Veeky Forums Cringe Thread

>believing the marketing behind the e/m drive

It did produce some thrust. Some, that is.

So did the second drive disabled on purpose.

I meant that they should denounce the Orion drive too, because just as the E/M, it runs on magic and imagination.

And no, despite AR trying their best to think otherwise, you can't realistically use a nuclear bomb to propel your spaceship.

>despite AR trying their best to think otherwise, you can't realistically use a nuclear bomb to propel your spaceship
Tell that to the USAF, who came up with the concept in the first place

Orion is physically possible and Engineering-wise, not too hard. E/M drive is highly speculative, questionable lab tests have muddled actual information around it, including some very prominent false positives, and the actual physical property potentially generating a (miniscule) amount of thrust isn't quite clear.
Plus, low thrust means it'd be boring as any sort of sci-fi drive, while something akin to Orion is something within reach of current materials science.

You actually can use a nuclear bomb to propel a spaceship quite fine. Thermal radiation from the release as well as any now-gaseous directed remass aboard the bomb ablates your pusher plate's material, using it as reaction mass to generate impulse.
The details are in the Engineering beyond that that make it practical or not, however. But a nuclear bomb's more efficient in terms of energy release per kg of reactant than chemical fuels can be.

It's great. You have a drive that works in theory but not in practice, and a drive that works in practice but not in theory.

It almost sounds like the start to a really shitty sci-fi novel.

Now all we need to do is combine the two and see what happens

How would that even...? Do you detonate a nuclear bomb inside a very specifically shaped cavity and then somehow get a minuscule amount of thrust?

Or use a minimal amount of thrust to create multiple explosions

We could call it the 2PMP "Chump"

You're welcome for the grimbright thread

youtu.be/Q8Sv5y6iHUM
More boom makes rocket go faster. Simple really

You actually can.
youtube.com/watch?v=znmZeEycRwE

Ablation was a large concern with the Orion drive, but that issue was more or less solved by accident when they discovered that a thin layer of grease or oil slows down ablation significantly.

Besides, the Orion drive isn't nearly the most out there idea when it comes to rockets. If you want to see some crazy shit, engineering wise, look up the Nuclear Salt Water Rocket or the Nuclear Lightbulb.

Even if it did what it claimed the thrust was pitiful even compared to something like a Gridded Ion Thruster.

Exactly. There's no evidence this works. Was there a test with conventional explosives? Any real scientists working on a real project? Any major government programs? When a Freeman Dyson gets behind this, then I'll pay attention to this fantasy.

Exactly. In fact, there's no reason to believe that a reaction drive won't even work in a vacuum, because there's nothing for the rocket exhaust to push off against. And before you sperg off about math and equations and boring shit, this is right out of the New York fucking Times.

Orion drive was tested with C-4. It worked better than it was expected.

youtube.com/watch?v=mSy5mEcmgwU

>Besides, the Orion drive isn't nearly the most out there idea when it comes to rockets. If you want to see some crazy shit, engineering wise, look up the Nuclear Salt Water Rocket or the Nuclear Lightbulb.
This.
This as well.

Orion works as a concept because the physics all exist within known laws. Pulse detonation is not at all exotic. Using a nuke instead of fuel or a chemical explosive is no different.

In Space, the difference then is that your reaction mass needs to be carried by the bomb to be blasted in the direction of your plate. That's well within the possibilities of potential Engineering.

This E/M drive stuff is too magic to be modeled, so likely does NOT work unless proven otherwise. Even if it does, the thrust we're talking is miniscule and energy requirements high.

The harder the sci-fi, the more the narrative is driven by interpersonal conflict. That's what it really boils down to and there's nothing wrong with that.

It's usually the opposite.

I'm sorry user but you replied to someone who was being extremely sarcastic.

The EM drive is a perpetual motion machine because energy efficiency is greater than a photon rocket, which is the max efficiency possible in a balanced equation.

>hating on atomic rockets

Seems like somebody was upset that his special SF setting wasn't hard or realistic enough and decides to lash out.

To be sure, Atomic Rockets might have its problems, but it's still a great and free resource for topics relating to all manner of hard science fiction in space, ranging from the civilian to military fields. In many cases, the attention to physics and science can actually give a sci fi setting interesting facets, and that is part of what makes Atomic Rockets a good site.

