Nyrath

Re: December 27, 2004: The Day Earth Survived the Greatest Stellar Attack -Ever Yes, but the mental image of a starship studded with turrets from a main battle tank seems so terribly retro.

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb In Roger MacBride Allen's two novel series The Ring of Charon and The Shattered Sphere, there is a nasty titanic entity whose body is a moon-sized sphere of strange matter. It feeds by converting normal matter into strange matter.

Re: December 27, 2004: The Day Earth Survived the Greatest Stellar Attack -Ever No, the Tunguska event was not quite a big burst for a rock. It was only 14 megatons. The Dinosaur Killer event was 800,000,000 megatons (80 teratons). That was quite a big burst for a rock. But you make a good point. People sneer at a low tech weapon like throwing rocks, but kinetic energy weapons can do ghastly amounts of damage. And no fissionables are required. It has been suggested that in the future, space faring nations will have military spacecraft on orbit guard duty, to prevent all unauthorized changes in the orbits of civilization-killing asteroids. Obligatory link to the Boom Table http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x1.html#boom

Re: Somali Pirates Open Up a "Stock Exchange"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091210092005.htm So the Alcor system could contain six solar systems with habitable planets. And the inhabitants could reach the other systems with ordinary spacecraft, no star ships required. Though it does seem like the Alcor binary proper is at a greater distance than the others. So the four other systems can be close knit, up until that fateful day when an exploration mission to Alcor stumbles over the xenophobic Tarantula-Crabs of Alcor 2 and their star empire.

Re: How to cram crew members into your spacecraft A larger ship can take advantage of the economy of scale. Often a life support system for ten is smaller and cheaper than 10 life support systems for one. There is also the "minimum gauge" problem. Certain pieces of equipment can only be miniaturized so far. So if the smallest life support system you can make is rated for 2.5 people, you are wasting 1.5 persons worth of support. Unfortunatelyh there are engineering reasons that make it impractical to design an individual RTG that produces more than one kilowatt. You'd need banks of the blasted things. Plutonium-238 has a half life of 85 years, i.e., the power output will drop to one half after 85 years. So a max 1 kilowatt RTG would only produce 500 watts after 85 years. Actually a little less since the thermocouples deteriorate in the radiation. http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3e.html#rtg A small fission reactor might be better, but they suffer from the minimum gauge problem. You need a certain size to achieve critical mass. Not really. You are a genius. The movie you are thinking about is Lifeforce, in which energy vampire Mathilda May spends most of the movie wandering around nude while ripping the lifeforce out of any poor moron who thinks with his glands instead of his cerebrum and thus allows himself to get withing touching distance. However, she is discovered by astronauts in a freaking huge alien spacecraft. She is in an individual suspended animation pod that resembles a huge quartz crystal, but the pod is not an individual spacecraft.

Re: December 27, 2004: The Day Earth Survived the Greatest Stellar Attack -Ever

Re: How to cram crew members into your spacecraft Heh, cute. Of course, they also would fit into a missile sized lifeboat

Re: December 27, 2004: The Day Earth Survived the Greatest Stellar Attack -Ever Happy to be of service

Re: December 27, 2004: The Day Earth Survived the Greatest Stellar Attack -Ever While plasma guns don't really work, lasers are effective as a ship-to-ship weapon. It is just that a laser sidearm is vastly more expensive and delicate than a .45 automatic, but is not much more effective at killing a person. The magnatar death beam, however, is much more useful to a game master as a Macguffin. For example, your stable of players are trying to stop a supervillain who is plotting to trigger a magnatar burst that will vaporize Princess Aura's home system.

Re: New Model of the Universe Says Past Crystallizes out of the Future If anybody is interested in the "block universe" described in the link, a fun-to-read explaination is in Rudy Rucker's THE FOURTH DIMENSION. Go here http://books.google.com/books?id=8J0djs-FK_8C&dq=rudy+rucker&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=WAzms4wqjb&sig=VgHCjwFsXd8jBx9YJMTdQXikbJs&hl=en&ei=susjS4bUFIjilAfzjeD9CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CDgQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=&f=false and go to the chapter "Spacetime Diary"

Re: New Model of the Universe Says Past Crystallizes out of the Future No, you are exploring exciting and interesting possibilities inherent in the model. Vacancies would be either areas of time stasis, or time-space areas in the past which change. For instance, the chapter in your history book about the battle of Waterloo might keep re-writing itself before your eyes. In a Dr. Who episode (the Pirate Planet), the villain had a room that was shifted one second into the future. Since the space without and within the room were out of time synch, it was the equivalent of an impassible barrier. Edge dislocations would be time gates, of course. Presumably these flaws would exist both in the "present" and in the past. Naturally something like a light-year long time gate would be patrolled by militant alien civilizations with notions about "finders-keepers". If you want a Star Hero campaign with time travel, such a model has great possiblities.

Re: Quantum Propulsion Machine May Lead To Propulsion Without Change In Mass I am not saying it is impossible. I'm saying it has unintended consequences, for the game master. Do you, as a game master, want an SF universe where a tramp freighter's lifeboat can destroy all life on Earth?

Re: Quantum Propulsion Machine May Lead To Propulsion Without Change In Mass "Although the proposed engine will consume energy for manipulation of the particles, the propulsion will occur without any loss of mass," says Feigel. Hard to say. Could be like a photon drive like ajackson says, but the article does not mention any photons being emitted. However, either way (reactionless or photon drive), theoretically both will have unreasonable power requirements, where one lousy Newton of thrust takes three hundred freaking megawatts!! http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3am.html And of course we know that reactionless drive have unintended consequences. http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3a.html#advice

Re: How to cram crew members into your spacecraft Of course even worse is another Japanese innovation, the so called "capsule motel." http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3ag.html#bunk

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/12/december-27-2004-the-day-earth-survived-the-greatest-stellar-attack-ever.html This looks like a weapon that can be used to take out entire solar systems...

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/saturn-hexagon/ Seriously, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??!!?? Evil game masters can make this into pretty much whatever they want, and it will still seem plausible.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/12/jacob-innovations-designs-first-class.html For early pre-Trek technology, habitable volume in a spacecraft will always be very limited. So you have to be efficient to cram in all your crew members. Especially on a troopship or something like that. The link shows a design for a passenger airliner, but the principle remains the same. For post-Trek technology, the habitable volume of your ships will be like a blasted five-star hotel, so you can ignore all this.

Re: Any Star System Mapping Utilities? I don't know if this would suit your needs, it is very Traveller oriented http://www.downport.com/wbd/HEAVEN_&_EARTH.htm

Re: Any Star System Mapping Utilities? Sorry about the dead links

Re: YACttTOR (Yet Another Challenge to the Theory of Relativity): Space-Time no More No, it has been observed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dialation#Experimental_confirmation As a matter of fact, the GPS system you use to navigate your car has to make corrections for time dilation effects from the satellites or it will display incorrect positions.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/12/historical-colonization-versus.html For future history builders who want some rules of thumb about how many spaceships there are

Re: Accretion Disk Civilizations? That is a hauntingly romantic setting. It reminds me of a novel by George R. R. Martin called "Dying of the Light." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_the_Light It would certainly give your campaign an exotic flavor. Rather than being a re-hash of Star Wars, Traveller, or something.

Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? A free program called Blender. http://www.blender.org/ I have some other work here http://www.flickr.com/photos/nyrath/sets/

Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? I'm finishing the structural bracing of my hard-SF rocketship