I am a huge star wars fan. I know the lore as good as gaunathor knows galcivs. (I have learning to do still) I read the wookiepedia and there is no mention of a containment field of any kind in the description or similar parts. I think that light sabers are impossible in the current design. But its ok it's just 'fantasy'.

DARCA

There talking about star wars light sabers. My qustestion on this is how do they stop.

Getting back to the oxygen. When I did a report on europa I studied this. I asked a question what in sugar gives us energy. Sugar is not enough of answer. He steps off the ship and see sugars and carbohydrates everywhere. One of the requirements in astro biology is an ergy source, but that is not enough some reason. I didn't understand is why does light need carbon dioxide, or why does plants need oxygen when being consumed by animals? Apparently hydroclourick acid is not enough all that does is break down food, but does not release energy. Inside the cell Atp is broken down to phosphorus. Phosphorus is reactive to oxygen. Yes I'm suggesting that we are powered by microscopic explosions. Yes I'm suggesting that we take Atp, and break it down into phosphorus. Only to explode it with oxygen. and then converts it back into Atp. There are probably fewer Atp's this way. This happens on a cellular level. This is why sugar is not explosive to air.

A requirement is a energy source that has to be reactive to some other substance. Whatever organism this is could realistically turn this into something else then it would need to break this down back into its original for to mix it with a reactive substance on a cellular level.

As far as I find is that the definition of a cell is a living molecule. If some one has a better scientific contrast between all molecule and cells. Some molecules are bigger than some cells, so size doesn't work. There are a lot of molecules that are made up of other molecules.

And here Star Trek is again talking out of it's rear end, as calling plasma gas is about as correct as calling gas another form of liquid.

Its no less true of Oxygen than it is for Helium or Hydrogen.

"The weapons consisted of a blade of pure plasma emitted from a hilt and suspended in a force containment field."

I didn't see a containment field or anything similar in the parts description. As previously stated.

DARCA

Question does anyone know how to shape a force field.

Well, could you first tell how to make a force field? Would make it easier to explain how to shape it.

A force field is a region of space in which an object will experience an applied force, the magnitude and direction of which can be determined from field properties (this is not to say that the only force experienced by the object while within the field will be that due to the field) and certain characteristics of the object. The gravitational field of a mass is a force field. Electric and magnetic fields are force fields. Fluid pressure can be viewed as a force field.

All of the examples that I listed can be shaped, to one degree or another. Gravitational fields can be shaped by changing the distribution of mass in the object or objects creating the field and changing the shape of the mass distribution. Electric and magnetic fields can be shaped by changing the charge or current distribution that creates the field, by changing the shape of the path taken by the current which creates the field, or by changing the shape of the charge distribution. Fluid pressure fields can be shaped by playing with densities, temperatures, and velocities of the fluid in a given region, which will in turn have an effect on the pressure distribution throughout the fluid.

Also, why exactly are we talking about lightsabers and shaping force fields, anyways?

Regarding the power station around a gas giant to make use of the radiation coming off of it: this is rather pointless when there's a significantly better source of radiation which most likely can be made use of at a point more conveniently located close to an inhabitable world, don't you think? If I'm looking to create a power station which works off of absorbing incident radiation, the first place I'm going to turn to is the local star, not the local gas giant. Another thing is that if you're going to use a space station as a power plant, you really need to think about how you're going to get that power from the space station to the point of use. There'd better be a very good economical reason for me to build a power plant around Jupiter if the point of use is on Earth, and it's not going to be that Jupiter is somehow a better location for absorbing radiation. It might be a decent place to put a starship fuel manufacturing plant, especially if some significant portion of the material necessary for manufacturing the fuel can be obtained relatively easily from the gas giant's upper atmosphere or its moons, and it might be a safer (or more acceptable to the populace) location for a large-scale antimatter production facility than something closer to home.

Similarly, any mining prospect is going to have to have an explanation for why it's better to mine a gas giant, which is merely the thing with the most significant gravity well and least hospitable environment, aside from the local star, in the system, as opposed to mining the same resource at some place where it's easier to recover the materials from. Upper atmosphere gas extraction isn't too bad; mining the core of the gas giant, though? Whatever you can find there is going to be cheaper to obtain from just about anywhere else, and if it can't be then there's an enormous economic incentive to come up with a decent way to synthesize whatever it is, because a gas giant has deepest gravity well of anything in the system that isn't a bigger gas giant or the local star, which means it has a higher escape velocity, which means it requires more energy to get things out of it. Beyond that, its interior is an extremely hostile environment, which means that any equipment designed for use there is going to be more expensive than that used for extraction from asteroids and rocky planets/planetoids/moons, and likely has a greater cost for failures, as damage is likely to be crippling and rapidly lead to the destruction of the equipment.

