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The Reeve

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How to start?


   I was thinking there was a interplanetary probe that was powered by a modified Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion system (kind of like a magnetic solar sail). The modification consisted of the system being active instead of passive much like the difference between a bird gliding on the wind and a bird flying. The results of actively "flying" would mean the probe could move many times faster than the currently envisioned "solar sail" could ever hope to achieve. In my story the probe reaches just a shade over 100 AU from the sun and all is looking good when suddenly the probes signal ceases. Everyone assumes a power or system failure of some type until 12 years later when a SETI outpost starts receiving signals from Tau Ceti (a G8 star located 11.8 light years from us). Analysis of the signal surprises everyone when it is determined to be the continued broadcast of the "lost probes" signal.

This would lead, of course, to a manned mission to discover how the probe had traveled 11.8 light years is just under 2-1/2 months...

How do you start writing a story like that?

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2/15/2012, 6:18 am Link to this post Email Pastor Rick   PM Pastor Rick Blog
 
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Shepherd

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Re: How to start?


Who is the MC?

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2/15/2012, 6:40 am Link to this post Email BaneBlade   PM BaneBlade
 
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Shepherd

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Re: How to start?


There's another problem, how did the signal get detected over such a vast range? And how did the probe maintain proper orientation to Earth?

For the latter one might assume the navigation system was kind of overbuilt, though for the former one would need a fantastically sensitive receiver... I suppose something like the Square Kilometer Array or some such might suffice...
2/15/2012, 10:40 am Link to this post Email QS2   PM QS2
 
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Grand Master

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Re: How to start?


quote:

Pastor Rick wrote:

How do you start writing a story like that?



I think I'd keep it simple: have a prologue showing the probe's launch and talking about the scientists' hopes for the technology (using that as an excuse to detail exactly what the technology is) and what they want the mission to achieve, then rather bleakly ending with how, at the time of its greatest triumph, the probe vanishes off the radar without explanation. (it could be quite a long prologue! emoticon ) Then, move to chapter 1 with the manned mission (which is presumably what the bulk of your story will be about?) and the MC getting ready to depart (or just arriving in the target area)--introduce the characters, relationships, etc.--and then reveal the reason for the mission, maybe in a team brief/pep talk from the mission's OC. Once that's done you're clear to move on to the bulk of the story.

If you wanted something a bit shorter then you could skip the prologue and feed the background in as part of the OC's brief, but make sure you avoid monologue-ing!

Are we allowed to know what they'll find, or do we have to wait for the story? emoticon
2/15/2012, 11:39 am Link to this post Email Flasheart2006   PM Flasheart2006 Blog
 
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Knight of Honor

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Re: How to start?


Bane and QS both have points. Who do you want the MC to be? The principal investigator of the spacecraft mission? If so, you could do the intro as Flash suggested, then skip 12 years to the MC suddenly getting a message from the craft.

...Though, to be realistic, if there'd been no contact of any type for 12 years, the Earth-based arrays would no longer be making any effort to contact the craft. Personnel costs would just be too high, when there was no likelihood of success. Not to mention, it'd be coming from a totally different vector than it had last been seen at. And, as QS mentioned, a transmitter that's designed to be used within the Oort Cloud is unlikely to be able to project sufficiently over 12 lightyears to have enough amplitude to be picked up on Earth. Especially if we aren't looking for it.

Finally, what you're envisioning is a robotic mission, right? Well, what kind of pre-programmed response could it give that was meaningful, would tell where it was coming from, AND tell that it was from a 12-year-old device that everyone thinks simply failed of unknown mechanical problems? Keep in mind that modern satellites send down only specific types of data: position/velocity from GPS, attitude from star cameras, internal temperatures, accelerations from accelerometers, measurements of structure flexing/strain, power and fuel levels, etc. A spacecraft that suddenly jumped location wouldn't know where it was and the star cameras wouldn't be likely to be able to help it establish its attitude. So all it could report would be, "Eeek! I'm lost!" Which means the BEST scientists on Earth could possibly get out of its messages would be the ANGLE between Earth and it, not the distance.

Of course, I suppose you could design it to be a more visual exploratory mission, rather than a "classic" science mission. If it's got a camera (which most scientific missions don't, actually, but it's certainly feasible), it could send pictures. Of course, you'd have to have some way for it to automatedly take photos, which current scientific cameras decidedly do not. So that pretty much requires a skilled AI, or else a human crew.

