[GURPS Spaceships] TL9 SM+15 Space Habitat

[DoctorRomulus]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Is this station built by a particularly hedonistic culture or one with sacred prostitution or something? It seems rather odd (from a 21st century American perspective) that large public spaces would be set aside for purely sexual uses, especially for group sex.

It was designed for and built by sex addicts!

:D LOL

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

700 cops for 37500 is rather high.

In America, usually there's one cop on duty per 1100 folks.

That would be some 37 cops; x5 for shifts, holidays, sick days, vacations, etc. you're looking at about 185 police officers plus admin personnel.

If you need security guards ("prepare to repel boarders!") that changes things but that's a different category (armed forces v. police.)

The hospital bed count is a bit high too -- 1200 = roughly one bed per 30 people. I think a normal figure is about 1/5 to 1/10 this. In an epidemic the sick will probably stay in residences with visits by medical personnel.

Of course, given the sexual mania indicated by the focus on . . . playpens, you might need the extra cops and doctors to deal with the fallout.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

700 cops for 37500 is rather high.

In America, usually there's one cop on duty per 1100 folks.

That would be some 37 cops; x5 for shifts, holidays, sick days, vacations, etc. you're looking at about 185 police officers plus admin personnel.

If you need security guards ("prepare to repel boarders!") that changes things but that's a different category (armed forces v. police.)

The hospital bed count is a bit high too -- 1200 = roughly one bed per 30 people. I think a normal figure is about 1/5 to 1/10 this. In an epidemic the sick will probably stay in residences with visits by medical personnel.

Of course, given the sexual mania indicated by the focus on . . . playpens, you might need the extra cops and doctors to deal with the fallout.

Probably some of the facilities are too heavily staffed. On the other hand, it'a a luxury habitat, and the habitants expect top-notch service and serious security.

One could also suggest that most of the hospital beds are used for elective procedures, rather than to treat diseases and injuries.

[Sanity]

Good argument...

...but: It makes the high number of security personell look even worse. If your people are basically either employees or VIP#s, your need for normal police goes down quite a lot ;)

[seano1]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Is this station built by a particularly hedonistic culture or one with sacred prostitution or something? It seems rather odd (from a 21st century American perspective) that large public spaces would be set aside for purely sexual uses, especially for group sex.

It could be used to attract tourists. It might be used by more visitors then residents.

[SuedodeuS]

Just a quick note on the Control Room thrusters - you could also move the habitat (for whatever reason) by tethering it to its complement of craft and having them pull it where it needs to go. Assuming each craft is capable of 1G acceleration, this would give the station a 1/31 G acceleration - rather slow, but probably enough that course changes could be done much less in advance than would otherwise be necessary.

I really like this habitat concept, although I admit I found the mention of "shag shacks" surprising (not surprising they would be there, but surprising the designers would make the habitat with them in mind). You might want to take a closer look at your armoring method, as others have indicated a susceptibility to charged particles. You might want to consider sacrificing some of the factory space to coat the habitat in a layer of ice, in addition to the steel for protecting against meteorite fragments. I'm not sure exactly how much ice you would need - any takers?

[Polkageist]

Neat, an O'Neill cylinder is remarkably well represented by the Spaceships rules.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Rear
[c] Open space, devoted to zero-gravity recreation (small shag-cabins intended for 2-6 temporary ocupants, larger orgy rooms, zero-gravity ballgame areanas, zero-gravity water tanks), cost 60M$ (tripled because of the need for improved containment of the water, and various systems to remove bodily fluids and skin particles from the air), 60 workspaces (tripled; the extra workers are paramedics standing by in case of emergencies, or someone demanding an immediate STD test).

This is why we can't have nice things.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Overall Steel Armour, covering the entire ship with 1/3 of the SM's dDR, which gives a dDR of 23, or a DR of 230. IIRC in GURPS, DR 70 is the same as 25 mm of steel, so we're talking over 75 mm of steel here, which should give quite good protection against radiation, and even tiny meteorites.

For cosmic rays and solar storm protons, you get a reduction of dose by a factor of about 2 for roughly every meter of shielding. For neutrons from nuclear sources (fission, fusion, radioactive decay), that goes down to roughly 10 cm if it is hydrogen rich material. 7.5 cm of steel will do very little to stop cosmic rays and solar storm ions, and it may scatter nuclear neutrons but will not tend to stop them.

To reduce the intensity of 100 keV hard x-rays by a factor of 2 you need about 1/3 cm of steel. For 300 MeV nuclear gamma rays, that becomes about 1.25 cm of steel, and for 1 MeV nuclear gamma rays, 2 cm of steel.

Net take home message - steel is good for gammas, but poor for particles.

Luke

[Agemegos]

Perhaps a magsail would be the best protection against charged particles.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Perhaps a magsail would be the best protection against charged particles.

It would need to be quite an extreme magsail. I have a magloop simulator I wrote, for simulating the deflection of protons by a magnetic field. For a configuration of two concentric magloops, one with a radius of 110 meters and one with a radius of 90 meters, each carrying 5E7 amperes, the loops will protect a habitat (or anything else) between them at 100 meters from their common center from protons of up to 1 GeV, but offers only partial protection against 10 GeV protons. This will protect against most solar storms, and give some but not complete protection against cosmic rays. With that separation and current, the loops will experience an attractive force of 25,000 tons per meter.

I make this program freely available on my website
http://panoptesv.com/Magtracer/magtracer.f
http://panoptesv.com/Magtracer/grater.f
http://panoptesv.com/Magtracer/rand.f
http://panoptesv.com/Magtracer/rungakutta.f
You will need to know FORTRAN to get much use out of it, and will need a FORTRAN 77 compiler (you can get one for free if you install cygwin on a windows machine, and I think linux automatically comes with a fortran compiler). It numerically integrates the trajectories of protons traveling in the magnetic fields of current loops. In its present configuration, it looks at the time inverse of the radiation protection problem - it starts the protons at the location of the habitat, and sees if they can escape to far away. If all protons are trapped, then there is no trajectory from far away which will allow the protons to reach the habitat. For those of you with programming experience, or who are willing to learn, you can use this to try to find effective magnetic radiation shields. Maybe YOU can figure out how to make it work more effectively!

Luke

EDIT: Make that an attractive force of 2,500 tons per meter, I forgot a factor of g=9.8 m/s^2. The attractive force goes as the product of the currents in the wire, so if both loops keep the same current the force is proportional to the square of the current. Reducing the current by a factor of 10 will give you a force of 25 tons per meter, which may be tolerable with sufficient support structures. This current will provide limited protection against 1 GeV protons and nearly complete protection against 100 MeV protons. This will provide considerable help but not complete protection against solar storms, but will let a lot of cosmic rays through.