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beccaelizabethHow many people can you fit through a Stargate? I have thought about this before http://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/2319899.html . Last time I figured 1 per second forwards, in 4 columns cause that's the most we've seen SG1 do. 4*60=240 people a minute; in a 30 minute gate opening that's 7200 people. 30 because they need to open it, check it's the right place, get people moving, and leave a margin for stragglers and that thing where everyone hesitates the first time. So it could be slightly more, but, basically, 7200.
But that's figuring from a guess that it took a second each. Today I woke up thinking it's a simple matter of how far a human can walk in half an hour times average spacing between humans. So average human walking speed is apparently 5km per hour. Half an hour is 2500m. If one person per m, then 4*2500 = 10000 people per half hour. But I also found a site about ticket gates that reckoned people go through at 0.8m spacing, so that would be 3125 people per column, or 12500 people per half hour.
Only when I woke up I was trying to figure it in yards and miles, because I've been reading GURPS. That required more brain and more numbers my brain don't got.
... average walking speed 3.1 miles per hour, 1760 yards in a mile (really? why so weird? ... googles says because Romans and conversions, and I don't really need this factoid anyway...) , ((3.1/2)*1760)=2728 people per half hour, *4 for columns makes 10912. So that's like in the middle of one person per m or per 80cm. And a yard is 90 cm. So it's the same, just with unreasonably complicated math.
Between 10,000 and 12,500 people can get through the stargate in a single opening if they form 4 orderly lines and keep moving.
That looks like a large number until compared to, say, Wembley Stadium, with 90K capacity. Even Norwich is over 27K. Total traffic to another world couldn't fill a stadium. Unless there's more than one gate opening to the same place in a row, obviously. But I'm still left wondering what a Stargate is really good for, if planet to planet traffic is going to be so limited. Also, consider the fraction of the planet than can get through the gate. Can it keep up with the birth rate? First google result says 255 worldwide births per minute, so that's 7650 in half an hour. So yes, we can ship out more people than we create. That's nice.
How many gate openings per day? It wouldn't be (24*60)/38, or 39 for dialling time, because humans aren't that efficient. But if it was it would be slightly short of 38 gates per day, which is tidy.
If you have people walking through it all the 38 minutes then it's between 12,666 and 15,833 , depending on spacing.
So I guess it's between 10,000 and 15,833 people per gate opening, depending on margins of time and space.
Next I want to figure out how much freight can fit through, but there's too many variable numbers in that. Like, I think I figured standard shipping containers might (but probably won't) fit through sideways, but it depends on how you move them. Plus, any way of fitting containers through quickly could be filled with people, who would then go more quickly too.
If people are carrying it all in those giant backpacks, it's going to be walking speed with heavy encumbrance, and it'll depend on how much they can carry each, which GURPS has rules for but which varies a lot person to person. Like, 10K people carrying an average of 200lbs would, assuming an average ST 10, be crawling along at their maximum encumbrance but would make easy math. However, if they're all military, their average ST is unlikely to be 10. Which would mostly mean they move quicker. Or at all. I poked at military loads for combat and they start around 50lbs for fighting in and go up to nearly 150lbs for 'emergency approach march', but if you're only walking for half an hour I guess you could carry more.
Still, 10K * 150lbs as everything the whole colony can carry to a new planet could get interesting...
Wheels are still more likely though. And then, assuming they make sure in advance it fits and have drivers who can keep it straight and steady threading the needle, it's again a question of how far they can travel in half an hour and vehicle spacing. 13.6m long lorry? That's interior on a curtain sided trailer, great big lorries like you see on the road. The whole lorry has to fit through the 4.74m square in the middle of the gate. 2.45*2.7m width*height, trailer is no problem, but what's the outside of the driving bit? Up to 4m tall of cab is the EU rule apparently, that should fit. Ah, articulated lorry on wiki, UK sizes... wait, should I be looking up US if it's their Stargate? I'll check both. UK: a coupled tractor unit and trailer will have a combined length of between 50 and 55 feet (15.25 and 16.75 metres). US... gets complicated because they put more than one trailer on the back. Really? Big road corners they have there.
Right then, 16m of lorry. HGV limited to 90 km/h ... personally I wouldn't want to thread the needle at any speed, but I'm sure someone would. It could be set up as a nice straight line anyway, and though you'd have to fiddle a bit to get the approach to be flat you probably want to do that because otherwise angles make math complicated. It's the driving into a blank shimmering glow that would bother me. 45000/16=2812.5 , but you'd want to leave gaps. Two second rule at 90km/h says one vehicle-length for every 8 km/h which is 180m, so effectively every truck is 196m long, so 229.5 trucks. But if you're going crawl along at 8 km/h then each truck is 32m long and you get 125 trucks through without the heart attacks. 16km/h, each truck needs 48m, 166 artics. 24 km/h, each truck needs 64m, back one travels 12000m in half an hour, 187.5 trucks. 32 km/h, each truck needs 80m, back one drives 16000m, 200 trucks in half an hour. Tidy maths. And that's still like 20 miles per hour, nice and slow for a driving speed. No need to rush.
As for weight, website for driving intermodal containers on lorries says shippers should usually be able to load up to 26,000 kilos of cargo. 57,320 lbs ? Decimal is much better.
