Pet blogs

sbisson points out today's Joy of Tech. I'm sure miroza_cat will be amused.

Starflung

two_star asks good questions:

I guess I don't have a very clear idea of how easy spaceflight is in this Universe. There are several parameters:

How expensive is it to build an FTL ship?

The basic expense is getting stuff into Earth orbit. Moving the ship by conventional means to Martian orbit is not too tough, and the FTL drive is fitted there. Cost to orbit is currently around $10,000 per kilogram, I think. I'm going to assume that that drops to about half, even allowing for inflation over 44 years, so say $5000 per kg. That's still pretty expensive. I'll have to do some more calculations as to how much a colony ship needs to weigh, and we have to include the possibility of some materials and parts being manufactured on the moon or Mars, which have lower costs to orbit.

How expensive is it to travel a given distance?

I don't know. This is a poor answer, I realise, but I need to work out more of the physics involved, and I'm not sure how hard I want to make this sci-fi; I'm aiming more in a Space Opera direction. The basic question is whether FTL travel uses momentum or not - can you blast up to 40 times lightspeed, and then stay there until you brake, or do you have to keep supplying energy to overcome some form of friction?

How far can a ship can go without needing refueling and repairs?

Considering that Voyager got out of the Solar System still pinging, and there's little enough to run into in interstellar space, I'd say this is a pretty high number.

How much can a ship carry? (in terms of people, cargo, data.)

This can vary. A colony ship could be anything from the size of the ISS - not much of a colony, admittedly - upward. The "friction" question above may affect shape and size. Later utilitarian ships might potentially be any size.

How wealthy are colonies, (i.e., how many ships can they afford?)

I think that for some reason related to the drive, it's easier to build one two-million ton ship than two one-million ton ships. So the question is more like: How large a ship can they afford? Unless they want to send ships in more than one direction.

And what is the range of cultural priorities in terms of how starships are used, (colonization, luxury tourism, trade, exploration, warfare.)

At diaspora or after? At diaspora, colonisation only. Afterward, anything you can think of.

And aliens are a whole 'nother bundle of worms. What are they like? How do you resolve the Fermi paradox?

Aliens can be and are anything and everything. I dislike the Fermi paradox (it's boring, and it limits the horizons of a Space Opera setting), so I'm going to throw it out. Aliens have not come to visit us because we live inside the FTL limit in a backwater system in an out-of-the-way part of the galaxy.

As someone else (ezrael?) mentioned, most communication is by FTL pod; radio is too slow and too clumsy for interstellar communications. So that's why we haven't heard radio signals.

Starflung

OK. You've seen some of the setup. You've seen what it'll likely be like. Now it's time to move it into working. What I intend to do for now is to create an LJ community, keeping setting-and-plot discussion locked to members of the community (writers) and leaving the actual story posts open to anyone and everyone.

So, who wants to be a writer for this setting? Comment here, please, and I'll add you to the community, when I get it set up. two_star and ezrael get free passes, as it were; access to the back end of things without having to write, because they've been a lot of help already.