a ha, yes i'd have to agree.

a rotating ring section would cause the other sections of the ship to rotate in the opposite direction. it's the same reason helecopters have tails: without them, the cockpick would spin wildly in the direction opposite the main propeller.

this could be offset in a ship like this by having rings occur in pairs that rotated in opposite directions. it also goes to the initial question i had when i first started this forum:

since the gases captured in a magnetic scoop take on a double-helictical motion, could that motion be harnessed to help rotate the ship (maybe not as much as the crew would like, but if nothing else as an efficiency mechanism)?



i had more in mind construction yards build right into the mother ship: build everything you need upon arrival. but i supposed having a few construction ships docked could work just as well as would having a staggered fleet follow the 'mother ship.'

but i still think one single self-contained ship would be the best option, boiling down to economic reasons. what i picture is a staging ground. the ship builds the infrastructured needed to build more complicated infrastructure, which is in turn needed to build yet more complicated infrasturcture. the facilities on board the ship itself would be very highly specialized, and after a point in development in a new colony, it wouldn't contribute very much to the overall industry.

what purpose does it serve then? in Sol, it was constructed (in my mind) to ease population density, but that wouldn't be a problem in a relatively new colony, and it'd take thousands of years for the population of the new system to present the same pressures. my proposition is that the ship then serves as a societal pressure valve.

several generations aftr its foundation, our colony will start looking less like a colony on the imperial model and more like a society in its own right. market capitalism will replace survival-driven egalitarianism; scientific instrumentalism will replace the kind of maverick discoveries made in and made possible by life in an uncharted space wilderness; people will think less about the needs of the group and more about what needs to be done with the group; and in general there will be a higher level of malaise. at least, that's how i see it.

but if technology permits suspended animation and highly prolonged life, such malcontents (like me) could sign a contract with the human colony corperation, enter SA and wait to be reawakened when the ship finds itself in need of new colonists. the colony would turn to a pressure valve, giving the adventure-seekers and egalitarian idealists a place to go until their personality traits can be put to better use. this also serves to populate the ship with new colonists slowly and over the course of many generations, rather than presenting a sudden and potentially massive population drain. the only real fuel the ship would need would be a supply of small, fissable pellets - the 'fuses' lit by anitmatter (generated on the fly) that ignite fusion reactions for the ship's drive and power supply. read up on antimatter-catalyzed fusion for more details on that.

but anyway the point is, such a model of colonization offers a number of sociological advantages to an early sister civilization - and presents very few qualms in the way of resource drains. what do you think?

also - woo! 200 replies. this is a good thread!

here is something to think about. once you get to this point where you have one or more off planet colonies. there will be no more cash. everything will be credits. via the computer or a credit card. so as far as the money getting from star a to home no problem only 5 years waiting will take care of that. that is the first transmission after that it will be coming in all the time.

Interesting idea, but I see one small problem. What about the "undesirables"? Austrialia and Georgia were both used as dumping grounds for criminals. And while they technically aren't criminals, there are numerous malcontent elements in our culture whose ideologies are often at odds with eachother (Racist groups, separatists, etc). While we really haven't talked about how many people would be in a colony initially to any great extent, I think we can all agree that every person counts in the initial phases of a new colony. If significant populations of the colony are aligned to a certian ideology that essentially tells them that the other half of the colony is inferior (say a colony consisting of a large percentage of a minority group and a large percentage of a supremicist group), you'd have fighting and violence from the get go, espeically if conditions are harsh.

I think, that colonists would have to be screened, so that certian groups that are ideologically opposed to eachother don't end up on the same colony. Also, it would be prudent for security reasons. You don't want someoen who serially violent (murder, assualt, rape) or a person looking to go so they can sabotage the colony (enemy nation perhaps? I think in the end, almost anyone who wants to go, will be able to, but I would be willing to bet, the assembly of colonists for anygiven colony would be closely monitored and controlled to make sure the colony is diverse enough, but not to the point of infighting.

