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.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Even so, such plans generally either never go anywhere, or only go far enough to have someone work out the cost.

If the terraforming plan cost ten times as much as cleaning up the Earth, I could see it happening.
If it cost 100x as much, it's definitely pushing the limits of plausible but maybe still.
If it costs 1,000,000x as much... I really can't believe it. And that's probably still lowballing the cost of the terraforming project.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

OK, first there's one thing I think you're ignoring about how jobs creation works in democracies, they've got to benefit some community somewhere, preferably one that's underdeveloped because there's no reason to build stuff there and likely good reasons not too. It doesn't matter that a space-borne aluminum plant will employ 5,000 people if those jobs aren't in, say, the Scottish Highlands.

Beyond that when I wrote my previous post I was only thinking about the aluminum production for the shade in isolation, it didn't occur to me until later that it could be used later on, or for that matter before hand (Solar Power Satellites were being built when this project was embarked upon).

Yes plants can convert CO2 to O2 but I don't see orbital farms ever taking off for staple crops for people Earth side, too expensive.

Yes an orbital colony makes for a cost effective worker barracks. It will start out simply assembling the power satellites, then it will start building structural elements and solar cells and then expand out into other areas over time. And there will surely be rec areas, likely serving beer (at first imported, later on maybe local [how does that affect the CO2/O2 balance?]) but likely also other things, fast food restaurants, (The US military maintains the McDonald's in Guantánamo Bay), normal restaurants, stores for all sorts things, and no and no. At what point does it make economic sense to manufacture things like O-rings in orbit rather then ship them up?

As for gravity, yes it is basically a non issue. The colonial heavy freighter/Colonial One from the new BSG? Or the shuttles used in Star Wars? That's the kind of performance I'm talking about, it probably takes less time to get into orbit then to another country.

Well ignoring that my idea revolves around post-colonial industrialization pollution mucking things up, any sort of cleanup like this in Africa would likely require Western companies/labor, which basically makes it non-viable.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

It's more like a real world problem when dealing with developing nations is getting them to avoid the mistake the West made developing. Sure, cutting down all the tress for farms is what the West did, but we now KNOW it causes all sorts of long term problems. Same thing for car dependent infrastructure or using coal/oil to power your country, but getting developing nations to listen is basically impossible.

That's what's happened in my setting. And no, the West using it's militaries to force the issue is not a workable solution.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

A small fraction of the likely cost of terraforming three worlds would probably be enough to make basically every African nation rather wealthy - wealthy enough, at least, that they wouldn't need to destroy their environment to make a living. The issue, of course, would be to insure corrupt officials at the top don't just squander everything, leaving the populace to still resort to environmentally-destructive methods of making ends meet.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

It was my assumption (since it was in response to your point that 'shipping up food to the workers' would make orbital factories a no go)that it was understood that I was pointing out 'orbital farms' or combined environmental/food production O2 production modules would be making food SOLEY to feed the workers/famililes/etc at said orbital facilities.

At no point was I suggesting building 'orbital' farming facilities to ship food back down to Earthside. It was a measure to lower the support costs for workers in orbital or Trans-Terran factories.

I would not suggest such a thing (the start up costs for the 'farms' would be a problem) since I assume such farms would be 100% occupied exploiting their competitive advantage over Earthside farmers who DO face the costs for boosting to orbit. I would point out that shipping 'down' into the gravity well would be very close to free. Depending on the method(s) chosen to de-orbit the payloads of course. Many of the methods would be cost competitive with Earth shipping costs since 'dropping' an Orbital load can be done fairly close to the chosen market.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

I've heard before - but never found a confirmation of it - that plants actually grow and mature more rapidly in a zero-g environment, as they don't need to fight against gravity. If this is true, such plants may be able to generate appropriate produce more rapidly than those that are Earthside, potentially giving orbital farms an advantage over terrestrial ones.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

However the start up costs are enough that I assume 100% of orbital food production will be tied up in feeding people in orbit.

I doubt IF the build out gets to the point of 100% supplying orbital food demand there will then be a drive to build more expensive orbital farms to ship 'down'.

I assume that the marginal improvements in growth and shipping costs will be more than offset by the large difference in upfront costs.

YMMV of course.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

The reason it's hard is because the option with long term problems is short term cheap. If you're willing to make your preferred option cheaper, they'll use your preferred option. This costs a lot of money... but nowhere near as much money as terraforming.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

It would depend on a variety of factors, but that's probably not a bad assumption. The real question is how much of a startup cost there really is, at least for later farms. If you can mine and transport the raw materials for building and maintaining the farms from asteroids for less than you can ship them up from Earth, you would be able to get the startup costs down, potentially low enough to make it competitive with Earth. But that's probably not the way to bet.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

IMHO the most likely scenario to make orbital farms shipping food down a feature/fixture in the OP's world is environmental degradation.

Depending on the path of Earth's downward slide vast tracts of currently productive farmland (hello Kansas, Alberta, and Ukraine) could see temperature changes and drought.

We have a historical precedent for the rough outline of the results.

Imagine the Oklahoma Dust Bowl but more on a continental scale than a regional one. Possibly also lasting longer than the 8ish years of the 1930's but for decades (or longer).

In that scenario of massive reduction in the ability of Earthside farming production it is conceivable that exo-farms would be a way (massive upfront costs not withstanding) to avert massive famine. Assuming of course there is enough lead time to start spinning up new farming plexes.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Cheaper to just fix the farmland. Let's suppose you can build a square kilometer of farms in orbit for a mere $1 billion (which is super cheap). What do you think happens if you spend that same $1 billion on farmland restoration?

