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Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

projecthyperion.org

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Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#181

Post by WithinReason »

amenhotep wrote: post #104
vl wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drive in this design is not yet invented Helium 3 - Deuterium Direct Fusion Drive. In your design how is it going to catch up to pellets if it's decelerating? I.e. pellets need to be pre-decelerated for this. Which raises the question, would it be cheaper just to bring all deceleration fuel onboard.

You'd spend years firing pellets in advance of the voyage, on the same trajectory but moving a little slower than the ship you plan to launch. Time it all so you catch up with the first of them just as you want to start decelerating.

But then the whole project takes thousands instead of hundreds of years

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#182

Post by Ekaros »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #161
Apocryphon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gravity is one of the four fundamental interactions (albeit the weakest one), perhaps trying to create it artificially is a bit beyond even hypothetical physics. Sounds like the latest suggestion for it is from 2016: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-mathematician-has-proposed-a-... > Now, Füzfa has shown, mathematically speaking, that by stacking large superconducting electromagnets we would be able to produce a very w…

Right, but in a fictional universe we aren't constrained by real world physics. Yet no "hard" takes on artificial gravity come to mind. I assume this is partly because any explanation would be difficult to work into an interesting narrative (unless you consider physics journal articles and mathematical equations interesting) and also because "simulating" the downstream impacts of changes at such a low level of physic…

David Webers Honorverse is mostly build on handwaved artificial gravity and FTL being possible. Largely it is hard take on whole thing. Though I think there is some other stuff as well.

It does do a lot with ship to ship fleet combat and at least some implications how ships work inside the constraints.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#183

Post by darccio »

os2warpman wrote: post #97
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are never leaving this solar system unless we discover some new physics to get around our speed limitations The winning proposal coasts at 0.01c. Propulsion systems--not the speed of light--and thus engineering, not phsyics, are the relevant limitors.

If you can build and maintain a system capable of sustaining the lives of 1,000 humans for 400 years, why do you care about interstellar travel anymore? “The indefatigable spirit of exploration” isn’t the answer. People, as a mass, only explore to find new resources due to scarcity. There are exceptions, but they tend to be thrill seekers or publicity hounds seeking to capitalize on a measure of fame upon their retur…

I didn't expect imagining deep space suburbs this morning.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#184

Post by Ekaros »

WithinReason wrote: post #180
Ekaros wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy is the limit. If used Wolfram Alpha right for reasonable comparison that is largest cruise ship with mass of 248663000 kg to speed up to 0.01c mentioned the kinetic energy would be 2.9 times the worlds fossil fuel reserves... Then double that to slow down. And remember efficiency and that well you need to spend some to keep people alive... Seems like energy in general is one of the true problems.

You wouldn't be burning coal for propulsion, you would fuse atoms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...

I didn't coal would be used. Just that involved amount of energy would be truly massive. Even with fusion.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#185

Post by m4rtink »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #82
codeulike wrote: post #2

Link to Canva presentation for the winning entry https://www.canva.com/design/DAGmr3ubC8E/LHHAeeAIGGQe_TkZVs-...

Where is the propulsion system design? Are all of these handwaving propulsion? They seem to all be habitat designs. Ok I'll take my shot at propulsion: Pulse nuclear BUT: For acceleration, we have a launch gun that fires more fuel at the ship, and the ship catches the fuel, imparting momentum from the catch, and more fuel for acceleration. For deceleration, we have pellets that it catches up to and uses the catching…

So basically a beam rider, right ?

https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/460c3685cd4c4

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#186

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kryogen1c wrote: post #155
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We couldn't even reliably get people to put a piece of fabric over their face Rural Americans couldn’t. But I don’t see anyone proposing we put high school dropouts and polio patients in space. China, India and Japan managed to pass that test just fine. I imagine one of the former two will be the first to colonise deep space.

>> kill their relatives > Rural Americans > high school dropouts Lol HN you really are too much sometimes. Covid went really well in all the intellectual bastions of liberal democracy right? NYC, SF? California famously no downsides from their policy choices at all. And then to top it off, you compare response to China - the government that lied through it's teeth about covid from the beginning, jailed journalists an…

Oh, nobody managed Covid well. The question was capacity to sacrifice for the common good.

New York is a bad example to call out since it was one of the first places to get hit, locked down hard after a delay, and yet came out with lower per-capita deaths and a stronger economy than most red states. (Speaking as someone who lives in one of the reddest states in the union.)

> jailed journalists and destroyed evidence

Not sure we can call anyone out on this anymore.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#187

Post by ivan_gammel »

teiferer wrote: post #178
jvanderbot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're one good new religion away from colonizing the solar system. Cathedrals were built over 100s of years. Imaging just living in a massive one and your whole holy purpose is to survive and thrive and spread. It's entirely reasonable we'd have the will to make it happen, and pretty reasonable we'd be able to build it with planet scale effort, but sadly quite difficult to imagine it surviving even dust impacts for 4…

> It's entirely reasonable we'd have the will to make it happen "We" are not even able to sustainably inhabit our current planet. We have hundreds of millions starving every day, we have wars in many places, the threat of thermonuclear war looming as strong as ever, and are still using natural resources at an unsustainable rate even though we know that that's the case . Settling on other planets has all these problem…

We are a life form that triggered major environmental crisis and is trying to adapt to it at unprecedented speed that no other life form achieved in the past. Our base line for being able to make changes isn’t science fiction but couple billions of history of life on this planet. Our goals are ambitious but we are doing surprisingly well. Just not as we want it to happen.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#188

Post by Hikikomori »

mighmi wrote: post #131
munificent wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am increasingly certain that culture is by far the biggest limiting factor when it comes to large-scale problem solving now and in the future. We couldn't even reliably get people to put a piece of fabric over their face to stop killing their own relatives. Even if we could build a generation ship, it would turn into an Event Horizon hellscape if we don't figure out better cultural, communication, and sociological…

Sweden did not have a mask mandate and did very well.

And most people did use masks. We did not do as good as our neighbours though.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#189

Post by grues-dinner »

aeve890 wrote: post #138
munificent wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am increasingly certain that culture is by far the biggest limiting factor when it comes to large-scale problem solving now and in the future. We couldn't even reliably get people to put a piece of fabric over their face to stop killing their own relatives. Even if we could build a generation ship, it would turn into an Event Horizon hellscape if we don't figure out better cultural, communication, and sociological…

>that culture >Limiting Factor I see what you did here.

I Blame Your Mother

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#190

Post by VagabundoP »

kylecordes wrote: post #14
virgildotcodes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading through this in detail just cements that we are never leaving this solar system unless we discover some new physics to get around our speed limitations.

c appears to be the speed limit of the propagation of information in the universe - never say never, but so far it appears quite unlikely any new physics will overturn this.

If we manage to get anywhere near 0.1c and slow biological ageing we can get nearly anywhere with the right engineering.
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