200 trucks, 26,000 kilos each, 5,200,000 kilos, 5,200 metric tons, through the gate at one dialling. And 200 truck drivers. How many people can fit in a lorry cab each? More than two, if it's brief and they're tidy. Four or six hundred colonists, with 8666kg to 13000 kg of equipment each, plus the container lorries, which are a substantial resource in themselves.
A Humanitarian Daily Ration pack weighs 850g, or presumably the content does, since it also says 11kg for a case of 10. 36.5 cases for one year of emergency food, or 73 for two people, which is more likely than everyone breaking a box. 36.5*11 = 401kg each for a year of food. That wouldn't fit on your back but it's easy enough with a lorry along.
I'm so bored these numbers are interesting.
But, if you were packing for another planet, and shelter is all going to be the shipping containers and their contents, what 8000 kg of stuff would you take with you?
... I wonder how much my stuff actually weighs?
... actually, simpler and just as crucial to figure, will it all fit in the one removal lorry? You could be driving one lorry each to the new world.
A 200 person new world is pretty small though. Which 200 people would you bring?
But that's figuring from a guess that it took a second each. Today I woke up thinking it's a simple matter of how far a human can walk in half an hour times average spacing between humans. So average human walking speed is apparently 5km per hour. Half an hour is 2500m. If one person per m, then 4*2500 = 10000 people per half hour. But I also found a site about ticket gates that reckoned people go through at 0.8m spacing, so that would be 3125 people per column, or 12500 people per half hour.
Only when I woke up I was trying to figure it in yards and miles, because I've been reading GURPS. That required more brain and more numbers my brain don't got.
... average walking speed 3.1 miles per hour, 1760 yards in a mile (really? why so weird? ... googles says because Romans and conversions, and I don't really need this factoid anyway...) , ((3.1/2)*1760)=2728 people per half hour, *4 for columns makes 10912. So that's like in the middle of one person per m or per 80cm. And a yard is 90 cm. So it's the same, just with unreasonably complicated math.
Between 10,000 and 12,500 people can get through the stargate in a single opening if they form 4 orderly lines and keep moving.
That looks like a large number until compared to, say, Wembley Stadium, with 90K capacity. Even Norwich is over 27K. Total traffic to another world couldn't fill a stadium. Unless there's more than one gate opening to the same place in a row, obviously. But I'm still left wondering what a Stargate is really good for, if planet to planet traffic is going to be so limited. Also, consider the fraction of the planet than can get through the gate. Can it keep up with the birth rate? First google result says 255 worldwide births per minute, so that's 7650 in half an hour. So yes, we can ship out more people than we create. That's nice.
How many gate openings per day? It wouldn't be (24*60)/38, or 39 for dialling time, because humans aren't that efficient. But if it was it would be slightly short of 38 gates per day, which is tidy.
If you have people walking through it all the 38 minutes then it's between 12,666 and 15,833 , depending on spacing.
So I guess it's between 10,000 and 15,833 people per gate opening, depending on margins of time and space.
Next I want to figure out how much freight can fit through, but there's too many variable numbers in that. Like, I think I figured standard shipping containers might (but probably won't) fit through sideways, but it depends on how you move them. Plus, any way of fitting containers through quickly could be filled with people, who would then go more quickly too.
If people are carrying it all in those giant backpacks, it's going to be walking speed with heavy encumbrance, and it'll depend on how much they can carry each, which GURPS has rules for but which varies a lot person to person. Like, 10K people carrying an average of 200lbs would, assuming an average ST 10, be crawling along at their maximum encumbrance but would make easy math. However, if they're all military, their average ST is unlikely to be 10. Which would mostly mean they move quicker. Or at all. I poked at military loads for combat and they start around 50lbs for fighting in and go up to nearly 150lbs for 'emergency approach march', but if you're only walking for half an hour I guess you could carry more.
Still, 10K * 150lbs as everything the whole colony can carry to a new planet could get interesting...
Wheels are still more likely though. And then, assuming they make sure in advance it fits and have drivers who can keep it straight and steady threading the needle, it's again a question of how far they can travel in half an hour and vehicle spacing. 13.6m long lorry? That's interior on a curtain sided trailer, great big lorries like you see on the road. The whole lorry has to fit through the 4.74m square in the middle of the gate. 2.45*2.7m width*height, trailer is no problem, but what's the outside of the driving bit? Up to 4m tall of cab is the EU rule apparently, that should fit. Ah, articulated lorry on wiki, UK sizes... wait, should I be looking up US if it's their Stargate? I'll check both. UK: a coupled tractor unit and trailer will have a combined length of between 50 and 55 feet (15.25 and 16.75 metres). US... gets complicated because they put more than one trailer on the back. Really? Big road corners they have there.
Right then, 16m of lorry. HGV limited to 90 km/h ... personally I wouldn't want to thread the needle at any speed, but I'm sure someone would. It could be set up as a nice straight line anyway, and though you'd have to fiddle a bit to get the approach to be flat you probably want to do that because otherwise angles make math complicated. It's the driving into a blank shimmering glow that would bother me. 45000/16=2812.5 , but you'd want to leave gaps. Two second rule at 90km/h says one vehicle-length for every 8 km/h which is 180m, so effectively every truck is 196m long, so 229.5 trucks. But if you're going crawl along at 8 km/h then each truck is 32m long and you get 125 trucks through without the heart attacks. 16km/h, each truck needs 48m, 166 artics. 24 km/h, each truck needs 64m, back one travels 12000m in half an hour, 187.5 trucks. 32 km/h, each truck needs 80m, back one drives 16000m, 200 trucks in half an hour. Tidy maths. And that's still like 20 miles per hour, nice and slow for a driving speed. No need to rush.
