green.nova343 wrote:I'll start with Dyson Spheres. Artificial gravity would help offset the stresses that would normally cause a solid (Type II) sphere's polar regions to collapse (essentially working as the much-maligned "structural integrity fields" of Star Trek). The amount of materials, however, would be staggering. For example, in our Solar System the estimate is that if you took every rocky planet, asteroid, moon/satellite, & every other solid object (including Earth) you could build a shell roughly 8-20 centimeters thick...way too thin to actually work as a platform, let alone leave any materials for constructing living quarters or providing soil, water, etc. Another estimate I've seen is that an ideal sphere would be 15km thick, so we're talking about taking the materials from roughly 100 star systems to build a single solid sphere. Now, apparently "Dyson swarms" would be better, where you have a bunch of separated plates (or even simply a ring of solar collectors in a ring around the star). Note that John Ringo theorized something similar with his "SAPL" in a trilogy he wrote as a semi-official prequel to the Schlock Mercenary webcomic (basically "how did Terrans first meet Galactic civilizations). SAPL was essentially "Archimedes' mirror" on a star-system scale (collecting mirrors scattered all throughout the Solar System, feeding to a bunch of larger collection mirrors, which then aimed them at a central location....first a really big mirror, then later a mirror mounted inside an inflated 10-15km iron-nickel asteroid). It was ostensibly meant for mining purposes, but basically burned through the toughest starship shields in a matter of seconds with energy to spare.
I could see Dyson spheres/swarms in 1 of 2 circumstances: a system that isn't too keen on interstellar exploration & wants to fully maximize their own system, & a star empire that doesn't care how many star systems it strip-mines to build spheres/swarms for its own star systems.
In the Phase World setting I think this is as likely as any reason why you would see a sphere. As I said I think Dyson Spheres are unlikely. Truthfully the only good use I have seen for one in sci-fi is as an intergalactic lifeboat in a setting where FTL travel was difficult and could potentially cause the destruction of an entire galaxy. Other than that maybe an ancient race with an abundance of time and resources just looking for something to do. In a setting like Phase World I could also see it as a prison for something horrible.
It is important to note that we do have a Dyson Sphere in Rifts. DB 15: Secrets of the Atlanteans, pg. 34. Tera Orbis is just the kind of gigantic ancient creation that you might see, but again I am more interested in what the main two powers can create.
Something along the lines of a Dyson Swarm I think is more realistic. We even saw the Geth in Mass Effect 3 creating a miniature version of this in the Quarrian home system to make use of solar energy for what amounted to large orbiting server farms. Again though with cheap and spectacularly fast FTL drives I'm just not sure there would ever be a need.
green.nova343 wrote:Star-lifting is definitely doable with CG technology. It would have to be on a massive scale & use focused CG generators, but you could probably come up with ways to siphon off stellar material. Gets you a lot of hydrogen & helium, & some of the other lower elements, for use in fusion power systems.
As I understand it, the whole point is to remove heavier elements for the core and that is what would extend the life of the star. Removing lighter elements, especially hydrogen, would actually destabilize the star and even shorten it's lifespan.
I really think this is doable but I am just not sure it is economically viable. All you have to do is fly to a star system that has not been mined for thousands of years and break up a few asteroid fields.
green.nova343 wrote:For using fusion to create materials...CG-type technology would be almost a given. The "iron peak" is the limit you hit in normal stellar fusion (elements above iron have too high of neutron-to-proton ratios to be readily achieved), & while it's possible with the "s-process" (s meaning "slow addition of neutrons") by having iron nuclei seeded into a younger star from prior supernovae, the process is very slow (thousands of years), so not commercially viable. The r-process (rapid) usually happens in thermonuclear weapons, but apparently doesn't produce a whole lot of usable products necessarily. Best method for that would be fusion bombs contained behind force shields that then collect the remnants, & by concentrating the elements it might be possible to better commercially manufacture them. The p- and rp-processes could also work with normal fusion if controlled properly (relying on injecting protons instead of neutrons), but only work up to tellurium at best. Still, should be doable without resorting to Star Trek-like "replicator" technology.
I figured the CCW and TGE would most likely focus on planetary scale processes. Most of what you mention above is a result of how energy intensive this process would be. But, when you have matter/anti-matter reactors those energy costs start to look kind of small.
glitterboy2098 wrote:in the 3G's, i could see dyson swarms (vast collections of stations and statites orbiting stars) as viable, since those wouldn't require any technology the 3G's societies don't have. it just calls for an expenditure of resources that doesn't quite fit the canon factions and stuff like their fleet sizes. but it could easily be stuck into the hands of some alien race that decided to "build tall" around one or two systems instead of expanding into an interstellar empire. especially if they're some particularly long lived civilization that has been building the parts to the swarm over multiple ages of the galaxy.
I think this was my biggest problem when I started looking at this a few years ago. The timeline that we got in Fleets of the Three Galaxies really expanded the time a lot of these groups had been around and even the amount of time ship classes have been around. All of this really just added to a situation where the 3Gs is just stagnant. Add in the fact that it has been 11 years since the last book and this is a setting that is just kind of dead.
