Sci-Fi Kinda Question

[Solar]

- The thing to do, is write the story without explicitly talking about EU stuff.

That's best advice because plasma dynamics has been in the actual scientific literature since at least 1879 (Crooks Tube). Its not something unique to the EU.

My question - can a Birkeland current "filament" act like this, and if something passed through it, and wasn't properly shielded or whatever - would it make sense that the current would flow through, rather than around the object? And, if so, what kind of voltages / current are we talking about.

BOTH of these can occur. Charged particles can interact (impact ionization) with the ship and emit secondary cascades ("Air Showers") of high energy particles inside the ship. That is one of the ways people inside the ship can be exposed to harmful radiation. This is an actual concern today with gamma rays emitted by lightning and airplane crew & passengers even though videos can be found where lightning strikes course around the skin of airplanes. For spacefaring this and the ramifications thereof would probably fall under “Spacecraft Charging” and efforts to mitigate this effect.

Spacecraft Charging NASA

Then see: A Plasma Contactor: to avoid arcing from spacecraft charging. From the links at the bottom of that Wiki article here is what one looked like at one point.

There is energy that can accumulate around the outside of the ship and there is energy that can penetrate through the ship. Both are of concern.

Basically, could some sort of structure "short circuit" a Birkeland current briefly, and if so, how large would such a structure be?

Just say 'No' to this.

And, knowing that, I assume there is a way for such a structure ( "ship" ) to tap-into a Birkeland current and use its power?

Not under that name or concept. See: Space Tether missions.

This next page has an extensive list of real world concerns related to spacefaring. "Table 1" can be opened in its own window (its longer than it appears)

The space-flight environment: the International Space Station and beyond

I would add:

Dangerous Dust

More Dust: I wouldn’t get anywhere near some spacecraft that is supposed to travel at the speed of light because the inverse is that it would be “sandblasted” at the speed of light by dust which is NOT moving at that same speed. And yet, if a ship is moving at the speed of light through dust traveling MUCH slower, said dust will ALSO be moving at the speed of light in the opposite direction of the ship. See?

Whiskering: The onboard plasma wave sensor just went out and no one knows why.

[allynh]

As I mentioned on an earlier thread, the Gaussjammer that A. Bertram Chandler used is the closest example that an EU spaceship would use to tap into the electrical currents.

This is chapter three where he describes the gaussjammer
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/978143913 ... 73__29.htm

The main things to watch out for with EU stories:

- No Big Bang

- No Black Holes

- No Neutron Stars

- No Wormholes

- The Sun is not an exploding Hydrogen bomb, it is powered by galactic currents.

That means:

- No Dyson Sphere

- No Space Elevator

So there are problems with my favorite SF books.

If you have read the Honor Harrington novels by David Webber, you can get a sense of how he describes the gravity drives that he uses. He is vague enough without getting tied up in the details. It took me a long time to realize that the fields extend out far beyond what I thought. I'm still not sure if they are hundreds or thousands of miles across, yet that didn't stop me from enjoying the stories of what they do "with" the ships. Amazing series.

The books by Larry Niven are fun, but false.

The story where the character is being chased by other spaceships and he swings by a neutron star. He kills the enemy with radiation from the neutron star by dropping stuff into the star spraying the pursuing spaceships with the radiation.

I love Ringworld, but any object that large would pick up the electricity coming from the outside. I suspect that the local star would go dark.

The other flaw with Ringworld is his failure to understand gravity. He has a ribbon a million miles wide holding atmosphere between high walls. The spin of the ring is enough to mimic gravity by centrifugal force. The problem is, gravity does not just pull downward, it pulls in all directions inward. That million miles of atmosphere, water, soil, would be drawn into the center of that flat ribbon, making a wet mess. It would not lie flat the way he thinks.

I am able to enjoy the story of what goes on inside the Ring as long as I assume that there is some way to shape space to the surface of the ring. Think the decks on the starship Enterprise. There are inertial dampers that keep people on the deck despite the ship moving around.

Terry Pratchett's Diskworld only works because the magic makes it work. An actual diskworld would have all of the atmosphere, water, soil pull into the center of the disk. There would have to be an inertial damper, like the magic, to hold everything flat.

The novel Accelerando by Charles Stross is a fun romp, but is utterly impossible.

The Vile Offspring start building a Matrioshka brain that completely envelops the Sun to utilize all of the energy "from" the Sun. Problem is, the Sun is powered by external electricity, so the Sun would go dark, and all of that electricity would hit the outer shell of the Matrioshka brain.

His novel Saturn's Children is almost impossible to read because of the constant violations of EU stuff. There is no "story" to enjoy outside of the errors. At one point he has a spinning tether that spins into the Venus atmosphere to drop people off and pick them up. The spinning tether would explode from the electrical overload.

Yet, you have The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton where they have vast spinning space habitats that gather electrical energy from the electrical fields of a gas giant using tethers.

- If you are looking for the "Nuts and Bolts" of "Hard SF" you will end up simply chasing your tail, instead of writing "tales."

