Dr. Anomaly Posted September 29, 2005 Report Share Posted September 29, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... Physics In Science Fiction has a great deal of information on Niven's Ringworld. And by the way, Suleyman, I didn't mean to ignore your contribution. I'd like to thank you for it, and say that it's a nice and useful "first post" for a newcomer. Welcome aboard! Edit: and I'm going to cross-post (quote) your link to the "pulsar worlds" thread, since it had some information that bears on that discussion as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 29, 2005 Report Share Posted September 29, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... ... From my perspective' date=' I find these advanced systems more believable than the notion of building a ringworld only to dump terristrial continents on it that will crumble apart in short order. What would be the point?[/quote'] Art for art's sake, of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Outsider Posted September 29, 2005 Report Share Posted September 29, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... Yeah, you'd still need enough spin to keep the slop in the bucket, but you could lose some and still have the same perceived living surface gravity. It would make the escape velocity problem in Suleyman's link less extreme. As to the tendency of the ring habitat material to clump up into spheres, the spin that is imparted should take care of that, and it should all be relatively balanced, like a klemperer rosette (cept the matter is moving way faster than a balanced orbit, and is relying on the strength of the ring stuctural material to keep it from shooting off into a higher orbit (or breaking orbit all together)) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
austenandrews Posted September 29, 2005 Report Share Posted September 29, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... In a way' date=' I'd find it [i']more[/i] likely that the alien science would be quite a bit ahead in one field than I would that all fields are on a more-or-less even keel. I absolutely agree. In fact I'm fascinated by the idea of societies that are very advanced in some technologies and very primitive in others - monolithic builders without gears, for instance, or spacefarers without rocketry. What I have a harder time with is an apparent deficiency in technologies that are almost essential to the primary innovation (like molecular engineering to a ringworld). Admittedly making those connections itself requires plenty of assumptions. It's another "gut level" thing. Now, on the subject of recycling systems. The problem with using living things as a model to build nanotech recyclers is two-fold in this case. First, with any kind of self-replicating machines (the cells in living things would count for this) you're going to run into the problem of replication errors i.e. "mutations." And no matter how many backups, failsafes, and checks you build into the system, sooner or later you're going to start to have breakdowns, "drifts" away from the original patterns, and so on. It may last for a very long time being functional, but eventually it's going to break down (or change, which is the same thing in this case as it will no longer be performing its designed function) the same as any system will, regardless of how it's designed and built. And the smaller the machines, and the more generations per unit of time, the faster those "mutations" are going to take place. No system is perfect, but it'll work better than nothing at all. And to me it's more believable (not mention interesting) to have such a system in place and then have it mutate, than never to have built such a system to begin with. Mind you, I'm well aware of the limitations of writing SF. You can't ever figure out and explain every last aspect of an advanced civilization. I've just always been surprised, since I started reading SF in grade school, how writers often set the "cutoff point" nearer than I thought they should. The second problem is one of sheer scale. Though it may be a failing on my part, I have a hard time imagining a nanoscale-based system that could recycle landforms, minerals, etc. on the scale of a ringworld -- at least, at a high enough rate of through-put to be effective at maintaining things. There have been a number of papers written already about the difficulties of building (for instance) a skyscraper using nanoassemblers, and this is many orders of magnitude larger than that. Please feel free to point out some things -- realistic, that is, not on the level of "magic" technology -- that would make it feasible. I'd really like to believe that nanotech could be useful and effective on that scale in a time-frame short enough to be worthwhile, but right now I just don't see it. I'm with you on the "nanoassembler" thing. I've never bought the idea of large objects springing up out of nowhere, as the early stories liked to portray. I don't see how the logistics would work. How to apply nanotechnology against erosion? Hmm, off the top of my head I can imagine two levels of erosion control that could work via microscopic machines. One would be to introduce agents into the soil that bond it against water erosion. If water has a harder time dissolving rock and soil and/or a harder time mechanically carrying it away, erosion will be reduced by practically the same factor. A second mechanism (which may not play well with the first ) might be to tie mineral recovery to water evaporation. If every, or even a significant fraction of water droplets that evaporate can carry away a tiny piece of eroded mineral, you'd have clouds bearing large amounts of material that might then be coaxed to rain upland. I don't know whether the numbers could be worked out to any sort of overall balance, but it's mainly an off-the-cuff example of the kind of system I'm thinking about - not complicated, operating by constant increments (like erosion itself), driven by a reliable natural mechanism. As for continents crumbling "in short order", that would depend on your time scale and your expected "lifetime" of the ringworld you've built. If it's a time scale on the order of millions of years, I really don't see the problem. That's certainly a valid consideration. I suppose it matters that I view the construction of a ringworld as requiring thousands of years and the coordinated resources of an entire advanced race. In other words, not something that would be undertaken as an "interim solution." Then again I think it's farfetched to build one and then abandon it, so I'm certainly thinking on an entirely different timescale than Larry Niven. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