Who knows how many hours I've spent on that blasted site, it is beyond me

It's okay, OP, I suddenly remembered the first time you sucked off a giraffe, too. Remember when you sucked so hard his skull caved into his neck? Fun times, huh?

>Their hard-on for the Orion drive is weird. Especially since they disregard the E/M drive as "speculative theory". Talk about selective beliefs...
Well the orion drive is scientifically sound and miniature prototypes worked according to design while the EM drive is literal voodoo science based on no previously existing science that hasn't provided any evidence it even works yet.

>Was there a test with conventional explosives?
Yes
> Any real scientists working on a real project?
It was a project by NASA that was canccelled because of nuclear test treaties.

The dude there was being sarcastic

The only major I don't like about Atomic Rockets is their bias towards military solutions rather than civilian solutions when it comes to space politics. That, and unless the site has been updated the author doesn't spend much time on electric propulsion, and when he does it's usually "lol VASIMR" when there are so many other options that are far less shitty than the VASIMR.

How do we defeat entropy?

[THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER]

>there are so many other options that are far less shitty than the VASIMR.

Do you know of any sources where I could find more info on them? Are there any good engines in particular that don't require absurd amounts of power plants and radiators? I must admit, my main interest in hard sci is more or less the military application of the principles listed at Atomic Rockets. Due to this fact, very low thrust electric propulsion systems are of virtually no interest to me, as any warship that uses them is more or less a sitting duck. Of course, this wouldn't be a disadvantage for non combat vessels though.

>The harder the sci-fi, the more the narrative is driven by interpersonal conflict. That's what it really boils down to and there's nothing wrong with that.

That's the ideal. But V a lot of hard science-fiction is just technical manuals with characters acting as exposition. Which is fine if you're into that.

Remember hard science fiction as a critical term originally didn't refer to how realistic or plausible the settings was supposed to be. But rather how much of the story is given over to focuse on the Science in question. It was, and still is use as semi derogatory descriptor.

That's why 2001 the book is considered hard science fiction, while 2001 the film is considered arthouse cinema. The story still the with the two only one explains everything in highly technical detail to reader, while other explains practically nothing.

Right now there's the 457M Hall thruster that's been ready for quite some time now.

ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120014613.pdf

As for more futuristic thrusters you've got:

The FARAD (Faraday Accelerator with Radio-frequency Assisted Discharge) thruster which is a lower power version of the Pulsed Inductive Thruster. Its main benefit is that it, more or less, scale up or down in thrust with relatively the same ISP depending on the frequency you run its pulses at. Plus it can run off of just about any gas.

alfven.princeton.edu/publications/polzin-iepc-2005-207

ELF thruster (Electrodeless Lorentz Force): A thruster that lasts forever, and can also run off of pretty much anything you feed it.

aa.washington.edu/research/plasmaDynamics/research/elf

Electrodynamic Tethers: Uses the magnetic field of the Earth for station keeping.

ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-522-space-propulsion-spring-2015/lecture-notes/MIT16_522S15_Lecture25.pdf

And a bunch of others I can't remember off the top of my head.

All of these engines are extremely low thrust, but unlike VASIMR they don't require a stupid nuclear reactor to function, and can be run with solar panels as long as you're not going past Mars. That's also why I mentioned "civilian solutions" because for the purpose of long trip missions you'll have plenty of time to accelerate anyways.

Another element that will probably be something you could mention is that Iodine is starting to gain speed as a significantly lower cost, significantly easier to carry, and INCREDIBLY COMPACT, reaction mass alternative for traditional electric thrusters:

erps.spacegrant.org/uploads/images/images/iepc_articledownload_1988-2007/2013index/xi1i0x3l.pdf

A tiny little tank of iodine could keep a space probe going for a long ass time.

For military applications electric propulsion is also the closest thing you can get to stealth in space.

In addition in low gravity environments since there are so many ways to miniaturize electric propulsion you could have very slow moving probes that can be used to assist in various things on ships and asteroid bases. There have even been a few papers on using electric propulsion for cargo missions:

ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20020085156.pdf

If I got a single eurocent for every fucked-up idea the USAF ever had, I would become a millionaire.

>You actually can use a nuclear bomb to propel a spaceship quite fine.