i don't think commerce will be possible between star systems. money still theoretically represents material wealth - even if those materials only contain information or productive power, rather than inherent value in the material. the only things that could be sold between star systems would be information, and who on earth would care if you said but "the bank of alpha centauri just transferred 5 million dollers to me!" since humans on earth can't make use of any of the resources represented by alpha-centurian money, it will have absolutely no value on earth. the only trade i can imagine is a kind of technology/knowledge bartering system (i'll tell you X if you tell me Y), but even there i think it'd be sketchy; the idea of a contract loses most of its cohesiveness when distance and cost prevent you from collecting/enforcing a payment (let alone haggling in real time).

if you think about it this country is cash less.

when you pay your taxes at the end of the year you send a check.

the IRS takes their cut and sends the government a check for the rest.

the government sends out checks for the tax returns.

you deposit said check and go out and celebrate paying for it with a check card.


as for trade goods what ever you make at star a for home will take 50 years to get there or however long the flight is

the only way i could imagine something ever being traded is if it were totally unique and impossible to synthesize; the shipping costs would be astronomically high to send anything between stars.

and putting all that aside, what assurange could there be that you couldn't be scammed? i guess i could see types of trade being possible, but not a unified banking system. ultimately, i think if we can synthesize any element and any molecule, the most important resource will be knowledge, followed by infrastructure, followed by basic materials (and i think almost anything could do, given sufficient technological advancement, but i do think any mineral heavier than iron will ultimately be mined more efficiently than fused; i think fusion of heavier atoms would primarily be carried out in circumstances where they're rare).

maybe trade would be possible after a long enough period of development. but i have to imagine a few additional conditions. if we learn to indefinately delay the effects of aging and death itself, i could see businesses and people having enough patience for interstellar trade at sublight speeds, especially given engine technologies with sufficient efficiency.

there is always raw material. like iron, copper, and other such stuff.

that was part of my point: if fusion technology advances enough, it might actually be more efficient to fuse iron and any lighter atom. fusion of molecules lighter than iron releases energy: the efficincy threshold would be where ever it takes more energy to contain the fusion reaction than it releases. however, it still might be cheaper to make iron by fusion, even if you have to spend energy to make it, because you also have to spend energy to extract iron from natural scources.

how much energy it would take will also determine whether it's cheaper to fuse heavy elements or to mine them. if mining requires costly machines and/or labor (for example if laborers are in short supply, or if machine manufacturing has been focused toward other ends), fusion synthesis might be cheaper in some cases.

i just realized that the first mission out will have to drop signal boosters. otherwise the communication signal will be to weak.

I think you provided for your interstellar economy right here.

Knowledge, information is still valuable. While its true that the colonial economy will be different in terms of how they value thier currency than say an Earth economy, the difference is analogous to different economies of the different countries today. I mean, contires today buy up US debt, invest in forgien local markets, etc. You're not talking a direct exchange of a material goods. Provided that there is some sort of banking infastructure over seeing the "national" economies of the colony and Earth (insuring proper value of currency, conversion rates, intrest etc), it could be very possible.

Why wouldn't investors in Earth invest in Colonial markets and goods? Even if the goods don't come to Earth, there is still a colonial market to make profit in. The investors would still get their return. In addition that could kick start Colonial economies as there is a flow of Cash. The "Galactic Bank" would ensure the Colony the money is legit and holds a comparitive value to thier own currency, so the money would be usable and transferrable. Investments could easily finance the entire colony at first, taking care of the economic burden of building a colony ship and colony.

Alternatively, The colony could sell information to Earth. While today, scientific information is freely exchanged, it might not be that way in the future. A colony could make a large amount of money providing astronomical data to cooperations looking for new colony locations, resources, etc. The largest problem would be the distance - Transmissions can only go so fast and It might be years before a money transfer reaches its destination.

The problem with any interstellar relations is simply the distance. It would take 10 years to transmit any information from colony to planet, and 10 years to return if any, so direct relations are out of the question. The only feasible way I imagine it would work is that before the colony ship was even sent, a company would be formed around it ("Galactic Imports", or whatever you like), and various interested parties would sponsor the colony (their money would build the ships, recruit colonists, everything). Essentially this would work like investing in Galactic Imports stock. The colonists would be told that they owe X trillion dollars worth of products back to Earth, and after that debt was paid they could produce for themselves. Several decades, possibly centuries later when the colony was well established and able to return products, Galactic Imports would have a monopoly over these products, and the stockholders would take their cut of the fruits of this monopoly.

