When Reality Is Wilder Than Fiction... Improvising and Mixing

[Bamax]

Scifi is that. You have your fiction and reality, mix it together, bake it, and out comes the result, with all the consequences of worbuilding.


For gravity, one way I devised involves rotation. See normally you would need a kilometer radius and 1 RPM for 1g, which would... or should requoire a huuuge ship.

Two ways to fix that:

Realistuc way: Kilometer long cables and ship seperation in two during rotation. Obviously has stability issues and propellant burn waste each time of use.

Scifi: Apply a stretched scifi tractor beam across a kilometer between ship halves and rotate. That's a line that WON'T break nor have stability issues.

If you know of more fun examples where you have improvised insert below!

[Cthulhu]

1. You don't need a full g, even half or maybe a third would be enough, at least for a warship. That would require smaller radii and, with higher RPM, a thick, torus-like structure revolving around the core of the ship would provide sufficient "replacement" gravity.
Thus, a warship would retain structural unity, while providing some comfort for its crew. For a civilian ship, you can simply build a very big, relatively thin wheel and have it spin around the engine core for a full g.

2. Tractor beams would be of the same technological family as artificial gravity, thus inventing some sort of grav-plating or grav-generator would be more "realistic" (in-universe). Actually, tractor beams that would work in a dynamic setting across a kilometer or more would be more advanced than a smaller, simpler generator providing limited and less focused attraction force to close objects.
Any problems with the ship parts, be it combat damage, difference in acceleration, loss of power, rapid maneuvering or trouble with the tractor beam itself would still cause them to fly apart. Nothing is unbreakable.

[Bamax]

1. You don't need a full g, even half or maybe a third would be enough, at least for a warship. That would require smaller radii and, with higher RPM, a thick, torus-like structure revolving around the core of the ship would provide sufficient "replacement" gravity.
Thus, a warship would retain structural unity, while providing some comfort for its crew. For a civilian ship, you can simply build a very big, relatively thin wheel and have it spin around the engine core for a full g.

2. Tractor beams would be of the same technological family as artificial gravity, thus inventing some sort of grav-plating or grav-generator would be more "realistic" (in-universe). Actually, tractor beams that would work in a dynamic setting across a kilometer or more would be more advanced than a smaller, simpler generator providing limited and less focused attraction force to close objects.
Any problems with the ship parts, be it combat damage, difference in acceleration, loss of power, rapid maneuvering or trouble with the tractor beam itself would still cause them to fly apart. Nothing is unbreakable.

For my setting, the 'tractor beams' are a modification with mass added to another scifi tech that propels ships.

Pressor rays.

Light repels but is too weak. Pressor rays are light that has been enhanced so that it's repulsive nature is increased manifold, enough that it repels enough to be like a rocket withouy photon death ray energy levels.

The only drawback is the fuel source gives you thrust per sec per ton. So iy requires thousands of tons that must,also be used conservatively.

[icekatze]

hi hi

For my setting, the 'tractor beams' are a modification with mass added to another scifi tech that propels ships.

Is this setting related to Outsider in some way?

It is my understanding that to get 1g out of 1rpm, you need 895.47 meters. But at 3 rpm, you only need less than 100. While 3 rpm might cause some mild motion sickness to people coming aboard suddenly, it should take less than a day for people to acclimate. Space Settlement Population Rotation Tolerance

Outside of rotation, if I were to assume super science tech for space travel, I'd just digitize the minds of the crew and have the living area be a simulation. Like the second arc of Accelerando by Charles Stross. Then if something needs fixing on the ship, they can download into a robot body or something.

[Cthulhu]

For my setting, the 'tractor beams' are a modification with mass added to another scifi tech that propels ships.

Pressor rays.

Light repels but is too weak. Pressor rays are light that has been enhanced so that it's repulsive nature is increased manifold, enough that it repels enough to be like a rocket withouy photon death ray energy levels.

The only drawback is the fuel source gives you thrust per sec per ton. So iy requires thousands of tons that must,also be used conservatively.

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever outside your setting. This "pressor" ray simply sounds like a laser with extra, very unnecessary and quite impossible-sounding steps. With no relation to tractor beams, too.

How about writing in a more consistent and comprehensive way?

[Bamax]

For my setting, the 'tractor beams' are a modification with mass added to another scifi tech that propels ships.

Pressor rays.