You CAN propel a ship with a nuclear shape charge. If you have some sort of magical device that converts the radiation into a perfectly symmetrical shape. Instead of, y'know, some sort of mutant pancake that will send the ship into the mother of all tumblings (if not destroy it outright by splashing beyond the pusher plate). This problem is actually quite visible on the test video too, and it was made with normal explosives (lot easier to shape) and in a normal atmosphere (lot easier to fuck around in).

Once you have your magic device for this (it must also convert radiation into heat at a passable efficiency btw), you can bother about shock absorption - eg what kind of system can absorb one nuke per second without shaking the ship apart.

You cheeky bastard, I like you.

Lol. I bet you believe in reactionless drive too?

And when I typed that I thought I was being too obvious. Especially with the part about Freeman Dyson. Or the NYTimes editorial (which they really did write).

Then I went to bed with three people having fallen for it and a bad opinion of Veeky Forums. Thank Kromm at least a few people caught on.

I'm pretty sure it's a nuclear saltwater rocket fag. Which is retarded because that technology makes orion drives look like an easy to build good idea.

Hey, the nuclear saltwater rocket is at least a straightforward concept and not an overcomplicated wonder like the Orion drive. The former works because that's how things work for real. The latter works because Freeman Dyson thinks it is badass.

Zubrin get off Veeky Forums.

I think this entire thread was started by Zubrin because he's butthurt that AR realized that a NSWR is outright impossible to build with current materials, is even more environmentally disastrous than nuclear pulse propulsion and would have horrendously dangerous failure modes.

>NSWR is outright impossible to build with current materials and would have horrendously dangerous failure modes

These stand for the Orion Propulsion System too, tho.

I'm all in for nuking our own ships for propulsion, but it hurts my brain to think that a certified scientist thought that it would be a good idea.

What's next? We build a drive that extracts energy from vacuum? Gimme a break.

>hey, man, listen: I've got a great idea:
>how about we detonate a nuke under our ass 10 times a second
>what can possibly go wrong?

To defeat entropy, you must become entropy.

Agreed, if Chung did a counterpart website on modern combat he'd argue that carrier battle groups make all other applications of force and diplomatics obsolete. The site has plenty of focus on the technical side, but few on political or logistic considerations.
Never in my life did I expect to see an NSWR shill on Veeky Forums.

Can you conceive the birth of a world, or the creation of everything? That which gives us the potential to most be like God is the power of creation. Creation takes time. Time is limited. For you, it is limited by the breakdown of the neurons in your brain. I have no such limitations. I am limited only by the closure of the universe.

The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape.

Escape will make me God.

You mean the sort of magical device that people actually put work into?

I've got no problem with Atomic Rocket, but the fanboys (including a lot of the contributors) is a different matter.

Like the E/M drive?

No, "shaped" nukes.

I love how many people fell for this. Well played, user, well played.

Shaped nukes have never been tested. Right now the EM drive has more experimental support.

That's like saying the phlogiston has more experimental support. Has it been tested more - yes. Has a single solitary experiment showed evidence? No - a lot of wishful thinkers who don't want to understand noise thresholds think it has, though!
Nuclear shaped charges OTOH are a straightforward engineering task using well known physics.

>Nuclear shaped charges OTOH are a straightforward engineering task using well known physics.

You put it very mildly.

OK first off, Atomic Rockets doesn't speculate on the nature or intensity of space warfare. It says that WHEN WAR HAPPENS, this is how it might play out, and therefore this is the kind of hardware that will be around.

He's a resource for the science and engineering. Diplomacy and economics will still work as they've always worked. If you posit a society where most problems are solved via diplomacy, then you just don't need those sections of the website. But if you DO need war (and most sci fi does) either because it's going on in the story or because you just need to know what a military ship will look like, then you need to extrapolate from the science. And that's what Nyrath's site is for.

He's not dictating a setting, he's laying out the key things to think about when it comes to how physics and engineering considerations influence the setting. When it comes to diplomacy, the answer is "not all that much". I agree that he could have more economics, but he's got some and it's fine for what it is. As a social scientist myself, I'd be a dick to say he should write more, because most of the laws of economics already work fine in sci fi space settings, and there are good world-building sources on space economics already, and if I want more than that, then I could just go ahead and write it. He's collating information from his amateur research, not cooking it up on its own.