austenandrews Posted September 29, 2005 Report Share Posted September 29, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... Art for art's sake' date=' of course. [/quote'] You got me there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keithcurtis Posted September 29, 2005 Report Share Posted September 29, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... ...like a klemperer rosette ... I was about to correct the spelling on that, but when I researched it, I found that Niven mispelled it in Ringworld. He spelled it Kemplerer. Regardless, I can't read the correct spelling without thinking of Col. Klink. Keith "Hoooogaaaan!" Curtis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keithcurtis Posted September 29, 2005 Report Share Posted September 29, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... And by the way' date=' Suleyman, I didn't mean to ignore your contribution. I'd like to thank you for it, and say that it's a nice and useful "first post" for a newcomer. Welcome aboard! [/quote'] I repped him. Keith "Welcome Wagon" Curtis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Anomaly Posted September 29, 2005 Report Share Posted September 29, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... I repped him. Keith "Welcome Wagon" Curtis So did I. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mallet Posted September 30, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 30, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... Thanks for all of the input so far guys. You have given me a lot of ideas to work with (keep them coming). I've been thinking that a ringworld might be too big of a "playground" for the PC's so, I think I am going to make it into an orbital (a smaller form of ringworld) with an artifical "sun" in the center. This will help keep the "playground" down to a reasonable size (only 4 times the size of Earth?! ). I think I am going to keep with my waring factions ideas, and with the mysterious group who is watching, monitoring event on the ring. I also had the idea to have the ring slowly becoming inhospitable, starting at one location and then slowly spreading out in both directions. This has been causing some of the groups to migrate away from the dangerous areas, and bringing them into conflict with the already established people on the far side of the ring. Eventually the whole ring will become unlivable, with the remaining people fighting over what little land remains, unless of course the PC's can find away to help.... But I am always open for other ideas and such, so if anyone wants to chime in, please do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garou Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... If the aliens are capable of nanoscale construction, to me it's not a stretch to say that they're also capable of devising a molecular and/or chemical mechanism for recycling eroded materials. It would probably be sustained by "natural" phenomena - say, using water evaporation as a delivery method - to reduce the problems with "moving parts." But we've already got nature and biology as examples of self-sustaining moving-parts systems. Not everything has to be clanky metal gears and power generators. By necessity we're already talking about a tech level that has solved the problem of living in space, so extremely reliable recycling systems will be old hat anyway. IIRC, (could be wrong, it's been a bit since I last read the series) the ringworld engineers built the spillways mountains simply to handle all the issues that would arise from natural erosion. Dirt, debris, etc all eventually would wind up in the seas, and so there were mechanisms to gather those materials and pump them along the underside of the ringworld to the top of the spillway mountains, where it would be forced out onto the ringworld surface. Over a couple million years, that material would naturally erode down the mountain slope, across the plains and back into the rivers and seas, at which point it would be gathered again. It was a continuous process, but some things interfered with it. Like, the death/disappearance of all the protectors/builders. You can build something on a huge scale and expect it to last millions of years without repair, but sooner or later, you need a maintenance crew. Unfortunately, by the time Louis Wu, Chmee, Nessus and Teela arrived, the protectors were long, long gone - as in, apparently millions of years. In conjunction with their absence, random events (like the meteor strike that created the Fist of God mountain) would eventually cause a major breakdown in the system. Of course, you're dealing with something that is the size of several million earths, so even if you are leaking atmosphere or sunflowers are taking over the ringworld, the death of the ringworld due to some mechanical malfunction can take quite a while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmadanNaBriona Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... Thanks for all of the input so far guys. You have given me a lot of ideas to work with (keep them coming). I've been thinking that a ringworld might be too big of a "playground" for the PC's so, I think I am going to make it into an orbital (a smaller form of ringworld) with an artifical "sun" in the center. This will help keep the "playground" down to a reasonable size (only 4 times the size of Earth?! ). I think I am going to keep with my waring factions ideas, and with the mysterious group who is watching, monitoring event on the ring. I also had the idea to have the ring slowly becoming inhospitable, starting at one location and then slowly spreading out in both directions. This has been causing some of the groups to migrate away from the dangerous areas, and bringing them into conflict with the already established people on the far side of the ring. Eventually the whole ring will become unlivable, with the remaining people fighting over what little land remains, unless of course the PC's can find away to help.... But I am always open for other ideas and such, so if anyone wants to chime in, please do. I'm not familiar with the concept of an Orbital... Is this similar to the idea of building a ringword style structure in an orbit around, say a gas giant, and then artificially forcing the giant into a fusion reaction that turns it into a big flaming ball of gas (like they were afraid might happen to Jupiter with that huge comet strike a few years back?) If so, sounds like a cool alternative with a much more playable scale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Suleyman Rashid Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... I repped him. What does that mean, precisely? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Suleyman Rashid Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... I've been thinking that a ringworld might be too big of a "playground" for the PC's so' date=' I think I am going to make it into an orbital (a smaller form of ringworld) with an artifical "sun" in the center. This will help keep the "playground" down to a reasonable size (only 4 times the size of Earth?! ).[/quote'] So you're talking about a Halo, like in the game. By the way, I found another useful link for this sort of thing. Hope it helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keithcurtis Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... What does that mean' date=' precisely?[/quote'] Every post has a little icon that looks like a set of scales near the top. If you click on it, you can basically give a vote of approval to a particular post. That vote is worth points. The more points you accumulate, the greater your "reputation". Also, the higher your reputation, the more points your vote is worth when you decide to rep someone else. This score is known as your rep power. You can get a rough idea of the value of your rep by looking at the line of little green dots next to your name (on the right, under your rep power). You have two, indicating that you are pretty much a beginner. You can see the actual score along with the comments people ahve left by clicking on your "User CP" link (on the left of the blue banner in the lower part of the header). Keith "Tour Guide" Curtis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Anomaly Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... What does that mean' date=' precisely?[/quote'] And to expand a bit on what keithcurtis said, you have a rep power of zero until you've made 50 posts in the gaming-related forums. (That is, in any forum except the NGD. ) This doesn't mean you can't rep someone -- you can -- but until you have at least 50 posts, the vote you give they won't give them any actual points. Don't let that stop you, though, if you think someone's made a worthwhile, insightful, or helpful post. Go ahead and "rep" them anyway...chances are they'll still appreciate the compliment and the comment. Though your two dots does mean you're a relative beginner, getting two dots already this soon means that you've already made some posts that people thought were very helpful or worthwhile. If you want to see who's repped you, and what the comments were, go to your User CP. (And there are no guidelines that you must adhere to when repping somebody...you just have to want to rep their post for whatever reason. ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Anomaly Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... Thanks for all of the input so far guys. You have given me a lot of ideas to work with (keep them coming). I've been thinking that a ringworld might be too big of a "playground" for the PC's so, I think I am going to make it into an orbital (a smaller form of ringworld) with an artifical "sun" in the center. This will help keep the "playground" down to a reasonable size (only 4 times the size of Earth?! ). I think I am going to keep with my waring factions ideas, and with the mysterious group who is watching, monitoring event on the ring. I also had the idea to have the ring slowly becoming inhospitable, starting at one location and then slowly spreading out in both directions. This has been causing some of the groups to migrate away from the dangerous areas, and bringing them into conflict with the already established people on the far side of the ring. Eventually the whole ring will become unlivable, with the remaining people fighting over what little land remains, unless of course the PC's can find away to help.... But I am always open for other ideas and such, so if anyone wants to chime in, please do. That does sound like a more managable scale, mallet. It would also make it easier to put together a map of the place. A spreading zone of uninhabitable area is a good way to force groups into conflict. I'm curious, though...did you have something in mind for this slow-motion disaster? The main things that come to mind are disease-related (plant pest killing off food crops or disease attacking inhabitants and the disease is somehow linked to the presence of something in the soil, so moving to a new location defeats it...for now), environmental-related (area is becoming a desert because of a shift in weather patterns, no discernable cause) or large-scale toxin problems (the material used to construct the ring is actually highly toxic, and has been slowly leaching into the overlaying soil for thousands of years. In the area where the trouble starts the soil over the ring material is thinnest, and the toxin has finally reached the water table -- so all the wells are contaminated, all the plants are poisonous because they've picked it up, etc. Water could probably be purified, but likely not on the scale needed for entire populations, necessitating a move.