Re: Kicking a few ideas around in my head (SF), would like to get feedback

MatthewJRotondo wrote:
-Stealth in space is impossible. I'm not trying to deny it, and I'm
not about to flip the bird to the laws of thermodynamics. However, if
a spaceship was approaching a planet and wished to be undetected,
could it fly in between the planet and its parent star to use the
star's heat to mask its approach?

When asking questions about stealth combat, they usually imply a context that would make this kind of solution ineffective. That would make it undetectable by heat, your enemy could still see the shadow of your ship as it approaches. Further, you'd still have to _get_ in that position, and they could notice that. Plus any of their sensors that are _not_ on their planet -- which is almost certain since you're implying some rather widespread infrastructure throughout the Solar System -- could easily see your approaching ship and alert the planet.

-Presume that a spaceship had some sort of insulation that would allow
it to control the amount of heat that it gives off, at the cost of
having to store it within the ship, to the point where it could store
ALL of its generated heat inside the ship for a limited time before it
melts the circuits and cooks the crew.
1) is this theoretically possible, and
2) if so, how fast would the heat build up? Is there a formula to
use? something that deals with heat generated and volume of the
ship?
3) How about a spacesuit? same questions: 1) is it theoretically
possible, and 2) how hot, how fast?

The numbers are just those of heat capacity and radiation. The problem is that change in temperature due to heat capacity goes linearly with the power, but the change in temperature due to radiation goes as the inverse fourth power of the power. That means using radiation is inefficient, and if you're dealing with substantial amounts of power, by the time you reach equilibrium (where power in equals power out), you're cooked.

Storing up the heat in a heat sink and then releasing it quickly isn't practical for this reason; you just can't dump the heat very fast once you decide to do it.

-Mechanical Pressure Suits -- spacesuits of the future, or just an
excuse to squeeze hot babes into skintight latex? What technical
obstacles need to be overcome before these can be used? Possible in
our lifetimes? It's my understanding that current bulky spacesuits are
rather unpleasant to work in, so I would imagine astronauts would be
eager for them, at least Mechanical Pressure gloves or something.

It's something we think is possible but we're not sure how to make it practical. It seems plausible for a somewhat-near-future setting to me.

-Energy -- I was contemplating currency in the future, and I thought
that energy would be a suitable currency compared to, say, precious
metals or fiat currency, presuming that we can come up with an
inexpensive way to store and give liquidity (in an economics sense)
to said energy. Would said energy be stored as Watts or Joules? If I
am totally off my rocker, please explain how.

Energy is measured in joules (not capitalized); power, which is the rate of change of energy, is measured in watts. If you're talking about using energy as a currency, then it would be joules, not watts. Even then, it doesn't really seem too plausible to me. The problem isn't storing energy, it's storing _lots_ of it. The costs of doing that are surely nonlinear, and so it doesn't make much sense. You'd like it to be linear or sublinear at most. Worse, you've got a big problem with a currency where someone can just make more. I'd hate to think what that would imply for, say, inflation, if _anyone_ could make more money by just burning more fuels. And finally, since people are plenty happy with fiat currencies, so there doesn't seem much useful motivation to do so.

-Weapons
--Besides chemical explosions, nuclear explosions, and the rather
implausible (in the conceivable future, anyway) antimatter torpedo, is
there anything else that can be used as an explosive? Besides using
the missile itself as a Kinetic bullet, of course. What would be the
best boom for buck for a space missile?

Kinetic energy plus or minus a nuclear warhead seems the most plausible. Antimatter warheads would be especially nasty, but would probably be too expensive to really use even if they were available. Making significant amounts of antimatter is really expensive and quite visible.

--I'm not entirely clear on Lasers. My understanding (which may be
wrong) is that the more energy you pump into a laser, the stronger
said laser is. In that case, what would differentiate, say, an
infrared Laser from an X-ray Laser? In terms of energy consumption and
its potential as a weapon? What would be the most cost-effective type
of photon to use?

Beam power is the total amount of energy of all the photons firing out per unit time; frequency is the amount of energy per photon. Beam spread depends on the frequency, and higher-frequency beams will have less beam spread, and thus have longer range.

Very high frequency lasers will consist of x-rays or gamma rays that will just pass through their target, irradiating their contents. That's good if you want to knock out the people, but not so good if you want to just do bulk damage (rip through the hull, etc.).

--speaking of which, would a planet-based laser (say, mounted in a
really tall tower), which can draw energy from terrestrial power
supplies (as well as have lots of ways to vent heat), naturally
stronger and longer ranged than a laser mounted on a space ship?
Wouldn't this be an effective terrestrial defense against invading
spaceships?

They really wouldn't be any different from ship-mounted lasers; they'd just be able to dump waste heat more efficiently. They'd still be hooked up to some sort of reactor.

--Particle weapons -- Great fun until the radiation kills you, no?
What about plating the casing in lead and mounting it on a ship far
enough away from crew compartments?

The bigger problem with particle beams is that they're going to be charged, and so they're going to have huge beam spread, and so they're going to be short range weapons. But at short range you're probably better off just using a powerful laser.

--Relativistic kill weapons -- The stuff of nightmares. Say one is
heading to Earth. Could a deep space scanner, say, in orbit around
Pluto, detect this weapon after it passes it? Presuming the technology
is advanced enough, could the Earth fire its own RKW on an
interception course and prevent it from striking the planet, using
trigonometry to calculate its position?

If it's _really_ relativistic than its image is passing barely in front of it. By the time you've detected it's too late. Even completely destroying it means its fragments, debris, or individual particles are still on their way at the same speed; if it's big enough to really do huge damage to a big target (say, a planet) then vaporizing it won't do any good since it'll still dump exactly the same amount of kinetic energy. However, it still requires vast amounts of energy so it's unlikely to be impractical to actually use. It certainly wouldn't be possible for interplanetary use.

--FTL communication -- There seems to be a never-ending supply of semi-
plausible (and not so plausible) ways to get around that pesky speed
of light for spaceships. Realizing that FTL anything is probably
alchemist's gold, are there any similarly semi-plausible theories for
transmitting information FTL? I've heard of ansibles, but from what I
can tell, they make FTL spaceships look like microwave ovens in terms
of plausibility.

Well, once you've granted FTL travel, FTL communication appears automatically, if it's only done by courier ship. You just have to pick something that makes sense; there's no way to come up with FTL communication that's consistent with the laws of physics as we know them.

--Force fields -- as with FTL, recognizing their fairy tale status,
are there any semi-plausible designs for a force field? Or would I
have to go the route of Frank Herbert and just come up with some
vague, handwavium quantum effect? (not to knock the author of my
favorite SF of all time, of course).

There's nothing really obvious that presents itself. You're probably best not going into it, and leaving the technobabble out.

--
Erik Max Francis && max@xxxxxxxxxxx && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM/Y!M/Skype erikmaxfrancis
A man's life is what his thoughts make it.
-- Marcus Aurelius
.

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