Kristopher

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? "It does go beyond what we can comprehend", which is the second time someone has made that sort of comment in this thread.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? OK, so 45 billion is do-able. But... is a worldwide city only 45 billion people? Earth's land area is 58 million square miles. We'll use the the population density of Singapore to be conservative (~18200 per square mile). That's 1,055,600,000,000 people. One trillion. Right? So you've be looking at the no-margin just-in-time delivery of offworld food arriving on almost 4700 "tankers" per day, right? Now take one of the very dense real-life cities as an example for density, and you'd have more like three trillion people, and about 14000 "tankers".

Re: Fiction resources for Solar HERO. So do the Transhumanists. There's a bit too much faith and "of course a solution will be found" speculation in most Transhumanism for my tastes.

Re: Orion Drive space battleship And RexMundi, it's not like I hate the idea of a far better heavy-lifter, or of Orion in particular. It would be awesome if the idea is as effective and economical and safe as you're making it out to be. Absolutely, beyond-words awesome. But all the awesome in the world won't change the facts, whatever they are.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Hardly. It's just numbers. The question comes down to the limit on how much food you can unload and distribute each day -- it doesn't matter how many ships you have from across the whole of the galaxy, it matters how much each one carries, how many you can land at once, and how long it takes to unload and load each one. And that's just the food. Where are the medicines, and the parts, and the building materials, and the consumer goods, and everything else coming from, as well?

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? How many ships, of what size, were unloaded at Trantor each day, or hour? How long did that unloading take? Was the unloading done at orbital transfer stations, or on the surface?

Re: Orion Drive space battleship "Rubber and glue" rebuttals of that sort aren't really up to par for these discussions. If you don't want people to ask why you're displaying contempt, don't display contempt -- in other words, when you dismiss the concerns about Orion as "hippy nonsense" (paraphrasing), you dismiss anyone who is concerned about the impacts of Orion as "a hippy". When you act like only idiots could hold a position, you're implying that people who do hold that position are idiots. Hardly. It's a quick and easy reference that we all understand the limitations of. It's very easy to understate or overlook the full scope of the risks and complications, because they can be subtle. See also, Cancer's post about the effects of the still-lingering radioisotopes from atmospheric testing.

Re: The Puffin: A Personal Aircraft If 0% can't drive...

Re: Orion Drive space battleship I've already made my point. You keep ignoring it and blowing off the facts and saying "What? there's no problem, that's all just crazy talk!" Not being a mind-reader, I won't speculate (out loud) as to why you do. And you'll please note that I'm not some "hippy", scared of all things with the words "nuclear" or "radiation" attached to them -- thus my comments regarding coal-fired power plants, the purely political opposition to breeder reactors and reprocessing, and so on. It's possible to be rational, pro-nuclear-power, and so on, and still wonder aloud at the utterly blase disregard for the dangers that's being expressed by proponents of projects like Orion. One has to wonder why there's such utter contempt being expressed towards anyone who isn't on board for the big show, and why it is that anyone who stops to question is being broad-brushed as a "hippy".

Re: Orion Drive space battleship The voluntary US mortorium on fast breeders, reprocessing spent fuel rods, etc, is an accurate example of a restriction on nuclear techology that's fueled by FUD and irrationality. I'll also add that given the far tighter regulations and limits on nuclear power plants, there's more radioactive crap added to the atmosphere each year by coal-fired power plants, or so I've read. It wouldn't surprise me if it were true.

Re: Orion Drive space battleship So you say "Well gee I heard that some guy got cancer and some other guy didn't." and the CDC says 11000 deaths from atmospheric testing alone. Which you then blow off as "they THINK" and by comparing it to accidental automobile deaths. I think I'll go with the CDC's findings over your snide caricatures about "the VW microbus crowd". You're ranting about "THE STRAWMAN" in response to my comment, while continuing to engage in that fallacy, along with ad hominem and absurd exagerations about the other side's opinions. All you're doing is digging yourself a deeper hole, and casting doubt on your own position.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? The Puppeteer worlds bring up something else I've been thinking of regarding the city-planets -- waste heat.

Re: Orion Drive space battleship

Re: Orion Drive space battleship

Re: Fiction resources for Solar HERO. I'd love a game in that setting, but the players in my group aren't interested.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Matter of scale. It's rare to find science fiction with an actual sense of scale. There are orders of magnitude in scale and complexity and vulnerability between feeding NYC from across the US, and feeding a world of 60 billion from across galaxy.

Re: Lockheed Martin HULC Exoskeleton Ow.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? I would suggest that it's not a matter of logic at all -- such a world as Corruscant can only exist in space fantasy with non-rigorous worldbuilding and no sense of scale. Such worlds exist because they're "really neat".

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but... I'll definately look into it. There's are multiple "transhumanist" movements in the game setting. (Despite the timelines that real-life transhumanists like to give, they'd still be waiting around several hundred years in the future, in my setting.)

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but... It's hard coming up with an idea seed for a culture/government form that hasn't been used before. I'm not necessarily looking for "villain" cultures.

Re: Orion Drive space battleship

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but... It's a mature group, and I don't plan to do any anvil-dropping. I'm not trying to present any outright dystopias, either, those are just the three easiest examples to present in short form so far. One of the players is actually from a vaguely Stalinist world, a very minor power with three neighboring systems officially refered to as "protectorates".

Re: Orion Drive space battleship