Space fleet

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Even if you had the antimatter, it would take 6,000 hours to refuel the spacecraft (by comparison, a carrier with two fusion rockets and two fuel tanks could use a SM+15 refinery to refuel in 54 hours). It would also cost practically nothing, as the require ice would cost $180 per ton of fuel, so a fusion carrier is a lot more efficient and effective than an antimatter carrier. Anyone who invested in a fusion carrier would run circles around the antimatter carrier and do so at a fraction of the cost.

Fixed.

Prometheus-class Station
This large mining station, located on Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is dedicated to the manufacture of matter/antimatter. Its annual production volume is 15.55 tons.

It has an unstreamlined 3,000,000-ton-0.7-km-long-hull (SM +15).

Front hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2!-6!] Nanofactory ($15B/hour production capacity)*
[Core] Control room (C11 computer, comm/sensor 15, and 60 control stations)*
Central hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2!] Secondary battery (10 turrets with 100GJ lasers)*
[3] Fuel Tank (150,000 tons of matter/antimatter)
[4-6] Solar panel array (one power point each)
[Core] Solar panel array (one power point)
Rear hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2] Habitat (20,000 bunkrooms)
[3!] Nanofactory ($3B/hour production capacity)*
[4-6] Solar panel array (one power point each)
*300 workspaces per system

TL 11
Prometheus-class
dST/HP 1000
Hnd/SR -
HT 14
Move -
LWt. 3,000,000
Load 150,000
SM +15
Occ 40,000ASV
dDR 300/300/300
Cost $3.82T

With this, anyone is capable of producing 12.96 million tons of antimatter-boosted hydrogen a year.

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

Fixed.

Prometheus-class Station
This large mining station, located on Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is dedicated to the manufacture of matter/antimatter. Its annual production volume is 15.55 tons.

It has an unstreamlined 3,000,000-ton-0.7-km-long-hull (SM +15).

Front hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2!-6!] Nanofactory ($15B/hour production capacity)*
[Core] Control room (C11 computer, comm/sensor 15, and 60 control stations)*
Central hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2!] Secondary battery (10 turrets with 100GJ lasers)*
[3] Fuel Tank (150,000 tons of matter/antimatter)
[4-6] Solar panel array (one power point each)
[Core] Solar panel array (one power point)
Rear hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2] Habitat (20,000 bunkrooms)
[3!] Nanofactory ($3B/hour production capacity)*
[4-6] Solar panel array (one power point each)
*300 workspaces per system

TL 11
Prometheus-class
dST/HP 1000
Hnd/SR -
HT 14
Move -
LWt. 3,000,000
Load 150,000
SM +15
Occ 40,000ASV
dDR 300/300/300
Cost $3.82T

With this, anyone is capable of producing 12.96 million tons of antimatter-boosted hydrogen a year.

Remember that at Mercury's orbit, you get about 7 power points per solar array. So your station is currently generating about 49 power points and consuming only 7 of them.

Also, why nanocomposite armor? You're on a planet made of free rock. You effectively have gobs of armor by just burying the factory; only the solar arrays need be exposed.

I would argue that you don't really need a Control Room because you can't maneuver the station - it is on Mercury. Most of that mass is maneuver jets; computers are exceedingly small at TL 11, and of negligible price compared to the cost of the station.

You probably want to add an Open Space to provide farmland to grow all the food your base could need. This removes the need to maintain a steady stream of life support supplies into the station (at significant cost that close to the Sun).

Also, you'll want office space, recreational space, medical facilities, etc. in your base - not just 20,000 bunk rooms. In fact, each resident would likely need their own cabin, too, or they'll go nuts. Assuming you aren't cycling residents on a regular basis (again, expensive that deep in the gravity well).

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by Humabout

Remember that at Mercury's orbit, you get about 7 power points per solar array. So your station is currently generating about 49 power points and consuming only 7 of them.

How´s that? I am looking for anything like that and it doesn´t appear in any of the books.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by Humabout

You probably want to add an Open Space to provide farmland to grow all the food your base could need. This removes the need to maintain a steady stream of life support supplies into the station (at significant cost that close to the Sun).

Upgraded to fully automated. I like robots more.

Prometheus-class Station
This fully automated mining station, located on Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is dedicated to the manufacture of matter/antimatter. Its annual production volume is 15.55 tons and it has a flotilla of self-propelled spaceships to transport the materials to destination.

