Gateworld Virtual Fleet 4.0 - Discussion thread

[thekillman]

" The cold plasma and hot plasma are different types of plasma the heat transfer would not effect it/you can replace the layers. "

Sorry, where is this from?

Cold plasma and hot plasma are the same thing essentially. The main difference is that cold plasma is room-temperature and atmospheric pressure, while hot plasma can be thousands to millions of degrees at less than a hundredth atmosphere.

Secondly, it may be possible to design such a shield. It required some additional reading. Well i doubt it's in the form of the shield you mentioned but still.

The idea of such a plasma shield is identical to the one i mentioned earlier. By tuning the plasma it becomes possible to turn it into an energy mirror. This is similar to how radio waves bounce off the ionosphere. That's also where the problems come in. First of all, you need a sufficiently strong plasma shield to counter the enemy's EM. So far i see radar being mentioned, that's very far down the wavelength range. The earlier mentioned idea of plasma shields thus still applies: a weapon of sufficient wavelength will cut through the shield like butter. if you have an IR mirror you can cut through it with a visible light laser. If you have a UV mirror you cut through it with X-ray. Even UV, IR and X-ray are a spectrum of energy states and so, an IR shield does not necessarily protect from another IR laser.

The plasma that makes up the shield needs to have a higher frequency (i am not sure how that works, but i assume it's tied to the AC current source) for a higher frequency lightwave. Almost inevitably that leads to a hotter shield. So, if you need to defeat a Gamma Laser you're probably moving a fusion reactor around on your hull.

As usual there is a possible exploit, which is what your source mentioned. If you tune the inner shield and outer shield to reflect the hot shield's own heat, you keep it trapped. Keep hot iron in mind. If you heat it, you can feel the heat radiating off it. That's IR. Increase the heat until it becomes red hot. It's now radiating visible light. Make it hotter and hotter and it'll glow white-hot. That's the entire visible spectrum. Now if you keep heating it further, it will go up in the spectrum and start emitting UV. I am not entirely sure how this works for a random kind of plasma, but as you get hotter you can use a less energetic shield to protect from that emission.

Obviously such an emission isn't perfect and a UV-radiating plasma will still radiate some visible and IR light. So heat loss is there anyway.




There is one very, very, very big IF. Modern plasma generators still rely on big magnetic coils. Erecting a single shell is going to be a massive feat of engineering. Erecting a sandwich shell construct with different properties is... well i think you can never build a generator that neatly keeps the cold(er) plasma cold(er) and the hot(ter) plasmas hot(ter). You would probably need such plasma generators poking through the inner cold shell and interacting with the hot shell (to maintain and keep in place) while also having generators poke through the hot and cold shell to maintain the outer cold shell.




I will dedicate a bit to the actual use of cold plasma, because they're not investing thousands of dollars on useless stuff. One use is for aircraft. i've seen ideas for plasma-shielded aircraft where the plasma essentially lubricates the craft and vastly reduces the air friction. I've seen ideas where the plasma reflects radar and so creates stealth without the complex design or black paint (although, it would probably be an additional in stead of replacing measure). It could shield satellites from radar too. It could act as a heat shield for spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere. Time and again the same problems are run into: it costs a ton of power and the equipment is heavy.

Rail cannons/Coil guns/auto cannons , proton beams, neutron beams, infrared lasers, x ray lasers, gamma ray lasers, nuclear fission/fusion devices, EMP, and radiation bombs?

I doubt it'll be effective against anything kinetic whatsoever. If it's slow enough it may work, but any ship using kinetic weaponry will make sure they can actually hit their target, and once stuff is measured in kilometers per second no wall is going to help.

Particle beams are more difficult. Below a certain energy the shield will work. Any kind of serious beam (a beam generator 100m+ or cyclic generator) will puncture through. Proton beams have scatter problems (making them less long-ranged than lasers but more long-ranged than kinetic weapons), neutron beams are godaweful hard to make.

