dystopic dystopic

bussard ramjets, cryonic stasis, and exoplanetary colonization

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bussard ramjets, cryonic stasis, and exoplanetary colonization

what will it take?

from GalCiv2 Forums
hello everyone,

i'm a bit of a writer, and i can't help but feel drawn to science fiction. that shouldn't be surprising.

lately i've been reading up a great deal on theoretical physics, exobiological speculation, and all that. i was dismayed at first to learn that the chances of faster-than-light travel being physically possible are slim. it was also pretty discouraging when i sat down and looked at the actual speeds that'd be required to traverse sizable parts of the galaxy in a single conscious lifetime. it was a kick when i was down to learn about how difficult terraforming probably would be. but the more i've been learning, the more i've been excited about telling a different kind of science fiction story.

to draw an analogue to our world, the thing that made both the european colonial age and the modern process of globalization have been technology. it's not that we couldn't go to various places around the world before, it just cost too damn much to make anything worth it. i got my BA in sociology, and these sorts of things interest me.

if FTL travel isn't possible, then more than likely it'll be too damn costly to ever colonize beyond our own solar system as the way it's been envisioned in most of the celebrated scifi universes. But there are examples such as Arthur C. Clarke's Songs of a Distant Earth or Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri where humans colonize to escape destruction on earth.

recently i had the chance to meet both Kim Stanley Robinson and Geoff Ryman. Robinson is a hard scifi writer after my own heart; the Mars Trilogy is a really interesting look at our first attempts to colonize within our own star system. Ryman was actually more interesting to talk to, though. maybe because few people have ever heard of him (i was only there because i work at UCSD where he was being hosted). but i actually got to talk to him. he said he thinks we probably won't ever leave our galactic neighborhood.

i'm interested in writing a hard scifi story (or series) myself. i'm interested from a sociological point of view: what would drive us to colonize space? from a writer's point of view, i want to keep the earth around, so i'm not interested in a flight from disaster. what would societies be like after colonies were established? trade would be difficult, but not impossible. same goes for war.

while i'm certainly interested in contributions along those lines, i'm also interested in learning more about the hard science and engineering behind interstellar travel. i've got a lot of questions i haven't been able to answer through wikipedia and google alone. but i'm not about to list them all here.

it seems like a discussion about real ("real") colonization and space travel could use a place on these boards.

i'll kick it off. i've been reading up on propultion especially, and bussard ramjets seem like the most economically feasible option since they gather their fuel as they go - perhaps especially if it could be hybridized with another form such as antimatter-catalyzed fusion. the wikipedia article on bussard ramjets describe that they'd probably need what is essentially a magnetic funnel or ramscoop to gather interstellar hydrogen as propellant.

The mass of the ion ram scoop must be minimized on an interstellar ramjet. The size of the scoop is large enough that the scoop cannot be solid. This is best accomplished by using an electromagnetic field, or alternatively using an electrostatic field to build the ion ram scoop. Such an ion scoop will use electromagnetic funnels, or electrostatic fields to collect ionized hydrogen gas from space for use as propellant by ramjet propulsion systems (since much of the hydrogen is not ionized, some versions of a scoop propose ionizing the hydrogen, perhaps with a laser, ahead of the ship.) An electric field can electrostatically attract the positive ions, and thus draw them inside a ramjet engine. The electromagnetic funnel would bend the ions into helical spirals around the magnetic field lines to scoop up the ions via the starship's motion through space. Ionized particles moving in spirals produce an energy loss, and hence drag; the scoop must be designed to both minimize the circular motion of the particles and simultaneously maximize the collection. Likewise, if the hydrogen is heated during collection, thermal radiation will represent an energy loss, and hence also drag; so an effective scoop must collect and compress the hydrogen without significant heating.


talk about kick-butt imagery! spirals of heated gas careening towards a ship only to be fused and expelled in a jet plume? sweet.

