Timeline for Realistic acceleration with Laser Propulsion for intra-stellar 1 million ton cargo ship
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 16, 2021 at 10:49 | comment | added | Starfish Prime | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Feb 15, 2021 at 22:17 | comment | added | dozTK421 | @StarfishPrime Key to the worldbuilding situation I am creating. 1) Fusion is used, but only on very massive, intensive scales. It is not decentralized. Laser lanes (both solar and fusion powered) are thus central to the economy of moving things around the system. (And central to where political power lies.) 2) A little bit of hand wavium to make planetary tethers robust so that leaving planetary gravity wells is about as routine an industrial process as going through the Panama Canal. | |
| Feb 15, 2021 at 18:26 | comment | added | Starfish Prime | @dozTK421 Your tech level already implies and advanced, mature spacefaring civilisation... mining the asteroids can be scaled trivially compared to dragging huge volumes of material out of deep gravity wells, especially ones with delicate and valuable ecosystems associated with them. Mature fusion technology negates the need for fissiles, so there's precious little else needed in-system. | |
| Feb 15, 2021 at 17:56 | comment | added | dozTK421 | @StarfishPrime Just quickly, of course I'm not speculating on shipping 1M tons of whiskey, but open to the possibility that 200kg, especially if it's extremely expensive, provides economic incentive to stick in the cargo. Asteroid mining is actually not easy scaled up. Highly refined steel and carbon pushed along solar lanes from Mars/Venus to Jupiter is plausible considering turning cylinders with different costs between low and high refinement. Mainly, this worldbuilding is not how I think the future actually will be, but how a fictional scenario could work to put my characters in place. | |
| Feb 15, 2021 at 16:58 | comment | added | Starfish Prime | @dozTK421 I can elaborate further, but it isn't really the sort of thing that fits in a SO comment thread. Feel free to invite me to a chat room if you wanted more detail. | |
| Feb 15, 2021 at 16:58 | comment | added | Starfish Prime | @dozTK421 modern sea trade is cheap. Fast interplanetary rocketry, as you can see, is stupendously expensive... the two are not comparable. One simply does not ship a million tonnes of whiskey... it would be an expensive luxury, especially when local analogues can be made much more cheaply, and will be shipped in small quantities like other luxuries. Bulk materials won't come from Earth, they'll come from the asteroids (cheaper to obtain, much closer and so cheaper to ship) and when they do they'll go via very slow low-energy orbits (think years, not weeks!) | |
| Feb 15, 2021 at 16:43 | comment | added | dozTK421 | Thanks, Starfish. Helps me understand realistic limitations. As to why a 1M ton cargo ship? Roughly what a single ocean cargo liner is today. Imagining even a vasty, advanced civilization with lots of in-situ fabrication, I am accounting for a healthy trade of certain goods a fraction of level we ship today. While my fiction includes near miraculous recipes for whipping up nearly any proteins from algae oil, I imagine people in colonies will probably pay good money for real Earth whisky and whine, and occasional luxury like antique books. As well as lots of useful raw material. | |
| Feb 6, 2021 at 9:51 | history | edited | Starfish Prime | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 700 characters in body
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| Feb 6, 2021 at 9:50 | comment | added | PcMan | YEah.. hence my comment in the question itself. It is the radiant energy of 25 * 50megaton nukes going off, in contact with the sail, per second. Slightly excessive. | |
| Feb 6, 2021 at 9:16 | comment | added | Starfish Prime | @PcMan so it is. Not that a few extra orders of magnitude here or there will make much difference under the circumstances ;-) | |
| Feb 6, 2021 at 0:06 | comment | added | PcMan | Errata: "that gives you a power density of about a gigawatt per square metre", should be "that gives you a power density of about a 4.8 TERAwatt per square metre" | |
| Feb 5, 2021 at 22:43 | history | answered | Starfish Prime | CC BY-SA 4.0 |