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SFeather2022 In reply to Auwinhawk [2021-10-23 08:24:27 +0000 UTC]

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NK-Ryzov In reply to Dinotrakker [2020-01-29 19:03:38 +0000 UTC]

Many thanks. I aim for “insane”. And I look forward to the response when you finish reading the writeup - I think I’ve definitely upped my prose game on this one.

As for the spaceport stuff, it’s simple: you do enough of something enough times, you get better at it and people get used to it. Charles de Gaulle Spaceport is a part of de Gaulle International Airport, which is 14 miles from Paris. Even with rockets now as safe as air travel, the noise is still a problem, and only the UK is crazy enough to turn Heathrow into a spaceport, those absolute mad lads.

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Dinotrakker In reply to NK-Ryzov [2020-01-29 20:15:01 +0000 UTC]

I would assume SSTOs might be useful, considering they would just need the runway and might not produce as much noise as a vertical stack. 

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Dinotrakker In reply to Dinotrakker [2020-01-29 18:03:38 +0000 UTC]

*how

*whoops*

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NK-Ryzov In reply to AlexanderBranza [2020-01-29 14:16:04 +0000 UTC]

In the era this map depicts? Honestly, I’m not sure what military vessels in general look like, in any period of OH, mostly because I haven’t taken the time to work on that. I have a massive “Mars 2020” doc in the works wherein I explain how paper and rubber are made on Mars - more often than not, OH has me fleshing out very minor logistical questions such as these, rather than the sexier stuff like space battleships.

Anyway, I imagine military spacecraft in 1999 look very similar to the civilian vessels, but with weapons attached to them.

In the same way that the par and sail dominated nautical technology for thousands of years, spacecraft designs haven’t changed too much between 1999 and 2285, mostly just in scale and details.

There’s voidcraft (ships built in space, for space), which sort of resemble the ISS, but with nuclear propulsion systems, wing-like radiator fins, and often rotating sections. Most of the time, crews are work in microgravity as the ship cruises, and spend mandatory hours in the rotating section, to avoid the negative effects of micrograv on the human body (bone density loss, blindness, etc). Others are designed in such a way for high-thrust; when the ship is under thrust, “up” becomes the direction the ship is traveling, while “down” becomes the direction of the thrust. A lot of ships have floors, consoles and furniture designed in such a way as to accommodate multiple configurations - walls that can become floors, foldable ladders, tilted sinks, etc, and a lot of the smaller, faster vessels have foldable rotating sections.

However, voidcraft aren’t able to land or take off from the surface. Ships able to do that are configured either like tailsitter retro-rockets, or bellylander shuttles. The latter aren’t able to cross interplanetary distances, but the former can. They don’t typically have rotating sections, so the crews have to deal with a mix of micrograv while cruising, and “down-is-thrust” while their engines are burning; to land, tailsitters tilt over and retro-thrust to slow their descent and then extend their landing gear. While retrothrusting, everything is fastened down, including the crew.

Also, no windows. While in 2285, modern ships have HD screens that are almost better than windows, in 1999, spaceships have to make due with grainy TV screens, periscopes and very tiny windows made of multiple layers of reinforced glass.

In 1999, tailsitters are still used for interplanetary missions, but they’re a lot slower than the larger voidcraft, which aren’t quite subject to the tyranny of the rocket equation (to go up you need thrust, to get thrust you need a big rocket, but the rocket is heavy, so is the fuel, this weight means you need more thrust, therefore heavier engines and more fuel, etc) like the tailsitters and bellylanders are. Most people traveling to Mars prefer to take a shuttle (tailsitter or bellylander) up to orbit, board a voidcraft and ride that to Mars for six to nine months, and upon arrival, they take another shuttle down to the surface. Tailsitter IPV’s (interplanetary vehicles), while slower and not as effective at moving heavy cargo, have the appeal of cutting the voidcraft middle-man out of the journey.

Chemical propulsion is still in use for simple missions from surface to orbit; demand and economy of scale has dropped the price of rocket fuel due to so much of it being produced. However, nuclear propulsion’s also pretty big. Bi-modal NERVA-type thrusters are the big cheese in 1999 when it comes to interplanetary missions (too heavy to use as a launch vehicle), but more recently, the first lightbulb NTR (a closed-cycle gas core reactor rocket) has been successfully test-fired; a lightbulb NTR uses a quartz wall to contain hot uranium hexafluoride, allowing the bright light from the nuclear reaction to heat up the rocket fuel, while also allowing you generate photovoltaic energy. The lightbulb NTR is an engineering marvel the drastically exceeds the performance of chemical rockets, but with a lot less weight than NERVA and no radioactive exhaust, unlike other NTR designs, and will go on to be the standard for fission propulsion (along with improved NERVA designs) well into the 23rd century). Electric ion propulsion is also being experimented with these days, but in 1999, things are still in their infancy on this front.

As for military craft, again, I haven’t really fleshed them out for 1999 (or really any era in OH), but I can drop some ideas regardless. Basically, everything I said above, applies to military spacecraft. Weapons would probably include one maybe two laser weapons powered by a dedicated nuclear power source, plus missile launchers and recoilless rifles. Something to keep in mind about space warfare is that it will be across distances in which you’ll need a telescope to see your enemy - in 1999, the expectation isn’t deep-space warfare, so most likely, Cold War battle-plans assumed duels between warships hiding behind the curvature of the Earth. An especially effective weapon for space warfare would be the nuclear shaped-charge; basically, take a nuclear warhead, and place it in a can made of graphite with one end opened up; the graphite will absorb the X-rays that make up the majority of a nuclear blast’s energy, and instead of 99% of that energy getting wasted in an explosion, you get that energy funneled into a magnificent beam - not unlike Godzilla’s atomic breath. The average Cold War-era “space battleship”, I imagine would have four to six of these “nuclear howitzers”, since they don’t require big hot power sources like the lasers do. Speaking of, heat dispersal is an issue all spaceships have to deal with - without radiator fins, crews will be cooked alive in their ship. Military craft also have this issue - in fact, it’s doubled if they’re using a separate power force for their energy weapons. Armoring up your radiator wings makes them less effective at dispersing heat, which means the radiators are the weakest spot on any ship. Kill those, and the crew is on borrowed time before they overheat. Oh, and stealth isn’t a thing in space, like at all. In general, space warfare comes down to sheer skill and who can draw their gun fastest - victory and death are two sides of a micron-thin blade. Oh, and let’s not forget anti-sat weapons, which can be mounted on anything from nuclear subs to fighter planes; anti-missile lasers and quick thrusting can mitigate this threat, but a second of carelessness can mean anyone on Earth’s surface can kill you. There are as many ways to die in space, as stars in the heavenly vault.

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AlexanderBranza In reply to NK-Ryzov [2020-01-29 20:01:49 +0000 UTC]

Pretty cool, and pretty hard sci-fi from what I'm inferring. Looking forward to more maps and lore.

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NK-Ryzov In reply to Boxinxs [2020-01-29 13:12:11 +0000 UTC]

Nice catch. I updated the doc with an explanation for what happened. Check paragraph eight, in the “New European System” section.

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