A laser is simple. If the frequency of the weapon is higher than the shield it'll go through. Otherwise, part gets deflected and part gets absorbed.

Fission/Fusion depends. Both have a strong spray of X-rays so if the shield is X-ray proof it'll work.

EMP depends on the wavelength and so on the shield. However, EMP protection should be fairly easy.
Radiation bombs? like how? because in space, a nuke will mostly emit radiation.

[thekillman]

Or any thoughts on "expanding metal foam" and metal foam in space ships and space craft construction in comparison to nano material, advanced composites and super alloy?

Metal foams, to my knowledge, have two very interesting properties:

*excellent (mechanical) energy absorbtion. They're used in cars in parts exposed to the crash for re-enforcement

*low density at equal strength. That is, an aluminium foam sheet of 5kg will be as strong as an aluminium sheet (assuming equal aluminium grade). The benefit however, is that the solid sheet will be, say, 1mm thick while the foam sheet may be, say, 10mm thick.



The reason the thickness matters is because of stiffness. A metal may be strong, but it's not much use if it's not stiff. Look at an iron bike or an aluminium bike. Aluminium is 3x lighter and 3x less strong than iron, and 3x less stiff. So a bike made of aluminium will have tubes with a bigger wall thickness (to compensate strength) and a much bigger tube diameter (to compensate stiffness).

Metal foams allow constructions which are just as strong, but much stiffer. I saw a plan with aluminium foam replacing wood, having an equal density but better properties.

[Gormagon]

Good info thank you.

Now, if you might, we were interested in more details on entangled matter (We abbreviate it ETm; EnTangled-matter.) as far as the specifics of the communication system. We can't seem to find the information we need online. Lets term the entangled matter as 'sync bits' (Synchronized bits.) for simplicity's sake, would 'two' Sync bits (If i'm understanding this entanglement.) only be able to communicate with each other, or could there be as many com stations as you wanted all operating on the same frequency? For instance, to coordinate a fleet? Or, do you need multiple....'containers' of ETm to communicate with different area...all linked to central com stations or something? But...you would wouldn't you, because if you 'said' one thing to one ship, all would 'hear it'....this is weird lol.

We need to know regarding-
-Com stations
-Sensor net drones (For battle, Drones spread out around the ship and increase sensor range and tracking with the ETm system sending info back to the ship)
-Probes and scout drones
-Inter fleet communication
-Secure coms
-Issues
-How its made
-How its contained
-How long does it last
-Potential cost
-Fleet communications

It would make sense to me these would be totally secure com's as in no one can 'hear' whats being communicated unless directly able to observe the specific ETm in question...like acquiring it illegally. Hm.....

Thoughts?

[Gormagon]

Oh also the potential use of quantum nucleonic reactors on Drones, shuttles, and ships, could it be used in space or would it make a good in atmosphere engine? And how would thorium or another fissile element provide propulsion for Drone craft in space? Right now we are using a mixture of nuclear engines for main and rocket thrusters for secondary, but are unsure exactly what to use for the fuel, (And therefore the lifetime of the power source and the thrust.) But what to use for rocket thrust? We figured hydrogen, but is it possible to enrich it? Or apply the principles of magmatter?

[thekillman]

for simplicity's sake, would 'two' Sync bits (If i'm understanding this entanglement.) only be able to communicate with each other, or could there be as many com stations as you wanted

Science hasn't entirely figured this out. QM says only a single pair of particles can be entangled, however black holes are a thing QM and relativity don't agree on. Information can't be destroyed, but hawking radiation seems to violate that. So, physicists reason that every particle would have to be entangled with the black hole, which violates QM. Then, there's the idea that if the entanglement would break, it could satisfy both, but that violates relativity since it says a transition into a black hole would be uneventfull yet the breaking of entanglement would create a literal firewall.