anyway, i've written enough, and i hope it hasn't put anyone off. some of the the community here has proven to be very well read with regard to these kinds of science, so i thought it'd make a great topic for discussion: all things related to space exploration and colonization with reasonable extrapolations of current technology.

my biggest point of curiostiy was with respect to ramjets, so i'll take the kickoff: could the spiral motion of the inbound gas somehow be harnessed to artficially generate gravity by rotating the ship, instead of producing drag?

any volunteers?

final words: i hope no one minds my double-motive. i won't try to steer any dicussion, though if things quiet down i might pose more general questions to keep it going; i encourage anyone interested to pose your own!
off-topic
436,423 views 930 replies
Reply #576 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
there are 7 highly intellegent or higher animals on the planet.

extreme intellengent man.

very high intellengence. orangatans, apes, chimpanzees.


very intellengent bottle nosed dolphins, orcas.


high intellengent elephants (any animal that knows how to build a ramp. knows when to build the ramp. and knows how to save a baby from dieing in mud pool.) lands in this catagory. the rest of the dolphin family.


intellegent. squids, octapus. and very others i can't think of now.
Reply #577 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
there are 7 highly intellegent or higher animals on the planet.

extreme intellengent man.



I don't think i have met one of those?? i wish i was one!! lol
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Reply #578 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
it takes threee generations to make a wolf a dog.


genetically speaking, wolfs and dogs are the same species. they can produce fertile offspring. the anaology would be like saying "it takes 4 generationst to make a scandinavian a mediterranean, just wait for their skin to get darker". i don't know if that applies to all dogs or only the more lupine ones (it's hard to imagine a wolf-chihuahua hybrid).

Reply #579 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i don't know if that applies to all dogs or only the more lupine ones (it's hard to imagine a wolf-chihuahua hybrid).


i didn't say breeds.
Reply #580 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
there are 7 highly intellegent or higher animals on the planet.


what do you mean by "intelligent"? (that was a rhetorical question - your statement was clear enough, danielost).

cognitive scientists aren't all together agreed on the nature of intelligence. some think there is a single factor underlying all intelligence, where as others think there are multiple forms of intelligence (7 or 8 in humans). this paper seems to do a pretty good job of going over the debate, though i don't have time to read it thoroughly right now (about to head to work, so i'm bookmarking it as much as anything).

i tend to think neither side is perfectly accurate, but i fall more on the multiple intelligences side. i'd definately tend to believe these intelligences are geneticall proscribed to some measure, and that opens up an interesting question: given other genes, what other kinds of intelligence might arise?

ps: any of you have even a passing familiarity with neurological psychology, cognitive science, i.e. "brain studies", or am i the most qualified participant on the subject? i'm certainly no expert, but i know a lot (of what other people have said) about how the brain works.
Reply #581 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
sorry i wasn't trying to break it down within a species.


otherwise i would have to include the group intelligence of the ant, the termites, social bees, and probable a few i have missed.
Reply #582 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
-- NASA Mars Rover Status: Hardy Spirit Rover Continues to Celebrate
Milestones
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=25691

"After enduring seasonal dust storms much stronger than the rover was
designed to survive,
Spirit has now been exploring the Red Planet for two Martian years.
That is a period of time
longer than three years on Earth and more than 10 times the duration of
the original 90-day
mission. In fact, on Oct. 1, 2007, the rover entered the fifth
extension of its original mission!"



lets here it for a 90 day wonder.
Reply #583 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Insects are pretty much just little machines. What i find amazing about insects though is their brain!

Just the other day i saw a tiny insect flying around, with a head far smaller than a pinhead. I wonder how a brain so tiny can manage flight among other things when a human with a massive brain in comparison can so easily loose the function of limbs due to a tiny stroke - still having an obscenely larger brain than that insect?

