[Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon

[scc]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Okay, what was your original, gaming related question? You seem to have this all worked out to your satisfaction.

I want to know if people think it would make for a good game, I'm not sure it last beyond one or two sessions, but it's repeatable and there are other places to go in the system and do the usual Traveler inspired tramp freighter things

Originally Posted by johndallman

How are you planning to lift all that mass to Venus orbit? You'd have to speed up Venus' rotation a lot to let you use orbital elevators.

Originally Posted by scc

Um, no rockets, either a mass driver to increase rotational speed to reactionless drives tailored to produce space fighters (They have a top speed).

Originally Posted by Varyon

How are you seeing this marathon work? Are we talking a race to see who goes from Venus to the Moon fastest with everyone starting in Venus' orbit? A staggered race where you just track how long it takes each vessel for a single trip? A variant of one of the previous where how much mass of nitrogen the vessel is transporting is factored in? A "race" where victory goes to the vessel that transports the most nitrogen to the Moon during the "nitrogen transport" phase of the terraforming project? Something else? And do you see the Mars project involving a separate race, or would it be something like the above where transporting to Mars instead of the Moon is worth more points?

Yes an actual race, the races by clipper ships to bring tea to England was on my mind when I came up with this. The event is annual and the first across the line wins. Vessels get around by Mag-Sail assisted by particle accelerator stations so there's something of a starting whistle when that fires up but starting early is allowed (Because it doesn't automatically give you an advantage). At this point I'm not sure then carting stuff to Mars would begin, it could start at the same time or later on, I'm not sure.

Originally Posted by whswhs

The pressure part makes sense. Atmospheric pressure is the weight of atmospheric gases, which is the mass of those gases times the acceleration of gravity. The moon has 1/6 g, so if you have six times as much atmosphere, you'll have the same pressure. (The scale height is inversely proportional to gravitational acceleration, so it will be six times as great.)

But with the lower gravity the atmosphere will escape far faster.

I calculated how much would be needed based upon Titan's atmospheric pressure.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by scc

I want to know if people think it would make for a good game

Running bulk freighters is not in general going to be an interesting game, though it can be the backdrop for something more exciting.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by scc

I want to know if people think it would make for a good game, I'm not sure it last beyond one or two sessions, but it's repeatable and there are other places to go in the system and do the usual Traveler inspired tramp freighter things

.

I'm having trouble seeing a place for mag-sails and any reactionless drive usable for heavy lifting in gravity wells like that of Venus. Even oif the reationless drive has a speed limit like 8 miles per second (relative to what?) drifting at that speed for free compared to the trouble and expense of mag-sailing looks pretty attractive.

It's also one of those "Space" things where you ask "Why are there humans involved in this?".

Races are also pretty hard to make into actually interactive rpg stuff. It was one of SJ's genius moments when he decided in Car Wars to sideline the going in circles and just have the cars shoot at each other.

It's also a problem that a solar system government big enough to be funding (and presumably supervising) this sort of terraforming will be squashing any Player Character shennaigans.

Of course,a society wealthy enough to be able to afford this sort of thing usually does not have that much use for terraformed planets.

[scc]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Running bulk freighters is not in general going to be an interesting game, though it can be the backdrop for something more exciting.

Like my races, yes? But there's other things to do both in conjunction with the race (Some other cargoes need hauling and there's spare space to haul them, some are government, some are private, plus people need to travel, there's also speculative trade, many goods, even basic ones, aren't made off Earth) and there's a few other places to visit.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I'm having trouble seeing a place for mag-sails and any reactionless drive usable for heavy lifting in gravity wells like that of Venus. Even oif the reationless drive has a speed limit like 8 miles per second (relative to what?) drifting at that speed for free compared to the trouble and expense of mag-sailing looks pretty attractive.

Mag-Sails provide some nice cinematic and game-play opportunities but they can also accelerate to higher velocites then the reactionless drives. Also said drives are both capable of boosting said fighters into orbit while being unable to accelerate them faster then WW2 fighters, don't think about this contradiction too much.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's also one of those "Space" things where you ask "Why are there humans involved in this?".

Probably

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Races are also pretty hard to make into actually interactive rpg stuff. It was one of SJ's genius moments when he decided in Car Wars to sideline the going in circles and just have the cars shoot at each other.

It's more in the setup, the race is probably decided in the launch from Venus, but it isn't going to involve moving pieces on a map or anything.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's also a problem that a solar system government big enough to be funding (and presumably supervising) this sort of terraforming will be squashing any Player Character shennaigans.

No system government or even planetary government. Project through the UN pushed by CANZUK and EU mainly as a jobs thing.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Of course,a society wealthy enough to be able to afford this sort of thing usually does not have that much use for terraformed planets.

They are unlikely to be that wealthy when they start.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by johndallman

You'd have to speed up Venus' rotation a lot to let you use orbital elevators.

Originally Posted by scc

. . . either a mass driver to increase rotational speed . . .

Could you lay out your sequence of stages in this operation? It's a bit confusing. As far as I can tell, it goes like this:

1. Build a sunshade for Venus, let it cool enough for the CO2 to liquify.
2. Build a huge mass driver on Venus' surface, which is covered in liquid CO2 to a substantial depth. That ocean also contains enough of various acids (hydrochloric, hydrofluoric and sulphuric) to worry about.
3. Start chucking rocks off Venus to increase its rotation rate. You have to get them to at least Venus orbital velocity, through a nitrogen atmosphere that's three times as dense as Earth's. That looks rather hard. Or are you going to let Venus cool enough to freeze the CO2 and liquify the nitrogen? That may take a long time, since Venus must be expected to have radioactive heat in its core.