Watching a lot of these videos I started trying to figure out where you would add in some of these really impressive megastructures and technologies, but then it sort of hit me that most of them don't fit. In all the books the only place we ever saw developed was Phase World itself and truthfully most of that is just the City of Center. The rest of the planet, the orbital stations, the rest of the system and surrounding sector are completely bare. The rest of the 3G is really almost empty.
glitterboy2098 wrote:taalismn wrote:The megastructures in Iain Banks' Culture were created by a. society that was run by AI Minds, who had the mental power, patience, and long term vision ncecessay to oversee such projects. Given the general AI-phobia prevalent in the Three Galaxies, I don't see any of the major power blocs ceding administrative control to sophist AIs. The best/most the CCW has allowed them was a hand in designing their latest superheavy warship, which is hardly impressive by Clarke-tech standards.
tru enough. though they could certainly show up as creations of the various "elder races" in the 3G's, both those that currently exist, and those that once existed, and their creations survived.
i would also suggest that some of the concepts from the culture books could be adapted to lesser scales. a full 2 million km diameter banks orbital might be outside of the CCW's or TGE's abilities, but a Halo ring sized one (10,000km) might well be within reach, and while it would need to rotate faster and would have a shorter day/night cycle as a result, it would suffice for many of the kinds of stories you might want to set on such a space station.
I think the size of the stations are doable, I am just not sure if they would have any reason to build them or use spin gravity.
glitterboy2098 wrote:likewise a 50km long, 20km wide Culture General Systems vehicle might not work with the tech in the 3G's, but the idea of a city contained within a starship certainly is viable, and it wouldn't be hard to imagine something the size of a Packmaster carrier with civilian housing, and shopping ares, and dockyards for smaller ships, and even park areas with (small) forests and lakes and streams all contained within its hull. like a mobile space station.
If you were putting this in a game what would its purpose be?
I touched on this a little bit in a previous thread about industry in star systems. I agree that the tech is there but I'm not sure what the point would be to having a mile long mobile city that can move at FTL speeds. The only use I came up with was a facility to help new colonies get started. It helps build cities and orbitial infrastructure and then moves on. But to me this seems like something best suited for a prefabricated station that is dropped off by a large carrier and then expanded upon.
The other option is something that goes to a system that is being mined but for some reson not being permanently occupied. Almost a companion to an asteroid eater.
glitterboy2098 wrote:i mean, they did on battlestar galactica with the
botanical cruisers and
Cloud Nine, and those weren't even as large as a warshield cruiser. so there shouldn't be much to stop the 3G's from mounting something similar onto a ship over 2x the size of the Galactica. (for that matter, a packmaster is way larger than
Terok Nor/Deep Space Nine, and is way more mobile)
Battlestar Galactica and the Quarians from Mass Effect are interesting examples that I am not sure we would see in the 3Gs. With the speed of FTL and the number of unoccupied systems it just seems that a large fleet would find a planet or moon and settle down.
Just some points of reference.
- A Packmaster is 1,600 meters (1 mile)
- A Warshield is 183 meters (600 ft)
- The Jupiter Class Battlestar is 1,445 meters. with a crew compliment comparable to a Packmaster
- Cloud 9, according to your source, is 450 meters, several times bigger than a Warshield
- Your source provided no length for the botanical cruiser but it looked about the same size as Cloud 9
That being said, I agree that the major powers could do this, again just not certain why they would. Now agricultural stations, like in The Expanse, seem pretty reasonable especially for systems that have no earth like planet, have wrecked that planets environment, or have tried to move agriculture off world to restore that planet (I figure Motherhome has a lot of these and so does Goldie Lox).
glitterboy2098 wrote:Furoan wrote:The one issue of imagining a Dreadnaught sized ship as a civilian ship is that we learned that the CCW only 'recently' got enough knowledge to build the Contra-gravity drives needed to push such a massive ship around. That being said, such a ship might either use a Rift Drive or a Phase Drive to get around. (Or it could be a gigantic Generation ship and move between systems at slower than light speed I guess).
that referred to ships bigger than the Packmaster. the packmaster class has been around since
before the formation of the CCW, so 700+ years of service. that bit of fluff in fleet of the three galaxies was in reference to the Emancipation class Dreadnoughts, which are even bigger than the packmaster class, and less than 24 years old. and those were a reaction to the Khreegor Doombringer ,whcih was also bigger than a packmaster, which has been around for at least 100 years (when the FWC stole one) and definitively known to the CCW for only 50 years.)
the fluff also says the packmaster is the largest you could build an FTL capable ship previously to the new drive and the emancipation class. it is kinda silent on whether the kheeghor used a special drive like the CCW did, or if there was some sort of design trade off that allowed bigger ships prior but limited them in some way that most races wouldn't accept.
