Arioch wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 6:22 am
As Elon Musk is fond of saying, you can't have a spacefaring civilization if you don't have cheap transport to orbit. You're not going to be using conventional chemical rockets on orbital shuttles at TL10. Unless you have efficient thrusters or antigravity or something like that, you simply can't have space infrastructure and starships on the scale of Star Trek or Star Wars or Outsider. Trying to implement 2160 infrastructure with 2021 technology is not going to get you there.
And if you can't assemble things in orbit, then your ships and stations will be limited to whatever the maximum size and mass your best booster can lift. Our current space stations were assembled in orbit, not lifted from the surface in one piece.
Prior to the new JJ Abrams movies, both Star Trek and Star Wars assumed that all starships and space infrastructure were built in orbital shipyards. The reason is kind of obvious... they have spacedocks and command ships that are literally tens of kilometers long. Either you would have to add atmosphere-safe engines and reinforce the hull to withstand atmospheric stresses -- which would take away a lot of mass that could be used for more space-based capability -- or you would have to build a booster which is probably larger and more expensive than your incredibly expensive starship.
The only way it makes sense to build starships on the ground is if you have antigravity technology. The new Star Wars and Star Trek movies seem to assume that some kind of antigravity exists, because they showed the Enterprise being built on the ground, and Star Destroyers hovering just a few hundred meters above cities. This looks super cool and I wouldn't have any problem with it except that it's complete bullshit in the established canon of both franchises. But it's pretty obvious that the people making these movies don't give a damn about worldbuilding, so there's not much point in even talking about it.
I thought about adding some kind of antigrav technology to Outsider, 'cause those shots of starships in atmosphere or floating in a water dock like in the
Yamato series do look super cool. I decided against it because I think it sets a technology bar that's much higher than what has been established for the setting. If you care about consistent worldbuilding, then every time to add an ultra-tech capability, you really have to think through all the different ways that
new technology would affect everything in your universe. Antigrav would be an incredibly disruptive technology, so I left it off the list.
The Loroi at TL10+ have very efficient atmospheric shuttle engines, and on a few major production centers they have built
orbital elevators. The main drives used in vacuum on starships and small craft alike would incinerate the atmosphere of a planet (and probably the spacecraft along with it) and shower the ground with hard radiation, so those craft that need to operate in both atmosphere and vacuum (like the Highland shuttle) have separate drives for vacuum and atmosphere. But building military starships that way just isn't practical; you'd have a hard limit on the maximum size of the craft, and it would sacrifice a lot of its mass for capability that it's rarely going to use.
And it doesn't matter whether the shuttle is SSTO or uses a booster, as long as both parts are reusable (as SpaceX's Starship aims to be).
Fleets of SSTO shuttle and the occasional space elevator eh?
Regarding gravity manipulation or antigravity the game changes do not have to be ridiculous.
For example, I thought of a simple gravity scifi drive augmented with auxillary rocket engines:
CGI (Converted Gravimetric Impulse) drive: Converts gravity into an impulsive propelling force in any sigle direction you want ship to go. Max acceleration is equal to local gravity field strength of planet you are on or near.
Neutral. When not accelerating your ship will float and be weightless inside even on a 1g planet.
Impulse: You can do full impulse (max acceleration based on local gravity strength) or accelerate slower or less than local gravity field strength.
Manuevers: Ship can accelerate up, down, sideways,backwards, forwards, pitch, yaw, and roll. All without RCS simply by using the CGI drive field. It saves RCS for times ship is too far away for gravity field strength to offer decent acceleration.
Keeping it from being overpowered: The charger for a CGI field obtains a second of thrust for every TON of charger.
Which means: 3000 ton chargers are common, shuttles and missiles do not use CGI, only big vessels. Auxillary rocket engines are nothing special, but useful for visiting deep space stuff with low or no gravity field of worth... since the impulse provided would be too weak. Obviously planet gravities are used to set up destination trajectories and speeds, and warp drives carry ships quickly between them.
Limits: You can toggle CGI field on and off, but it will deplete during use, the charge, so after 3000 seconds of thrust you need 3000 seconds of recharge from gravity (50 min). Remember local gravity decidess what max impulse is. Earth gives a respectable 1g (on par with a torchdrive). The moon, if you warped to it,would provide lower max impulse. In deep space sun gravity is really low so the CGI won't help you much, just rocketry will.
Analysis: While the Loroi drives are waaay faster, the main advantage my CGI drive gives is such a civilization could put more mass in orbit with such ease unparralled by rocketsand space elevators.
For fast space travel I use variations of warp/jump drives anyway.
