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!
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436,417 views 930 replies
Reply #601 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
a trip to pluto is now only 9 years.
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Only?

if it is possible we will not get ftl until we decide that we need it.
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Ftl (I assume you are talking about faster then light travel) is not possible unless your driving with 0 mass. As your speed increases so does gravity and as stated in the theory of relativity time goes faster for you then for the rest of us. Eventually you get to a point where the front part of you is traveling faster(by "front" I mean the forward moving side) then the rear part of you. Gravity increases and increases until you are ripped apart into infinitesimally small pieces. And all this happens while you approach the speed of light, not actually acheive it.

Light has no mass. Gravity also is technically non-existant(no mass) and can also do light speed.

Reply #602 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
bigger animals have more complex muscluature. it's capable of much more graceful movement realtive to its size:
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This is true

also, that just led me to a random thought. i wonder if there's a connection between geography and average animal size.
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Well i know that fish in a larger fish tank will grow larger (all other factors being equal). Typically a mouse will still grow to the same size if it is in a small tank or a large one. Australia (where i live) used to be very green all over not too long ago and had large versions of everything we have now that all died out due to the drying of the continent. Scientists are suggesting Aboriginal activity may have contributed, including of course, the introduction of the Dingo.

the article didn't say, but when we weight a person we generally include their hair, fingernails and dead skin cells.
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Well hair, fingernails and dead skin cells would equate to dead leaves and twigs still hanging in the tree. Wheras most of the bulk of a trees weight is in it’s dead wood, only the outer rim is actually alive.

sorry the larger the brain is compared to body the less is used to function and the more is available to thinking.
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I don’t get that remark at all. It must mean a person driving a truck is much more stupid than a person driving a car, because the truck is much bigger in comparison to the persons brain!

most of what that bug does is pure reaction, true?
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Well I would not argue that a bug can think if that is your point?

but in many respects much simpler because they don't deal with the issue of scale.
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I would agree a little with this.
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Reply #603 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well hair, fingernails and dead skin cells would equate to dead leaves and twigs still hanging in the tree. Wheras most of the bulk of a trees weight is in it’s dead wood, only the outer rim is actually alive.
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i don't think this is right.


a tree is alive from its center to its bark.


i may have read your statement wrong.


as for the largest organism on the planet. it is a birch tree in Colorado. this tree is so big it makes a whole forest.


possible the largest living organism is the earth itself.
Reply #604 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don’t get that remark at all. It must mean a person driving a truck is much more stupid than a person driving a car, because the truck is much bigger in comparison to the persons brain!
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no it means that a person driving a car with cruise control is more relaxed. than one without cruise control. or a person driving a car with power steering is less tired than one without power steering.
Reply #605 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I thought that tree in Hawaii was bigger?   

We have pictures of it, very cool, the roots go back underground and spring back up like a whole separate tree but its all connected under you
Reply #606 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Gravity increases and increases until you are ripped apart into infinitesimally small pieces. And all this happens while you approach the speed of light, not actually acheive it.
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I theorise that relative to the observer in normal time, yes it would 'appear' to happen that way. But from the perspective of the spaceship approaching light speed, everything would be normal, apart from the rest of the universe 'appearing' to loose mass from it's perspective. This is the beauty of relativity!
Reply #607 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i don't think this is right.


a tree is alive from its center to its bark.
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One thing i mentioned before is that i have a degree in horticulture. That dousn't make me right, but the facts do!
Reply #608 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don’t get that remark at all. It must mean a person driving a truck is much more stupid than a person driving a car, because the truck is much bigger in comparison to the persons brain!
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Semi's are inherently more difficult to control (hence higher standards to be licensed for CDL) There are more blind spots. The Semi itself is also more cumbersome. It requires more effort on the driver's part to control the Truck than it does a car. Now I'm not implying that a truck driver is more or less intelligent than a car driver, but it seems that a Semi would require more brain power (Some commercial shippers have 2 people per rig) to drive, mostly due to the added complexity of driving the truck due to its size.

I asked my significant other, an anthropolgy student, about the macro fauna. She said that the Americas were the last continents to have abundant macro fauna (Mammoths, etc). They disappeared around the time of the human migration to the America's durring the ice ages. Obviously one theory was that Humans had something to do with their extinction, but there is nothing definite. Another theory is that Climate change may have also had a factor (Ice age getting warmer)

Also, more modern evolution of Homo sapiens is thought to be less linear than before. Skeletons with Erectus and Sapien traits have been found In Asia, Africa, and Europe, but these hybrid skeletons (archaic sapiens) have regional differences. "In Africa and Asia the
Reply #609 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Now I'm not implying that a truck driver is more or less intelligent than a car driver, but it seems that a Semi would require more brain power (Some commercial shippers have 2 people per rig) to drive, mostly due to the added complexity of driving the truck due to its size.
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And yet both the truck driver and the car driver have the same sized brain.
Reply #610 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Obviously one theory was that Humans had something to do with their extinction, but there is nothing definite. Another theory is that Climate change may have also had a factor (Ice age getting warmer)
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the latest is a comet/astroid strike.
Reply #611 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i don't think this is right.


a tree is alive from its center to its bark.