Now, in this futuristic time, there would really only be two things that could feasibly be transferred, which we have already mentioned: information and productive power, specifically energy, most likely in the form of fuels. So Galactic Imports would own the intellectual property rights to whatever information that is conveyed (with stockholders getting their share of those profits), and then sell the fuels.

There are, however, a few problems with this system. The difference of time between initial investment and any return would likely span centuries, so who is going to want to invest if there is no return in their lifetime? Plus, the colony might not feel so happy about sending all their wealth back to Earth; they might revolt, and there would be little that could be done about it because any warships would take a decade to get there, at which point the defenses would be made (America, anyone?).

Also, the products. What information could possibly be found on another world that is of value to people on Earth? The only thing that I can think of that would be extremely valuable is alien technology, of any kind. So there's one option. But aside from a lucky break like an alien spaceship buried in the sand, what else is there? There are certainly people who would be interested in astronomical or geological data, but that would be limited to a few scientists. Hardly the average consumer, so there's nothing that can really be considered valuable there. Plus, consider that since the colony would be started on a roughly Earth-like planet, there isn't all that much that we wouldn't already have on Earth. The exception to this would be genetic information from alien species of plants and animals. This would likely be the primary source of income as far as information is concerned. We could create these organisms from the DNA, and then turn them over to farmers to raise as exotic food sources; we could also make zoological exhibitions. As for fuels, the energy available in the fuel would have to be greater than the energy it takes to ship the fuels back to Earth, so we're looking at some high-end fusion materials. Perhaps rare isotopes of Lithium or Beryllium that released large amounts of energy (larger than common Earth isotopes) would be worth it; besides being very high in energy these are solid materials, so they are easily contained and transported. But these isotopes aren't called "rare" for nothing, the chances of finding significant amounts on other worlds isn't all that plausible. But hey, this is sci-fi, you can make a planet with a crust of Beryllium that has super cows that feed a million people and huge alien war machines strewn about.

I do have to agree that the major killer of all our economy, information, contact ideas is the time/distance problem.

Like millertime pointed out, that is a mjor problem. When it take 20 years to receive word that your money transfer was received, well 20 years is a long time to wait for anything. Especially when you consider that major investment reurns might take many years, or centuries to materialize, who would want to invest in something that has no garunteed returns for 100 years. Maybe parents wanting to benifit thier granchildren when they (the grandchildren) retire? I think major investments like that might be limited to governments (who are in things for the longer hual) and some copereations (but current investors want to see gains - so this might be limited).

Since we're talking about scfi - what are the chances of faster than light communications? Does anyone know if this has any grounding in science (I know squat about physics, as you all know )? I mean that is really the only hope for a galatic economy/communication is if we can shorten the time to send transmissions from say ten years, to a couple of weeks, maybe a month or so.

There's always the possibility of FTL communications; the Alcubierre drive is an example of how we could move entire ships, let alone a string of photons FTL, but this requires the use of theoretical "negative energy", which would require ridiculous sums of normal energy (like millions of stars working together, that kind of energy) to harness, even given the technology to do it. However, we are simply nowhere near any sort of breakthrough in anything FTL. I thought quantum entanglement would do the trick, but experiments have shown that it does not allow information to travel FTL.

Which is too bad, cause FTL communications would solve a lot of problems. Probably why most sci-fi books include something that is capable of it.

actually it's not. scientific information costs money; most discoveries are printed in journals (forming a major part of most scientists' curricula vitae), but subscriptions to those journals aren't cheap. it's just that working scientists are typically well-funded enough to stay in their respective loops.



that's my point exactly. under our current monetary system, monetary units have not standarized or concrete value. they aren't inherently tied to a commidity (as was the case under the gold standard), or to a service or obligation of a service. monetary value nowadays is established partly by policy and partly by perception. in other words, money only has value in our society because every agrees that it has value.

what sort of perceptions would Sol-based moguls have of an economy separated by years? but beyond that, how would they be able to assist or fund a new colony? if the alpha centauri colonial government determines it needs to build a new habitation dome and determines it'll cost $84.5 billion (the dollar sign is an arbitrary symbol here), they send a message back to Earth. 4.6 years later, investors on Earth arrange a contract and send it off to their Alpha Centauri branch with a provisional transfer of funds. another 4.6 years later, when the approval's come through (and you thought mortgages take a long time), costs of labor and materials have changed, and now it's gonna cost $92.7 billion.