I mean if you put that mirraculous brain in a human then they could probably live and function normally even if you removed 99.9% of their brain. Ah what i mean by function normally would be the ability to attract a mate and have sex - thats what insects do!
So if being capable of getting dressed up and acting as charming and witty as George Cloony gets a mate, then that is what an insect brain could do i guess??

Reply #584 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Back to adaptablility.

There is a limit to the adaptability of the human. Different G's present a series of problems that are very difficult to over come by adapttation. Adaptation only works in the sense that the body can already make/do the things it is required to do. Its the same as working out, the body makes more muscle, not a new type of muscle.

There's a limit to the stress you can place on the organs in terms of gravity, especially the heart. Sure there will be adaptation - growth of the heart, but there are physical limitations to the size and efficiency. Same thing with structural elements. An infant, on earth, cannot support its self (I'm talking about the skull and neck) In high G's, even the littlest movement would snap its neck or cause brain damage (skull not fully developed), not to mention the complications of pregnancy.

Lastly, our bones can only take so much. I mean, it doesn't lake a lot to break them if you hit them the right way, That danger would be even more present on a higher G world. Stress fractures, bending of the bone.

I'm not saying that living on a high G world would be impossible, I think that it would just take a toll on the people that would live there (shorter life span, more medical problems, etc) I figure, given a chance between a high G world and a lower G world, probably the less fortunate (or less rich) would end up on the High G world. In the end, you'd have to end up with some sort of genetic divergence especially in that extreme of an environment for any full scale settlements to develope.

Reply #585 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
ps: any of you have even a passing familiarity with neurological psychology, cognitive science, i.e. "brain studies", or am i the most qualified participant on the subject? i'm certainly no expert, but i know a lot (of what other people have said) about how the brain works.
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Perhaps it would help, we we stated some of our credentials. Nothing to revealing, Just so we have an idea where the other is comming from:

I'm DenYaSis:
-Studied Forensic Chemistry in College (It is a weird mash of Chemistry and Microbio and Genetics)
-Worked in a Lab doing genetic work (Cloning sequences mostly)
-Good amount of Warehouse Experience
-Worked in a Steel Fab for a short time (Learned alot about the construction business and logistics)
-Security Guard (Hey, you're 15 and your drunk and on Private property.... You can't do that man)
-Working my way right now to eventually work in law enforcement.


I know very little about laege scale neuro science. Most of my knowledge about nerves is on the cellular level and has to deal with toxic efects of chemicals on nerves (toxicology class)
Reply #586 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm DenYaSis:
-Studied Forensic Chemistry in College (It is a weird mash of Chemistry and Microbio and Genetics)
-Worked in a Lab doing genetic work (Cloning sequences mostly)
-Good amount of Warehouse Experience
-Worked in a Steel Fab for a short time (Learned alot about the construction business and logistics)
-Security Guard (Hey, you're 15 and your drunk and on Private property.... You can't do that man)
-Working my way right now to eventually work in law enforcement.
End of quote


I'm mystikmind:
- Studied horticulture
- did warehousing!
- now i'm doing office work.

I have a keen interest in biology, science and philosophy.... all the things the teachers at school tricked me into thinking were dead booring so i never persued them.

Reply #587 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Perhaps it would help, we we stated some of our credentials. Nothing to revealing, Just so we have an idea where the other is comming from:
End of quote


not a bad idea! i go by dystopic on here, but my real name is Nik (and i'm not worried about sharing that; you'd learn it eventually if you follow this discussion into into the published fiction it'll become).

work experience
-currently a college administrator managing about 30 teaching assistants in the "Culture, Art & Technology" program
-worked for a while as a CSR for ditech.com's inbound call center (look it up in Dante's Inferno, it's one of the layers of hell)
-while i was in college, part time tutor, part time jambanaut (i am to pureed fruit as vampires to garlic).
-have had odd jobs at a law office, a telecom firm, and others

educational stuff
-BA from UC San Diego in sociology: trained as an ethnographer, focused knowledge on social psychology and especially identity formation
-pretty significant knowledge on religions of India
-writing experience: fiction of very short to medium lenghts (esp. character study), experimental writing, creative nonfiction
-pretty well-read on topics including: the brain, general physics, various esoteric historical subjects, etymology, and other random topics
-i'm also a pretty good painter, photographer and chef

i'm slowly working my energy up for grad school, but i was tired of being poor when i graduated. now i'm just tired of paying bills  