As for weight, website for driving intermodal containers on lorries says shippers should usually be able to load up to 26,000 kilos of cargo. 57,320 lbs ? Decimal is much better.
200 trucks, 26,000 kilos each, 5,200,000 kilos, 5,200 metric tons, through the gate at one dialling. And 200 truck drivers. How many people can fit in a lorry cab each? More than two, if it's brief and they're tidy. Four or six hundred colonists, with 8666kg to 13000 kg of equipment each, plus the container lorries, which are a substantial resource in themselves.
A Humanitarian Daily Ration pack weighs 850g, or presumably the content does, since it also says 11kg for a case of 10. 36.5 cases for one year of emergency food, or 73 for two people, which is more likely than everyone breaking a box. 36.5*11 = 401kg each for a year of food. That wouldn't fit on your back but it's easy enough with a lorry along.
I'm so bored these numbers are interesting.
But, if you were packing for another planet, and shelter is all going to be the shipping containers and their contents, what 8000 kg of stuff would you take with you?
... I wonder how much my stuff actually weighs?
... actually, simpler and just as crucial to figure, will it all fit in the one removal lorry? You could be driving one lorry each to the new world.
A 200 person new world is pretty small though. Which 200 people would you bring?
no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 01:25 am (UTC)SM +7 cargo holds carry 15 short tons, so it's almost two of them.
SM +6 cargo holds carry 5, so that's 5 or 6 of them.
SM +5 cargo holds carry 1.5, so it's 18 or 19 of those. A spaceship is designed around 20 slots. One for the engine, one for the control room: your artic works out as an SM+5 vehicle (though I didn't give it a fuel tank, so maybe not quite). Loaded mass 30 tons is a bit small but the next SM up is 100 tons so +5 is much closer. Length around 15 yards. I worked out the SM+5 to be about 1.25 buses long, so, matching.
So that means I can use the GURPS Spaceship rules for 18 SM+5 slots together to work out what'll fit in my cargo container. Kinda sorta anyway. Or 5 slots of SM+6 or almost 2 SM+7. That'll work better because you can't put a Habitat on SM+5 because it doesn't fit in a single slot, so it's only available in SM+6. So you can fit 5 or 6 cabins to a container, figured from SM+6, or almost 4, figuring from SM+7. ... that's illogical, these rules scale clunky. But if you're trying to put them in a shipping container, that's 40 feet long, 4 cabins at 10 feet each could work. 6 at 6 2/3 feet each is a teensy skinny to fit all the beds in; though it just about works, you'd end up like in submarines.
Each Habitat cabin can house up to 4 people in barracks style bunks, or fit one in comfort. ... This gives a useful shipboard definition of comfort, if they've got 10ft by 8ft to be comfortable in. My bedroom is about the same square feet. 4 bedrooms to a container. I really could ship my whole house to another planet.
GURPS Spaceships also has how many cabins can be swapped for rooms of particular other purposes, so a bar with standing room for 20 patrons takes 2 cabins. Also you can use it for steerage cargo; 15 tons is 2 cabins, one cabin is 7.5 tons. So if you pack your bedroom and a bar to work in you have 7.5 tons of cargo left, or 6800 kg.
Which isn't the most useful configuration.
Sickbay swaps for cabins at one for one, so you could fit a 4 bed sickbay in a shipping container. That's one surgical bed with all the gubbins, you can do first aid for up to 4 people per sick bay bed.
Hibernation chambers are 0.25 cabins each, so if you want a rack of cryo chambers in the back of the room, you have a 3 bed sick bay.
A ten bed sickbay is a clinic, for higher bonuses to effective skill - presumably because snazzier equipment. But to get a 10 bed clinic you'd need 3 containers. So at one truck each you'd need 3 people agreeing to spend all their cargo allowance on a clinic, 4 cryo chambers, and one bunk room for 4 people... Or you'd need the community to chip in and divvy things up between them.
A Lab suitable for Science!, the skill mostly practiced on Stargate shows, takes 2 cabins and can be used by 2 people. It costs $30 million GURPS dollars. ... plain labs for one actual science at a time are much, much cheaper, $1 million for chemistry or biology, $10 million for physics. So $12 million the set, though you would need two containers.
GURPS rules are rough but handy. Like this, I can cost out my space colony.
Still don't have a cost per Stargate opening though. Was there an episode that mentioned it?
no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 01:38 am (UTC)Point being, I know they had the cryo for Tommy, maybe Gray ended up in that one, but I don't know how many of the same fancy sort they've got.
Still, I remembered the pizza.
http://iantos-desktop.livejournal.com/7946.html
MORGUE STOCK TAKE
Author: Harper, O
Bay 50: The final pizza we ordered from De Rossi’s – best pizza place ever to set up on these shores – before they closed down (bunch of philistines in this town, letting that happen). It’s a Viennese with extra chillies. Totally edible. I’m saving it for a special occasion.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 02:58 am (UTC)200 people each bring one shipping container. I'll abstract that to 25 short tons. Yeah that's 600 tons difference by the time you add them all up, but I'd rather have spare weight to play with at the end than the other way around.