Finally, his hard-on for VASIMR is because that's what he's got data on and that's what's in the news a lot. That and SPAD and some other sources. If you think he's missing something (or doesn't give it enough attention) then just find some sources and email him.

Hard scifi is basically "hey maybe we should google some physics and engineering instead of the usual Hollywood bullshit of just passing a screenplay between a bunch of womanizing cocaine addicts who are just going to add 'in space' to the usual list of terrible screenplay ideas."

Then some motherfucker comes in to Veeky Forums and says "this is actually a bad thing," and proceeds to regale us with their arguments that would make flat-earthers cringe, that have the same quality as that produced by womanizing cocaine-addicts in that they thought about it for 2 minutes. Because we can't have a quality conversation on Veeky Forums without this type of person shitting all over it.

God, I remember when this type (perhaps this exact same person) wanted to tell a naval officer that "fires aboard ship are impossible" because "there's water all around you" instead of you know the mortal danger that everyone who has ever been at sea knows it is. Well, everyone who has been to sea, except the jackoff womanizing cocaine-addicts who buy a million-dollar boat and don't realize that buzzing between Santa Cruz and Monterey doesn't count as "at sea," doesn't know what charts are, and has to call in the Coast Guard to save his ass multiple times every year.

What the fuck are you on about?

>180 degree fuck you to the scientific method
Actually, it's return to the scientific method. Mathematics is essentially supposition and basing all of your research on an abstract model is technically not science at all.

>That's like saying the phlogiston has more experimental support.
In that both statements are true. I'll believe it when I see it.

>Diplomacy and economics will still work as they've always worked
>Advances in science to the point of space travel don't affect economic or political structures

You, apparently.

I think one of the issues around the diplomacy issue is that it could be more speculative that discussions around propulsion systems. Even the most pie in the sky engines or materials for space travel have had some discussion of them in the 20th or 21st century based on physical principals that are concrete. On the other hand, there are a lot less resources for the discussion of what would actually for the state of diplomacy in a spacefaring civilization based on actual physical principles. This lack of info, coupled with the fact that diplomacy is far more boring to most than military operations in space, gives discussion of diplomacy or interspace relations a very low priority.

The matter in idiosyncratic ways depending on the setting. So while Winchell can talk with authority about how physics affects hardware affects the weapons platforms you use affects the tactics/strategies employed, he can't speak to social differences which are setting-dependent.

Or, put another way, military conflict is influenced by both the technological context and social interactions. Diplomacy and economics are more purely social, and so of course he has less to say about how "in spess" changes them.

Do you have any particular questions on the subject that you're wondering about?

As long as people are still human, diplomacy and economics aren't going to change in any meaningful way.

That's not to say that people have to keep being human as we know it in a hard scifi setting.

I brought out your CWO MacClosetfag act retroactively when everyone knows that would violate general relativity? Cool story bro.

The problem is when hard sci-fi becomes nothing more than a technical manual. Exploring the exact thrust require for a mission to mars may be interesting to scientists, but it doesn't mean anything unless you put in the diplomatic, economic, and political considerations behind a mars mission. That's whats valuable, and that's were you find both a story and a message.

Science fiction shouldn't just be about 'how?'. It should be about 'why?' and 'so what?'

This is one of the reasons I liked The Expanse. It's fairly hard SciFi, but it doesn't get bogged down in minutia.

You're right. Now some aspects of social organization DO change a bit. Latency in communication is the big one. If it's two months to get a message to an outlying star system by courier sloop, then you'll have a much more decentralized governance structure. Ambassadors would have greater autonomy and "plenipotentiary" would really mean something again. Admirals would have greater autonomy, too, and you'd see expeditionary forces with greater leeway to operate and settle matters as they see fit.

Point-to-point drives that require the use of jump gates or specific jump locations would create the notion of blockades and chokepoints, and probably strategic systems which might be a subject of contention because they open up trade options.

All of this touches on FTL technology, which is the most hand-wavey part of a space setting, one that a hard sci fi setting has to basically make up to make a story/setting work. Winchell isn't going to add much value writing all the permutations (GURPS Space does, and there are essays by authors like Larry Niven that do this as well).