It has an unstreamlined 3,000,000-ton-0.7-km-long-hull (SM +15).

Front hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2!-6!] Nanofactory ($15B/hour production capacity)*
[Core] Control room (C12 computer, comm/sensor 15, and 60 control stations)*
Central hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2!] Secondary battery (10 turrets with 100GJ lasers)*
[3] Fuel Tank (150,000 tons of matter/antimatter)
[4-6] Solar panel array (one power point each)
[Core] Solar panel array (one power point)
Rear hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2] Hangar bay (100,000 tons)*
[3!] Nanofactory ($3B/hour production capacity)*
[4-6] Solar panel array (one power point each)
*300 workspaces per system

TL 11
Prometheus-class
dST/HP 1000
Hnd/SR -
HT 14
Move -
LWt. 3,000,000
Load 150,000
SM +15
Occ -
dDR 300/300/300
Cost $3,830.8B

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

How do I fix it so the Eve-class can climb back out of atmospheres when they dive in? I thought that by activating both propulsion systems at the same time, we could accelerate with one and maintain speed with the other.

I swapped it for an external pulsed plasma engine (2G acceleration) and a fuel tank (5,000 tons of bomb pulse units with 8 mps delta-V). That should work.

In the 41 seconds that you could have burned the chemical rocket, the antimatter rocket would put out one quarter of one percent of a mile per second of delta-V. So adding them together basically achieves nothing. Without the chemical rocket, its calculated atmospheric speed would be 250 mph - and realistically I don't think it would sustain flight at all.

EPP certainly solves a lot of problems if you don't mind the mess.

[AlexanderHowl]

Nanofactories cannot make antimatter (Ultra-tech, p. 91). You need dedicated and specialized equipment, like massive particle accelerators, and they have massive inefficiencies (at TL10, the calculated efficiency seems to be around 0.025%, around 1 million times better than current efficiencies, so you would need 360 PJ to create one gram [around 100 GW for an hour]). With each SM+15 power point representing ~100 GW by my calculations, Prometheus could produce around 36 grams per hour since solar panels cannot be core systems (which means that it would produce $75 billion worth of antimatter per hour).

Each SM+15 Antimatter Forge Component should probably have a cost of $10 trillion, have a production of 1 gram per power point, and be capable of consuming up to 100 power points, meaning that you could have it orbiting Sol at 0.1 AU. Six Antimatter Forges and six Solar Panels would produce 600 grams of antimatter per hour or $1.5 trillion worth of antimatter per hour at TL10). At that cost though, most antimatter rockets are probably antimatter-catalyzed fusion rather than pure antimatter rockets, which reflects their performance.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Nanofactories cannot make antimatter (Ultra-tech, p. 91). You need dedicated and specialized equipment, like massive particle accelerators, and they have massive inefficiencies (at TL10, the calculated efficiency seems to be around 0.025%, around 1 million times better than current efficiencies, so you would need 360 PJ to create one gram [around 100 GW for an hour]). With each SM+15 power point representing ~100 GW by my calculations, Prometheus could produce around 36 grams per hour since solar panels cannot be core systems (which means that it would produce $75 billion worth of antimatter per hour).

Okey, so swap their name and call it "particle accelerator" instead of nanofac, and use the rules for replicators.

Industrial Antimatter Factory.

[AlexanderHowl]

I have no problem with the design of Antimatter Factories, $5 trillion for an SM+15 facility that could convert 10 power points into 10 grams per hour is acceptable.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I have no problem with the design of Antimatter Factories, $5 trillion for an SM+15 facility that could convert 10 power points into 10 grams per hour is acceptable.

I personally think such an Antimatter Factory would be superscience, but given that I routinely use reactionless drives and FTL, I don't see that as a problem. :)

In a hard science setting, any "Antimatter Factory" would probably require being limited to a minimum of three SM +15 or larger modules (or a single SM +13 "craft") in the same or adjacent hull sections.

[AlexanderHowl]

You can always reduce the cost, power, and production. Anyway, I think that antimatter is a bit of a scam, as fusion just tends to work better on just about every level. For example, an SM+15 fusion powered mining/refining spacecraft is much more justifiable than an SM+15 antimatter powered mining/refining spacecraft (the fusion powered spacecraft can easily carry drones and/or fighters if it really needs defensive weaponry).