I mean if you put that mirraculous brain in a human then they could probably live and function normally even if you removed 99.9% of their brain.
End of quote


nice try, but there's a problem with that. biologists usually measure brain capacity in terms body mass percentage; in other words, they divide brain weight by body weight and plot that on a graph. the animals that have bigger brains in proportion (and danielost's post #576 pretty much summed up the planet's living braniacs, though he didn't include any extinct species - some of the dinosaurs had pretty large brains for their body sizes, for example).

and to the more substantive point, our brains are the only real thing we got going for us. morphologically, we're not well equipped for most of those "other" parts of living - getting food, avoiding being food and death in general, and reproducing. being bipedal makes all of those things less efficient - even mating, and the subsequent rearing of offspring. the only advantages of being bipedal have to do with the brains we can have and the uses to which we can put them when we're bipedal.
Reply #588 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
also, i totally forgot to say:

welcome, FireBender! have you watched any of the new season yet?
Reply #589 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
though he didn't include any extinct species
End of quote


if i had mankind would have come in 2nd place. Neanderthals had a large brain. but when you are constantly looking for food. brain size doesn't matter. when you live in an artic climate you need three times the food.


the group that we supposedly came from not only had time to use its brain. but it actually had to in order to survive.
Reply #590 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
as for who i am


i was a cab driver. i live at home with my dad taking care of him when i can.

i have a cert. in accounting obtained from job corp.

i try to learn something new everyday.

i am very religious.

i am very interested in science. especially astronomy. and in history.

Reply #591 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
if i had mankind would have come in 2nd place. Neanderthals had a large brain.
End of quote


indeed - their brains as compared to bodies were actually a bit bigger than ours. there's a lot of debate about whether they were really a separate species or a sub-species, and whether there was interbreeding with humans. my sense of the most prevailing view is that their brains were structured differently than ours in a way that made them better at focusing on specialized tasks, where as our brains allow us more synthetic thought by comparison.

a similar difference exists between the sexes in humans: women have larger corpus collasi, which is the central relay station of the brain. this means the different regions of women's brains are more connected to one another, and the postulation follows (and by no means is universally accepted) that women are generally better mutli-taskers than men, and men are generally better at specialized analysis.
Reply #592 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
nice try, but there's a problem with that. biologists usually measure brain capacity in terms body mass percentage; in other words, they divide brain weight by body weight and plot that on a graph.
End of quote


That theory works if your talking about cars. It is all about power output verses its weight. However to say that intelligence has anything to do with size is kinda funny, especially if you look at the history of computers! Yes miniaturization is responsible for computers getting smarter and smaller but I would equate the miniaturization of computers with the 'connectivity' of the brain - meaning that a much smaller brain can be smarter if it has greater connectivity.

Which leads me back to the mystery of the tiny insect and how the hell such a microscopic brain can manage flight systems and all the rest of it? It must surly have some insane biological miniaturization going on there?

if i had mankind would have come in 2nd place. Neanderthals had a large brain. but when you are constantly looking for food. brain size doesn't matter. when you live in an artic climate you need three times the food.
End of quote


I do not know why people think Neanderthals became extinct? Just head down to your local football field if you want a look at your primitive ancestry!
Reply #593 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That theory works if your talking about cars. It is all about power output verses its weight. However to say that intelligence has anything to do with size is kinda funny, especially if you look at the history of computers! Yes miniaturization is responsible for computers getting smarter and smaller but I would equate the miniaturization of computers with the 'connectivity' of the brain - meaning that a much smaller brain can be smarter if it has greater connectivity.
End of quote




sorry the larger the brain is compared to body the less is used to function and the more is available to thinking.


the reason i included the ants and bees is because they actually have to communicate with each other to get food. complex communication not warning calls.


the reason neanderthal didn't (think) is after spending up to 13 hours or more hunting and carrying food back to the cave. your to tired to design a better spear.


where as the people living in africa were living in a desert. to live in a desert you have to use your brain in order to plan ahead.