From the perspective of writing this story, a human crew would make life easier on you. Otherwise, how are you going to tell a story through characters' eyes? But if you do that, the feel of your story changes, since you're naturally going to focus on the people onboard, not the ones back on Earth that they (somehow) send a message back to.

Alternatively, I suppose you could send a manned mission out to the point where the spacecraft had last been heard from, to see what had happened. What if the robotic mission was a broad-scale searching mission, looking for something in particular, like ores, or else just mapping out the Oort Cloud? In that case, people could have the ability to travel to the Cloud easily enough, which would make an immediate repair mission possible. A mission that would find nothing where the spacecraft disappeared -- which is decidedly more spooky than engineers just sitting on Earth going, "Aw, dang it! We lost communications with ANOTHER craft?!". It would also give you a presence in space, for 12 years later when humans finally re-establish contact with the robotic craft. The humans on the Oort base could go BACK to where they'd originally searched and... something new and exciting could happen.

I think that's how I'd set things up. Also, because of the physical difficulties involved and my knowledge of how a real engineer would design a robotic mission, I wouldn't have the spacecraft send the message back. I'd have it come from Tau Ceti itself. Maybe they "borrowed" the robotic craft to learn something about us, before they actually initiated contact, and now they're ready to actually meet.

That's how I'd start it, I think.

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2/15/2012, 3:58 pm Link to this post Email Reythia   PM Reythia AIM MSN
 
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Shepherd

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Re: How to start?


I can't believe you'd overlook the brightness of the transmitter aspect Reythia, you know how bright the spacecraft transmitter should be. And the way it sends messages would in the end probably allow you to determine which craft it was.

The bigger problem is aiming at Earth if you're lost, no way you can do that. You must at the least be able to identify which star is Sol, which I guess is possible. Or maybe if it had a 3D idea of local space, it could still reconstruct its position from that. This is a future deep space mission after all, so it might have had some inbuilt ability for such.
2/15/2012, 4:26 pm Link to this post Email QS2   PM QS2
 
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Knight of Honor

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Re: How to start?


Ah, but you see, QS, I'm still skeptical that enough photons will actually get through to Earth from that far away. Which means that estimating distance by brightness won't work, since the only way ANY meaningful signal would get through is if someone on Tau Ceti amped up the power somehow. Otherwise, you have the same difficulty the Lunar Laser Ranging folks have (which is a really cool setup, FYI). They beam a laser shot at the Moon and wait for the return pulse, to measure how far away the Moon is, very, very accurately. But they only get a handful of photons back each night! And that's only the Moon!

Now, granted, hitting the Moon disperses more of the beam than merely traveling through open space does. Which is why we can still talk to Voyager, for example (well, ping it, anyhow). But in the case of this fiction story, we're talking 12 LIGHTYEARS. Not to mention, the signal has to get through our own Oort Cloud, whatever's around Tau Ceti, and any loose dust in between -- all of which will scatter the light/signal just as the Moon does. But even ignoring scattering, can you imagine how wide even the narrowest laser beam would get, by the time it crossed 12 Lyrs?

So I don't think it's possible for the original beam to get here in a comprehensible fashion at all. Even assuming people were still looking for it, which they wouldn't be.

quote:

This is a future deep space mission after all, so it might have had some inbuilt ability for such.


Is it? In that case, it's got a lousy choice of propulsion. What's going to power it beyond the Sun's magnetosphere? That's why we sent the Vovagers with nuclear propulsion, after all. It's also why I was mentally limiting this story to the Oort Cloud, which is a long way from the Sun, but still within its magnetic influence at least. That's hand-wave-ably plausable.

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2/16/2012, 3:29 pm Link to this post Email Reythia   PM Reythia AIM MSN
 
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The Reeve

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Re: How to start?


Thank you to everyone for the feedback on my idea/concept/inspiration. I think I have enough to try the first part of my story... I am hopful the first draft will be done before Sunday. emoticon

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2/16/2012, 4:05 pm Link to this post Email Pastor Rick   PM Pastor Rick Blog
 
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Shepherd

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Re: How to start?


Well sure, the reason its Antenna will still function sufficiently at such a range is a bit questionable I suppose. Though future projects like the Square Kilometer Array I've heard, can supposedly can detect the amount of emissions Earth currently emits at that kind of range. And depending on how far the probe was supposed to go ultimately, it might have had an antenna designed for ranges up to 0.1 ly. So purely hypothetically speaking, it isn't entirely impossible in certain configurations of the mission to still have a detectable range that far out, especially if considerably overengineered.