So, it's pretty much up to you if you decide particles can entangle with only a pair or multiples. However, an entangled pair (or multiple pairs) only have the connection themselves. therefore, a reconnaissance drone would need a supply of entangled matter that's paired with entangled matter at some base. The obvious solution is having various bases use various supplies of entangled matter to communicate to multiple places. Obviously, if you run out the only thing to do is send a ship that also carries a fresh supply of entangled matter. However, it's a powerful story machine i think, and a good incentive for proper, common and frequent spacetravel.

Lastly, consider that every atom is a bit (a one or zero). A mole of sugar (IIRC, that's about a kilo) would make up 10^27 atoms and so an equal amount of bits (yottabits? more?. Therefore, shipments of entangled matter would not be big in actual size. Each would probably come in a container, frozen to near absolute zero and with an attached refrigerator and laser trap to ensure it stays fresh. As it is used to communicate, it'll be expended and so it needs frequent resupplies. It would almost certainly degrade over time (the degradation being a function of quality of the container, the size of a shipment (smaller=better) and the actual level of technology.

the entangled matter would have to be made on location, or pairs of shipments need to go to their respective sites.

-Inter fleet communication

Depends on how much information you intend to send, and how you standardize the communication size and how the technology evolves for larger scale containment. I would expect a flagship to simply have a cryoroom where a couple of hundred bottles are stored, some having just enough (under extremely low decay) for small mayday messages and larger bottles for large infodumps. A terabyte is 8*10^12 bits. I am not sure how much entangled matter modern bottles hold but it's in the order of ten or so (atoms that is). Engineering can probably upgrade it to millions. That completely depends on how far the tech develops. I doubt we'll ever get to the point where we can store tons of this matter. Oh and since this matter would probably go at a couple of million per microgram, it'll probably be used for important info only. E.g an interstellar drone only using it if it detects a malfunction and doesn't expect a retrieval or so. How often it's used is likely a direct function of distance, as the further away the targets are, the more expensive it'll be to replace it. Earth-mars would likely feature casual lightspeed transmissions (although for most applications, the delay wouldn't be THAT bad). Earth-alpha centauri would probably make high-compression, short messages mandatory. The easier interstellar travel is, the cheaper such matter would be to refill.

[thekillman]

As to a hafnium reaction (sorry, the quantum nucleonic reactor gave me a small stroke, until i realized many people consider it a proper name.)

The trouble is that it is a worthless weapon if it takes thirty one years for half of the energy to slowly leak out. For a weapon you want it all to burst forth instantly. Therein lies the rub, nobody knew how.

That is where the controversy started.

Enter Dr. Carl B. Collins of the university of Texas. He figured that hafnium-178m2 could be triggered to release its energy by irradiating it with carefully tuned x-rays. The process is called induced gamma emission.

In January of 1999, Dr. Collins lead a team to explore this possibility. They put a tiny smear of hafnium-178m2 on the top of a styrofoam coffee cup, and used a scavenged dental x-ray machine to bombard the sample. After several weeks, the team studied the results. They concluded that there was a teeny-tiny increase in gamma rays measured in the data, which they interpreted as proof positive that they had succeeded. Or at least opened the possibility that there might be some magic frequency which would make the hafnium-178m2 create the desired explosion.

As always in science, if one has extraordinary claims, one had better have extraordinary evidence. And the sad fact of the matter is that Dr. Collins' evidence was pretty pathetic. Many scientists were uncomfortable with his outlandish claims and his experiment's large margin for error. Indeed, his findings were somewhat at odds with the laws of physics given that nuclei are thought to be practically unaffected by electromagnetic radiation.

The US military didn't want to provide funding to a crack-pot, but didn't want to miss out on nuclear hand grenades either. So they asked the Jason Defense Advisory Group (a panel established in 1960 to advise the government in matters of scientific controversy) to make an assessment. The Jasons concluded that the results fell into the former category: the data did not prove that induced gamma emission had occured, and even if it had a successful triggering event would not start the necessary chain reaction due to energy dissipation.

