Atmosphere

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Atmosphere

 

And as for air you could capture a comet (you are basically in the kuiper belt) and tap the water ice in it and break it down with electrolysis. Hydrogen (for fuel) and Oxygen. Then when you burn the hydrogen' date=' thereby combining it with oxygen, you create more water.[/quote']

Regarding this...in all likelyhood you shouldn't need to go to the trouble (read: expense in energy) to capture a comet and move it in to Pluto orbit to mine for water. Given Pluto's density, water-ice should be ready to hand as a good deal of the bulk of the planet itself; or, if mining on the same body where you're planning to put your city is unfeasible for some reason, Charon is in essense a very large comet-type body already in orbit...

[Silversmith]

Re: Atmosphere

 

That'll teach me to open my undereducated mouth in the presence of the truly learned.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Atmosphere

 

I was wondering how the various homebrew Star Hero games out there explain artificial atmosphere. I am debating between a super-tech dome or terra forming the planet ala Firefly. It will be for a huge military installation on Pluto's Moon, and a hudson city clone on the surface of Pluto.

 

Dome seems more sci-fi but I can see it being a huge weakspot for the installation. Punch one hole and there goes everything.

 

Any other ideas, or comments?

 

I still support the tunnel idea, and it is predominant in my campaigns on "oh-pressures" (worlds with no atmosphere of their own). We do have a few dome cities, but only on planets with substantial atmoshperes. Atmo is is essential for things like burning up asteroids, etc, and keeps 'pops' (just what you'd think) at a minimum, so maintenance costs on the dome are lower than with on an oh-pressure. Domes in our campaign are used to gaurd against a dangerous atmo rather than a missing one. Further, a dome on an oh-pressure gets the full hit of solar and stellar radiation, which atmo helps to gaurd against. Though domes are a great setting for a genetically mutated 'lower class.' In my own campaign, domes usually indicate a world preparing for or undergoing terraforming.

 

It occurs to me that if you really want a beautifully done fictional account of terraforming, I would highly recommend Kim Stanley Robinsons' Mars series of novels, in particular the first two: Red Mars and Green Mars. The third (Blue Mars) is not awful, but fails to make the 'Duke's Best Bet' list. The fourth one (the Martians) was as close to unreadable as an otherwise excellent author can achieve-- in short, readable, almost enjoyable, but distinctly a horrble dissappointment. It's a classic example of finding a great story line and following it way too far......

 

Robinson gives wonderful ideas, however, and you may find them vital to campaigns that will feature heavy terraforming. I'd suggest paying particular attention to the details on turning dirt and regolith into actual productive soil; wonderfully insightful.

 

Hope his helps.

 

Duke

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Atmosphere

 

That'll teach me to open my undereducated mouth in the presence of the truly learned.

Ideas and contributions are always welcome! Don't you dare decide to stop opening your mouth!

 

 

 

Seriously.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Atmosphere

 

Ideas and contributions are always welcome! Don't you dare decide to stop opening your mouth!

 

Agreed!

[Nyrath]

Re: Atmosphere

 

You would lose way too much energy in breaking down the water to Hydrogen and Oxygen for it to be worthwhile to burn the Hydrogen as a fuel. It would only work if you used the Hydrogen for Fusion power.

True. This is brought up frequently when people discuss "clean" hydrogen power. The problem is that there are no hydrogen wells, but there are petroleum wells.

 

If you have to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, the mix is not a power source. It is an energy transportation system. Sort of like a gaseous electrical power line.

 

You take energy from a nuclear reactor or something and put it into the mix by electrolyzing water into O2 and H2. This mix can then be tranported to where energy is needed. When you burn it, the energy comes out of the mix. Less, of course, the inevitable energy loss due to the second law of thermodynamics.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Atmosphere

 

True. This is brought up frequently when people discuss "clean" hydrogen power. The problem is that there are no hydrogen wells, but there are petroleum wells.

 

If you have to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, the mix is not a power source. It is an energy transportation system. Sort of like a gaseous electrical power line.

Of course. There are, however, 2 big differences:

 

1) With hydrogen combustion, there's only water as a by-product. (One of the bigger selling points.)

 

2) With oil, you have to drill where the oil is, and there's only so much of it. With hydrogen, you can put your hydrogen plant wherever you have another energy source (hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, tide, solar, etc.) and you can 'recycle', if you will, the combustion 'waste' products back into more fuel by applying energy to water once again.

 

On the down side, storage and transportation of significant quantities of hydrogen are a pain.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Atmosphere

 

1) With hydrogen combustion' date=' there's only water as a by-product. (One of the bigger selling points.)[/quote']

 

Quite right.

 

But you so seldom see in-depth discussions of the waste products generated by the refining of that hydrogen.....

[Cancer]

Re: Atmosphere

 

Quite right.

 

But you so seldom see in-depth discussions of the waste products generated by the refining of that hydrogen.....

 

True, though in this context, presumably you're not getting it by cracking locally-drilled petroleum. Whatever your power source, hydrolysis of water into H2 & O2 is going to be a very handy portable chemical energy system, assuming technologies for safe transport of adequate H2 supplies are developed.

 

The real advantage of chemical energy is that it's got a high power-to-weight ratio for devices at the low-weight end of the scale (which means that for short-duration medium-power output, chemical devices are really good) and it has a modest start-up cost. Think weapon cartridges here. Even if personal laser pistols were to become the sidearm of choice, I suspect handguns would still go "bang", because chemical lasers still have about the highest power per gram of device; so instead of a guncotton-filled ball cartridge (eaching firing once and then getting ejected) it'd be firing off premanufactured chemical laser cavities (which also would fire once and get ejected) giving you extremely high-energy pulses. Similarly, for short-haul vehicles too small to have a sustained reactor or other megascale power plant, filling up the tank as needed with some chemical fuel is going to be the operation mode of choice.

 

Generation of AC electrical current on a large scale -- that is, the colony's primary power -- has to be done from some other class of source on a space colony, because chemical energy has a really awful power-to-weight at the high end of the weight scale.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Atmosphere

 

OooOOOoohh!

 

Tell me more about the chemical lasers, please!

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Atmosphere

 

Quite right.

 

But you so seldom see in-depth discussions of the waste products generated by the refining of that hydrogen.....

Quite right. Which is why, in my #2 point, the various sources I listed are all "clean" methods of hydrogen refining:

2) With oil' date=' you have to drill where the oil is, and there's only so much of it. With hydrogen, you can put your hydrogen plant wherever you have another energy source (hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, tide, solar, etc.)...[/quote']