Use the SM+6 sections: One SM+6 section, 5 tons, one cabin or cargo hold. There are 5 sections per container. Put 4 containers together and you have yourself one SM+6 ship. So your colony is a fleet of 50 SM+6 ships. ... in sections. ... or it's 5000 tons, which is an SM+9 and a couple of SM+8s. It is not two 9s or one 10, it's not that big.
8s or 9s could have a hangar bay. But since each container is itself SM+5, they cannot carry a ship of SM+5 within them. Possibly the parts to build one, but not the assembled ship itself. Sadly.
So it matters that you've got two fireflies (SM+8) and probably an Enterprise (SM+9), but only so you can get your head around how complex it can get. Each part has to fit in SM+5, which is the other reason for saying mass 25, because that leaves 5 for carting the other 25 around on.
Right then. 25 tons is 17ish sections in SM+5, 5 sections in SM+6, less than 2 in SM+7, and half an SM+8. If something can only exist in a vehicle SM+8 or bigger, it can't exist in our containers. Use the SM+6 column.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 03:43 am (UTC)Cargo holds
Cabins
Sick Bays
Control Room, complexity C7, comm/sensor TL-5, 2 Control Stations, $200K
(or, because lumpy scaling, one SM+7 control room, 3 control stations, comm/sensor TL-4, $600K)
Enhanced multipurpose science and tactical comm/sensor arrays
SM+6, Array level TL-3, $200K
SM+7, Array level TL-2, $600K
So probably the best arrangement is to stick with SM+6, get one control room and one sensor array, for $400K and sensor TL-2.
technically Enhanced, Science and Tactical are different sorts of arrays, that can be combined in Multipurpose, but why would you not combine them when the rules allow it?
So it's highly sensitive for doing Science but can jam transmissions and overcome countermeasures for Tactical.
Factory: [!] (The little ! means it needs power)
Makes spare parts or other goods. The $/hr entry on the table shows the production capacity of goods it can assemble, with appropriate blueprints.
We have been TL8 since the 1980s; TL9 starts 2025 ish and the likes of Tony Stark are there already.
Though Stargate science from offworld partners tends to the superscience end, I'm imagining the SGC wouldn't share.
Fabricator (TL8): A high-tech machine shop. Requires component parts equal in mass and costing 40% of the good’s value.
So at SM+6 that takes up one slot and can fit 5 to a shipping container.
$5K per hour, cost $5M
... you could have a $25M factory shipping container.
But it would make goods worth its cost in like 42 days. Assuming you had raw materials to feed it.
Mining and refinery: Would need one section each. Also a miner to supervise from a control station.
and you buy control stations seperately, see above for 'control station'.
Mining is from rock, converts it to powder ready to get useful stuff out of it.
Refinery turns what you mine into different chemical stuff.
So each container could contain a control room, two mining sections, and... huh, no, you'd need another control room to go with the refinery, and would then have a spare chair. Or multipurpose control chairs, who can choose to be the boss of mining or refining? The thing where there's 5 spaces and one of them contains 2 control chairs gets awkward.
Ah, but, numbers:
Mining, SM+6, 0.5 tons/hour
Refinery, SM+6, 1.5 tons/hour
either costing $100K
You don't need as many refinery as mining.
I don't think it quite works to just call it a mining & refinery vehicle shipped through the gate. I mean, I seen those in movies about mining the moon or something, but usually they were just mining bots that got refined elsewhere, and also they should be designed as SM+5 vehicles. Also it depends what sort of mines, like, if you have to make a big vehicle sized tunnel. Also also also. Thing.
The point is, mining and refinery equipment, $100K will get you enough for that many tons an hour, with some handwaves.
Is there rules for mining in a different book? Low Tech Daily Life and Economics certainly has them, but not for tech levels relevant to current mining. The goa'uld have been using low tech methods though, with slave labour, so moving in a mining vehicle could chew through very rapidly.
Of course one wonders what happens when you mix naquada ore with modern mining methods. Maybe there's a reason to chip away carefully by hand...
The values of different ores / minerals / elements are in GURPS Infinite Worlds on page 83.
Infinite Worlds can resemble a Stargate campaign because of empty worlds and odd travel times, plus variant human cultures and apparent time travel. Or actual time travel if there's solar flares.
ANYway: Bauxite $20/ton - "although aluminum itself is dirt cheap, bauxite contains valuable gallium, widely used in computer technology and worth about $200/lb". Beryllium ($300/lb.), Chromium ($500/ton), Cobalt ($25/lb.), Gold ($4,400/lb.), Platinum ($6,400/lb.), Silver ($220/lb.), Titanium ($4/lb.), Uranium ($7/lb.)
Chromium is in tons not lb, is it $0.25/lb ?
The InvestmentMine site reckons aluminium is $0.75/lb
but some of them metals have very wiggly graphs
and none of it is in GURPS dollars, which are on the bread standard, not actual dollars. (One dollar is one loaf).
I don't know what Naquada prices would be like. Would they be more than platinum, because you purely can't find it on Earth? How much would even be needed? Not jewelry quantities, power generation quantities. The need won't be filled for a long long while. Also, if naquada = the stuff Tony Stark has in his chest, then the economics get twisted, because he can synthesise it but it presumably costs a ton to do in power etc. Spend power to get power? How does that work out?
It matters because all the costs for these mining units etc will likely be poured in with the expectation of getting naquada back. If it is more like Uranium in price then that's a lot of digging.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 03:47 am (UTC)I think they're just sitting there without it, honestly.