Light repels but is too weak. Pressor rays are light that has been enhanced so that it's repulsive nature is increased manifold, enough that it repels enough to be like a rocket withouy photon death ray energy levels.

The only drawback is the fuel source gives you thrust per sec per ton. So iy requires thousands of tons that must,also be used conservatively.

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever outside your setting. This "pressor" ray simply sounds like a laser with extra, very unnecessary and quite impossible-sounding steps. With no relation to tractor beams, too.

How about writing in a more consistent and comprehensive way?

It is not for Outsider per se... any can develop any scifi tech they wish on this thread and use it for their own setting.


Radiation pressure is real. The real way to increase it is to simpy throw more photons at an object that reflects them. The problem with this is that too many photons will burn the same object. Or you could increase the surface area of the object, but thrust would still be weak.

But what if you could modify traits of photons? By making their pressure force greater.... much greater? Then flashlights would be rockets, minus the cap as they would blow it off.

Light repels everything, it's just too weak to be noticed much. Increase the radiation pressure force sufficiently and you could get rocket thrust without death ray plumes or engine melting heat.

Scifi is not about how to do what we don't even know how to do and what may be truly impossible. It is about what we could do or would do if we had the capacity to do what is impossible or difficult.


How do you make inertial dampeners?

How do you make FTL jump drive?

How do you make pressor rays?

The answer is not important unless it will involve the direction of the story plot somehow.

So I avoid that. I wanted a ship I myself could explain that won't melt itself while having great propulsion.


Truth is, it's all in the design. If you have a high mileage warp drive of even lightspeed or less, you could get by on rocket reserves that are far less ISP than the Loroi.

You only need to use main engines for:

Ship to ship rendezvous.

Orbit insertion.

Landing.

Battle maneuvers.

Warp can do inbetween flight fast enough that you really don't need 30g. 3g would suffice, even if only 400 seconds ISP... so long you have ISRU to make rocket fuel from offworld ice.

But that's the hard way. Still easier scifi ways are available.

[Scantrontb]

This sounds like you're going OLD SCHOOL... like way back to the likes of the "Arcot, Morey and Wade" space opera genre of books back in the 50's... they had some of the things you mention: Pressor Beams, inertial dampers, Space Warp drives and Time Warp drives (not time TRAVEL, it just makes time go faster/slower in it's field effect radius while time is still going forward as we know it, just not in reverse.)

[Bamax]

This sounds like you're going OLD SCHOOL... like way back to the likes of the "Arcot, Morey and Wade" space opera genre of books back in the 50's... they had some of the things you mention: Pressor Beams, inertial dampers, Space Warp drives and Time Warp drives (not time TRAVEL, it just makes time go faster/slower in it's field effect radius while time is still going forward as we know it, just not in reverse.)

Quite right!

Fun fact: The original Star Trek pilot episode with Pike used time warp... probably not realizing it would only be practical for interplanetary, not interstellar.... unless they were going 99% lightspeed LOL.

Oldies but goodies I say. A mix of 1950's and cold war tech. All scifi is a product of it's time that is paradoxically since no obe can see far ahead enough to know what exactly or how we will do space opera stuff.

Pressor beams as I see them would only work port to port, but would, as a long extendable pressing beam. be like an uber space elevator that can retract and won't break easily.

At the end is a massive circular platform that space vessels can launch from.

Since it is not orbiting, I would use high thrust/high delta v drives... project orion pusher plates propelled by bombs.

The more energetic a drive is the more efficient it is. You only have to scale up the size and propellant mass flow when the energy is too high to reject heat efficiently enough.

Loroi drives without scifi heat rejection or inertial damping would need to be truly massive to fly under the heat load they would produce otherwise.

Here is a fun example that demonstrates the nozzle a rocket engine that produced 500 terawatts would need.

Everything else would need to be bigger too, the combustion chamber etc. The propellant tank too.

So you see the ships would be truly massive without scifi.... but could in theory still fly.

https://i.postimg.cc/G2PXsgTF/pentagon-engine.png

[Demarquis]

Probably the biggest handwave I like to use is a wormhole network that doesn't result in time travel (ie, causality violation). You just can't build them that way--the tunnels collapse if you try. Why? Very simple: due to the special theory of plototivity (sometimes known as narrative mechanics).

[Keklas Rekobah]

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." -- Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), writing as "Mark Twain"

[Keklas Rekobah]

"Causality, Relativity, FTL travel: choose any two." -- attributed to many