Reply #594 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That theory works if your talking about cars.
End of quote


it works about brains, too, but probably not in a way you'd necessarily think about. the comparison of computers to brains is tricky at best, given what computation actually entails.

most of what that bug does is pure reaction, true? well, pure reaction isn't so much in the real of computation as it is electrical engineering, and as with brains, one grows from the other with evolution. so i guess there's some similarity there.

small bug, the brain might not even consitute a switchboard at the phone company in the town where Leave it to Beaver took place. you're connecting fewer places with fewer other places. their nerve cords are smaller because they relay fewer signals over shorter distances, and to boot most of their muscles' articulations are pre-programed at the receiving end. its body has parities of most of our systems, but in many respects much simpler because they don't deal with the issue of scale. it works when your small on earth, it's a great way to survive. if humans propogates at the numbers on bugs did, we'd eat everything in a decade or otherwise become prey for something that kept us in check - or big brains to better exploit nature, but that comes much later.

bigger animals have more complex muscluature. it's capable of much more graceful movement realtive to its size: compare the mechanics of a single pulley with those of the string section in a full concert orchestra (okay, the analogy broke down but the image should make the point). and what's more, these complex muscle systems are coordinated by the comparatively specialized brains we see in reptiles, birds and especially mammals. our muscles aren't preprogramed for certain articulations - our brains are. but they also have space set aside to learn and coordinate new types of movement. being bigger can be an advantage, as long as you can use your weight well, which requires a more complex brain. you can still imagine a place where too much bigger becomes an issue, especially with social animals, because the food needs of a group place even more stress on the environment.

also, that just led me to a random thought. i wonder if there's a connection between geography and average animal size. i mean, the dinosaurs lived on pangea, an absoluate huge land mass. things were changing when they died out anyway, but when big fauna returned, it was never nearly so big, and neither were the largest land masses (and incidentally, no such correspondance occurs in ocean life, the blue whale being the largest animal known ever to have lived on earth).
Reply #595 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
even though, what do the largest animals have on the largest plant:

"Pando (or The Trembling Giant) is a clonal colony of a single male Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) tree located in the U.S. state of Utah, all determined to be part of a single living organism by identical genetic markers and one massive underground root system. The plant is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000 tonnes (6,615 tons), making it the heaviest known organism."
Reply #596 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The plant is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000 tonnes (6,615 tons), making it the heaviest known organism."
End of quote


I will get back to your other interesting remarks later, but i would just ask if your including the not living wood cells in that weight figure?
Reply #597 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
IMO ftl is next to impossible. We may be chasing it for a thousand years.

Far more possible is life extention and along with it a sea change in our concept of time. If life can be extended indefinitely the stars will be ours for the taking at sub light speed.

Early on space travel within our system will be a commercial thing and colonization will be simply a matter of living where you work.
Reply #598 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

also, i totally forgot to say:

welcome, FireBender! have you watched any of the new season yet?
End of quote


Upto chapter 4.
Reply #599 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I will get back to your other interesting remarks later, but i would just ask if your including the not living wood cells in that weight figure?
End of quote


the article didn't say, but when we weight a person we generally include their hair, fingernails and dead skin cells.
Reply #600 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
IMO ftl is next to impossible. We may be chasing it for a thousand years.
End of quote



if it is possible we will not get ftl until we decide that we need it. right now we don't need it. a trip to pluto is now only 9 years.