Science and mistakes in Firefly: Ask your questions.
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Thursday, September 8, 2005 08:45
VIEWED: 13068
PAGE 10 of 10
Its a highly theoritical bananna.
And I aint peeling, i'm splitting it, got to get some fairly radical power out of splitting a bananna...
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Reaverchow:
And as for ripping the ship apart...yeah...good point....what if we made a ship that pulled in one direction, and made the interior artifical gravity align along that direction? Heck, or even used the same gravity field for both? So all the pull was in one direction. (Travelers would be going forward feet first, I guess.) Would that work?
As long as the gravity well didn't go much beyond 1g I don't see why not.
Quote:
Originally posted by Reaverchow:
Sure. At one g....shouldn't be a problem....just need LOTS of fuel....and fuel to accelerate the mass of the fuel.... ;) Unless you didn't carry he fuel like in a ramjet...
But could a Bussard scoop up that much intersteller hydrogen to keep up that kind of acceleration *constantly*?
...
Oh, and I forget....colser to c (lightspeed) you get, more massive the ship gets, more fuel you need to propell it. 'course, in a ramjet, faster you go, more fuel you collect....('till you hit a bit of space dust and explode!)
Long answer time:
The Bussard RamJet utilizes a Bussard Ram Scoop to 'pickup' matter from the surrounding universe, to use as fuel and engine reaction mass.
Quote:
The Bussard ramjet was proposed by R.W. Bussard in 1960. The original vehicle collects charged particles from interstellar space using a large magnetic scoop, and funnels them to the onboard H-He fusion reactor, where they are converted to fuel. According to Bussard's calculations, a 1000 ton starship with a 100% reactor efficiency, which collects fuel from a medium with 1 charged nucleon/cubic centimetre would accelerate almost indefinitely at 1g. In a year the craft would reach the speed of light and in the subjective lifetime of the crew it would also reach the end of the Universe. The diameter of the scoop would need to be 100 km for this 1000 ton vehicle, if it is to move through a space medium with a density of 1000 atoms/cm3.
http://www.itsf.org/brochure/ramscoop.html
Now the actual particle density differs depending on who you ask, and where in the universe you are. For instance Interplanetary space will have a fairly large particle density, where as Intergalactic space would have very little.
This site gives an estimate of an average of 1 Atom per cm³:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/DaWeiCai.shtml
Using a EM field as our collection mechanisim would allow for a larger area of space to be harvested. Using the above criteria we would need a field that had an electric current of more than 1.6*10-19 volts and a magnetic field of more than 1×10-6 gauss (0.1 nanotesla) for a diameter of at least 100,000km.
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
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Just don't do a Full Bananna Burn.
Monkey in the wrench Chrisisall
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Quote:Yeah, that makes sense. I didn’t think about that, but that’s a good point.
Originally posted by perfessergee:
So, YoSafBrig-type operatives would have to match vectors, at least approximately, leaving the field clear for sharpshooters like Jayne. Who could probably have done it with a 30-06. But that's what Big Damn Heroes are for......
Quote:Yeah, and I’m pretty tough if you compare me to small rodents.
Originally posted by citizen:
As for ships meeting each other in the black, the distances aren't that great at all, at least not on a galaxtic scale.
You are right about the orbital dynamics. Distances between planets curve around the star’s gravity well, as well as the planet; this however doesn’t make anything necessarily any closer. One of the assumptions that scifi seems to make is that planets are always stationary. In reality it may be necessary to travel from one end of the solar system to the other to get to planets that are “near” each other in distance from the sun and that will take you in a big arc around the sun. A particular ships trajectory along these “space lanes” would be quite unique and a function of the departure time and initial velocity of the particular ship in question. Even along a matched trajectory towards the same destination there could be distances of thousands of miles between ships, along the same area of corridor. How far away does a ship need to be before you can resolve it with the unaided eye? Even a large ship, I would say less then 10 miles, anything further is likely to appear as nothing more then a moving white dot against a background of stars, if it is visible at all. It just seems so unlikely to me that one would ever find another ship just meander past.
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn Mac Cumhal:
A particular ships trajectory along these “space lanes” would be quite unique and a function of the departure time and initial velocity of the particular ship in question. Even along a matched trajectory towards the same destination there could be distances of thousands of miles between ships, along the same area of corridor. How far away does a ship need to be before you can resolve it with the unaided eye? Even a large ship, I would say less then 10 miles, anything further is likely to appear as nothing more then a moving white dot against a background of stars, if it is visible at all. It just seems so unlikely to me that one would ever find another ship just meander past.
We have sensors today that can scan the outer reaches of the solar system, (even if it is only visually) so its not a stretch to assume that ships can detect each other at ranges of 100,000 miles or more. So they know when someone else is using the space lane. Add to that the spacelanes would likely take weeks to move a great deal out of place, and its likely that spacelanes would be 'fixed', only the entrances from the planets would change (otherwise it would be difficult to patrol them no?).
Given thoes points meeting a ship in a spacelane is far more likely, as a ship can pickit up on Lidar(Laser/Infra-red Direction And Ranging, obviously) or whatever, and change course for an intercept if so desired, and they'll likely be moving around a relativly small galaxtic neighbourhood.
Chrisisall:
Give me a DUH!
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
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Thats cause its a joke thread .
As for the science, read some of it, all through, alot is based on real theoretical physics and is a reasonable explination based on what is cannon FireFly.
Read the first post, its explained how the thread is going to work ...
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
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