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Oh I agree. I prefaced it with 'a scenario that might lead to'...I wouldn't run it that way...but if someone wanted to that would be the way I would recommend to do it.

Normally yes it would be cheaper to rehabilitate Earthside farmland. However if the damage were to be extensive enough there comes a point when no matter how much money you pour into the project it just will not work.

Triage does not do a lot for the dead.

In that scenario (esp with pre-existing orbital farms) further expanding orbitals to feed people Earthside might be a workable emergency measure.

YMMV etc.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Well I'm kind of partial to Standford Tori, and the interesting thing about them in this case is that you can cheat in this regard, you can make inner rings with lower gravity. Maybe even gene-engineer dwarf crops so that they grow even faster.

Sorry, I thought you where suggesting growing food to feed people on earth, see my below.

There's a couple of other reasons:

1. Africans see the American lifestyle in movies and on TV and want it, which means that devlopment occurs towards that, no matter what
2. Giving the advice is complicated, there's an aspect of 'Do as I say and not as I do' put also a parential or something componet to it that makes it hard.

This is scene coming a few years out, but things probably start in one country and move domino like. And things probably fall to prices before people start starving but when governments start rationing or invading neighbors. And the West might not do anything to avoid creating perpetual starvation, and there's no way they could build enough farms in time.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Why build dirty power plants when you can build solar satellites and groundside receiver stations for far cheaper? Why use old gas-burning vehicles when you can get top-of-the-line electric vehicles for a fraction of the price? Why pollute your environment from landfills and dumping into rivers when the West will pay you for your waste? Because that's the situation the African people (and their leaders) would find themselves in if the West invested a fraction of what they would need to spend for terraforming three worlds into preventing Africa from becoming a toxic wasteland (to be clear, the reason the solar satellites/receivers, electric vehicles, etc cost so little is because the West is footing most of the bill).

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

"Africans just can't help themselves destroying Africa" is a really weird take for a supposedly anti-imperialist background. Also seems to reduce all of the West to just the USA, which... first of all seems odd, second of all seems to equate "the American Dream" with "increase pollution at all costs" and not much else.

The idea that all of Africa will always choose fossil fuels and pollution even if clean energy is cheaper is hard to believe. Setting aside that an entire continent having the same economic opinion is highly unlikely, it seems to me that the only people who would choose Pollution Uber Alles are the legacy fossil fuel companies that have a vested interest in it. Nobody else benefits.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

There is nothing especially appealing about the American lifestyle that demands mass environmental degradation. I'm also not talking about providing advice, I'm talking about providing direct economic incentives.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

I get the impression that isn't really the choice being posed. A bunch of "terraforming nations" get together to terraform the moon and two planets to "create jobs". In the meantime, environmental degradation destroys Africa, which the "terraforming nations" don't care about, because they're stupid and short-sighted. Then there's enormous refugee crisis that causes mass chaos (I feel icky writing that).

The situation isn't: "The environment's being destroyed, we can clean up the Earth or Terraform Mars", it's, "We should have spent more money on foreign aid."

Then again, any organization that can afford to terraform multiple worlds at once probably has so much wealth that they could divert a tiny fraction of their budget towards foreign aid and avoid the problem to begin with.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

This. If you can solve the problem by diverting 0.0001% of the budget, it's pretty hard to see that not happening.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Not just that - it's apparently Africa itself that's destroying Africa, and doesn't care because they're stupid and short-sighted, according to this setting. The terraforming nations apparently have the means to fix the problem but don't want to for fear of being accused of imperialism.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Groundside receiver stations would be the default, although issues such as size minimum (requiring national grids to make proper use of them) and restrictions on placement and construction (The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was ended by one such incident) may well restrict their use in Africa.

But the main source of pollution is more ground water contamination and the like, PFAS being dumped into the river, burning of fossil fuels for power is not an issue.

As for the West paying them not to do stuff like this, I'm not sure how likely that is, but I doubt that if offered it would be accepted.

I don't think anti-imperialist really applies here, and likely neither does post-imperialist. Also see above, this doesn't really have anything to do with fosil fuels.

Providing it cheaply and quickly however almost certainly does. And Westerners telling Africans not to go that route will almost certainly provoke them to go that route.

This, the terraforming nations trying to force the issue will not end well.

For reference I'm basing this off the on-going civil war in Ethiopia. In contrast to the Russian invasion of Ukraine Europe isn't providing weapons to any side. Why? Well the no side is good (compared to Ukraine V. Russia) is one. The other is the complicated history between the continents. This same history prevents them from sending peacekeepers.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Historian me disagrees.

It is simpler than that.

Sending peacekeepers has no use when there is little desire for peace and thus little peace to keep.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

You just subsidize the clean options so they're cheaper. This does cost the advanced nations some money, but it's laughably small compared to the cost of terraforming anything.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

I'd argue that there are also other reasons, but I was trying to make a point about relations between Europe and Africa

Subsidizing clean waste disposal is problematic, and more so in another country, if it's even a thing, but supply chain management means that factories making things for Western markets do have to follow proper procedures and not just stuff barrels full of toxic waste in a public park.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

Not that problematic. Pay the polluters to ship the waste to you and then dispose of it properly. It's like backwards plastic recycling.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

That's not going to work out. Even when dealing with an internal market this would cause HUGE problems. An external one? Where the the internal market has to pay for it? For something that it isn't viewed as a problem for the people who would have to pay for? Not going to happen.

Re: [Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon
 

So they won't invest mere millions or billions in African enterprises because there's no immediate benefit to them, but they will invest trillions of trillions on building giant space mirrors to liquify the Venusisn atmosphere in 70 years?

I doubt it's your intent, but the obvious explanation for this would seem to be because there aren't any Africans on Venus.