Hard sf settings can't have anything but shit shi-

>hard sf settings can't have anything but shit shi-

God, I love magnetosails. Part of it is just that the circle is the most science fiction-y shape for a piece of technology, so a ship that has an enormous hoop for an engine is obviously going to be good. The giant beam of unimaginable energy blasting into it to propel it certainly helps the aesthetic, too. But the really cool thing, to me, is the infrastructure you'd need to set up for these. I love that, the idea of these enormous installations set up for the purpose of facilitating transport across the solar system and beyond, it's a beautiful vision of mankind's future and the sort of long-term thinking that would be required for them.

where is the part for the people and the stuff they are supposed to transport?

and damn dose that thing look stupid and ugly.

Circle ship reminds me of an idea I had. There's this concept (picture by Luke Campbell, off Project Rho) for a fusion drive where the coils of the magnetic nozzle are shielded by blades of 200:1 slope in order to reflect x-rays off the reaction. This is designed to absorb an absolute minimum of the heat and radiation from the drive so that it can survive extreme engine powers.

Campbell points out you'd get a ship where the engine structure is a significant part of its size, but I think the logical conclusion would be a ship that is entirely made of the engine structure: A giant hoop with not only the magnetic coils but the payload, propellant and other ship parts on the rim, benefiting from the radiation shielding of the blade.

See those cylinders placed equidistant around the circle? There. You're missing out on the scale because this is space, the loop is enormous. Each of the cylinders is its entire separate city, that's how big they are.

Bump. Even though bested me, I've still got this image.

and the big ships of the future will be BIG

>Braindead retards can't make good threads

How do we fix the gravity problem?

What did people think of Isaac Arthur's recent interstellar empires video? Its interesting to imagine the sorts of massive and exotic slower than light starships that would be present in an empire of ancient immortal posthumans, and the sorts of Kashdev 2 dyson swarm megacity-states that would develop around stars, in the way of core, suburb, and kuiper belt wilderness between the seas of open space.