[hal]

Originally Posted by scc

So I'm working on stuff for a setting that has Earth going through terraforming Venus, The Moon, and Mars. It's this terraforming bit that kind of interests me for the moment. To terraform the Moon I need to 2.4e15 tons of nitrogen from Venus to the Moon, moving about that much to Mars is probably also a good idea as well.

Now this number is big, so that means there will be a lot of freighters moving this nitrogen, even the absurd number I give of 1 million will require something like 3 million years of ships moving gas so it's probably actually low. Now given that Hohmann transfer orbits are a thing that means that the ideal conditions for a race.

Here may be a good thought to consider...

If a "mass" within the Sun's gravity well slows down - its orbital speed around say, Venus, will not be that OF Venus, but will work such that the ship will begin to "fall" towards the Sun.

If I recall correctly, solar sails can be used to slow a ship just as much as it can accelerate a ship. Which means, it will fall into the sun, and require that the pilot plot a course to insure that his speed is no lower than that of Mercury if he doesn't want to get any closer to the sun than Mercury. Yes, it likely helps if your course doesn't point you straight at the sun despite being at the speed of Mercury, but that's not something I will go into. ;)

From there, the thrust from the Solar Sails will intensify due to the inverse square of the distance law until the ship reaches the maximum velocity possible from the use of its solar sails. Not sure what that velocity will do where it comes to reaching the orbit of Mars or what have you...

In theory? Your solar sail ships may NOT need to utilize Hohmann transfer orbits. Sadly, I don't have the math background to determine if this is feasible or not. The real problem however, is - the closer you dive towards the sun, the hotter your vessel becomes. I'm not certain what the safest approach is to the sun - nor what the actual orbital times will be.

As for harvesting the Atmosphere of Venus - some time back, I read about a tether ssystem for which ships could aim for the tether that is at the end of a long cable connected to a satellite. Is there any reason you can't simply have Venus orbital stations with tethers that reach into the atmosphere, and suck atmosphere up? Yes, there will be drag involved, but if you're going to use a solar screen to hide Venus from the sun's full sunlight, I think you may have some options here. For example, what could you do with a bank of solar panels large enough to hide Venus from the Sun? Could those solar panels power some high powered lasers whose only goal is to accelerate the solar sails of ships moving away from the orbit of Venus?

What about microwaves being beamed into the atmosphere of Venus - where the skimmers dive into the atmosphere of Venus, use a portion of the atmosphere as reaction fuel powered by microwave powered ships (broadcast power) and have them bring up a fair amount of atmosphere back into orbit? Those skimmers would need a maintenance crew to keep them in top shape, and they likely require someone to operate them remotely (would YOU want to land on Venus due to a ship malfunction?!!) But here is where things can become even more interesting...

what if you used the energy from the solar shade, to power maglev launch systems? The problem will be - what will you launch, and where will you get the material for the containers that you're launching? If these "containers" are launched on a ballistic trajectory - they don't even really NEED a ship to get them to where they're going. They just need a ship to collect the containers that were launched.

Just brainstorming here. I haven't the foggiest notion on what materials are used for solar panels, and whether the amount necessary to create the solar shade will be present in significant amounts to be worth the while.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by scc

I want to know if people think it would make for a good game, I'm not sure it last beyond one or two sessions, but it's repeatable and there are other places to go in the system and do the usual Traveler inspired tramp freighter things.

I have to confess, when I did the prep work for my tramp freighter game, it didn't occur to me to figure out the economics of terraforming Mars. In large part because the kind of regular, bulk freight loads involved in carrying a small asteroid's worth of N2 to Mars are pretty much the opposite of tramp freight loads.

But that's me, and my opinion shouldn't matter if you players think it is interesting. However, you asked, and I don't think it's a particularly interesting premise: what's the challenge here? Where are the opportunities for shenanigans and reversals?

As I indicated, I am currently running a tramp freighter game, and these are the things we've done:
* Intercept another tramp freighter to deliver a repossession team on board, and incidentally defend it from attack by pirates
* Smuggle 50 tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU), and deal with the consequences of the fact that the only people that are illegally transporting HEU are pirates
* carry a load of freight that the shipper neglected to mention contained genetically modified gladiator apes for arena battles, and have the apes' containment systems fall apart almost at the end of the journey and the apes get loose and start wrecking the cargo hold
* smuggle a huge load of precious metals, and fend off hijackings and pirate attacks and hijackings during pirate attacks because the PCs are bad at screening their passengers

Some of these plots have worked better than others, but they've all been entertaining. Shipping bulk N2 on Hohlman transfer orbits doesn't sound entertaining.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by scc

Like my races, yes? But there's other things to do both in conjunction with the race (Some other cargoes need hauling and there's spare space to haul them, some are government, some are private, plus people need to travel, there's also speculative trade, many goods, even basic ones, aren't made off Earth) and there's a few other places to visit.

In my experience running games, neither racing nor mercantile activity makes for a good game, other than maybe the very occasional theft or sabotage storyline.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by Anthony

In my experience running games, neither racing nor mercantile activity makes for a good game, other than maybe the very occasional theft or sabotage storyline.

Mercantile activity is a broad arena. Arguably it covers everything from the Opium Wars to Firefly to adventure in the Caribbean. Spain called them pirates (sometimes smugglers) IIRC the French, English and Dutch called their own citizens merchants...

A run of solely mercantile pursuits would likely be dull, but commerce can take you to the strangest places.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Witchking

A run of solely mercantile pursuits would likely be dull, but commerce can take you to the strangest places.

Commerce can be a good excuse to take you interesting places where you do interesting things, but that's not actually a game about commerce, it's a game that's using commerce as a backdrop.