Admittedly one can wonder why they'd go that far away and all that, but who knows, maybe in the future they'll find some small gas giant out there and they just want to know how those look like in detail, at near interstellar temperatures.
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The Reeve

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Re: How to start?


quote:

BaneBlade wrote:

Who is the MC?



I still don't have a last name for the MC (open to suggestions) but his first name is Jason. I am thinking of him as being there as part of the crowd watching when the "UDS-1 Colaeus Probe" is launched and then being selected as commander of the tentatively named "MDS-1 Hippalus" spaceship.

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2/20/2012, 4:02 pm Link to this post Email Pastor Rick   PM Pastor Rick Blog
 
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The Reeve

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Re: How to start?


Colaeus is a rogue planet that was only found because it collided with a dwarf planet roughly the size of Sendra when it was 140 AU from Sol. The resulting analyse of the collision showed Colaeus to have a frozen oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere which prompted the launch of the Colaeus space probe. Feasible? I have no idea but it sounds like something people would get excited about and the math in this paper suggests it might fall into a legitimate realm of possibility...

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3/1/2012, 4:31 pm Link to this post Email Pastor Rick   PM Pastor Rick Blog
 
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Shepherd

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Re: How to start?


Possible sure, I don't see why not, though technically if the atmosphere is frozen, it's actually now a layer of solids on the surface. emoticon


Though if you're looking for an interesting prospect out in deep space, I just ran in to a new and recent calculation on an interstellar planets. (also known as nomad- ,rogue- or orphan planets) Interestingly enough these objects from other stars, or at times not even from stars at all are now calculated to be extremely numerous. So much so that in a 10.000 AU box you'd expect to probably find atleast one. Obviously it could be anywhere in there and so in the vicinity of Sol there could be one at just a few hundred AU or thousands of AU and you'd have no clue about it being different from the rest unless for instance a violent collision occured.

As for why you can tell it was different, the balance of its elemental composition (and the isotopes that make up an element) would be different from anything made from the gas cloud that formed our Sol solar system. And because it would be way closer then other stars and their planets, it would be like you'd suddenly got close access to something you could only usually find at truly vast distances away. It's scientific value would be basically greater then oh pretty much near anything else in the entire Kuiper/Oort cloud region and would be a priority for scientists. Even if it was a thousand AU out or more, they'd probably try to find a way to get at it, as that's peanuts compared to getting to another star.



Would something like that be useful to you as a plot element for starting up such a long range mission?
3/1/2012, 5:40 pm Link to this post Email QS2   PM QS2
 
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Shepherd

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Re: How to start?


A further comment on this mission, due to how far out it is from the central star, it seems most useful to use something like a full up nuclear reactor, that way you have far more power to work with and the ability of the reactor to deliver large amounts of power over a long time is pretty good. Especially some of the now being researched fast neutron reactors would be particularly useful in this, as they will do a full burn of the fuel, rather then just the enriched part as with current day reactors. With something like that you could run a spacecraft for maybe half a century or more at a power output in the Megawatts atleast, if not tens to hundreds of megawatts.

Advantages are that you have a long mission life, and have vast amounts of energy available. And unlike current nuclear power sources, it doesn't degrade near so much over time, thus leaving you with a lot of power near the end as well.


This leads to you being able to equip extremely powerful sensors, including active radar scanning at the target site and possibly even the ability to vaporise small sections of the surface for spectroscopy. As well as many many other sensors that can benefit from a lot of energy. Also a high speed comm link would need a lot of energy and if you have it available you could send back extremely large amounts of data. The last extremely important advantage of this is, is that the most efficient types of space drives use a lot of power, so how more power you have, how faster the probe can go and thus how sooner it can get there.

Also because you'd be unlikely to send any followup mission until the first mission has created results and the trip time is probably expressed in 1-3 decades. What ever you send initially will probably be a high budget high capability probe, probably something in the 1-10 billion range, especially if the target is special enough that it's pretty much a once in a lifetime opportunity.
3/1/2012, 7:28 pm Link to this post Email QS2   PM QS2
 
Reythia Profile
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Knight of Honor

Registered: 11-2005
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Re: How to start?


Yes, Rick, your idea would work.

But I want to second QS's thoughts. The idea of a rogue planet from a different system seems particularly clever, since it would give a clear, strong scientific motive to launch a large, costly, long-term mission. Also, if you worked at it a bit, I bet you could find a way to tie in its origin to the alien encounter you originally mentioned.

