mccNov 30
Science fiction novel about, and from the perspective of, a species from a planet with liquid methane oceans; periodically throughout the novel water must be discussed, and they perpetually refer to it as "liquid ice"
Show threadallisonNov 30
@mcc sometimes i like to consider how—to beings from beyond the snow line—i am made of 70% lava
Show threadmcc
@aparrish if i understand right, if you're in deep space, ice should be one of the hardest substances around. as you approach absolute zero it has a hardness of 19, twice that of diamond. it would make absolute sense to use as a building material for spaceships or on deep space asteroids
Nov 30 at 5:47pmWeb
Show threadBenjohnNov 30
@mcc @aparrish I did not know that. That's extremely cool.
Show threadRatsnake Games 🔞Nov 30
@mcc @aparrish Don't space ship surfaces get super hot in space because there is no atmosphere to exchange heat with?
Show threadmccNov 30
@ratsnakegames @aparrish put an outer layer on it. Put the ice in a plastic bag or something
Show threadHoward Chu @ SymasNov 30
@mcc @aparrish hm, but why build a spaceship that can't safely fly near stars or gas giant planets? What kind of propulsion system operates without producing waste heat?
Show threadmccNov 30
@hyc @aparrish why go near a star?? those things are dangerous
Show threadHugo MillsNov 30
@mcc @aparrish Blish didn't quite do this, but he has the original science for the Spindizzy star-drive being done by building a large structure out of some allotrope of ice at high pressure on the surface of Jupiter (way down under the hydrogen atmosphere).
Show threadmccNov 30
@darkling @aparrish
Show threadHugo MillsNov 30
@mcc @aparrish Icy what you did there.
Show thread🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦Nov 30
@mcc @darkling @aparrish Ice-9 FTW
Show threadHugo MillsNov 30

@mcc @aparrish I'm getting shades of Project Habakkuk here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk - Wikipedia

Show threadallisonNov 30
@mcc now i'm imagining a roland emmerich-style film in which an interplanetary disaster forces us to abandon earth and colonize the outer solar system. under pressure to build infrastructure as quickly and expertly as possible, the world's governments have no choice but to put humanity's fate in the hands of a ragtag band of ice hotel architects and traditional inuit builders
Show threadDarby M. Dixon IIINov 30
@aparrish Armageddon 2: you can teach a hotel concierge how to draft space blueprints but you can’t teach an architect how to do basic hospitality
Show threadKevin GranadeNov 30

@mcc @aparrish no way can I recall the title, but this reminds me of a short story centered around a deep space ship making a stopover at a planetary colony to replenish their stock of ablative ice chunks they installed in front of their ship to absorb micrometeorite impacts.

The interesting parts were how the politics of this situation impacted the colony, as it represented an infusion of technological knowledge and hardware as well as an "escape" from the colony for many of the inhabitants.

Show threadDag Ågren ↙︎↙︎↙︎Nov 30
@kevingranade @mcc @aparrish Songs of a Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. Available both as a novel and a short story, apparently, I only read the novel.
Show thread01d55Nov 30
@mcc We learned how to synthesize diamonds but did not start building things out of diamond because being harder than steel does not allow diamond to hold up a building better than steel. I suspect no rigid crystal is going to beat metals.
Show threadmccNov 30
@01d55 depends on the relative difficulty of mining asteroids and comets, i imagine
Show thread01d55Nov 30
@mcc Mining comets is easy because you just need heat and everything makes heat, you can't stop things from making heat. Mining asteroids is easy because ice-tipped drill bits are really good.
Show threadAndrew WadeNov 30
@mcc @aparrish I can't find anything definitive but it seems unlikely that water ice would get that hard: it will still be held together with hydrogen bonds. Water ice does get hard enough to build mountains out of when it gets cold enough.
Show threadTimothy Entertainment SkullDec 1
@mscibing I think reports of the Brinell hardness of ice (>17 below -50C) are being compared to the Mohs hardness of diamond (10) instead of the Brinell hardness of diamond (est ~8000 but the Brinell test indenters are softer so idk if an actual measurement is possible)