Channelknight Fadran

shut

what do you mean by that?

It is edited.

Aha. I have published it early on accident.

Please disregard this while I edit in literally everything else.

Or we should decrease the speed of time to achieve the same effect.

Dannnnnnnnexish

I was trying to limit it by size:

• Rule by one
• Rule by few
• Rule by all
• Rules? What're those?

But I see your point. Those limitations were... kinda my point.

8 hours ago, The Bookwyrm said:

I put yes on the second question, but the mechanics of it would be very wonky.

Reminds me of this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/a_bunch_of_rocks.png

So yeah, possible, but difficult and not in the way most people would think.

HAHA

THIS ^ ^ ^ GUY KNOWS HOW TO THINK

2 hours ago, The Bookwyrm said:

Also, what does this have to do with a space opera?

Kardashev.

2 hours ago, The Bookwyrm said:

Thanks, @The Wandering Wizard.

As a tried and true SPACE NERD, I would like to thank you, @Channelknight Fadran, for teaching me some things that I did not know. I had no idea that NASA was coming up with ideas for space-railguns, or skyhooks that would launch your payload to your destination faster. This is a well written...(what is this? Blog post?)...thing....that explains space travel in ways that I did not know were possible. (You did use the word "yeet" a little to much, though...)

Sadly, I am more interested in the scientific areas of space than the engineering aspects. I probably know more about space travel than the average human, but you obviously know more than me. I tend to get more into the hypothetical forms of FTL (And also forms of FTL that could never really exist in the real world) and things like interstellar arks and planetary colonization.

A few thoughts: 

If you were trying to launch humans into space with the railgun, wouldn't the g-forces of that super-fast acceleration smoosh them? Or am I vastly overestimating the railgun's capabilities and vastly underestimating the "human squishiness quotient" as M-Bot calls it?

I think, to answer your "How do we make sure things don't go wrong" question, it's just that as a civilization advances in their technology, it will generally become safer. I mean, people drive in cars or fly in airplanes all the time, but if you sit down and think about it, you're in a steel projectile hurtling through three dimensions and high velocities with so so so many things that could go wrong and kill you. But no one actually sits down and think about it. So how long would it take for space travel to get safe enough that, for the most part, you don't have to worry about how terrifying it is? (You kind of talked about this, I just wanted to elaborate.)

What about gravity slingshots?

Hydrogen, at least for our time and level of technology, is a very efficient fuel. While it's true that compared to some kinds of propulsion that can be achieved in the future it's basically redundant, I don't think we should put that handy chemical reaction of H2+O2=H2O out of the picture yet. At the poles of the Moon, there are large stores of ice that have been untouched for eons. If someone were to go and mine that solid water, melt it, and do electrolysis on it, you have all of the Hydrogen and Oxygen that you need to burn for fuel. And because the Moon has much less gravity than the Earth, if we turn the north and south poles of the Moon into fuel mines and spaceports, the solar system could quite easily open up for us. You're completely right that we need to move on to a more advanced method of propulsion in the future. But I think Hydrogen fuel could be helpful in other ways, at least in the early eras of expansion.

So yeah, there's my random rant. Sorry it's so big. If you want to talk about big galactic-scale space opera or FTL sometime, just ping me, and I can rant some more.

Edit: A quick internet search made me realize we should actually be building the railgun on the moon.

Well shoot. That's a lot. Lemme answer the main points:

• Hypothetical FTL will definitely happen. I'm starting with the basics - that is, the laws of physics as we humans understand them. Future additions will contribute to more whacky, fantastical things.
• About the G-Forces thing... I dunno. I've basically just decided that NASA probably knows what they're doing, so there's PROBABLY a way to counterract the human squishiness quotient.
• Gravity Slingshots: Of course! If you mean gravity-assisted trajectories and such, then that would be all over the place. If you mean slingshots using miniature black holes to power the thrust... then sure. Why not?
• H Y D R O G E N
• Moon thing: well, yeah. Less gravity means less force means less energy required, yada yada yada. But that doesn't really help us if we can't get people off Earth in the first place.

2 hours ago, The Wandering Wizard said:

I assume Channelknight Fadran is taking into account that we will have more advanced technology analogous to the gravcaps in Skyward Sword.

2 hours ago, The Bookwyrm said:

Hm. It is a little unclear on how advanced this Space Opera will be, or if it will span from about a time in the present-near future to a galactic civilization.

I'll get into that in the  f u t u r e.

(Spoiler alert: the universe has been around for a long time and doesn't seem like it's gonna blow up anytime soon)

...A weird discrepiancy has shown up. Why do y'all like the bacteria so much?

First of all: cups, teaspoons, etc aren't imperial or metric. They're used all over the place invariably.

Second of all: Meters are equally useful in practicality as feet. Both of you here have fallen into a fallacy: that of the familiarity bias. You're more used to feet/vs/meters and such, so it seems much more practical to you.

Third of all: I am 69 inches tall