And yes, in reality, the power source for something that far away would almost HAVE to be nuclear. Well, or something else that current physics doesn't explain, obviously. But solar power won't be sufficient to power anything worth speaking about out that far.

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3/5/2012, 5:14 pm Link to this post Email Reythia   PM Reythia AIM MSN
 
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The Reeve

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Re: How to start?


While looking at this the Lagrange point 2 "Gallilio 5" space observatory is becoming rather large in its own right. The idea was to have a future successor to both the Hubble and James Webb observatories combined and expanded giving a very large array to both telescope types in a single manned framework with a roughly 50% increase in ability to each type while I was at it.

Here is a scale drawing of the "Gallilio 5" array:

Image

The light gray area shows the optical array with 50% greater light gathering power than that of the Hubble (HST). The darker yellow shows the infrared array with 47% greater ability than the James Webb (JWST). The light yellow is for specialty instruments of some kind (no idea what those might be)...

The "sun shield" is much larger going from the size of a 737 jetliner to a 100m luxury yacht (comparatively speaking).

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3/8/2012, 6:51 am Link to this post Email Pastor Rick   PM Pastor Rick Blog
 
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Shepherd

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Re: How to start?


Thinking of how some kind of large scale array a bit like that in the future might be used to observe the star system the probe gets in? If so that's certain;y an option, though I imagine they'll be using Interferometry even more so. To give a short summary of the idea if you haven't heard of it, instead of making one giant telescope to get really high resolution, you instead simulate it with multiple telescopes spaced apart from each other; big advantage, resolution of a ridiculously large telescope; drawbacks, you don't have the equivalent light collecting ability of that telescope and you have to be able to precisely maintain/calculate the differences the distances will make in the light so you can recombine it properly to get the end image.


On the drive system, while drifting away on the solar wind like that sounds clever,, your destination is beyond the area of the Solar Wind and in the Interstellar Medium, so no matter how good you make it you can not probably use it to stop very quickly out there. As such if the probe is running on nuclear power, you can use a plasma/ion drive for instance to decelerate at the destination. Considering even current such drives you can probably get a total amount of speed change (Delta-V) in the range of 500-1000 kilometers a second if your powersource and fuel supplies are adequate. That amount. (This means you can change your speed any way for a total of 1000 km/s and then you are out of fuel, so for instance you can accelerate to 500 km/s and then at destination decelerate again)
Drawback is that these drives don't accelerate very quickly, so even with a very power dense nuclear power source you could be busy for quite some years to change your speed. Advantage of course is that you get a lot of speed.

Alternately one could look in to a pulsed fusion drive approach, these theoretically have even more speed ability and far higher acceleration rates, but are at current beyond our ability, but they could be very achievable in a few decades time.
3/8/2012, 12:31 pm Link to this post Email QS2   PM QS2
 
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The Reeve

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Re: How to start?


quote:

QS2 wrote:

Thinking of how some kind of large scale array a bit like that in the future might be used to observe the star system the probe gets in?

Partly that for sure. The observatory has the optical array because of the societies "show me something" mentality. Space agencies of the future will finally come to realize that a huge part of public support involves the ability to show what is happening and what is being done in a dramatic fashion. The pictures are what propelled the Apollo missions support to almost legendary status while the sparsity of dramatic pictures relegated the Shuttle missions to relative obscurity over time.



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3/8/2012, 4:28 pm Link to this post Email Pastor Rick   PM Pastor Rick Blog
 
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The Reeve

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Re: How to start?


Well now... Having read several dozen papers on the M2P2 drive it looks like an excellent choice for a near future sf story and fits almost perfectly with the story timeline requirements as far as capabilities are concerned. The main problem is being able to decelerate and maneuver around the edges of the heliosphere or termination shock boundary of the solar system. While not a problem for early interstellar probes that don't want to slow down this does put a kink in my story from a technological view if I want to keep it a mostly "hard science fiction" story... So I went looking for something that could be a logical tie in and discovered magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters (see here). Now since the M2P2 drive uses a magnetospheric plasma field and the MPD drive also uses those components/forces but in a different way My sf spaceship can combine the two drives to achieve what I want to do and even look "reasonable" to the real science types... (I hope)...

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3/9/2012, 6:11 am Link to this post Email Pastor Rick   PM Pastor Rick Blog
 
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Shepherd

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Re: How to start?