Meanwhile the Argonne National Laboratory used their own powerful x-ray machine in an attempt to reproduce Dr. Collins results. They failed: no induced gamma emission was recorded. Dr. Collins said it must be because your machine is too powerful. The skeptical Argonne scientists tried again using Dr. Collins' specifications. Still nothing was seen. Collins again ascribed the problem to experimental minutia, but by now the Argonne scientists had better things to do with their time.

TLDR: it's almost certainly a fluke and the phenomenon doesn't exist. It may be a good alternative to common RTG's , which use stuff like the natural radioactivity of plutonium to generate power. However, the dream of hafnium as a non-nuclear powersource is just that, a dream.

And how would thorium or another fissile element provide propulsion for Drone craft in space?

Via a reaction mass like hydrogen or water, where the thorium heats the ReMass and it gets expelled out the back.

Or apply the principles of magmatter?

that's a more complex way, though if you want it, it's an area to pursue. Orion's Arm has quite a bit on this (they call it a Conversion Drive, for google purposes). The "problem" is that it's quite a transitioning into a vastly more powerful engine than a nuclear rocket and a nuclear rocket is already vastly more powerful than a common chemical rocket.

[thekillman]

I am currently working on a design. it's nearly finished, but i am wondering what to do with the spare 50 tons. The design is slightly more powerful than i anticipated.

Name: Miasma Class
Type: Nuclear Salt Water Rocket
Length: 61m
Diameter: 7.6m
Dry Mass: 753 ton
Total Mass:1720 ton
Mass Ratio: 3
DeltaV: 200km/s (1.5 months to mars, 7.5 months to asteroid belt)

Crew: 6
Maximum mission time: 18 months
Habitat mass: 22 ton
(habitat includes EVA equipment, healthcare and other systems like radio, backup batteries and climate control)

Engine: Nuclear Salt Water
Exhaust Velocity: 182km/s
Engines: 13
Engine Mass: 10 000 kg
Total Mass: 130 000kg
Thrust per engine: 13MN (meganewton)
Total Thrust: 169 MN
Acceleration: 10G (98.1m/s^2)
Propellant fraction: 55% (amount of volume dedicated to propellant)

Structural: 346 ton
Material: titanium
Construction type: monocoque

Reactor: (depending on the laser and further power budget, i may need more of these)
1000kW SAFE reactor
5.1 tons

Shadow Shield:
2.5 tons

Weaponry:
Solid State Laser, 864kW (Equivalent to ABL but electric-powered. Though technically i have more than enough capacity for thousands of shots at ~5kg per 5 second shot)
18 tons for lasing equipment

Payload: (everything else)
51 tons.
561 cubic meters

Thermal waste:
Engine: none
Reactor: 4MW
Laser: 1.7kW

TODO:

Radiators!

Shuttles?
Missiles?
facilities?
Armor?



Problems:

The engine is a continuously detonating nuclear bomb
It spews out highly radioactive steam
Propellant tanks hit = instant kill

[Gormagon]

Hence why I avoid hardcore construction methods, would not much of your left over mass be taken up by radiators? And since your going to be a one hit = pretty much disabled if not dead without a large amount of armor, Vs kinetics, I would recommend a Trophy defense system or something similar. Against lasers, some sort of reflective layer or charged field.

Well we are keeping at as realistic as possible we decided to include the following technologies in our universe-

Gravitomagnitism artificial gravity generators.

Only on Cruiser sized vessel or larger for human factions, powerful super conductors manipulate the force of gravitomagnetism to generate a simulated gravitational field. The power requirements are quite high, and the mass of the conductors makes them impossible to use on smaller vessel or shuttles.

Inertial dampening system-

Linked to the AG science, they are only installed on Cruisers sized vessel or larger, some Scout ships may have them at the cost of other features. As of such Drone craft are heavily used where high maneuverability and small size are required.

