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Hello all, just a quick check in. I've been reading EG articles for quite a few years but haven't participated since I felt I have nothing to contribute. However, I am working on a story now to hopefully submit to Voices so I may pop in from time to time to ask questions for small details.
Thanks,
Aunty Proton
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Welcome to the forums We don't run voices anymore but we do still take stories (we just put them onto the site, which is undergoing a redesign atm that should make it easier to find and read stories). Would you like to share anything about your story now or wait until it's finished? And as a general question; what's your favourite part of the setting?
If you're a discord user feel free to join our channel for more casual conversations:
https://www.orionsarm.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3500
OA Wish list:
- DNI
- Internal medical system
- A dormbot, because domestic chores suck!
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I'm still outlining at the moment, but it concerns a small fleet of extremely early O'neill cylinder habitats / generation ships that have been in flight since they left Solsys in 440 a.t. They originally planned to settle in the Kuyper belt of Procyon, but as they were only able to do 1%C by the time they got halfway there they realized it had been taken by the anti-biont AIs. They rebuilt their magnetoplasmadynamic engines and diverted to go around at a safe distance, ending up heading roughly toward New Gaia. Given their way of life and what they've been able to pick up during the years, they've remained isolationist and steered way clear of inhabited systems. They've managed to pick up small asteroids and comets along the way for resources (they left with only 1 cylinder, they've managed to build another and a combination ship/cylinder for their AI), but now they are running EXTREMELY low on resources. To the tune of "if something unexpected happens to bump this house of cards, we're all dead". Their AI wasn't even a real AI when they left, just a superbright with a lot of automated systems running the cylinder. Now, she's been resisting ascension to S2 for a couple thousand years. So she's holding on by the skin of her virtual teeth, trying her damndest to keep all the balls in the air and keep her people alive and flying without losing it herself. In the middle of all this, a diplomatic task group shows up as a "first contact" representative... and it all starts falling apart.
There's more but I don't want to give it all away.
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Hi - Welcome to the forums
The story sounds interesting. If there's anything we can help with, either in terms of OA Canon or technology or whatever or on more general principles, please don't hesitate to ask.
Welcome aboard!
Todd
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(08-24-2018, 02:54 AM)AuntyProton Wrote: I'm still outlining at the moment, but it concerns a small fleet of extremely early O'neill cylinder habitats / generation ships that have been in flight since they left Solsys in 440 a.t. They originally planned to settle in the Kuyper belt of Procyon, but as they were only able to do 1%C by the time they got halfway there they realized it had been taken by the anti-biont AIs. They rebuilt their magnetoplasmadynamic engines and diverted to go around at a safe distance, ending up heading roughly toward New Gaia. Given their way of life and what they've been able to pick up during the years, they've remained isolationist and steered way clear of inhabited systems. They've managed to pick up small asteroids and comets along the way for resources (they left with only 1 cylinder, they've managed to build another and a combination ship/cylinder for their AI), but now they are running EXTREMELY low on resources. To the tune of "if something unexpected happens to bump this house of cards, we're all dead". Their AI wasn't even a real AI when they left, just a superbright with a lot of automated systems running the cylinder. Now, she's been resisting ascension to S2 for a couple thousand years. So she's holding on by the skin of her virtual teeth, trying her damndest to keep all the balls in the air and keep her people alive and flying without losing it herself. In the middle of all this, a diplomatic task group shows up as a "first contact" representative... and it all starts falling apart.
There's more but I don't want to give it all away.
If I might offer a suggestion.
Although 1% of c is considered a near crawl by Y11k standards, and not even terribly fast by the time most of the early starships were being launched - it is still a tremendously fast speed and one that you can't just speed up and slow down from at will (at least if getting to that speed in the first place represents a significant effort).
This has a couple of implications for your story:
1) Interstellar dust and gas will still be a danger to the ship. At 1% of c a piece of gravel striking the ship could be like a small bomb going off on the hull. Remember that 1% of c is still 3000 kilometers per second.
2) Picking up small asteroids and comets en route is probably not doable - both because the ship would be hard pressed to slow down and speed up again and because it would take enormous energies to accelerate even a 'small' body up to 1% of c (since even a small asteroid or comet could still easily be the size of a large building or a small mountain).
With these two issues in mind, and given that you indicate that resource exhaustion is a major factor for the fleet, I would suggest a couple of alternatives:
a) The first ship included a substantial amount of extra mass set up as shielding to protect the ship in flight. This same mass was intended to be mined over the course of the trip to provide additional resources, up to and including creation of additional vessels in flight, but after such a long extra time in space it is nearing the point where mining any more will endanger the ship in the event of an impact and/or there won't be any more mass to make up for losses in recycling and such.
b) The first ship was launched along with a small 'fleet' of small asteroids and iceteroids (masses of raw materials and volatiles basically) flying in formation with the intent that these should be mined over the course of the trip. After the long voyage these are again nearly exhausted both in terms of starting to lose shielding mass if much more mining is done or running out of consumables, or both.
Either of these options could take advantage of the industrial base of the solar system to help accelerate the whole shebang up to speed. The new habs would have the advantage of not needing fuel to accelerate and could use mag-sail tech to help them slow down with much less fuel when they arrived at their destination.