Regarding the species inhabiting the gas giant: I don't really see a point to this. Something which evolves for life on or within a gas giant is unlikely to need anything that comes from a rocky planet, as most likely there are some asteroids or a small moon somewhere which provide more convenient and cheaper access to whatever materials they need, and rocky worlds aren't going to be classed as inhabitable for them any time soon. Similarly, there are far more convenient sources of anything you can find in a gas giant somewhere else in a Sol-like system for species which evolved on rocky worlds to make use of, and unless GCIII includes something like Cloud City from Star Wars, a gas giant really isn't a viable colonization target, either (its moons might be, but anything which inhabits the gas giant is not going to be competing for habitation space with something colonizing its moons, and may even consider this beneficial, as it would no longer need to concern itself with extracting resources from the inhabited moon, as trading with the new residents would most likely be more convenient). Thus, at least the way I see it, species which inhabit gas giants natively have little reason to compete with species that inhabit rocky worlds; at worst, it'd be who gets to collect taxes on the inhabitants, not who gets to live where.

Well I have three reasons why I would build a Dyson swarm, circle, or sphere around a gas giant instead of a star.

1. Because most of the quotes for the distance around a star is one Au then it requires a lot of building materials for a Dyson sphere around a star is would require less material to go around a gas giant.

2. The reason for this is the energy requirements for space travel which could probably be answered with a lot less materials around a gas giant instead of a star.

3. The third reason is that if you are building a Dyson sphere around a star that solar system might become inhabitable, but if you build a dyson sphere around a gas giant instead that would probably not make the system inhabitable.

I've brought this up before and it was ignored: Where is your reference that gas giants give off useful amounts of energy compared to a star?

The best source I've found lists Jupiter's energy balance at about twice incoming solar radiation - that is, Jupiter gives off roughly twice the energy it receives from the sun, due to fossil heat, radioactive decay, magnetic field interactions, etc. Of that, half is merely releasing the energy it received from the sun in the first place, so if you cut off incoming light (which a sphere would) you'd get about the same energy hitting the outside of the sphere as you would the inside. In total it would be a pretty good amount of energy, but not much more than putting a sphere around Mercury. Hell, if we used Mercury we wouldn't even have to build a sphere, we could just coat the planet in solar panels and call it done.

Isn't this just over thinking things at this stage

I like the idea of launching missiles into it and leaving a fun nuked out crater to live in. Every idea is so logical and requires technology and planning. I want to see a awesome explosion, and at the least make money from it or get a resource that makes invasion transports to build faster. LOL, I'm serious.

But amount of energy put out by star is so massive that even with smaller amount of material you get same energy output. No need to necessarily make it sphere, handful of rings would provide incredible amount of energy already while providing only occasional shadow for planets.

When you start thinking of any kind of Dyson structure, even partial one, your tech level is such that you do not think twice about requirements of travelling inside solar system.

Easily compensated by either making the structure partial, leaving plane on which planets traverse alone, or making the structure further out.

Again, why? If WIllythemailboy's energy balance statement is correct, then a power station around Jupiter is going to need to be roughly 12.5 times larger than one around Earth in order to absorb the same amount of energy, because the intensity of solar radiation at Earth's orbital radius is roughly 25 times greater than that at Jupiter's orbital radius, and this is assuming that all the radiation coming off of Jupiter is in a useful form while none of the radiation coming off of Earth is. So exactly why should I bother building a power station out there, unless the point of use is close by and it's more economical to ship over the shorter distance than from the better location for energy absorption.

Besides this, in order for a Dyson sphere/swarm around Jupiter to absorb anything approaching the amount of energy that a star gives off, Jupiter would have to give off energy approaching the level given off by a star, because the fraction of the shell around the sun that Jupiter takes up is insignificant, and thus the solar flux through that portion of the shell makes up an insignificant fraction of the total solar output.

If you're capable of manufacturing a Dyson sphere/swarm, then you are almost certainly capable of manufacturing life-sustaining environments in regions of that Dyson sphere/swarm, and just by surface area any Dyson sphere/swarm has the potential to hold sufficient inhabitable area to greatly exceed the inhabitable surface area of any realistic inhabitable system. Environmentalist concerns about causing mass extinctions due to an inability to provide a large enough habitat for a sufficiently diverse sample of a large enough fraction of the lost ecosystems to sustain the species found therein are a reasonable argument against making a Dyson sphere/shell around a star. Rendering the system uninhabitable is not.