Power!
Date: 2014-02-11 05:30 am (UTC)One nuclear fission reactor can fit in the same space as a cabin and provides one power point. Systems that require power so far are factory, mining, and refinery. Each of those need one power point. so you need as many cabins of nuclear fission reactors as you have of mining, refinery, or factory.
It does solve the mining container thing: Control room, mining, mining, nuclear reactor, nuclear reactor.
*blinks*
... that seems... unusual.
Each reactor will last 25 years on internal fuel, or at TL9, 50 years.
It costs $500K
... but where do you shop for them?
A $500K 5 ton fission reactor in the Stargate setting seems VASTLY less likely than buying naquada reactors. But there's no stats for those. They are man portable, or possibly 2 man at most, and they give enough power for a Stargate.
Try figuring from the rules for a Jump Gate; Jump Gates are only available on SM+9 vessels because they need a whole 150 ton space, so that naquada reactor is at least equivalent to 150 tons of uranium fission reactor.
So a naquada reactor weighs... call it 200lbs, or 0.1 tons, and makes the equivalent of at least 150/5 SM+6 power points. 0.1 tons, 30 power points.
If you can get the power from the naquada reactor to the mines, factories, and refineries, that seems likely to cover the needs of the colony.
Total Conversion, the super science ultra powerful most best generator, gives 5 SM+6 power points per 5 tons; naquada gives 30 in 0.1. That's... wildly more power. Examine assumptions.
A Jump Gate in an SM+9 ship weighs 150 tons and can let 100 tons (SM+6) pass through it.
A Stargate weighs about 30 tons (there are two kinds of tons is it 29 or 32 GURPS Starship tons and where did the wiki page get its numbers argh) and for purposes of this imaginary colony can let 30 tons (SM+5) pass through it. So it's at least a whole size modifier smaller.
SM+8 power generators would weigh 50 tons. That's 10 of the SM+6 uranium generators, 10 SM+6 points. Naquada gives 10 power points, that's not so wild any more. Still twice as good as the exotic superscience and weighing 1/50th the amount, but, an improvement.
Okay, the superscience reactor last effectively forever at 5 tons. Naquada doesn't, they need to mine more, and often. So what if the part we've seen, the part they can carry, doesn't last very long? Is it ever stated?
Internal fuel last anything from 2 years to 200 for an antimatter reactor, 25 for nuclear fission, wild ranges for all the rest. They end up weighing the standard amount, it's the endurance that changes.
Then the rest of the tonnage would be fuel.
So they've either got a portable reactor that doesn't last very long, but has all the power they could need, or a 5 ton compartment filled with naquada that lasts... however long the plot wants.
... if they have 5 tons of naquada, why do they need to mine for naquada?
I'm just saying, that seems like a lot of naquada.
If we just figure that a Jump Gate, seeing as it needs 1 power point for 1 gate section and the necessary fission reactor weighs as much as the gate, needs 1 ton of nuclear power for each ton of gate, then we need 30 tons of uranium reactor for a 30 ton Stargate. 30/5 = 6 power points. One naquada reactor, 6 power points. It's still more than a Total Conversion drive, but much closer to it. And there's still the fuel issue, to tweak the points per ton to wherever seems useful.
Some numbers would have to be invented.
Also, what are the hazards of naquada power? How does it do its thing?
Same with arc reactor power. The arc reactor has more numbers attached, even if they are made up numbers. It can provide a little power for a long time, or a lot of power for a short time. There's nothing in the Reactors rules that allows you to change the power available by as much as he does; reactors can be adjusted for longer life and less power, but the change is like 25% longer, not lifetimes vs weeks. GURPS rules in this book can't model arc reactors.
GURPS rules in this book can't model many sorts of power.
BUT!
Solar panel array: $500K
5 tons gives you one SM+6 power point. ... in space, where you don't have to worry about clouds and weather; though since I'm thinking the mining planet is desert, solar should still work very well. And it seems more likely than getting hold of enough nuclear reactors to power their mining operation. However it has an obvious drawback for mining, in that you have to leave it in the actual sunlight. So I'd have to figure out the relation between power making structures and mines, and how they stick them together. Cables would add up, in terms of weight. Maybe the factories are for making cables from stuff they mine so the cables can reach further into the mines...
Solar panels are exposed systems not protected by armour. So if any got hit you'd have to repair them. If you brought the right factories, and mined the right materials, to even try it. But it's much preferable to what happens if there's a hit on a nuclear power supply...
Re: Power!
Date: 2014-02-14 07:34 am (UTC)Power Array powers 'a whole household', $25,000 , 1200lbs, LC4. So if each and every container had sufficient solar panels, and 1200lbs is easily in the wiggle room for weight that I left built in to my assumptions so I can ignore it and consider 5*SM+6 the internal limit, then everything that doesn't have a [!] is powered by solar power.
However, in any environment dim enough to give even a -1 Vision penalty, they produce
no power. So, either the colony only needs power in the daytime, or it needs something for night and evenings.
GURPS lists a lot of batteries, but it assumes we're interested in carrying them around. But a couple of batteries suitable for powering a golf cart, that is in GURPS terms VL batteries, seem like they could keep a house going overnight. But, rechargeable batteries only have a few hundred recharge cycles, says the same rules. So, you couldn't last a year on them. Which seems odd. How often do modern electric vehicle batteries need replacing?