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Outsider Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... The disaster that is forcing groups into conflict could be manufactured by the watchers, also. Kind of a spin on the old (niven?) short story "War Movie". As to Rep, also note that it wasnt -always- just available in game related forums, and when they changed it, they didnt deduct NGD rep from people's totals, though they did deduct NGD posts from people's post counts. So Rep isnt always a good guide to the quality of people's game related posting. (though in this thread, the high rep types are quality posters, IMHO.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Suleyman Rashid Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... The disaster that is forcing groups into conflict could be manufactured by the watchers, also. Kind of a spin on the old (niven?) short story "War Movie". Not familiar with that movie, either. I'm a fan of Niven, but mostly because of the Ringworld series and the Mote in God's Eye. Can you elucidate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Outsider Posted October 2, 2005 Report Share Posted October 2, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... Its not a movie, but a short story. From his Draco Tavern series, IIRC. The story takes place in a tavern (Draco's) that caters to humans as well as aliens. Humanity has been in contact with galactic civilization for some time. A particular race of aliens were instrumental in arranging for this contact. The (human) bartender notices an alien of that species drowning his sorrows in booze, and asks what's the problem? The alien explains that his species specializes in entertainment programming for the galactic market, and on about 90 years before they happened upon the Earth, where humanity was engaged in a massive war. Men and machines hurling themselves against eachother around the globe, real life and real death, stark ideologies, High Drama in general! And the ending! Two cities obliterated by atomic explosions! Spactacular! Well, they did what they could to record things, spread about what few crude spy devices they could get there in time, used long range telescopes, and so on. Then they presented the often grainy images nearly live to galactic society. It was a phenomenally successful program, the most popular one by a huge margin for the entirety of its 5 year run. It was entertainment like nothing else galactic civilizatoin had seen before. You just can't pay sentient beings to do such things! Heck, species that make war are vanishingly rare. Finding one and putting its war on the air was a major lucky break. Well, to make a long story short, they figured that a species that makes war will make war again, and if their home world were flooded with really good spy devices, then the programming that would result would blow away even the astoundingly successful previous war program. So the alien arranged for galactic society to contact humanity in order to facilitate the incorporation of the necessary spy devices throughout the Earth. The aliens invested all the profits from the previous program, plus all their savings, AND mortgaged much of their homeworld in order to afford enough top-notch spy devices to really make the new program incomparably good. And then humanity stopped having big, spactacular wars! Ruination! All debts come due! The homeworld seized for in lieu of debt payments! Why! WHY havent humans had another big war? The bartender looks askance at the alien and say "Well, geez, we couldnt do something like that with aliens watching!" The spin would be that your watchers, instead of hoping for a war, arrange for it to happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Suleyman Rashid Posted October 3, 2005 Report Share Posted October 3, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... The spin would be that your watchers' date=' instead of hoping for a war, arrange for it to happen.[/quote'] That is evil! I love it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lethosos Posted October 3, 2005 Report Share Posted October 3, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... A better reason for migration/conflict would be unexpected "burps" in the artifical sun, sending excessive amounts of radiation than what pre-built shielding is already in place. Now, it's possible the Watchers may have triggered it; or it was an exccedingly lucky break and they just maneuvered their plans to use the opening offered to them. They, of course, are scrambling to fix the problems, but it's escalating out of their control... I figure your artifical landmass would be something like a smaller Dyson sphere; I would add some unexplained phenomena in certain "inaccessable" mountain ranges that hide the huge enter/exit gates between the inside and outside of the Sphere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
megaplayboy Posted October 3, 2005 Report Share Posted October 3, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... If you build a hollow sphere of thickness = radius(earth)/3, you can make it of any radius R, and the surface gravity will be roughly equal to 1 g. then you just have to worry about rotation, internal heat, lighting, atmosphere, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Anomaly Posted October 3, 2005 Report Share Posted October 3, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... If you really want to get crazy, terraform the exterior of a Dyson Sphere, rather like Cuckoo in Farthest Star and Wall Around a Star. The available living area makes a ringworld look sick by comparison. But then again, mallet said he wanted to go smaller, not larger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mallet Posted October 3, 2005 Author Report Share Posted October 3, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... Yes, I do not want it to turn into some strange form of Synnibar. Although.... If ever a game was thunk up that could be converted to make full use of the Hero System Toolkit... ...But no. That thought leads only to madness... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Anomaly Posted October 4, 2005 Report Share Posted October 4, 2005 Re: Ringworlds, orbitals, etc... Yes' date=' I do not want it to turn into some strange form of [i']Synnibar[/i]. Aaarrrggghhh! You mentioned one of the Three Unmentionable Names of Gaming!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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