Any significant fraction of a full shell around a star is going to take massive amounts of materials, regardless of whether you build it at the star's surface or beyond the Oort Cloud. And while a full shell around a planet will require significantly less material, it will still require a significant amount of material - a 1m thick solid shell around Jupiter built at Jupiter's nominal diameter and made out of steel will require roughly 1% of the mass of the Moon in order to build. Relative to what it'd take to build a similar shell around the Sun, this is insignificant. But relative to the scale of what's been done in GCII, it's enormous - the largest mobile structures in GCII are the Terror Stars, which weigh in at ~1.3 million metric tons, or 1.3X10^9 kg, according to the intelligence report screen for the vessel. The shell described above to surround Jupiter is about 1.2X10^20 kg, using the density of steel as 8050 kg/m^3; building this therefore requires at minimum a similar effort to that required to build 92.3 billion Terror Stars. Also note that Terror Stars are similar in scale to other space stations - so while you might want to compare the mass of a fully upgraded military starbase to the mass of the shell, it's not going to change the effort required by any terribly significant amount. Even if there's a factor of 1000 difference, 92 million starbases is still far in excess of anything that any playable faction in GCII has ever demonstrated itself capable of.

Well the reason I what you called ignored your statement is because you brought up that a planet doesn't release light it releases infered  radiation. The reason I didn't answer this is that your technically right in that a planet relwases infared, but infared is light, and that is what made me right actually we were both right on that. Maybe cause I'm not a scientists, but I don't understand why we can't use infared light as energy. So there is my answer if you want to continue the same conversation. 

Actually not necessary useful amounts of energy compared to a star, but how many habitable systems do you want to ruin considering there aren't to many uninhabitable  systems compared to habitable systems on the game. The question I think should be asked if this is more efficient than a normal power plant. Not more efficient than a star unless you don't mind wasting inhabitable planets to build this. This really depends on game play. Now as far as my reference on my ideas where they came from as far as planets giving off energy. That comes from a solar system formation class I took last year.

Good argument except that I probably would rather use this for colonizing the planet instead of using it for energy, but mercury is a class zero planet, so it would be up to the developers to decide which planet is which.

Easily compensated by either making the structure partial, leaving plane on which planets traverse alone, or making the structure further out.[/quote]the game. I would say that if someone is building a Dyson sphere around your sun it would be an act of war!

Hope this reasonably responds to your question that you asked a long time ago. Sorry! Oh I want to leave this with what I'm suggesting is to have both options on

That is why I also mention the Dyson swarm, circle, I usually don't mention the bubble option because I can't fathom it. Spme thing else I can't fathom

 is why it has to be an Au in size.

Did you mean interstellar travel and Hyperspace.

 

Probably, but there is none thing better to do.

1. It doesn't have to be 1 AU in diameter. However, that number is often chosen on the assumption that you might want the inner surface of the shell to be inhabitable. If built around a Sol-like star with the intent of having an Earth-like environment on the inner surface, that means that you want the diameter of the shell to be roughly 1 AU. Incidentally, if you did make a Dyson sphere with an inhabitable inner surface, you'd have more inhabitable area on the interior of the shell than could be had from 500 million Earth-sized planets.

2. A Dyson swarm isn't actually significantly more feasible than a solid-shell Dyson sphere. If you want to absorb 90% of the energy emitted by the star, you still have to cover at least 90% of the surface area of a shell surrounding that star, and so the minimum material requirements before considering the special structural requirements for a solid shell is still going to be similar. Building the swarm is more feasible than building the shell because you don't need to worry about how big you have to make things and how strong the material being used needs to be in order to create a solid shell, but doesn't save you a terribly significant amount of material because if you need 1 solar mass worth of steel just to enclose the star (this is to enclose it without any consideration for the structural requirements of the shell), then you'll still need roughly 1 solar mass worth of steel to create your swarm that covers at least 90% of the shell.

As for why it goes around a star rather than a planet - stars are by far the most significant source of energy in the system, and if the size of the collector is an issue, the cross-sectional area of the collector can be reduced by a factor of 4 every time you halve its distance from the star. Solar radiation intensity at Jupiter's orbit is only 1/25 of what it is at Earth's orbit (roughly), and if Jupiter releases energy at a rate equal to twice the local solar radiation intensity, that's still only 3/25 of the solar radiation intensity at Earth's orbit, which means that you'd need a collector 25/3 times larger when sitting around Jupiter to collect the same amount of energy as a collector sitting around Earth. If you have the resources to do it, then fine, but unless there's some kind of problem preventing you from building the smaller collector (such as the intensity of the radiation being great enough to damage the collector, which, at Earth's orbital radius, is not a problem with present-day technology). Therefore, if you have the resources available to make a collector which can at least partially enclose Jupiter, you will gain a greater benefit by making the same collector somewhere closer to Earth's orbit; placing it around Jupiter, or any other gas giant, is not going to buy you enough additional radiation to make up for the decline in solar radiation intensity.