establishing exchange rates and fixing currencies has been a challenge to global economists for a long time, and there have been several systems. the funny thing about economists is that they're half creators and half describers. as an academic discipline, economics seeks to describe and predict the behavior of the market (and all the exchanges of goods, money, services and information therein). not all economists agree on why things work the way they do. economists are also sought as experts for businesses and governments, and as such they help establish policies that further affect the market. because their views can differ, their policies can differ, further facilitating the unpredictablility to market behavior.

modern finance and monetary systemization is very complex, and i prefer to think things through simply. monetary exchange can take place in today's world because it's possible to go to another place and spend its money there. i can go to Europe, exchange American dollars for euros, and spend them there. the only reason i'd want to buy Alpha Centuri units would be if i wanted to spend them there. and the only way i could buy them would be either with Sol units sold to someone who wants to come to Sol and spend them, or with some commodity, service or knowledge.

i suppose i can imagine an economy of sorts, though. if representatives were given discretionary power over a pre-set spending amount, or brought it with them electronically, they might be able to carry out many of today's more complex business interactions. keep in mind, modern wall stree style business is very little trading beans for iron ore. it's much more about moving money around, and very quickly at that. but in this case, i think it'd be better to imagine the colony ship itself as a sort of business. especially if we were to envision the Von Neumann style ship, its leadership could be a sort of business executive board. part of why they need so much money is because they don't die. they've paid their way into an expensive interstellar upper class, able to afford costly, regular anti-senescence treatments (sort of like the Son'a in Star Trek: Insurrection). they also have a cosmopolitan culture, trading music and art and cultural products amongst themselves with equal, or even greater, value than technological knowledge.

these people left Sol because of the exorbitant taxes on anti-senescence treatments (remember Sol's overpopulation woes?), but they don't exactly wish to settle down in some backwater colony where they'll be tied up with the struggles of fronteir life. ideally they'd like to occupy some role in civilization that allows them to pat themselves on the back while still allowing them to enjoy only the best of what human productivity has to offer. so they build their colony ships. these ships are giant contracts, in their minds. they offer billions of people the opportunity for a new and better life in another star system, and in return these people are indebted to them in ways that allow them to support their lifestyles (contractual obligations to provide certain necessary material resources, services and cultural products). that obviously leaves a lot of detail to be filled in, but does that picture make some sense?

(bear in mind, i'm thinking like a writer here).



the most common term in SciFi for such devices AFAIK is 'ansible' (coined by Ursula Le Guin and most commonly recognized from Ender's Game). the only identified methods to communicate FTL are the same ones that'd make it possible for large objects to travel FTL: warp bubbles and wormholes. when you say that these rely on 'negative energy' what it really means is that it relies on exotic matter, since energy and matter are one in the same. such exotic matter might be repelled by gravity or have negative or even imaginary mass (at least when described by current mathematics). freaky, huh? my layperson's intuition tells me that if such matter exists, it doesn't exist in our 3+1 dimensions.

also, if Alcubierre bubbles tickle your fancy, you might want to check out Krasnikov tubes.

Ooooooohhhhh that's cool. That would actually put some literal meaning to the term "hyperlane", like in Star Wars.

just noticed this one:



neither project orion, nor project deadalus, nor project longshot have described this as a need. bear in mind that we can record even very weak signals if we know exactly where we need to look for them; alo remember that in the story at least i'm allowing several hundred years for telescope technology to advance (and a telescope is different from a radio receiver only by a matter of degree and intent). finally, who said anything about sending a weak signal?

radio broadcast stations on earth use trasmitters typically operating about 100-200 kilowatts, but 100-500 megawatt lasers are common in lab settings. the recently deconstructed Nova laser in N. CA operated at about 120 terawatts.

further, radio waves on earth are 'weak' because we have a thick atmosphere and because they still use analog signals. while digital signals can also be corrupted, it's much easier to reconstruct a binary transmission than an analog one, especially if the transmission is sent repeatedly.

and:



i was also thinking about jump gates from Babylon 5 and the transportation system from Cowboy Bebop   

before you jump into hyper space you have to find out if it is there.

