Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Stations would be closed system, wouldn't they? "Space-age" Recycling should allow them to get by with very little raw import of elements.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Ships weren't cheap 1600-1750... the golden age of piracy.

Ships aren't cheap today, and there's plenty of piracy in the modern world.

Somali pirates don't use any ships... neither do similar pirates operating in other parts of the world.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

And even if you needed more nitrogen to support an expanding population, then you could just replace it with some other inert gas (probably helium).

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Those kind of pirates rely on transportation route bottlenecks that just don't exist in realistic space. As for the Golden Age of Piracy, it was in part the result of government subsidization, and also because it was fairly easy to capture a ship more or less intact.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Helium is even rarer in the Solar System than nitrogen (outside of the gas giants and the sun). In general, you need around 10 metric tons of nitrogen per person, and you need to replace around 10 kilograms per person per year due to seepage (replacing nitrogen with helium is untested for long term survival, so I would be reluctant to mess around that in any case). Of course, unless you have 100 million people or more in space, you will not even have enough population to maintain your technology.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I'm just thinking of inert gases that can be found on the moon.

If you can't handle seepage into groundwater in agriculture, you can't handle building mostly self-sufficient space colonies. They wouldn't have groundwater, so there's nothing to seep into.

Atmospheric nitrogen does nothing for people (directly, it's necessary in the nitrogen cycle for plants, and people eat plants). Any inert gas could replace it with minimal problems. You wouldn't want a gas much heavier than air though.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I am talking about seepage past the seals that separate the habitable sections from the vacuum of space (it is not a leak because there are not really any holes, just air slowly working its way past the seals due to pressure differences). A seepage of 0.1% per year is pretty good from my understanding (I think that the ISS wastes that much in a day), so I am not sure that anything less than 0.1% per year would be realistic.

In addition, how do we know that atmospheric nitrogen does nothing over the long term? Have there been studies on the long term biological consequences of using other 'inert' gases as replacements for nitrogen? For all we know, atmospheric nitrogen concentrations are vital to long term health.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Sure they do. Having to refuel at a gas giant in an uninhabited system, for example.

Governments wouldn't exist in space? It's easy to capture s a ship in space, too in several settings... assuming that the crew doesn't want to die..

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Except that small craft require a nearby base to work from.

Governments wouldn't hand out planet devastating weapons to random hoodlums.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I have to agree. Space pirates that have access to vehicles that can go over 30 kps would probably be treated like terrorists with nuclear weapons (a 100 metric ton shuttle going 30 kps possesses 45 TJ of kinetic energy, which is the equivalent to around 11 kilotons of TNT). Governments would not sponsor them for much the same reason why the USA and USSR did not hand out nuclear weapons to their proxies during the Cold War, everyone loses when you break the gameboard. The faster the ship and the larger the ship, the worse it gets (a 1,000 metric ton corvette moving at 300 kps would be the equivalent of a 11 megaton weapon while a 10,000 metric tons cruiser moving at 3,000 kps would be the equivalent of a 11 gigaton weapon).