Additionally, you appear to have missed or ignored the point that I brought up about the effort required to build some kind of enclosure around a gas giant the size of Jupiter; namely, that with a similar level of effort you could have built 92.3 billion Terror Stars. Even if I've overstated the requisite amount of mass by a factor of millions, you're still looking at something far beyond the demonstrated capabilities of any playable faction in GCII, and while I admit that a 1m-thick solid spherical shell made of steel built around Jupiter with a diameter equal to Jupiter's diameter is probably a bit of overkill for a Dyson swarm, I seriously doubt that it's anything at all like millions of times too much mass.

Honestly we are talking about a lot of materials. How much materials is irrelovent because I don't know where to get that much material. Maybe you could use a replicator. I'm not going to spend the time to calculate how much material we need. I'm not sure. Do you think I have any reason to argue with you about  calculations. i know that Jupiter is about 80,000 kilometers in diameter.

My reading of a Dyson swarm in wikipedia was that the swarm was one circular orbit of satalites around the sun. Not a spherical orbit of satalites around the sun. Here we are talking about two different things. My idea is a far cry from 90% of the energy. Is my idea called something else.

I kind of like the idea of satalites around earth, but how can do this idea about absorbing the light released by the planet without absorbing the light from the sun going to earth.

Infrared light is *much* less energetic than visible light, which means it's much more difficult to capture in usable form (with our current knowledge of physics, anyway). Visible light can be harnessed to release electrons from semiconductors (basis of solar panels), but infrared isn't powerful enough to do that. We'd need a whole new type of technology to try to harness it. Look at it this way: which is easier to get usable energy from: a small camp fire or a school bus-sized rock just 10 degrees above room temperature? The rock and the fire have roughly similar total energy, but one can be used to cook your food and the other can't.

Using a single star would be enough to power an entire empire in GalCiv, given that they're running on fusion power plants now. That of course assumes they have a way to get the power from one system to all the other systems that need power. Of course, we're also assuming the technology to get power from a gas giant shell to the habitable planets that need it.

No, as you stated " The reason for this is the energy requirements for space travel".

Society which can build any kind of dyson sphere anywhere in it's solar system is not going to give crap about location as means of travelling inside their solar system are at such point that it is irrelevant.

This has nothing to do with interestellar but within stellar confines. If you can build Dyson sphere, you can go anywhere you please within your solar system without really thinking of it.

 

I agree that at least you would need to invent the tech to harnest infared light, but unless you were going to do this to power a power harness of planets I can't think of why else you need this technology inless your heat sinking.

Here is one idea, I think is best if I describe it as a tech-tree rather than a science theory, sorry for the large wall of text.

Medium planet terraforming for mining: “After understanding the basic of Habitat Improvement we devise a way to terraforming the surface of a medium size category cero planet for mining; small planets are not worth the effort and bigger ones are too dangerous”

Cybernetic miner: “Robotic miners might survive the hazardous environments of planets category cero, this open a new era for spatial mining”
(At this point you can establish up to 2 mines in medium size planets that yield some bc, nothing game-breaking but with enough planets the income will have a nice boost)

Exotic Life studies: “The study of exotic life (extremophiles) can provide some insights for new technologies, for example, some creatures can survive incredible pressures while maintaining an acceptable size”
(Planetary mining 5% ~ 10%)

Large planet terraforming for mining: “Applying what is known from Exotic Life studies to cybernetic miners we improved their survivability in extreme conditions, making possible for them to mine large planets, even some gas planets. Giant planets are out of reach, for now”
(At this point you can establish up to 3 mines in large size planets that yield some bc)

Advance materials + armour/defence theory + Large planet terraforming for mining = Reinforced cybernetic miners: “We found a way to improve our miners, who said that warmongers are just for fights?”
(Planetary mining 5% ~ 10%)

1rst tier of missile defence, laser defence and bullet/gun defence + Reinforced cybernetic miners = Giant planet terraforming for mining: “We found a better use for the basic defence for our warships. Yes, it might be expensive, but the rare materials in giant planets are worth the effort”
(At this point you can establish up to 4 mines in giant size planets that yield some bc)

- at one point one scientist asked, “what we can do with those pesky small planets?”, other answered, “blast them and make them asteroids, easy enough, right?”

I like the idea of having seemingly-unrelated technologies reinforcing each other when adapted to other situations, reminds me of real life. Really good idea.