Very true - Nature for example is almost 200 USD a year. Here in america, Most Research scientists are sponsered by universities, allowing them to pool resources and afford expensive equipment/ subscribtions. However there are also many legit, smaller journals that are totally free for subscribers.

In addition, with the internet, a lot of the information no longer comes from printed journals. When I worked in the lab, I had to desgin primers (strings of Custom DNA). All my research (looking up Genomic codes of organisms, etc) and design (designing the primer and calculating its properties) was done Online - for free. You can find Genomic and other data in databases in the internet, that charge no fees and are full fledged scientific sites run by research projects.

While it can be advantageous to have a subscribtion to Nature or Biology, Usually individual scientists won't subscribe (Its too big and generic in coverage to be of use to one scientists). The university will buy a subscribtion and make it available via the library. Some scientists will subscribe to smaller publications, which are pretty schep, if not free, but a lot of info come from the internet, especially for day to day operations


Also, In regards to the economy, I think we are kinda arguing along similar lines. I certianly agree that the Colony as a whole has to have some form of net profit. As you pointed out, the money to finance the colony has to have come from somewhere (investors, whatever) and would need to be repaid. Also, as you pointed out, the peolpe left Earth looking for a beter life, wanting luxuries, the abilty to sit back, etc. I think you would have to have a local colonial economy too. If the colony is totally geared toward a business (producing product/service X for a terran investor or Giant corp), I think you'd end up with poor, bitter populace as the fruits of thier labor are sent to someone else who gets the profit. You'd only end up with luxurious lifestyles if the colony prospers internally with an internal self sustaining economy that is able to export to Earth and generate growth as a whole (allowing it to repay its debts)

The whole FTL is still a real snag, though. What if the colony were not out of the soloar system but A solar planet or moon?

edit - just rd the last few posts - The whole jump gate things would be cool, You'd still have to place a gate on the other side right?

I've recently been looking into theoretical drive systems for the Stargate TC Mod (I wanted to add some sublight systems before Warp and Hyperdrive), and I think that the bussard ramjet is unfeasibly large. It just doesn't seem practical, and far from economical.

Perhaps something like a Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster would do the trick? Of course we would have to develop that H-3 fueled Fussion reactor everyone wants so bad

<-- EDIT -->

It seems several posts were made while I was making mine!

As to an interplanetary Economy, I have no idea how that would work. Some kind of near light communication would be necessary. At the interstellar level it would have to be FTL communication, as stated earlier Perhaps Hyper/Subspace communication? We know there are other universes, the trick isn't knowing its there, its knowing how to get there.

The idea is that one of the other dimensions/universes/levels of reality would have a higher speed of light, thus matter/energy could travel faster than light does in our space. Or even better, the laws of physics themselves could be different, or the point of origin and the destination are either very close (relatively) or the same. At any rate, its about getting there, and figuring out if one of the other dimensions/universes/levels of reality are up to the job

whoa okay here goes...



sort of, except rather than the colony sending stuff back to earth, where the financiers enjoy them, the financiers come with the colony. in this way, nothing need be sent back to earth. i'm imagining privately funded colonies with little or no government funding.

i think the discussion has turned towards a focus on what it'd take for an interstellar empire to form. i've got no objection to this at all, but it's getting away from what i envision in my writing. i was originally attracted to the idea of hard science fiction as a means to facilitate 'islands of humanity' that'd diverge is lots of different ways.

i'm definately committed to the idea of realism in this story, as much as realism can occur in a work of total fiction. in that sense, i just don't see an interstellar empire being feasible without FTL, and i don't see FTL being realistic within the realm of hard sci fi.



the big tension in proposed forms of propultion is max thrust vs. specific impulse (raw power vs. fuel efficiency), high thrust and great impulse being the dream. MPDTs have great impulse but don't generate that much thrust.

what i was describing earlier is one part bussard ramjet and one part fusion bomb rocket. i agree that bussard ramjets are huge and wouldn't make for a good warship, but like i've said i'm imagining really, really huge colony ships, so that's not a limiting factor. and i'm also imagining slightly eccentric rich moguls will be the primary funds behind this thing (or these things). governments would have little to gain, and businesses that planned to stay on earth would face equal should-shrugging indifference. but an adventurous and slighly crazy bazillionaire (sort of like Howard Hughs, only not quite that crazy) might just do it. in fact, they might even view themselves and creating a sovereign nation (knowing that no government in Sol would allow an upstart like that to form unless they were getting something in return - "sure! we'll take that extra billion people off your hands and send them off to some other star system, no problem").

