Mnemosyne - a picture of Solar System in the 27th century

[Drashner1]

Can you please stop doing this? I'm creating this by myself in my free time, afflicted with depression and one of the first things people do is nitpick every technical detail and threaten me with a ban because of my tone. That's not what I'm used to. OA is a 20 year old collaborative project, this is something created by me and me alone in WordPad, incomparable. Nobody forces anyone to read this, it's everyone's personal choice. Apologies if I sound irritated.

Hm. Ok - fair enough. Let's try this again. I will admit that it's been a bit of time since our last communication and I've been busy so I don't fully recall all the details of your setting right now. Will endeavor to refresh myself on the thread and/or rub the brain cells together to get myself back up to speed.

That said (and speaking only semi-seriously) - given the nature of OA, what else other than technical detail nitpicking would you expect if you asked for feedback here? Nitpicking technical details (on each others writing usually) is how we spend more than half our time around here. It's practically in our mission statement.

Rather more seriously, is there a particular type of feedback that you're looking for here, beyond technical details? IIRC you haven't really written up a fully formed formal description or story or the like, so it seems to me the range of options for us to provide feedback on is rather limited at this point. But it's possible I'm missing something.

To save us both some stress, can you explain a bit more what you're looking for from us, please?

In the meantime - and speaking tentatively since I still need to refresh on your setting and get further info from you on preferred feedback, a couple thoughts below:

Anyways, I've been thinking to move the big war earlier or revise the timeline in a different way. I want the population to be high, but you're right - the years don't line up. I'd also like to flesh out the factions. You're right that the raids are a recent development, temporary, perhaps I'll remove them and replace them by something else (then again, Mercury is mincapistan). I do want the Hegemony to be a real threat and hated for a reason though, as well as something to underline their parasitic (taking from others rather than making things by themselves) nature. Illicitly making antimatter using stolen technology that they don't really understand fully may be a more sensible choice.

Bearing in mind that this is tentative thinking on my part...

a) Re making the population high - The trick here is to do it in a way that is justified to the reader. Either from a hard science perspective, or a suspension of disbelief perspective, or both. For example, rather than having the Hegemony breeding like bunnies, what about having them use some kind of artificial wombs or cloning tanks or something that lets them accelerate their reproductive rate well beyond what humans are normally capable of? This also has the advantage of not tying up half the population with being pregnant all the time.

b) In terms of a possible justification for the large population - IIRC the Hegemony is ruled by or allied with an artificial intelligence. Would it be workable for the AI to have some method of amplifying its own capacity via utilizing human brains as extra processors and linked to it via some form of direct neural interface. Or maybe (if you are OK with going with an alternative, possibly somewhat handwavy, theory of human mind), say that in your setting, human brains work in part via quantum computing and by linking to one in the right way the AI can increase its computing ability far beyond just the thinking ability of the human brain. Either way the more brains the better. Other authors have played with similar ideas, so its not totally original, but it might be an option.This could also result in the Hegemony being sort of in symbiosis with the AI.

Another option - now that I think of it - I've seen an idea/speculation thrown about in a book of mine many years ago to the effect that the human is an emergent property arising out of the interactions of something like a hundred billion neurons or some other neural structure - so what happens if you have 100 billion human minds all talking to each other via telecommunications links? Do you get a whole new class of emergent (and possibly superhuman) intelligence? Whether you do or not, if the Hegemony believes this it might be trying to breed up a lot of people to achieve that goal.

c) In terms of making the Hegemony a threat and hated - what about biotech and biotech related atrocities? Specifically, what if they are into releasing genetically engineered plagues into target populations and then either attacking them when they are weakened by this or coming in and scavenging their habitats and such after the plague kills everyone off? Also - relating to wanting lots of human brains for things - maybe they scavenge the brains of their victims (either after they die of the plague or more directly during a military type raid) and plug them into some kind of computer matrix - whether to help build up their AI, or create their hypothetical super mind, or just to run equipment for them in place of more conventional computer hardware. That seems like it might rather...annoy (in polite phrasing) everyone else.

Just some thoughts,

Todd

[iancampbell]

Drashner1Hm. Ok. Based on the above, my sense is that any feedback anyone provides will simply be dismissed or after-the-fact rationalized away (using information you failed to provide in the first place) such that it ends up that you've created a perfect setting on the first try and don't actually have to listen to anything anyone else might say otherwise or make any changes to your vision.

Further review and commentary would therefore seem superfluous.

Anyway

Todd

Can you please stop doing this? I'm creating this by myself in my free time, afflicted with depression and one of the first things people do is nitpick every technical detail and threaten me with a ban because of my tone. That's not what I'm used to. OA is a 20 year old collaborative project, this is something created by me and me alone in WordPad, incomparable. Nobody forces anyone to read this, it's everyone's personal choice. Apologies if I sound irritated.

Anyways, I've been thinking to move the big war earlier or revise the timeline in a different way. I want the population to be high, but you're right - the years don't line up. I'd also like to flesh out the factions. You're right that the raids are a recent development, temporary, perhaps I'll remove them and replace them by something else (then again, Mercury is mincapistan). I do want the Hegemony to be a real threat and hated for a reason though, as well as something to underline their parasitic (taking from others rather than making things by themselves) nature. Illicitly making antimatter using stolen technology that they don't really understand fully may be a more sensible choice.

iancampbell
Just a couple of minor points to start with:

The fusion technology you imply might not actually be the best option, in detail. It's quite possible (and I am neither a nuclear physicist nor an engineer) that one of the better options might be dense plasma focus (DPF) fusion using a proton/B11 mix as reactant. Advantages: much commoner materials as fuel and just about no neutrons, also getting energy out of the reaction products is easier and more efficient because they are all charged. Some more info:

https://lppfusion.com/

Another possible advantage is that it might be possible to tweak the reaction geometry to make this into a fusion drive. Yet another is that the units can probably be made quite small, suitable for something the size of a large truck.

Second, I'm not sure the kamikaze option would be used much, or if it is might be used very differently. Why? Because the best weapon of a fusion torch ship, especially at short range, is its drive exhaust. Remember the Kzinti Lesson!

Thank you for your feedback (see, I don't actually think my setting is perfect ). I've read about p/B11 fusion on ProjectRho and IIRC it was less powerful in both specific impulse and thrust but this wasn't DPF fusion so I'll do some reading. The size would definitely be a huge advantage. Can it be adopted for pulse/Orion-like operation too?

As for kamikaze, it's something Kuiperians are infamous for, but it isn't really a strategy used for winning a battle as more of a "if I can't have your vessel, noone can" losing strategy. Where other attackers might ran away, Kuiperians go for the blaze of glory. But they aren't actively suicidal and you're right, at these power levels, short range attack by drive plume would be a good strategy and I should include it.

My limited understanding of DPF fusion is that it is intrinsically pulsed in the first place - but at fairly high frequency, perhaps something like an IC engine.

Incidentally, p/B11 fusion may well be possible in another mode which doesn't require high temperatures, as such, at all. The idea is that at speeds around 0.1%c (IIRC) the velocity of incoming interstellar protons is comparable to a temperature of around a billion degrees. So the idea here would be to guide said protons (probably with EM fields) into the reactor vessel to meet a pre-made boron plasma.