Stealth Technology-

Very limited in its scope for multiple reasons, currently only one human faction is capable of employing stealth ships. It involves holding a vessel in the 'uppermost', transition layer of subspace, the part closest to our space time, and the area vessel pass through when initiating FTL travel. The ship is not present in normal space to be detected, but subspace detectors do not scan this surface part of subspace currently as transium is required for subspace detection, but transium exists in both normal space and the slightly deeper layer of subspace.

So how does the technology work exactly? The vessel has an altered subspace drive system, the transium control rods are forced to keep the vessel from completing the normal process of being deeper in subspace, past the transition layer where you want to be for stealth. The downside, the energy required is basically what you need to enter exit subspace already, but being run constantly. Quite a bit of power, and on top of that, it degrades the transium rods. Rough example, it would be like paying 25,000 Dollars an hour to run the system based on how fast the transium degrades.

Possible extra inclusion, the transition layer does not allow for FTL travel.


An rough idea I had for providing Mars with an electromagnetic field: You setup a massive laser array with maneuvering drives close enough to the sun to use it as an efficient power source, multi terawatt. You then use it to drill a hole to the core of Mars, and try to re-liquefy it. But, lets say Mars does not have a metal rich core, collect metal rich asteroids from our belt, bring them to Mars, and use that metal. You might be able to do that same for Venus if you wanted to go through the bigger trouble of terraforming it compared to Mars.

[thekillman]

At about 0.01kg/kW for radiators, no it wont require massive heat radiators. rest of my reply will be tomorrow

[thekillman]

Hence why I avoid hardcore construction methods, would not much of your left over mass be taken up by radiators?

As mentioned above, no. Radiators aren't the biggest concern since it's essentially origami. Recent developments for the SABRE engine included a micrometer thick wall for a heat exchanger. With such technology, making paper thin heat radiators and exchangers is easy.

And since your going to be a one hit = pretty much disabled if not dead without a large amount of armor, Vs kinetics, I would recommend a Trophy defense system or something similar. Against lasers, some sort of reflective layer or charged field.

The main weapon is based off the ABL, or Air Borne Laser, which was intended to shoot down long-range (but not ballistic) missiles. I've included the full mass. For any kind of proper complex ordnance projectile or missile, the laser can fire low-powered shots and kill them quick before firing a long beam at the enemy.

Against lasers, reflective layers don't work. Mirrors only really work against lasers if you're dealing with maybe Kilowatt lasers tops. At sufficiently high energies (like what you need to cut through a spaceship), the inefficiencies in the mirror are enough to vaporize it's surface in a microsecond and make it useless. I figure a Megawatt laser would be enough to kill it. Especially since the heat stress would likely impose huge damage on whatever mirror surface you have.

All in all, war in space is likely going to be very similar to the wars we fight now: insta-kill weapons, evading and electronic warfare.

Well we are keeping at as realistic as possible we decided to include the following technologies in our universe-

I don't really see how you can claim that with respect to below.

Gravitomagnitism artificial gravity generators.

Why? what on earth do you need artificial gravity for? In a show or movie, they do this so all the zero-g scenes don't cost half the movie budget. If you're either worldbuilding or intending to write a novel or so, it doesn't matter that it's zero G. Spinning systems will do just fine for any kind of artificial G. and if your ship accelerates with 9.81m/s^2, you'll have downward facing pseudogravity.

Inertial dampening system-

Again why? If you already use done ships, there's no reason to put this on a drone ship too and make it move about at 10 000 G rather than a normal 100G or so. There's no way you can every reasonably defend this choice. it's also pointless to do.

Stealth Technology-

How is this any different from phasing or FTL and why even bother? why not make FTL undetectable unless they're smack dab on top of you?

An rough idea I had for providing Mars with an electromagnetic field: You setup a massive laser array with maneuvering drives close enough to the sun to use it as an efficient power source, multi terawatt. You then use it to drill a hole to the core of Mars, and try to re-liquefy it. But, lets say Mars does not have a metal rich core, collect metal rich asteroids from our belt, bring them to Mars, and use that metal. You might be able to do that same for Venus if you wanted to go through the bigger trouble of terraforming it compared to Mars.