So far I know there is no way that would work, or atleast the total level of integration beyond the power source itself will probably be not all that high. But these propulsion systems aren't all 'that' heavy compared to the total mission mass. Fuel loads tend to be the most significant weight component for high speed travel for instance. Also to see an already existent practical magnetic plasma drive, see for instance VASIMR. And of course that's just the current stats, one imagines in the future they'll find ways to improve the performance further yet.


Still these are not the largest constraint to your system, instead your true constraint is your power source. So much so even, that choosing a high density power source actually makes it possible to use even your proposed drive systems magnitudes more effectively. To give a specific example, VASIMR gains a lot of acceleration if you give it tens or even hundreds of megawatts to work with in a compact package, rather then some hundreds of kilowatts.
Also with that much energy it also becomes feasibly useful to increase the total speed beyond current designs, though at the price of some reduction in the acceleration. So if you have a lot of energy you could have a VASIMR2 engine for instance that focusses on being able to reach higher speeds like that. (Or decelerate from higher speeds)

It's also relevant to how powerful a magnetic fields you can form for your magnetic sail, more power means you could drive more powerful magnets to higher levels, thus catching more solar wind and thus reaching higher speeds. Though you'll probably max out at a few hundred km/s, as the solar wind only reaches 400-600 km/s I believe.



Thus for instance you might be able to get up to 100-300 km/s on the way out of the solar system with your magnetic sail, add some more speed yet from a high efficiency plasma drive, say for instance topping it up around 400-600 km/s. (taking a few years) And then once you start nearing your destination start decelerating back down to zero over a few years. Total flight time is probably a few decades, but that's acceptable as long as it isn't much more then say 30 years total. Some space probes already have flight times not much shorter then that already anyway.
I'm not quite sure how far you'd have travelled in that time, but if one assumed the flight speed was 500 km/s constant for 30 years you'd travel about 3000 AU (If I didn't make a mistake in my calculation); this seems more then enough even way more then totally necessary for your goals. So it seems possible to assume some what lower speeds and thus less advanced technologies to achieve your goals.
3/9/2012, 12:28 pm Link to this post Email QS2   PM QS2
 
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The Reeve

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Re: How to start?


The system parameters for my story at the beginning have the manned ship going only 100-150 AU. The ships systems are designed to achieve a 450-500 AU operating range with life support for 5 years.

I am finding all kinds of things that look like they are related. The need for power is huge to get the kind of performance envisioned for my story. I am thinking of a closed system nuclear activated MHD power source for both the probe and the manned space ship similar to what is described by the "New Era Technology" paper. The system described in the paper yields a usable power output of 51 megawatts. If the probe used one of these then perhaps the manned spaceship would use either larger or multiple reactors to get the power needed for the mission. Actually, since it is a story I think I'll go with 3 Nuclear MHD reactors and each one of them capable of 100 MW power output.

I think having the ships minimum power requirements set somewhere around 100 MW and having "normal" power requirements set at 200 MW gives the ship a back-up/emergency reactor which is good yes?

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Knight of Honor

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Re: How to start?


Hi Rick,

I just read this and want to verify what QS said. You're definitely going to need a VASIMR-type engine (or something like it), rather than relying on magnetic/electrical propulsion. Keep in mind that the heliosheath is around 80-100AU out. (The two Voyagers are there now, so we know that, not just suspect it.) At this point, propulsion from the sun will drop off precipitously, and also become a lot more turbulent -- Voyager 1 ended up pushed SIDEWAYS to the sun, rather than out from it, at one point! And beyond the heliosheath, at some not-well-known distance, is the heliopause, where the extra-solar magnetic/electric impact is as big or bigger than the sun's impact. So while you could start out with a magnetic drive, once you got out part way, you'd definitely need something else, something self-contained. emoticon

I don't have a good feel for the exact amount of power in MW you'd need for the types of things you're talking about. The good news is, the exact numbers aren't that important! That's because if you're talking about some time in the future, no reader will question the idea that nuclear power setups will be more efficient and/or larger than what we have now. So if you say you have three of them (an excellent choice for redundancy, which will still be relevant), you can pretty much get away with claiming that they'll power any reasonable instrument array. So as long as you don't tell the gory detail in your story, you'll be good with it, I'd say.

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3/9/2012, 3:27 pm Link to this post Email Reythia   PM Reythia AIM MSN
 
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Re: How to start?


I'd like to make a minor addition, considering the manned mission needs to get places so fast so quickly, but luckily is also launched decades later. I would propose it wouldn't use the same drive system as the probe.

