Spaceships: Escape to the asteroids

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

It's dangerous, but no more so than a magazine full of missiles, for instance. That said, if you've got free choice of TL9 technologies I certainly wouldn't pick that for my interplanetary drive.

This just isn't true. The fuel tanks and drive system can be arranged to provide a fairly substantial PF to 2 sections of the ship, and you can manage some mass shielding everywhere. It's enough to make solar flares negligible, at least. It won't do much against cosmic rays, but it's very hard to do anything about that.

I'm pretty sure that's totally missing the point. This is a colony ship, not a mobile colony. The eventual habitat is supposed to be built on site.

No, a tank of NSW fuel can go critical if accidentaqlly compressed. Missile warheads won't do that.

It _is_ cosmics that you have worry about on a long term basis (like living in space beyond Earth's magnetosphere). A thick enough hull will shield from them though. This is what deep space habs have to have if the people in the hab don't have TL11 nano or TL10 Regeneration (radiation only) genes.

I'm only trying to suggest something that might work. I don't think the OP's orignal plan would.