Modern, though, is bordering on ultra-tech. Some prototypes pretty much are TL9.
Ultra tech assumes fuel cells, not batteries; fuel cells are listed in High Tech too as TL8.
Portable Methanol Fuel Cell (TL8). A suitcase-sized generator. It uses 1 gallon of methanol every 3 days.
$5,000, 13 lbs. LC4.
Semi-Portable Hydrogen Fuel Cell (TL8). A large cart capable of powering a whole household on a single hydrogen cylinder for 5 hours (extra cylinders are $100, 65 lbs.).
$6,000, 100 lbs. LC4.
TL9 fuel cells are just one of the assumptions about power cells:
Fuel cells combine hydrogen or methanol with oxygen (often in the form of water, which contains oxygen) in an electrochemical reaction. Fuel cells are more complex than batteries, incorporating a fuel tank and microelectronics to control fuel flow.
F cell: These power medium or large vehicles and cannon-sized beam weapons. They’re about the size of a compact car engine. $20,000, 200 lbs. LC4.
They're assumed to be rechargeable, with no limit on number of cycles.
So if you combine solar panels and fuel cells it looks like you have all day, every day, regular power. But fuel cells are full of methanol or hydrogen, so look a bit kaboom. There's rules for exploding power cells, but they list for TL9. REF is 1/8, for an amount of explosive equal to the weight of the power cell. 200lbs of explosive seems like a lot, but 0.125 REF is much lower than pre-1600 gunpowder.
Explosive damage is 6d * square root of (weight of explosive in lbs. * 4 * REF).
6d * square root of (200*4*0.125) = 6d * square root of 100 = 6d*10
If every living are had one 6d*10 explosive block strapped to it... hmmm. Not popular.
Of course the next level up on power, the generators, starts with fission. To use GURPS rules you can choose between potentially explosive and nuclear. Lovely.
TL9 nuclear generators are $100K per 1000lb (or 0.5 short ton like Spaceships uses). They provide power for 5 years.
Not enough power for a mining machine ala Spaceships, but plenty to drive around the truck they're on, yes?
I'd need GURPS Vehicles 4e rules.
aha, I'd skipped Power Plants: Chemical Energy in GURPS Spaceships, because they'd need refueling a lot. $50K at SM+6 . This power plant is a high-efficiency chemical energy closed-cycle power plant using hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel (much like a chemical rocket). There are two variations:
Fuel Cell (TL7): Each system provides one Power Point. It can operate for three hours (TL7), six hours (TL8), 12 hours (TL9), on internal fuel. Endurance can be extended: each fuel tank of hydrogenoxygen rocket fuel consumed by the power plant operates it for 4* that duration.
So Solar Panel, Power Plant: Chemical Energy Fuel Cell TL8, Fuel Tank, together make up a long lasting and efficient power generation system IF you use the TL9 Power Cell rule that fuel cells are rechargeable. Which feels a bit like cheating, but, stargate, there's no way not to cheat the power requirements (though see Cosmic Power Cells in Ultra tech for possible Naquada rules :eyeroll: ). Power plant would last 6*4=24 hours. Then the solar arrays could recharge it. So you wouldn't have to carry the solar panels around on the trucks, you could power the mining vehicles for 24 hours off internal power cell and fuel, and have them return to base for recharge. ... if the planet has a non-24 rotation, remember that doesn't mean 'all day'.
I can't see where it has rules for how long it takes to recharge a thing. If you could only go out mining on alternate days, that would be annoying. Or if you had to leave it plugged in all night. Or swap out your giant power cells.
What exactly is the 'mining' equipment? ... exactly don't matter, I won't be poking it.
TL9 solar power array covers 400 square feet. If containers are 8 ft wide they'd need to be 50 feet long to have the roof be sufficient space, or maybe have fold out awnings; yeah, I like that idea. $10K , 500lbs. That's a lot lighter than the TL8 array for a household. So would the other array need more area? Because then a container couldn't be long enough to power itself. Or is it just higher TL gets lighter? TL9 arrays deploy in 1 minute. I'm having pretty thoughts of solar power flowering at the first touch of day. Then it would protect itself at night.
Most of the rules assume adventurers happen in vehicles or on foot. They're not really for building and powering a fortress / installation / colony.
Everyone needs a bunk
Date: 2014-02-11 04:08 am (UTC)And this is why it's a poor model for things that go on the ground. Because mostly, your house is not pressurised or radiation shielded to the degree a ship is. Also, there's a shortage of elevators when everything is just shipping containers. But you do have to get from one section to the next, so who knows, maybe there are corridors. There's a lot of ways to arrange the boxes so you can get to visit your neighbours without going out in the rain.
Each of those options take up one cabin.
Takes up 2 cabins of space.
And again, 'pressurised' is probably a bit much, but 'indoors in the dry and reasonably warm' would be another way to put it.
So that's heat and cool, and full water recycling that cleans up your wastes, which is a rather over impressive investment for a glorified caravan. Especially since some people would in fact just bring a caravan, lets face it. But it wouldn't actually need the air supply on a planet with breathable air.
It doesn't have a ! for needing to be connected to a generator, so it acts like it manages all its own power needs too, which is implausible without regular fuel delivery or rather more solar power than you'd get in Britain.
All the tech explains why it's $100K per room.
