Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Economic sense says that boosting miners, factory workers, seeds etc into Orbital Habitats and Lunar or Belt Mines out of Earth's Gravity once is cheaper; than boosting decades of their finished products out of that same gravity well.

That is what has kept space from being anything but an expensive showpiece, research project; the cost of boosting everything out of Earth's Gravity.

Even after that problem is greatly reduced it will still be cheaper to mine and make what you need out there than to ship it all up.

Imagine how the colonization of North America would have gone if every tool, every horseshoe, every plank needed was shipped from Europe rather than made locally. That will give a bit of the idea of the scope of the problem.

If it is a job program cool! Give 'em a raise for being Astro-Miners or Zero-G Riggers and congratulate them for 'meeting' the rigorous requirements (no matter what they actually are or even if there ARE no standards).

Then ship them to orbit ONCE, with a free return trip upon retirement. Make it as homey as possible, bring families up, make it easy to send pay dirtside to support extended family.

Every time you have to fight gravity you are upping your costs, significantly. So don't do it.

My $0.02.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

In theory, those reactionless drives would mean that you could get into orbit at the cost of only electricity, which a society that can terraform a planet(oid) should have no shortage of*. In practice, given they are stated to give performance comparable to WWII-era fighter craft, I believe they won't be able to keep anything airborne outside of the atmosphere, as those craft didn't have even 1G acceleration (the minimum to avoid being pulled back down to Earth if you lack an atmosphere to manipulate to generate lift). This also means the sunshade array around Venus can't work either (while Venus' gravity is weaker than Earth's, it's still far too strong for these drives). Well, unless the drives cancel out gravity while in use... but even if that's the case, with a top speed below the speed of sound in Earth's atmosphere (there were some disputed reports of such vehicles breaking the sound barrier while in a dive, but even if those were true, they were "cheating" by getting most of their thrust from gravity), getting out of orbit would still require nearly the same amount of reaction mass as just doing it from the ground. Magsails pushed by particle accelerators might be able to do it, although then you're still burning reaction mass (the particles being accelerated), although the fact the vessel doesn't have to carry its reaction mass will certainly make things more efficient.

*Then again, what scc has described - a society that has lost somewhere around a third of its economic production (due to the collapse of the US and China) and that has a major continent in bad enough condition that refugees from it are set to overwhelm the infrastructure of the rest of the world - is probably in no condition to try to terraform anything.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Those were bad instrumentation. Rather than recording the breaking of the sound barrier they had discovered limits of sccuracy in extremem conditions for their speedometers.

No airplane of the period had a properly shaped airtframe for surviving the shockwaves in the transsonic regime. Their wings and/or propellors would have been ripped off by those shockwaves and this was probably the cause of destruction for those vehicles that did break up in extreme dives (which was surprisingly common in testing).

The F-86 Sabre was probably the first aircraft to exceed the speed of sound in a gravity-assissted dive. Note the clean nose and the highly swept wings.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

You need 1 gee (of thrust plus lift) to get off the ground, but not to transition from flight to orbit. Not in principle, anyway, though your aerodynamics might demand a TMR over one gee for hypersonic flight. Indeed, one gee might be nowhere near enough — there’s no necessary connection between local gravity and the thrust required to fly at escape velocity at the Kármán line.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Here's the thing, those workers are going to need to be feed and housed. And you're going to also need to do that for their families. And you'll need recreational area/activities. And supporting industries for all of this, including parts suppliers for not only you're factory but all of the others. And suddenly you need to house like a million people.

All to make some aluminum foil. It's not worth it.

So here's the thing, once you go for a cinematic space drive, like I'm doing here, because while this campaign idea doesn't space fighters the setting does for other games and it makes thing easier for me, I get multiple games out of it, things don't add up. Ships are clearly using reactionless engines. They also aren't moving that fast, after all, old school dog-fighting is conducted, yet their able to make orbit. Don't think about this too hard.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Ummm the amount of Orbital shades and SHIPS you have discussed in this thread IMHO would likely be less than the costs of orbital habitats (or belter ones). They can be built with Rec facilities. In a LOT of SF plants play an integral part of life support in space (CO2 to O2) in some flavors the plants involved also help provide calories. Orbital farms are a known SciFi concept (see classic BSG forex of a massive ship farm) The factories of course were a given.

The cost of building all of this IS massive. However it is (in many cases) a single time, up front cost. An orbitial factory costs more to build than a ground side one. Once it is built tho every day you make that investment back with the savings on transport costs. The only real question is what is the time to break even (upfront cost vs transport savings) after that orbital production will be more profitial than groundside.

Considering how many Megaprojects this proposed setting encompasses and that ALL of them are in Earth orbit (or further out Venus, Mars, etc); the thought of doing it with every nut, bolt and washer being made Earthside is at least for me a total 'dealbreaker'.

Hell I have been reading this thread mostly for entertainment. Even with very robust Orbital Industry I am not sure this setting does not bust my suspension of disbelief. However unless gravity has been ELIMINATED as a factor in transport costs I just do not see it.

Well good luck and hopefully we have helped a bit with the creative process.
Its all good so long as peeps have fun!

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

All to terraform three planet(oid)s (Venus, Luna, Mars). And if you aren't willing to invest in having substantial orbital assets, you honestly have no business trying to terraform anything.


You really need to think about how these drives function. You mentioned them being important in lifting the nitrogen containers from Venus' surface, but simply getting out to space is a relatively minor part of the equation - what you need is for them to reach escape velocity. Can these drives do that? If so, you'll need to figure out a paradigm by which they can reach at least Venus' escape velocity (6.4 mps - around Mach 30) around Venus, but can't manage that for purposes of space combat. Or maybe, considering these drives can apparently allow hovering above a planet who's gravity is markedly stronger than the drives' thrust (necessary for the sunshade to function), they can serve to negate gravity - space travel away from a planet doesn't need to worry about escape velocity, as you can just leave these drives (or at least their null-gravity effect) on while traveling.

And, sure, there's also the option of ignoring all that... but if you're going that route, why bother worrying about complex things like Hohmann Transfers and the like? I think this is what's preventing me from properly grokking your setting - the way you seem to jump between hyperdetail and "It just works, don't worry about the particulars."

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

"We can't possibly help African countries repair the environmental damage we mostly caused with colonialism, but instead will simulaneously colonize three uninhabitable bodies in space" seems like a satire.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

You say that, but that's exactly what some of the ultra-rich today think.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Yes, satire typically is satirizing something.