Our core is liquid because of radioactive decay. Also drilling such a hole wwon't work, it'll just collapse

[Gormagon]

I don't really see how you can claim that with respect to below.

There are so many aspects, such as weapons, propulsion, hull, sensors. We are keeping them as realistic as possible.

Why? what on earth do you need artificial gravity for? In a show or movie, they do this so all the zero-g scenes don't cost half the movie budget. If you're either worldbuilding or intending to write a novel or so, it doesn't matter that it's zero G. Spinning systems will do just fine for any kind of artificial G. and if your ship accelerates with 9.81m/s^2, you'll have downward facing pseudogravity.

He wanted it to help simplify the mechanics. The Humans did use spin before gravitomagnetism was discovered.

Again why? If you already use done ships, there's no reason to put this on a drone ship too and make it move about at 10 000 G rather than a normal 100G or so. There's no way you can every reasonably defend this choice. it's also pointless to do.

No, Drone ships do not have the ID. The ID is to large and power intensive to be used on smaller craft.That was what the sentence meant, 'as of such,..' Drone ships are used in place of manned fighters.

How is this any different from phasing or FTL and why even bother? why not make FTL undetectable unless they're smack dab on top of you?

Because we needed a new aspect of subspace science so that everyone does not have stealth. Subspace detectors only detect disturbances in subspace, we do not have faster then light sensors in real space.

Our core is liquid because of radioactive decay. Also drilling such a hole wwon't work, it'll just collapse

Why would a large enough hole keep collapsing? Or any other method?

[thekillman]

No, Drone ships do not have the ID. The ID is to large and power intensive to be used on smaller craft.That was what the sentence meant, 'as of such,..' Drone ships are used in place of manned fighters.

you could build a drone the size of a cruiser and end up with a ship that has all the benefits of a fighter and a manned ship with none of the problems.

Anything a human ship can do, a drone can do better. The only thing it may not be able to do is being creative, which is why a remote operations cruiser puppeteering the whole shebang will be optimum. Though that depends on the power of AI.

Why would a large enough hole keep collapsing? Or any other method?

structural integrity. There's a reason a planet is a big lump of matter in stead of a Death Star with walkways down to the core. you're talking gigantic stresses working on the rock down below that would far surpass the structural strength of any material. Drill a hole and it'll instantly collapse.


EDIT:

simply put, i don't really understand why you make these choices. You seem to want one thing, then decide things that work in complete opposition to what you want.

[Cmdr. Setsuna F. Seyei]

[QUOTE=thekillman;Our core is liquid because of radioactive decay. Also drilling such a hole wwon't work, it'll just collapse[/QUOTE]

Where the hell did you get that one from?!?!?!
the planet has a molten core due to the mass of the planet pushing inwards creating enormous pressure and heat. As a matter of fact scientists have proven that the inner core is actually a crystalline form of IRON

[thekillman]

Where the hell did you get that one from?!?!?!
the planet has a molten core due to the mass of the planet pushing inwards creating enormous pressure and heat. As a matter of fact scientists have proven that the inner core is actually a crystalline form of IRON

calm down, calm down.

I'll take the lazy route and bring Wikipedia to your attention:

The Earth's internal heat comes from a combination of residual heat from planetary accretion, heat produced through radioactive decay, and possibly heat from other sources. The major heat-producing isotopes in the Earth are potassium-40, uranium-238, uranium-235, and thorium-232

Source
Yes the core is mostly iron. yes it contains nickel. It also contains a large category of "other" elements, including radioactive ones.

The inner core is solid, but the outer core is liquid.

[Cmdr. Setsuna F. Seyei]

Wikipedia is not a recognized reference site by many major institutions primarily because it is user edited and is not peer reviewed. if you are in college getting your degree you should know this