08-16-2018, 06:37 AM | #11 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Nuclear Powered Aliens
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GURPS Overhaul Last edited by Varyon; 08-16-2018 at 06:43 AM. |
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08-16-2018, 06:45 AM | #12 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Nuclear Powered Aliens
Nothing material can survive the temperatures of a fusion reaction, at 100 million K in does not matter what the reactor is made of if the fusion plasma touches the reactor wall, that is why they use magnetic fields for containment. A genetically engineered creature like a bioroid could use symbiotic bacteria to grow the components of a fusion reactor within it, using a process similar to the development of bug gems.
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08-16-2018, 07:36 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: Nuclear Powered Aliens
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As for converting ionizing radiation into food, melanin-containing fungi are actually pretty good at that. If you can genetically engineer most of the biological inefficiencies from natural evolution, you can probably have bio-ships powered mostly by photosynthesis and radiosynthesis, with the occasional infusion of what amounts to fertilizer. In fact, that can be a pretty good way to handle biological waste from the life forms on board... |
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08-16-2018, 07:40 AM | #14 |
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: The Land of Enchantment
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Re: Nuclear Powered Aliens
If your ships are going to be making food in any form that approaches what we are used to calling food, they will need more than "occasional fertilizer". Food is matter. So where is the mass coming from on a ship in space?
They will need some sort of bulk matter input, unless they are highly closed systems recycling waste products. (Which I guess could be what you all are trying to say, but then it would make more sense to call it a closed life-support system.) Even plants here on Earth take matter in from the ground and even more so in the form of carbon dioxide to get the carbon to make sugars.
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I'd need to get a grant and go shoot a thousand goats to figure it out. Last edited by acrosome; 08-16-2018 at 08:56 AM. |
08-16-2018, 09:04 AM | #15 | |||||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Nuclear Powered Aliens
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08-16-2018, 09:35 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: Nuclear Powered Aliens
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Even with high efficiency for solar power, that's only useful within a relatively short distance from the local star. You're still gonna need radiosynthesis and probably some form of matter digestion if you're going out as far as Jupiter. |
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08-16-2018, 11:31 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Nuclear Powered Aliens
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Granted, this is assuming a bioship is going to have similar caloric requirements as a human scaled to the same size. They'll actually have much lower basal metabolic rates (less energy need be spent getting up to temperature, as space is a pretty good insulator, and they don't need to burn energy to sustain oversized brains), but much higher active caloric needs (their "aether flukes" burn through a lot of energy), which will probably work out to overall higher caloric requirements. Additionally, interstellar travel requires them to travel all the way out to the system's termination shock (which in-setting is simply called the helioshock), which is going to be somewhere around 18x further from the sun than the Jupiter-equivalent, and then requires them to travel through hyperspace where there's no solar radiation to rely on, so they'll need radiosynthesis - and/or a very large store of fat or similar - to make it through all that. ... I think I have my sort-of-rubber-science explanation. In the systems of interest, the primary gas giant has incredibly high radiation levels, resulting in any of its moons that lack atmosphere having high concentrations of radioactive elements - notably, they tend to have an abundance of Plutonium-238. One of the malakim forms, the Lachporim, is a specialized digger and bioconcentrator of a variety of useful elements, including Plutonium-238. It shares this with other malakim, and they use its decay energy to supplement their rations. As Plutonium-238 produces around 0.57 W/g, with 10% efficiency a malakim with a 3000 kcal daily requirement would require somewhere around 2 kg to avoid needing to eat. They'll actually have a good deal less than this, of course, as they do still need to eat. Also, any energy that isn't converted into usable calories is going to be waste heat, which could be problematic with only 10% efficiency. On the bright side, the malakim probably don't need to "waste" any food calories on staying warm, as their internal plutonium reserves handle that for them. The bioships themselves tend to "park" in a highly-radioactive orbit around the gas giant to store energy (likely as fat or similar) from time to time. This is particularly common following travel through hyperspace, as that tends to deplete their reserves.
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08-16-2018, 11:52 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Nuclear Powered Aliens
I would like a citation on the 70% efficiency for bacterial photosynthetic efficiency because from what I have read in my research on biofuels for energy policy bacteria are less efficient than plants. If it was not the case, every biofuel scheme would be using bacterial photosynthesis rather than plant photosynthesis because bacteria are easier to grow than plants. Honestly, if bacterial photosynthesis was that efficient, plant life would have never evolved because bacteria would have filled all of the available aquatic niches long before plants first formed.
If you do not have fusion, you are not going to survive in deep space with anything short of superscience. The fission reactors in Spaceships should be considered superscience because they are orders of magnitude cheaper and lighter than in real life. In Spaceships, they have a 300 MW reactor for $30M and 450 metric tons at TL8 when, in real life, it is $3B and 4500 metric tons at TL8. At TL8, high energy fission is far from reality for spacecraft, and the only vehicles that can really use it are nuclear powered aircraft carriers and the like. Of course, if you use superscience force fields, you can probably create a fission reactor like that found in Spaceships. |
08-16-2018, 11:53 AM | #19 |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: Nuclear Powered Aliens
Considering the biomes it's used in, it kind of HAS to be that efficient, just for the bacteria to survive. Conveniently enough, the wavelengths of light it can produce bio-available energy from don't overlap with chlorophyll, which is good for your ships.
If your ship and crew can hibernate, that also cuts down on the requirements to survive a trip to the point where a jump to hyperspace can be made, and a short trip to either the inner planets of a system or a nebula full of organic compounds would provide caloric needs to travel through hyperspace. |
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