I don't know enough physics to check a bright idea

I decided that my spaceships would go FTL only through having stargates. Those gates would exist in pairs, so you have to take the far end all the way out at sublight and only then can nip through. They would be wormholes, playing with gravity, so you just sort of fall through really. And they're not reprogrammable, only paired, so if you want to get anywhere it's like riding the railway with interchanges and stations and all.

Then I realised: the main limit on reaction drives is how much fuel you can carry around. But if you're carrying half a stargate with you then you only push the mass of the gate around but you never have to stop for supplies or fuel tankers cause it just goes through the gate. So what if you just put one end of the gate under an ocean on an uninhabited world? You ride the firehose through space! Even if the stargate itself is not pushed by things going through it, it would continuously refuel your ship. You'd have a fuel tank that never emptied. Your main problems would be getting rid of the stuff, including getting rid of salts or impurities or fish or inconvenient marines who find the back way in to the ship. Probably you want a small tank and a hot engine to deal with the marines and the fish. Otherwise you could just let a distant planet's gravity push water out your back end. Just like waterfall power.

So then I was thinking, ships like that wouldn't need generators, except for backup. They'd be hydroelectric.

Until they deplete a planet. That would probably take a while. I don't know, it would depend on the planet.

If stargates are scarce then not many ships could play this game. Since my stargates can spin small or wide then such a ship being captured would let people go back through their fuel gate and emerge on the refuel planet. You'd probably want to put the fuel gates somewhere thoroughly inhospitable on both ends. Above a volcano you'd get a head start on your hot water. Geothermal hydroelectric spaceships.

All this is thoroughly ridiculous but I think it's the logical consequence of the first ridiculous thing, the tethered wormhole stargate pairs. Especially if falling through such a gate adds to your speed, which I already decided it did. You'd have all the push you needed right there.

I wanted the gates to spit you out so you couldn't blockade by sitting in the middle but had to be far enough back other people could get in and start a fight. It's no fun if someone can close the door. If the two sides are both trying to control the size of the gate then they just cancel out. I also decided the gate always spits you out the middle, so if you go in at the edge and out at the middle the spin-and-stretch can tear you apart. Threading the needle requires precision, and skilled pilots. And there's a reason to keep the gates small and send small ships or ship trains. Get it too big and your outsides get squished towards your insides too hard and fast. There's a sweet spot of varying size that puts a maximum on what size ships can go FTL. Because I wanted small communities, not FTL cities, much less FTL planets.

So anything trying to get through a fuel gate would spin-and-stretch if the gate was really small and the calm area was tiny. It wouldn't have far to travel to get to the center, but the gate would want to push it into a very small area, so it would still be unconducive to comfortable travel. Anything sneaking in that way would have to be pretty tough in the first place.

Geothermal hydroelectric spaceships with a door back to a planet they can use instantly in an emergency. Hmmm, you wouldn't want your fire exit to exit to an actual fire, so maybe not on top of a volcano? Depends if you're more worried about entrances or exits.

You'd still end up with a ship that had a tiny fuel tank and only backup generators yet still an endless supply of fuel and energy. It would look like ultratech or a reactionless drive to bystanders, if they hadn't thought of the trick.

It would also leave them in trouble if the fuel supply ran out somehow. Or if the other end of the gate was somewhere hotter than ocean. Or colder, it would slow right down. Or if there were vacuum on the other side, then fuel would fall the other way. There would have to be a tank with valves for reserves, but there's no way it could handle the v the endless fuel tank could give the ship.

So, one of those ideas that's great when it works, but really disastrous when it stops.

Perfect.

... if I've understood physics at all. I only mean to tweak it the once, the tethered wormhole gate pairs. Everything else is meant to be ordinary physics. But I've only read bits of the 'for dummies' version.

plants

Today I discovered the Happyface Spider. Now I am creeped out and LOL in about equal parts.

Anyone that knows plants of the pacific edge, help me out: I have a character who grew up on the Pacific Arc, which is sort of a ship and sort of a city and sort of a preservation project. He brings with him into space one plant that his mother and grandmother before him used to grow. What does he bring? I don't know if it's a really old plant or a descendant. I don't know from plants. I just know that's what he's been spending his personal weight allowance on for twenty five years. He's currently using it to show off to a girl. It's the reason he's in work late, cause he has to look after all the food and air plants before he can look after his own. And clearly he would know what plant it was in great detail. But I don't.

Any suggestions?

LKH Merry and Anita yuck

I finished reading the Laurell K Hamilton books. All of them, as far as I can tell. There are no more.
I am quite glad.
This suggests I should have stopped reading them earlier. As does the thing where it took me three days to finish the last one.

How can so much sex be so completely boring?
No, wait, I totally know that one.
The actual plots suck completely. No build up, no clues, no payoff, just about a short story worth of story stirred in with sex with a new man every few chapters.
And they're very short chapters.

It pisses me off that the whole power structure built in to the books makes it all about one royal person at the top with the most personal magic power, and in this case fertility goddess / succubus glowy sex power, and they gather everyone around them. I want to write a book where people gather new powers by making new friends who can do things. ( Read more... )

The part where both Merry and Anita 'rescue' people from sexual abuse and make their lives All Better by lots of magic sex and feeding on them and giving them magic powers... it's creepy. ( Read more... )

It's not a union of equals. There's not a set of equal minds trying to find a way that works for everyone. There's just swapping bad Master/Mistress for good.
It's creepy.

No more reading this stuff.

CSS Incorrupt

So this explorer ship is sent out with the magic fuel tank, the stargate that refuels constantly from a planet sized tank. Maybe the Fleet is wasting a potential ecosystem, or maybe they're using meltwater from under the glaciers of a highly volcanic moon. The ships just know the water keeps coming. Its fall gives them electrical energy and pushing it out the back gives them thrust. Firehose ships.

They look a bit like the Gherkin building, though this Explorer is only half the height. The outer shell is advanced materials, tougher than diamonds, but it looks like glass. The inner shell is designed to stop laser weapons, so there aren't many windows for the crew. There are airlock doors in three places, above between below. There's also a collar or two for the attitude jets. The main engine is underneath, the thrust defining which end is under. But if they're generating power from the fall then the fuel tank, the stargate and its pond, will be up in the top. Big crystal gherkin with waterfalls flowing down inside. Okay, probably not actual free flowing waterfalls, probably great big pipes, but either way, could be pretty.

( Read more... )

I'd say poking around with ship design is more fun than actual writing, but getting the hang of the ship design nailed down some plot I needed and suggested a lot of other things that happen in reaction to that event. Physics can be fun that way.