Technology musings
Oct. 9th, 2004 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cdybedahlAny space propulsion technology that is a plain extrapolation of currently existing technologies (such as, for example, fusion-powered rockets) will be much too slow. A reasonably realistic such spacecraft would take 18-24 months to get from Earth to Neptune.
If one on the other hand assumes that one of the few things that NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project didn't just plain reject (Zero-Point Energy, ZPE for short) turns out viable (and the US Department of Defense finds that likely enough to currently be spending money on researching it), things get more interesting. With ZPE, we might get free energy, reaction-less propulsion and even possibly the ability to de-couple inertia and mass. Which would make constant-acceleration spacecraft viable. Steady one-gravity acceleration would take you from Earth to Neptune in 15.5 days (according to GURPS Space), which from a story point of view is a whole lot better than two years. So The Proteus Manuscript universe will have ZPE. If it'll have the inertia/mass thing remains to be decided, since that might turn things a little too weird.
I have also been thinking about implants. Specifically, implanted computer power. Protein-based computers seem much more likely to work well as implants than ceramic/mineral-based ones, so that's the way to go. As for where in the body to put them, the usual fictional place for it (the head) is right out, since that's pretty much already full of brain. So they'll have to be put somewhere where they don't get in the way of the body's normal function -- and it suddenly occured to me that at least in female bodies there are two places where there's fatty tissue that's basically just there as filling to improve the shape of secondary sexual characteristics... A function that, of course, can be fulfilled just as well by bio-chips as by fat. So there might actually be a reason for a female character to have really big breasts. "Oh boy, look at the CPUs on that chick! Bouncy, bouncy!"
While somewhat reasonable, this idea is almost certainly to damn silly to actually use.
If one on the other hand assumes that one of the few things that NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project didn't just plain reject (Zero-Point Energy, ZPE for short) turns out viable (and the US Department of Defense finds that likely enough to currently be spending money on researching it), things get more interesting. With ZPE, we might get free energy, reaction-less propulsion and even possibly the ability to de-couple inertia and mass. Which would make constant-acceleration spacecraft viable. Steady one-gravity acceleration would take you from Earth to Neptune in 15.5 days (according to GURPS Space), which from a story point of view is a whole lot better than two years. So The Proteus Manuscript universe will have ZPE. If it'll have the inertia/mass thing remains to be decided, since that might turn things a little too weird.
I have also been thinking about implants. Specifically, implanted computer power. Protein-based computers seem much more likely to work well as implants than ceramic/mineral-based ones, so that's the way to go. As for where in the body to put them, the usual fictional place for it (the head) is right out, since that's pretty much already full of brain. So they'll have to be put somewhere where they don't get in the way of the body's normal function -- and it suddenly occured to me that at least in female bodies there are two places where there's fatty tissue that's basically just there as filling to improve the shape of secondary sexual characteristics... A function that, of course, can be fulfilled just as well by bio-chips as by fat. So there might actually be a reason for a female character to have really big breasts. "Oh boy, look at the CPUs on that chick! Bouncy, bouncy!"
While somewhat reasonable, this idea is almost certainly to damn silly to actually use.