I can think of two reasons why the manned system wouldn't want to use such a system,
1. The acceleration rates are kind of poor, thus flight time is long.
2. Total possibile speed while not all to bad, could be better to reduce flight time.


There is an idea already that seems feasible in the future that can counter both these issues on a platform large enough for deep space manned missions. Namely a nuclear pulse drive, which can reach very high accelerations, in some cases in fact as high or higher then 1 gravity. (10 m/s^2)

The basic drive setup would be based on current fusion research in Inertial Confinement Fusion, where you forinstance focus a set of high power lasers on a pellet and ignite it in to a fusion fireball with in a reaction chamber. This fireball will then push your spacecraft forward, a little bit like a normal rocket, but incredibly more efficient.
Setups for such systems will most likely be sizable, but if you're going to be sending a long term manned mission anyway, which will need to be quite large... well it's within the realm of feasible, especially as you do not need to achieve commercially viable levels of fusion to make a good rocket engine. This means the spacecraft can have a considerably smaller setup then what a commercial power plant would need. Though progress in laser technology over time will probably lead to miniaturisation of the technology as well.



What this all comes down to is that a spacecraft like that would probably have your three redundant powerplants, and they'd be used to drive the lasers which will then burn fusion pellets with massive energy gain and thus very high acceleration. The outcome is that you could cross several hundred AU within a year or two then, which seems to be your goal here. The other advantage is of course that this gives you a bit of play room for how far away you want the object to be exactly, but you seem to have set it at 150 AU?



(Some more information on Nuclear Pulse Propulsion can be found at this wiki page)
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Re: How to start?


quote:

QS2 wrote:

I'd like to make a minor addition, considering the manned mission needs to get places so fast so quickly, but luckily is also launched decades later. I would propose it wouldn't use the same drive system as the probe.

I can think of two reasons why the manned system wouldn't want to use such a system,
1. The acceleration rates are kind of poor, thus flight time is long.
2. Total possibile speed while not all to bad, could be better to reduce flight time.


There is an idea already that seems feasible in the future that can counter both these issues on a platform large enough for deep space manned missions. Namely a nuclear pulse drive,...
...(Some more information on Nuclear Pulse Propulsion can be found at this wiki page)

I looked at the link you gave and one that really appealed to me was the Medusa concept but with a slight twist. In my story I am thinking that instead of the solid sail used in the Medusa proposal (detailed in this paper) the sail will be the same type used for the probe (a M2P2 sail with a stronger field strength). This allows the m2p2 field to (a) act as a shield against radiation by "sheathing" the space ship and (b) act as the "pusher plate" as it captures the force of the nuclear explosions. This postulates the continued development of the m2p2 sail to a point where its shape can be controlled allowing it to flex under the force of the explosions to provide the "tethering" effect that Johndale C. Solem describes without having the attendant worries of the tethers being damaged. Oh my, a totally new propulsion idea based on current theories and ideas! It really is "Science-Fiction" now. emoticon


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Lady of the Land

Registered: 05-2003
Location: Germany
Posts: 6984
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Re: How to start?


quote:

Pastor Rick wrote:
 Oh my, a totally new propulsion idea based on current theories and ideas! It really is "Science-Fiction" now. emoticon



I have believed for years that close interaction between scientists and SF writers could inspire both great stories and great science. emoticon

  emoticon emoticon emoticon

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Shepherd

Registered: 03-2006
Posts: 2138
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Re: How to start?


An interesting concept, though you'd probably still need some neutron shielding for the crew themselves. I suppose you could put the fuel and everything between them and the explosion position to help in that, this also reduces the amount of radiation protection one needs out of the sail as well.


Still no idea how big exactly this mission craft will be though, what kind of weight are you thinking about, 1000 tons or so perhaps? More, less? It's mostly really a case of how large a spacecraft do you want to have, it's probably possible to design something so long as you don't go to low. (Or to high, considering the construction expenses then)


In any case, I hope this resovles most of your science issues. emoticon




Oh yeah... you should also consider a reason why the probe would want to match speed in another solar system, or arrived there with matched speed. Else with the velocities used it, as I believe you noted yourself, will flash out of the system at rapid rates. Or did it actually do exactly that and it's far away from the star now and of no use itself anymore? (And thus a reason for a follow-up mission?)
3/10/2012, 7:15 pm Link to this post Email QS2   PM QS2
 


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