Find what works for you, and don't get lost in the details. There is no such thing as "Hard SF", everything is Science Fantasy, at best. Even Arthur C. Clarke only wrote Science Fantasy, yet he was always described as writing "Hard SF".

Have fun...

[Earl Sinclair]

I've read most of those stories mentioned above. I've always thought that Dyson spheres and ring worlds were ridiculous because the sheer size and bulk is way more than what is really feasible - no matter what your technology.

Dyson's idea is actually really stupid, in my opinion - you'll use untold amounts of material and energy to build something that can capture 100% of a star's energy output. Um, right.

No, my idea is relatively near-future. All travel is intra-solar, and things are still being figured-out. The, well, "cool" thing (?) is the plot device that makes it unnecessary for me to come-up with all kinds of far-off future stuff that will become dated in 20 years.

I'll be concentrating on the characters - and guess what? There aren't ANY space battles. No aliens. No gigantic artifacts. I DO have one "magic" thing - but I think that it makes sense within the story, and may well be possible. The whole thing takes place more along the lines of 2001 - A Space Odyssey, as far as technology goes.

I guess I'm in the same technological mindset as "The Martian" - where practically everything was currently "possible" within understood physics.


Earl

[allynh]

I love the Martian, I watch the movie on a regular basis, and read the book many times, but it is Science Fantasy, because virtually none of what is on the page is physically possible.

Here are some things that I'm talking about:

- How did they get the Mars rovers to each landing site. There are two at each.

- How did they get the solar panels on the surface.

- How did they get the Habitat on the surface and assembled, with only a 30 day mission.

He got to the other landing site:

- Where was the new habitat, the food, the two new rovers.

- Why was there just a return vehicle.

- Where was the nuclear power source to make more fuel.

He would have had more than enough to set up another Habitat, grow more potatoes. He should have gone to the next base as soon as things blew, killing the crops.

Remember, they had to virtually strip the return vehicle just to get him off the surface and to a higher orbit to meet the ship. If they brought all that mass to Mars with that ship, there would be no problem lifting him to a higher orbit, without having to strip the ship.

- If they could launch the return vehicle from Earth, with everything for the Mars Habitat, why did they need the Chinese to help launch the supply run.

- If they could launch that much mass from Earth to Mars, none of the launch problems in the story would exist.

There was a great TV series about going to Mars.

Scientists Are Designing the Spacesuits We'll Wear on Mars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pjX-rSZCe8

They have to deal with the low temperatures along with low pressure. They literally test the suit by having the guy pick up a metal bar that has been chilled to Mars temperatures. I can't find a video clip on YouTube about it, but it is scary to watch him try and pick up something that cold.

I laugh every time I watch this part.

the martian blew myself up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lIWV0hZs8U

I need to watch the movie again tonight. It is more fun than what is going on right now.

Thanks...

[Earl Sinclair]

The way you show all the problems with The Martian makes it look no better than Tolkien.

My story centers around things I know a lot about. I won't have to speculate too much about future gadgets - except the absence of them.

One question about pressure and gravity. I know that the air pressure in Apollo space crafts were NOT earth-at-sea-level normal, but were, IIRC like 5 lbs-sq-in or something like that, basically 1/3rd of atmospheric normal. I know that they increased the O2 to compensate, and that caused it to be super-flammable which resulted in Apollo 1 disaster.

I'm still looking at how they mitigated that...

The second thing is that that artificial gravity I propose is only about 1/2 to 1/3 earth normal. Still not great, but the human body should still get enough to operate properly and slow-down bone and muscle loss...

Most of the computer stuff I already know ( I'm in the biz ), and most of the electrical as well ( was in the biz ).


Earl

[allynh]

The way you show all the problems with The Martian makes it look no better than Tolkien.

HA! I know. yet I still love the movie/book. I watched it again last night and it still rips me to shreds.

That's the thing to remember, tell a good story and people will not notice the impossible things that were left unmentioned.

It's like The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The story starts with all of the AI construction robots already in place, with finished habitats.

- How did they get all that equipment to Mars.

- How did they build AI robots that could work independently, without triggering an AI Singularity.

People just run with the story. As author, don't get trapped by the details.

I asked google:

what was the air pressure in the space shuttle

and I got a number of articles.

This one has most of what you are looking for.

Crew Compartment Cabin Pressurization
https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/re ... press.html

There is also the book, Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach that goes into a lot of details about long distance spaceflight. It is still on my "to-be-read" pile. Buy it used.

For artificial gravity I have problems with most of the solutions proposed. Zubrin has a cable that connects two modules and has them spin to generate the artificial gravity. I can't tell you how scary that concept is. There are so many degrees of freedom in that system that there is no way to control the orientation of the system. No way to make course corrections.

Zubrin wrote a novel based on his plan to go to Mars. Read the sample and you will see where he lost me with chapter One. That was one of the few books that I could barely start. I'll try it again one of these days.

First Landing by Robert Zubrin
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OIZULW/

[jackokie]

Hi, Earl.

I just joined the forum after lurking for a couple of years, and you get my first post.

