip: The "West and East Pole" should always remain in the twilight zone. However, the North and South pole (both of which are necessarily in the twilight zone while the planet is "upright")...

Any takes on this, since it just came up again on another forum? Perhaps a general thought experiment: How hot would the day side of a planet in the habitable zone of a red-dwarf star get over the course of 5 days facing the star, uninterrupted? Because after that, given its short orbit / year...

Thanks, I hadn't heard of the tri-alpha yet! :) That one seems to be a design for aneutronic fusion. So if I understand you correctly, the mechanism would still be that of the Helion design (Deuterium + Helium-3), but the shape would be that of the tri-alpha, right? Would those multiple...

Thanks for your take! ;) I guess, overall, this sounds like a blank cheque for me to handwave anything I want about the reactor. The choice between a Tokamak, Stellarator, or Helion design would be primarily relevant because of the reactor's shape. For example, in case I have somebody climb...

Thanks for your replies! :smile: It's still hanging in the balance - I may end up sending a repair team to the reactor at the midpoint of the first book; or it may become relevant once they start developing a singularity drive in the second book. The point is, much like I took the constraints...

Alright, time to turn to something I've neglected for far too long, but which I cannot afford leaving unaddressed: My generation ship Exodus (accelerating and braking at 0.048 m/s2 over 25 years, maximum coasting speed 0.125 c) needs to decide on a specific type of nuclear-fusion reactor. This...

Since people on this forum have understandably warned me against using a real-world planet in my story, just in case James Webb looks at its atmosphere in the future and debunks my story by proving that planet is uninhabitable: I recently asked the YouTuber Kyplanet (a new “contrarian” setting...

Just a heads up: I gave the art software Leonardo.AI the description of how I currently imagine a tidally-locked planet around a calm red dwarf star like Teegarden's Star. After many attempts, this is one depiction it came up with (as per the Terms of Service of Leonardo, the user who created...