It actually talks about this in DB 13, pg. 79. They created a special kind of drive with "help" of the Machine People.
glitterboy2098 wrote:thus why i specified the packmaster in my comment. if 1 mile long and 1/5th of a mile wide and tall (call it 5,280,000,000 cubic feet) is the upper limit for an FTL capable ship using 'normal' 3G's contragravity tech, i don't see why you couldn't build civilian ships to the same scale. super-freighters of that size would be one of the only ways to make shipping bulk goods between systems economically viable, and there is no reason you wouldn't also see things like cruise ships of similar scale. and what is a cruise ship but a specialized mobile mini-city?
I agree with all of this. Given how long ships the size of the Packmaster have been being built in the 3Gs you would probably see tens of thousands of them flying around between systems and it is certainly the best way to move between galaxies.
ShadowLogan wrote:I don't think the authors even considered these things when writing for PhaseWorld.
I agree, the problem that after almost 30 years the setting is extremely dated. It needs more sci-fi to balance all monsters and fantasy elements and I doubt we are getting any new books anytime soon so anything that gets added is just by the GM.
ShadowLogan wrote:These technologies/structures are geared toward:
-material resource extraction
-energy extraction (does anyone in 3G actually need the entire energy output of their host star?)
-population growth (few races in Palladium have a population issue like this currently, and IIRC they all have access to off-world travel)
I think all of these depend on how you approach the setting of the Three Galaxies, since we really have no information on it. We know by the inclusion of asteroid eaters and gas mining ships, as well as descriptions of planets that are engaged in mining and other extraction activities, that resource extraction is a big deal. This isn't Star Trek with replicators they need to extract the resources they use. This means that creating scarce resources through fusion and star lifting might be useful.
As for the power, it depends on how you treat things like anti-matter. In a lot of settings anti-matter costs more energy to produce than it generates. It is used for things like starships because it is, for lack of a better term, energy dense you can carry a lot in small space. No matter what solar is always going to be the cheapest energy and something like a Dyson Swarm where you can just keep adding to it as you need more energy just makes sense.
As for population growth and FTL, this is my feeling too. No matter how big your population gets at some point it is just going to be cheaper for people to go to another system than continually build more habitable space.
ShadowLogan wrote:A Dyson Swarm could be started by any of them and set to expand as needed w/o being noticeable (a Dyson Sphere/Ring not so much IMHO) per say, though it does raise the possible consequence from how the energy is beamed around the star system, it might allow creation of Super-Energy-Weapons (that are a hazard to planet/moons, never mind puny ships).
This is covered in one of the books, either Three Galaxies or Anvil Galaxy where one of the planets collects enough energy to use it as a defensive weapon.
On the other end structures like this would be really hard to defend against fighters, assault craft, and missiles so might be a strike against them.
ShadowLogan wrote:Star Lifting might break things a bit in terms of making heat/energy resistant materials better possibly negating the usefulness of energy weapons (or specific types) for battle.
From what I have read and seen in the video star lifting doesn't require those things and in fact the advent of CG and energy fields would just make it cheaper and easier but I could be wrong.
ShadowLogan wrote:Other aspects are going to come down to the economics in the game world. But unfortunately, the game world economics don't always translate into the real world (or make sense). Some of them might be developed if they had military applications either in offensive or defensive capacity.
Fortunately in a game like this the economics are what the author says it is and since there is really nothing about it in the books it just falls to the GM. All you need is a decent in universe reason for it and you can go from there.
green.nova343 wrote:Meant to add in something else. With CG tech, you will see skyscrapers be able to reach much higher into the sky. David Weber talks about it with his Honor Harrington series, particularly when they compare the architecture of governments & civilizations that have had CG-style tech for centuries (Haven, Manticore, Solarian League, etc.) vs. more "backwater" planets that either just managed to incorporate it in the last generation or so (i.e. Grayson). My assumption is that the civilian systems (with a bunch of backup systems) use the CG fields to lessen the apparent weight of each floor (ceiling/floor, walls, etc.) so that it lowers the load on the support members, without actually changing the gravity felt by the residents on each floor. So skyscrapers & buildings that set records here on Earth will be pipsqueaks compared to these types of buildings.
Just...heaven help them when all the primaries, secondaries, backups, & backups to the backups fail simultaneously...
glitterboy2098 wrote:i would assuem that it less about using CG to support the building, and more the fact that IRL the biggest limiter in how tall you can build a building is how hard it is to lift construction materials to the upper reaches of it using cranes. with CG craft you can easily lift even heavy items to any height.
Glitterboy is correct. In the books it goes into great detail about two aspects of there version of anti-gravity and city construction:
- One is what GB just said using it in construction allowing them to go higher and higher.
- Two is using gravity fields to create stronger materials for construction. It does specifically say in several books that there is still a limit to how high as the ground can not take the weight so pretty sure they don't have active fields running.
The only place I could see in the three galaxies them using active CG fields for a building is if it was some sort of CG powered space elevator but not sure how useful that would be since you can just put CG on a ship and lift it off world that way.
Thanks for the input everyone, lots of good ideas to think over.