@[email protected] @nyrath @FredKiesche
What sort of vehicle should accelerate at 1 g or so, though? You get the benefits of the Oberth effect at much lower accelerations, and designing for lower accelerations provides a lot of benefits. You get reduced structural mass - especially for solar arrays and radiators, lower thruster/engine mass, and usefully better specific impulse.
@cstross @[email protected] @nyrath @FredKiesche
Depending on your definition of "unlimited thrust", you could squint and say artificial spin gravity qualifies. It obviously has no waste heat or fuel mass problem.
If your spacecraft spins, the most intuitively obvious thrust axis is parallel to the spin axis, but it's not a no-brainer. For example, with solar electric you probably want the spin axis pointed to the Sun, but you usually want thrust perpendicular to the Sun.
@SteveBellovin @KarlSchroeder @hendric @isaackuo @sudnadja @nyrath @FredKiesche (We expect ships to carry reaction mass. Why not have them also carry feedstock and a printer, so that the core military tech you need is a big reactor, bigger radiators to dump waste heat, and a design library full of weapons and countermeasures?
(The term "energetic merchant cruiser" comes up: it's officially unarmed, stands up to customs inspector scrutiny, but you do *not* want to fuck with it …)
@SteveBellovin @cstross @KarlSchroeder @hendric @isaackuo @sudnadja @nyrath @FredKiesche sounds like Jack Campbell's Lost fleet. I would say it got even better with the later Lost Stars/Tarnished Knight set.
My favourite Jack Campbell would be his "Lady be good" short story
(Apologies if this overlaps with someone else also answering :)
@cstross @SteveBellovin @KarlSchroeder @hendric @isaackuo @[email protected] @nyrath @FredKiesche And Bennet C Cole's "Virtues Of War" series. He was a ASW operator in the Canadian Navy. Oddly hyperspace warfare is like North Atlantic submarine warfare...
(Also noticeable for the fact that the main characters are all serving in the military of an Earth engaged in a colonial war, and it's not until we get to the mid-point of volume 2 that we realise that Earth's government a) the bad guys and b) Nazis)
Cant quite remember the quote or where i read it but
The main problem facing a commander wishing to join combat, is that combat is almost impossible to join
Bugger, thats got into my brain untill i find it
@KarlSchroeder @hendric @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @nyrath @FredKiesche
@StevieP @KarlSchroeder @hendric @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @FredKiesche
Curse you 😉
That quote sound exceedingly familiar. No, I cannot remember where it is from, either.
It really depends, doesn't it? I mean, if both sides wish to engage ASAP, then yeah they'll charge toward each other for a single cataclysmic clash.
But what if the sides are not symmetric? What if one or both sides have to consider sustaining capabilities? What if one side is trying to defend a space station or something?
Depending on the details, there could also be a big advantage to engaging "retrograde".
@KarlSchroeder @hendric @cstross @[email protected] @nyrath @FredKiesche
If we're talking realistic propulsion systems capable of 2.5G, we're talking stuff like chemical rockets or maybe solid core fission thermal rockets. You'll run out of propellant within a few minutes.
Also, performing such manuevers plausibly means you can't shoot back.
It could be better to use mass to patch damage to Whipple armor sheets, rather than flush it down a nozzle.
@KarlSchroeder @cstross @[email protected] @nyrath @FredKiesche
@KarlSchroeder @hendric @isaackuo @cstross @[email protected] @nyrath @FredKiesche
And they are AWESOME books just re-read the whole series and came away with my brain buzzing.
@KarlSchroeder @hendric @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @nyrath @FredKiesche once upon a time, like 20 years ago, I joined an open source effort to build a multi-user "realistic" space battle game.
I think I basically killed the project by pointing out how, at a solar-system scale and without magic, warfare is mostly a game of electronic warfare (sensor arms races and emissions control) and information warfare.
Once you're discovered, it's nukes-on-drones time and goodnight.
@phenidone @KarlSchroeder @hendric @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @nyrath @FredKiesche one reason I like The Expanse & Honor Harrington novels: they each make effort to portray realistic space fleet combat... that still has drama & still has sparkly sci-fi
long ago I tried making a 2D space combat sim with realisticish physics... from a "fun play" perspective? the horrors, the horrors... debris became a real problem. large exploded ships becomes huge number of tiny fast friendlyfire projectiles
If you want, you can ignore the problem of debris.
The thing is ... natural debris is a real problem, which more or less demands Whipple shielding. The debris from a nearby exploded ship isn't going to be going nearly as fast, so your shielding may be fine with it.
You might want to angle solar arrays parallel to the debris "flow", though.
@phenidone @KarlSchroeder @hendric @cstross @[email protected] @nyrath @FredKiesche
@isaackuo @synlogic @KarlSchroeder @hendric @cstross @sudnadja @nyrath @FredKiesche yeah, simulation fidelity and gaming fun are two different goals.
I did enjoy the Expanse - it was pretty open about its (drive) magic - despite a few places where an inability to detect ships/drives was sadly necessary for the plot.
@KarlSchroeder @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @nyrath @FredKiesche
I think Stuhlinger (or somebody) proposed this for a Mars mission, except tripartite, not bipartite.
@tarheel @KarlSchroeder @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @FredKiesche
Krafft Ehricke designed these. I'm still looking for the tripartite one you mentioned.
@nyrath @KarlSchroeder @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @FredKiesche
He described it to me in person (he was a good friend of my grandfather, Wilhelm Angele, so we spent some time together when I was a kid). Maybe I misunderstood or his proposal never saw the light of day.
@tarheel @KarlSchroeder @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @FredKiesche
I'm sure the design exists.
All I am saying is I have yet to be fortunate enough to stumble over an old scientific paper that was blessed with an artist conception. Which is a disappointment that happens regularly to me.
@nyrath @KarlSchroeder @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @FredKiesche
Could a been a coffee-machine proposal. 🙂
I think he also had a plan for crews in each of the nodes to visit each other, like three houses close together being on good terms with each other. Kind of an emotional/social health aspect.
No idea what the mechanics of that would have been. Elevator on the cables?
@tarheel @KarlSchroeder @isaackuo @cstross @sudnadja @FredKiesche
The closest image I've managed to find was this.
And it is more about orientation effect on floor geometry than it was tripart spin habs.
Grey lines are floor contours.
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