One thing i mentioned before is that i have a degree in horticulture. That dousn't make me right, but the facts do!
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You can kill a tree by removing a layer of the bark in a continuous ring around the trunk because a tree is alive on the "outside" and that destroys its food/water transportation system, its all about xylem (water) and floam (food) or whatever the hell its called   
From what I remember of that 8th science, Mystikmind has it right. I think loggers used to do this because it made it easier to cut the trees down or something.
Reply #612 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The Aspen tree (Populus tremuloides) forms large stands of genetically identical trees (technically, stems) connected by a single underground root system. These trees form through root sprouts coming off an original parent tree, though the root system may not remain a single unit in all specimens. The largest known fully-connected Aspen is a grove in Utah nicknamed Pando, and some experts call it the largest[1] organism in the world, by mass or volume.[2] It covers 43 hectares (.43 km²) and is estimated to weigh 6,600 tons. [3]

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sorry i was wrong on state and type.
Reply #613 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You can kill a tree by removing a layer of the bark in a continuous ring around the trunk because a tree is alive on the "outside" and that destroys its food/water transportation system, its all about xylem (water) and floam (food) or whatever the hell its called
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except that beavers do this all the time and it doesn't kill the tree.

also if i ripped your bark off wouldn't you die too.
Reply #614 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
And yet both the truck driver and the car driver have the same sized brain.
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What i am trying to troobleshoot is the idea that brain size relative to body size denotes intelligence?

It seems to me that a body such as the body of a mouse or the body of an elephant would both have similar processing power requirements to run? Certainly the Elephants body would have much greater nerve signalling distances to cover but i do not see how that requires more intelligence?

Anyway the idea that you guys are sugesting is that (theoretically speaking)if the mouse had a much larger brain for its body size than the elephant, then the mouse must therefore be smarter than the elephant? I would say this - that if an animal does have a larger brain to body size ratio, all it means is that particular animal has invested more recources on intelligence but it does not necissarily make it smarter than something else.
Reply #615 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
not if it was only in a small ring around my trunk, but I would bleed a lot!

and beavers dont eat the full circumference around a tree unless they are cutting it down to use for the lodge/dam. If they ruined the transport system underneath all the way around the tree it would die.

The "living" part of a tree is typically the immediate layers UNDER the outer bark, called the inner bark, or "phloem", followed by the cambium cell layer, and finally the sapwood. Phloem lives only a short while, transports "food" for the tree then dies. The cambium cell layer is the growing part of the tree. Auxin hormones promote new growth of bark in this layer. Sapwood is the water-line of the tree and is generally the innermost living layer.

The inner core, or heartwood, is dead. It is mainly for support.
Reply #616 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Anyway the idea that you guys are sugesting is that (theoretically speaking)if the mouse had a much larger brain for its body size than the elephant, then the mouse must therefore be smarter than the elephant? I would say this - that if an animal does have a larger brain to body size ratio, all it means is that particular animal has invested more recources on intelligence but it does not necissarily make it smarter than something else.
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the elephant has the same brain size as a human. the mouses brain is much smaller.


the reason elephants aren't as smart as humans on a whole is it has to spend most of its time eating.
Reply #617 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
except that beavers do this all the time and it doesn't kill the tree.
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Interestingly enough, you cannot ringbark trees of the 'monocotal' group such as palm trees. As for the trees Beavers have, they are all from the 'Dicotal' group and can indeed be ringbarked.

There is an inner level of dead cells in trees that still function to transport water up from the roots. The outer layers are responsible for growth and sending food down to the roots. So if you ringbark a tree, it will take a long time to die since water is still getting to the leaves.
Reply #618 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
intelligence isn't just brain size but leisure time. day dream time.
Reply #619 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
intelligence isn't just brain size but leisure time. day dream time.
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I will sum up my argument that intelligence is based mainly on the connectivity of a brain, not it's size. Of course humans won't necissarily make good use of their intelligence, but i imagine animals in the wild would make full use of the intelligence given them.
Reply #620 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What i am trying to troobleshoot is the idea that brain size relative to body size denotes intelligence?
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Try breaking it down to smaller parts.