of course, that's just the vision i have for my story. i think in reality no one can really predict the future with any precision. past thinkers envisioned lots of stuff we have today; they also envisioned lots of stuff we don't have, wouldn't need, or have already done better. i think if you actually took a survey of all the predictions of the future, be it events or technologies, you'd find that most were either completely off or too vague to mean anything.

however, as far as the course of the conversation is concerned, i'm happy to continue discussing interstellar empires. i still think trade in raw materials wouldn't be realistic without some kind of FTL travel (at least as far as i'm concerned, FTL travel and FTL communication are physically the same basic thing; the only differences is in cost and needing to keep humans alive in some purposes of FTL travel).

perhaps an empire that worked more like a plague of locusts would be more realistic, slowly moving from system to system and using up all the available resources before moving on.

Why settle for near-light communication when we can achieve light speed communications already? Perhaps you didn't quite think that through...

I was thinking, what if the same techniques that were proposed for warping space were modified so that we could project small, variable warp rifts through space and communicate via "warp patterns"?

Or, another alternative is to send "space letters", essentially small capsules carrying a miniature hard drive (only needing a few GB) and capable of warp travel. I haven't looked at the math myself, but generally it requires less energy to move less stuff, so this seems more feasible than sending large ships through warped space.

we are looking at this wrong


earth isn't going to make money off of an interstellar colony at least not until we get ftl travel. with the exception of the exploration team ie the first colony ship.


the colony on the other hand will make money shipping raw material and unique items like food back to earth. hopefully not destroying the local fona at the same time there or here.


and any ships not used to build the colony will be used as cargo ships for the return trip

that might actually make more sense for Alcubierre bubbles because an object inside the bubble would be unable to control the bubble, but passing through the bubble would utterly destroy almost any object. an external start/stop mechanism would be needed.

of course, this supposes we can actually create such bubbles.



how's that work exactly? the part about the first colony ship making money for Earth, that is.

it won't directly it will just set up the colony for the rest of the colonist to come later.


assuming

1 that time for travel to alpha is 50 years.

2 that there is a place to colonize when they get there.

the second set of ships. the real colonists will arrive 55 years after they get there.

of course the first ship will need a way to refuel in case it doesn't find anything usable. even if you send out a probe first there is still going to be a need for the exploring ship first just in case there is something that the AI didn't understand or see.

ah, i see, thanks danielost.

you know, i've been adamant that interstellar trade wouldn't be feasible for economic reasons. but at one point (ha, i almost typed 'pint' - no, i'm not drinking tonight). anyway, at one point overnight shipping to another continent wasn't feasible. it was possible, but no company could get enough business to make it profitable.

economies adjust, and who knows, given the right technology i'm sure interstellar shipping could be affordable enough to trump synthesizing raw elements via fusion.

but my inclination is that raw materials will always be cheaper to make or mine locally. in one of his books, Arthur C. Clarke points out that we could always extract dissolved minerals from seawater. i mean, we've got a whole solar system here and thousands of years to develop various technologies - it seems like using what we have locally will always be a better option.

however, historically speaking our most important resources have always been organic. pack animals, plant fibres and dyes, foodstuffs, exotic novelties. i could further imagine that many of the colonies would bring earth life with them, hoping they'll eventually be able to terraform (or, less likely, find) a place where it could thrive. but i think most of the time, colonists would genetically modify their specimens hoping to improve survivability on an alien world. who knows what kinds of enzymes such life forms might eventaully be able to produce.

however, given such levels of technology, it seems to me it'd be much cheaper to send a gene code and the relevant data about environment to allow other people to recreate the life forms and harvest the enzymes on their own. however, people are often greedy. i could see that kind of information being guarded as a means to create a never-ending source of income. i mean, you send off this valuable thing your colony has discovered/created, and what do you get in return? option number two: send off a few tons of the enzyme that makes the life form so important, bring back a few tons of gold, lather rinse repeat.

and there's always the products of culture to exchange. i wouldn't underestimate them, either: it was consumer capitalism that brought us out of the great depression (IMHO, at least).