It's a bit of overkill for something crammed 5 to a shipping container,
I don't know where the kitchen is supposed to fit in a standard cabin though. Probably more towards the microwave end, but with a bigger fridge.
Sanitary facilities would have to be those scarily compact ones from ship cabins.
Up to 5 cabins per container. 200 containers. up to 4 bunk beds per cabin. You could just bring shelter for 4000 people in a single gate activation.
Of course it's more likely that people packing for the rest of their lives decide on one luxury cabin each and use the other 3 slots for cargo and maybe an office and a briefing room, which would really be a home cinema.
One or two people to an office, up to 5 offices per shipping container. Two containers of dedicated offices make the ops center. But I doubt they'd devote 20 just to offices. Don't know though, what are people going to do with their days?
Really, can you fit a 10 seat meeting into the same space as a 2 person desk? I guess with the filing cabinets and space for a computer and more space that is not for a computer you can sprawl quite a lot in your own office. But it seems odd. More like the briefing should be 10 people with those chairs as have a paper rest mini desk on them, that fits much tighter. 10 person lecture theatre with a desk up the front. Compact.
... I like how it goes through bar, brothel and casino loooong before it gets to nursery, classroom or shops.
Even somewhere that doesn't sell things for money would need a room that distributes things, like a shop in the ordering and collecting ways. So maybe Establishment could also be where you get uniforms and supplies?
no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 04:38 am (UTC)Airliner style seats.
24 hours of life support per seat.
So again, the life support isn't necessary for the current application, and I guess airliner seats is why you can only fit 6 and not 10 like in cabins.
... but this with a movie screen is still a six person cinema with recliners.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 04:14 am (UTC)Or would one container be bunks, one offices, one medical, and ownership be either 'the colony' or some more complicated arrangement?
It's easy when it's military, the military owns it all and people get the use of bits. But a colony could have everyone owning only what they bring, and having to fund it themselves, and under capitalism being perfectly allowed to charge the rest of the colony to use said facilities even if they're medical. Or perhaps they have colony shares? Then everyone would own 1/200th of everything they brought all mixed together? Or most likely there's personal belongings AND colony shares.
Complex, think it through before playing with it.
Whoever funds the colony could have shares without being physically present.
Capitalist shares means a major shareholder could do the deciding.
Or it could be more like democratic votes, where everyone gets 1/200th of the say in how everything is used.
But then who would buy in at what money levels?
If Tony Stark funds all the equipment, which he easily could, then what's the position of the colony if he wants to kick them out?
How about if there's investors gathered like for a movie?
Kickstarter the colony?
Money people have the knowing of this kind of thing already, but to me it's new thorny problems.
Economics. I can't write a colony without understanding at least some economics.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-11 05:33 am (UTC)In a Stargate 'verse colony funded by Tony Stark, would they bring container sized heavy weapons?
Like, Tony stopped designing weapons... for the military. If he isn't sending a suit or two along for protection, how about a honking great space gun?
Well how much use is a honking great space gun, really, how much power does it need, where do you have to put it...
Weapons seem likely, but more like fortress weapons, not starship weapons. So. Onwards.
200 containers, 5 slots each.
Date: 2014-02-11 06:05 am (UTC)Cargo Hold, 5 tons, cost negligible
Steerage Cargo, controlled environmental conditions, 5 tons, $100K
Control Room, 2 seats, $200K
Comm/Sensor arrays, $200K
Factory, $5M
Mining: $100K
Refinery: $100K
Solar Panel Array, $500K, one per factory, mining, or refinery unit.
Cabin, bunkroom, cells or cages, $100K
Briefing Room, $100K
Office, $100K
Passenger Seating, $30K
Sick Bay, $100K ... the first time the price makes sense. Honestly, stocking it with medical equipment from the Biotech book would nudge it around rather. Not having a price premium to distinguish a surgery from a cabin is a bit foolish, but the life support makes them all expensive.
4 cryo chambers, $100K ish, but see Bio Tech p147, they call the kind you can revive from Hibernation Chambers at TL9 or Suspended Animation Capsules at TL10. Freeze tubes seem more like it, not just slowed metabolism. $50,000 each, for $200K room of 4. However at TL8 they're most likely salvaged alien equipment, and it's hard to put a money value on them.
Two slots together can contain:
Luxury cabin, $200K
Establishment, $200K
Lab, Biology, $1M
Lab, Chemistry, $1M
Lab, Physics, $10M
Lab, Science!, $30M
10 identical Offices, Sick Bays, or Labs, gives an improved skill bonus, as you can fit shinier equipment in it. 100 identicals of those types would give an even higher bonus.
conclusion: Using the Starships price makes sense for everything except cabins. Those seem excessive because all the cost there is secretly life support equipment. But with heating, air con, some kind of solar panel arrangement for your daily power needs, kitchens, bathrooms, and then all the furniture etc you do need them to be pricier than they may appear. More like buying a house than stocking one. So keep the numbers, when estimating total worth of the colony.
Re: 200 containers, 5 slots each.
Date: 2014-02-11 06:36 am (UTC)need 200 cabins, maybe 400 for luxury cabins.
100 offices
100 labs... of a particular type. 300 for the 3 sciences then? Or will they subdivide smaller, and need 100 to get a bonus to geology? GM's choice, so I say no. 300 labs.
100 sickbay seems excessive if you're only treating 200 people, but if they're setting up to trade medical knowledge, that's more interesting.