It seems to me that a body such as the body of a mouse or the body of an elephant would both have similar processing power requirements to run?
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That might not be necesarily so. I don't know much about intelligence (don't have much of my own to begin with ). But one could assume that the physical complexity and size would be directly linked to the brains ability to control all the extra muscles groups with precision while being aware of the larger surroundings that the organism is moving around in. One example would be sensory density. A large animal would have more sensory nerves on its skin than a small animal. This translates into more info going to the brain, which has to process exactly where the large animal is feeling say, pain.

This doesn't mean that a large animal is more or less intelligent than a small animal, just that different processing power is needed due to the size.

Now if an animal has a very large brain for its size, larger than other animals of its size, this is where the brain size vs body size = intelligence notion comes in. For its size and complexity, the animal doesn't require a brain of that size for basic functioning, so the extra brain would be linked to intellectual functioning.

Remember that is only works in general, there would assumably be variety in intelligence from individual to individual within a species.

I would personally speculate whether or not it is the size or the organization of the brain that would be linked to intelligence. Is the larger size/weight ratio due to a higher degree of organization or is it the first step to a better organized brain?
Reply #621 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A large animal would have more sensory nerves on its skin than a small animal. This translates into more info going to the brain, which has to process exactly where the large animal is feeling say, pain.
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That could well be a valid point.

For its size and complexity, the animal doesn't require a brain of that size for basic functioning, so the extra brain would be linked to intellectual functioning.
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You have very nicely put forward the exact idea that troubles me.

Earlier i was talking about a tiny flying insect with a brain probably smaller than the point of a needle. If somthing that small can manage flight systems and the rest of it, then i have to wonder just how much brain is required for the 'basic functioning' you mention above.

There would be a definite increase in complexity from making that tiny insect body functional compared to making an elephant body functional, but there is no way in a million years i could believe the corresponding increase in brain size could justify that!

so i have to say that my above reasoning appears to blow your point to kingdom come?
Reply #622 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
While we are on biology;

Titan would be a nice place, but it does lack an easy way to get food for the colonists. If we were to make an artifical ecosystem, we'd have to import everything (the plants, animals, fertilizer, etc) for quite some time until enough biomass is present that the system would be somewhat self sufficient, which could take years, if it happens all.

If, say we are looking for a "perfect" planet outside our solar system, obviously we would want one with a livable biosphere (essentially an Earth clone). So what would we do with the local alien organisms? Domesticate them? Replace them with our own imports from Earth (I'm voting on this one - sadly)? What about disease (alien vs terran)?

What if we find intelligent life there? Not like spacefaring, but still a group of intelligent lifeforms.
Reply #623 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
so i have to say that my above reasoning appears to blow your point to kingdom come?
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I think the problem with both our arguements is that we can't do a Direct Apples to Apples comparison:

There would be a definite increase in complexity from making that tiny insect body functional compared to making an elephant body functional, but there is no way in a million years i could believe the corresponding increase in brain size could justify that!
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You see, we have to assume that the Elephant and Fly have the same intelligence (mental capacity). That way we can compare size/weight ratios. As you point out, the increase in size might not match the increase in brain size. Now we are comparing brain size as a product of basic functionality And as a product of Intelligence. There is really no way to say that the increase in brain size is only due to the size of the organism. Perhaps the elephant is more intelligent too. I don't think there really is a way to distinguish the two, unfortunately.

I think This makes it pretty much impossible to objectively say whether a speicies is more or less intelligent than another (atleast by brain size alone), but it may give a general indicator of which species may have more intelligence. I figure you'd need corraborative testing and experimenting to find out for sure. I have a feeling this size/weight thing is more of a general rule of thumb that one would use as a starting point for research/experimenting
Reply #624 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think the problem with both our arguements is that we can't do a Direct Apples to Apples comparison:
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You could theroetically, by imagining (if such advancements were available) what amount of computer equipment would be needed to simulate an insect flying around acting on instinct compared to the computer equipment needed to simulate an elephant.
And i'm not talking about the body of either, just the computer brain. I would bet my life that the micro computer you developed to simulate a tiny insect would not need to be much bigger to simulate the elephant with all its natural behaviour and intelligence included.

Reply #625 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
sorry i forgot to say i think you make some good points denyasis.

Anyway, it is interesting how the size of a brain verses body size will be larger or smaller for different animals. then on top of that there will be different density levels of connectivity within the brain.

However brain connectivity levels are not necissarily goverened by genetics! We are only just beggining to learn how to stimulate greater brain connectivity in young children, resulting in much greater potential.

So i am just pondering the connection between the geneticly arbitrary brain size verses the potential of brain connectivity.

Also I am just wondering how smart a human could become if we managed to stimulate brain connectivity to it's maximum potential??