Here is a link to a proposal for a z-pinch fusion powered spacecraft. I haven't vetted it, but they seem to have invested a fair amount of time in the project. Perhaps you could figure out a way to provide the necessary power via tether.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25jRvzTPL4A

Re Zubrin's artificial gravity concept: I just finished a sci-fi series where there were two counter-rotating habitation rings around the center of a very large ship. I'm thinking that the angular momentum of such a setup would pose as difficult problems as Zubrin's in terms of course changes. For Zubrin's plan, couldn't attitude jets on the connected modules keep things aligned properly absent course changes? For a deep space voyager (rather than a military ship) I would expect course changes to be infrequent enough to just stop the rotation, realign to the new course, and then spin up again. The modules would have to be tolerant of zero-g anyway in case of an emergency.

Good luck with your story. With all that energy flowing through Birkland currents in space, it'd be a shame if we couldn't figure out a way to take advantage for travel.

[Earl Sinclair]

Hi Jack,

I'm honored! Interesting that MY ship also has a pair of rings rotating in opposite directions. My main purpose was to minimize torquing issues - much like on aircraft where they have propellers going in opposite directions.

The main portion of the ship is in free-fall, and the inhabitants spend as much time in the gravity as they can. Also, the gravity is not a full 1g, rather 1/2 or so. There are other considerations I won't go into just now.

I agree that course corrections aren't "pivotal" to the ship ( egad, bad pun ). As a matter of fact, my ship is pretty pokey and can barely get out of its own way. It's not designed to be particularly close to a gravity well.

There are 4 parts to the book, and maybe I'll do the Martian thing and release a chapter at a time and see if it gets traction. But, I can't do that until I'm done with part 2 at least. The "fantastic" stuff starts in part 3, with resolution in part 4.

It's basically writing itself so far, but I need to edit it down a bit.


Earl

[allynh]

You are better off indy publishing the book through Amazon, both ebook and paper. You'll make more money and have less hassle, especially if you are writing non-standard physics SF.

The traditional book industry is imploding with the pandemic. They are paying lower advances and taking less risk on new books, plus taking more rights. You can literally indy publish several books in the time that it takes to even find an agent. BTW, don't get an agent, they are imploding even worse. Your books will stay in print, where with traditional publishers most books are out of print within a year.

"Look inside" Dean Wesley Smith's first issue of his magazine, read the introduction, and you will see what he did.

Smith's Monthly #1 (Volume 1)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0615894852/

You can do everything with free software.

LibreOffice was designed for creating books. You can do the layout with Writer and assemble the covers with Draw.

There are tons of tutorials on YouTube for using free graphic packages like Gimp, Inkscape, Blender, to generate the cover art. If you do everything DIY it costs dollars to publish a book, so you are ahead of the game at that point.

Use Blender to draw your spaceship.

On YouTube "search" the words:

blender tutorial spaceship

and you will find plenty of tutorials.

I enjoy looking at the CGI spaceships on YouTube for inspiration.

FICTIONAL STARSHIPS Size COMPARISON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTPwbVqU6lc

Above all, have fun.

[Earl Sinclair]

LOL - I don't expect to make money, actually. I'll try, but we'll see.

On the cover thing - um, actually, I can think of a cool cover which doesn't really give anything away.

I'm a software engineer, and already have any and all editing software I need. Thanks for the info, though.


Earl

[Solar]

I enjoy looking at the CGI spaceships on YouTube for inspiration.

FICTIONAL STARSHIPS Size COMPARISON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTPwbVqU6lc

Above all, have fun.

That was fascinating Allynh. The background cityscape really helped showcase the scale of some of these ships many of which i've never paid attention to for some reason. But if they a have personal cruiser like this:

Flying Sub

I would be like George Clooney in the movie Gravity - never on the main ship.

[Earl Sinclair]

OK, no black holes, wormholes, etc....what about Einstein time dilation? From what I've been seeing, the whole turning time into a fourth dimension - treating it just like the other three axes, is bogus.

So, if one travels, however briefly, at relativistic speeds, or say, .5c - would time pass more slowly than earth?


Thanks.


Earl

[allynh]

There is no such thing as "Time Dilation".

I can't find the lecture again, but there was a Professor that worked at CERN. He pointed out that when grad students first show up at CERN they get the lecture that "Time Dilation" does not exist and that it is never used at CERN.

- Virtually all of "Theoretical Physics" that you learned in school is bogus.

- One scientist pointed out that there is nothing "Theoretical" about Physics.

One of the fun themes I have in my stuff is that they build a ship to travel to Alpha Centauri, and expect time dilation to reduce the need to feed the crew for a ten year round trip, since it will only takes months in relative time to get there. They get a year into the flight, and they still are light years away from their destination -- no time dilation -- and are running out of food.

It's a fun variation of the story, "The Cold Equations".

[Earl Sinclair]

Cool, that what I figured. It plays into my story well, as upsetting apple carts is what I want to do.


Earl

[allynh]

Read this article for the reaction to the controversy, and the way the scientist is reacting to attacks against him. I put the article in my Story folder.

Does ‘Oumuamua Prove Science Doesn’t Want To Find Aliens?
https://thedebrief.org/oumuamua-proves- ... nd-aliens/