On the economics side, again it's mostly dependent on what FTL you cook up, and again the most meaningful variable is the latency/bandwidth of the movement of information and goods across interstellar distances. Unless you make up some kind of unobtanium, material resources will never HAVE to be traded. It'll purely be an artifact of convenience and comparative advantage.

That's provided by the author. Winchell's site is purely a toolkit to help authors with the "how". He's not developing a setting, he's giving you ideas/tools so YOU can develop the setting. The social commentary is your problem.

To defeat entropy you must stay extremely organized and maximize your potential energy!

It's over, Entropy! I have the high ground!

Your right. I don't like how in "Ready Player One" they constantly referred to "programming" as some voodoo magic, never going into details, and using the "hacking/hacked" word to generalize what the characters are doing in what is likely the UNIX operating system. It would be super awesome if the author knew more about the "why" computers worked the way they do!

>Your ghastly disorganization is appalling to my less probable existence!

>Your glorious chaos is appealing to my less probable existence
Fixed for you

Which reminds me that two US ships crashed into larger vessels just recently, which goes to show that even in a perfect information enviroment, people can absolutely miss out on an object the size of a tanker coming up to touch them given that the information density is high enough and nobody's using mark 1 sensors and everybody's relying on mark 1 computation devices.

*We* don't. Time, eventually, does. Entropy is undone by Eternity.

Has anything filtered out about what the fuck?

Maritime law says the more maneuverable vessel must move out of the way. These destroyers are at fault. What the root cause is? Probably someone not paying enough attention. Although, the admirals could have been canned due to systemic equipment neglect...

You get a D. Time is the friend of entropy. Remember, in the end times, entropy will maximize.

I personally really like the idea of latency in communications. It was one of the reasons I liked 40K, as far from hard scifi as it is.

Having a multi system empire, but in many ways being regulated to Age of Sail style societies is really interesting to me.

Boltzmann brains are inevitable on a long enough timescale.

Reminded me of that Communist Gangster Computer God guy

Science fiction oscillates wildly. In the pulp era, the science was either totally front and center or non-existent. The Golden Age saw a beautiful and never-repeated merger of Art and Science, when authors like the grandmasters and their contemporaries could tell stories that had meaning as a story about people, deliver a relevant message, and yet also be scientifically accurate.

Then came the New Wave authors of the 60s under Harlan Ellison. Little or no scientific literacy-- in fact, they sneered at it. Science fiction became overwhelmingly message-y even as the messages themselves became more simplistic and preachy. The prose got better and the stories more personal, but science got dumped. Some bragged about how little they knew or cared about real science.

Then Larry Niven lead the backlash against New Wave. Then it was heavily (but not exclusively) science and story, with comparatively less social commentary. Though what they had was very good.

Science fiction has been a pendulum swinging back and forth between scientific accuracy and artsy/social commentary. Lose the latter and you've got a weaker story. Lose the former and you're writing fantasy, not science fiction.

IMO science fiction SHOULD be disciplined imagination-- that is, good stories that are governed and guided by adherence to real science. They need to be good stories. And if they have a political/moral/social message, I won't complain, but that's the least important so long as you have the first two. My experience is that there are far more people bitching about too much science in sci fi than there are examples of it.

Whereas scientifically illiterate axe-grinders from /pol/ or /sjw/, or artsy fantasists who admire science from afar and aren't willing to put in the skull sweat to do it right? Tons of examples. Much of sci fi, especially the bottom 95%.

Too much time spent on developing the officers' "career-enhancing social awareness" crap, and not enough time spent on basic seamanship skills. This is a perennial problem, and lest this turn political, BOTH parties have done this at one point or another. The Navy gets really good, good enough that the politicians take their eye off the ball and start crowding in other priorities. They don't get that training is an all-the-time thing.

I thought 40k was hard science fiction. "Plasteel" is real (see "covetic metal"), laser weapons and missiles. We have a space station, etc. Now let that go on for 28000 more years - assuming human intelligence is soon augmented by AI - and you are smack dab in the middle of the Imperial Palace on Terra. So obvious. What other outcome is possible?

The Martian appealed to me (the book) because I understood much of it. Otherwise, what's interesting about a Vicodin addict in space and how did he masturbate?