... 100 offices, 300 labs, 100 sickbays, would they need 500 staff to get those bonuses? Because, you know, only brought 200 so far. Though those 200 cabins could fit 800 people in...
400
100
300
100
Leaves 100 cabins for cargo, or establishments, or briefing rooms, or whatever. So it is possible to make it a science colony.
For increased money, and greater compatibility with the Stargate universe, it could be a Science! colony. 100 labs of that would take up much less space, but cost $3,000,000,000. That's three billion. Even for Tony, that's a bit much.
Of course $1,000,000,000 is also non trivial. What kind of research would need that? Atlantis style power generator research, or advanced weapons, of course.
... I just looked up the USA R&D spend in a year. Many, many billions. Like, $125 billion just from the government, and twice that on private stuff. For the entire country, sending three billions off to another world might seem drop in the ocean...
Wow, looked up NASA, the Apollo program had an annual budget of nearly $18 billion. And they didn't even stay on their ball of rock.
Okay, so I need to think bigger. Yes, this colony would cost billions, but apparently that's the done thing...
So a Science! colony with an on world hospital would work out at:
400 luxury cabins $80,000,000
100 offices, $10,000,000
100 Science! $3,000,000,000
100 Sickbay, $10,000,000
200 unallocated, could be cargo, bars, shops, briefing rooms, but also needing to be mines, refineries, factories, control rooms, sensors and solar power.
Already that's
$3,100,000,000
with the vast majority of that being spent on the Science!
Put it back down to biology, chemistry, and physics, and $1,200,000,000 is still the vast majority of a $1,300,000,000 colony. Science labs are far, far more expensive than sick bays. Though the biology and chemistry ones are quite likely to be related to sick bays.
Each container has 5 slots, so you can't have 3 luxury cabins, only 2 luxury cabins and one from cargo, briefing room, office, or passenger seating. The others all need to be in sets.
A container would be dedicated to mining or refinery.
1 control room, two mining, two solar panels
or
1 control room, two refinery, two solar panels.
Because a control room has two seats, a mine or refinery needs one seat each, and also one power each.
100 Sick Bay would be 20 containers, but they'd also need some room for cryo. Owen's cabin, office, lab and cryo would be his container. Additional to the hospital, because the cryo chambers are his personal stuff so far.
20 containers per subject of labs.
100 of cabins, if they're luxury.
I have no idea what I'd need 100 offices for. What do people do in offices? I can't see very much of it being useful in a new colony.
But also consider: Office, briefing room, cells, cells, cells. That's the jail, with room for 2 law enforcement people in the office and 8 more deputies at the briefings. Cell capacity maximum 12 people.
Offices are useful for Intelligence Analysis and Strategy tasks. So give them 10, or 2 containers, as the ops center.
100, 20, 20, 1, 1, 2
144 so far
Factories would go 2 factories, 2 solar panels, 1 office.
The local bar would be 2 establishments and 1 cargo storage area, for 40 people to use at once.
There only needs to be the one of that.
145, leaving 55 to divide between mining, refinery, and factories.
Mining can process 1/3 of refineries, so you'd have 3 mining containers to 1 refinery container.
40 of them? 30 mining and 10 refinery?
15 factories. Factories are figured in $ not tons though, so you can't figure them by ratios. Just, half as many factories as mines seems like a lot.
Hmm, I forgot things like a nursery, or shops, or people that don't want to live in 'luxury' while sharing 'their' container with someone.
There's a lot of factors to juggle.
Re: 200 containers, 5 slots each.
Date: 2014-02-11 06:48 am (UTC)I can't imagine how to bolt containers together to make an actually useful hospital though.
But I guess they're used as building materials even how, so, maybe possible?
Lab access one end, lots of doors to rooms in sickbay out the other?
So it wouldn't be 20 containers of lab, it would be 25, with 25 sickbays in them. Leaving 75, or 15 containers, of just sickbay on its own. Which, yes, greatly resembles two sets of 20 containers, but the layout is distinct.
Also, would the lab people want sickbays, or would they rather have offices? Because that might mean lab needs 25 and sickbay still needs 20.
Re: 200 containers, 5 slots each.
Date: 2014-02-11 07:05 am (UTC)Oh, establishment: Baths. Because even in a luxury cabin, that's like 20 ft long, they could fit my bathroom in but it's not exactly luxurious. 20ft out of 50ft? How long did I figure these containers are? No, it's more like 16ft by 8. Still my bathroom fits, but, 12 ft left for things that are not bathroom. Like a kitchen. And dining room. Somehow I can't see this working.
Establishment: Cafeteria. Seats 20. ... with all these lab people around, and a generally kind of like a university vibe, how many of them can actually cook? Possibly they need more than 20 seats...
Re: 200 containers, 5 slots each.
Date: 2014-02-11 07:10 am (UTC)100 labs, 2 per container, 50 containers of labs, plus an office each. 50 offices already.
100 sick bays, 5 per container, 20 containers of sickbay.
Another 50 offices... would be scattered around many subjects. 2 containers to be Intelligence Analysis and Strategy, 10 offices. 40 other containers with an office on the end.
50+20+10+40= 120 containers implied in just the 300 places to get bonuses.
80*5 plus 40*4 things that are not offices, sick bay, or labs.
That's only 120 luxury cabins. So there is not in fact room for everyone to live in luxury. Unless they mostly cohabit.