Beyond that do you mean their AI is resisting ascension to S1 or actual ascension to S2? Currently only one transapient is known to have jumped from S0 to S2 in one hop and that was GAIA (which may or may not have worked out badly, depending on who you ask). While we don't forbid such a thing, it is very much unusually for a sophont to jump 2 S-levels in one go. Also, are you talking about the AI being a 'superbright' (a human genetically engineered for greater intelligence) or a 'superturing' (an AI engineered for greater than human intelligence)?
Just trying to get a clear picture of things here.
Hope all this helps,
Todd
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It does sound like an interesting story a few comments echoing Todd:
1) .1c is the usual cruise speed of this period however most craft also carried their colonists and ecosystem in stasis. This craft is a live generation ship meaning it will need more mass and size to maintain an active ecosystem. This can account for the reduced speed. Exactly why this was chosen? I’ll leave that to you.
2) RE harvesting: an interstellar space craft is extremely unlikely to have the delta-V to do more than speed up to cruise and decelerate upon arrival. So if they did slow down to intercept a rogue dwarf planet or something that’s their one chance to do so. After that they’ll be practically stationary relative to the stars, moving at low tens of km/s (assuming they don’t just slow down to a complete stop relative to the body they wish to harvest).
3) As Todd says a superturing is an AI, a modosophont one specifically. It might make more sense for it to be on the cusp of ascension to S1 but limiting itself from any further self modifications for fear of a failed ascension. The potential fallout of which could easily exterminate the crew.
OA Wish list:
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- A dormbot, because domestic chores suck!
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Why not leave after the Technocalypse, as part of the general chaos as the old order falls apart? Sometime between 540 and 621 seems reasonable. A number of Backyarder and refugee ships left in this period - most were not successful, but some survived.
Quote: Interstellar dust and gas will still be a danger to the ship. At 1% of c a piece of gravel striking the ship could be like a small bomb going off on the hull. Remember that 1% of c is still 3000 kilometers per second.
On the positive side lumps of gravel are very rare in space. On the down side a ship travelling at 1%c will encounter just as many dustgrains/lumps of gravel as a ship travelling at 10%c, or 90%c, over the same distance - the sip effectively cuts a cylindrical hole through space and intercepts everything in that pathway. On the upside (again) the energy of impact for a ship travelling at 1%c is much less than that at 10%c. A relatively modest impact shield on the forward end should suffice.
Rather than slow the ship down to build a new cylinder, you could send an advance party with a fast ship to build it as the generation ship sails past. This would be much more economical on fuel and propellant. You could even cobble the fast ship together from the engines of the generation ship (which aren't being used, after all).
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(08-24-2018, 07:46 PM)stevebowers Wrote: Rather than slow the ship down to build a new cylinder, you could send an advance party with a fast ship to build it as the generation ship sails past. This would be much more economical on fuel and propellant. You could even cobble the fast ship together from the engines of the generation ship (which aren't being used, after all).
Assuming you have the manufacturing technology to do so, not to build the smaller ship but to pack enough equipment and people into it to to get the job done. Neumanns in the early days were't as advanced (the need for supervision places a cap on how many can be deployed for a given job) but they were good enough for the colonies that did succeed. For a story it would be a fine line between having enough technology to be able to send off industrial seeds to harvest/transport resources and build more habitats and not having technology good enough to keep your current systems going. There might not be any overlap at all.
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- Internal medical system
- A dormbot, because domestic chores suck!
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(08-24-2018, 07:56 PM)Rynn Wrote: (08-24-2018, 07:46 PM)stevebowers Wrote: Rather than slow the ship down to build a new cylinder, you could send an advance party with a fast ship to build it as the generation ship sails past. This would be much more economical on fuel and propellant. You could even cobble the fast ship together from the engines of the generation ship (which aren't being used, after all).
Assuming you have the manufacturing technology to do so, not to build the smaller ship but to pack enough equipment and people into it to to get the job done. Neumanns in the early days were't as advanced (the need for supervision places a cap on how many can be deployed for a given job) but they were good enough for the colonies that did succeed. For a story it would be a fine line between having enough technology to be able to send off industrial seeds to harvest/transport resources and build more habitats and not having technology good enough to keep your current systems going. There might not be any overlap at all.
Note however that:
a) Neumann tech from this early in the timeline was presumably much much less capable (exactly how much is something we would need to work out and possibly not relevant to developing this story.
b) Even if neumanns (or whatever is used) any sort of advance party would need to slow itself down from the ship's speed (and magbrakes don't work very well at this low a speed, so this would be expending some amount of fuel at some point. Also, this would at the least require detecting the target in interstellar space well in advance), hopefully locate all the required materials at the target to build what is desired and then provide the fuel to get it back up to speed with the ship, build the desired ship/hab - and then get the whole thing up to speed to rendezvous with the main ship as it passes by. TBH I don't think even Y11k tech could pull that off, or at least not reliably.
On a related note, rather than bringing 'raw' asteroid/comet material at launch, it might be better to bring along a big mattercache of material mined and refined in the solar system before launch. This would let you know exactly what you had (vs having to go with what you think you have in the asteroid) and would make construction and recycling easier in most cases.
Just some thoughts,
Todd
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Finished the outline. Or maybe I should say the provisional outline.
"Outline!" They said. "It makes it easier!" they said. "It'll be fun!" they said.
Easier my shiny chrome posterior.
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