Ray Pullar writes in message 7297 about orbital colonies in response to
another writers comments about refueling stations to bridge empty sectors.
Before I go on about orbital colonies I would like to mention that the Aslan
bridged the rift using similar methods. It is briefly mentioned in the GDW
Aslan alien supplement. Basically what they did was to drop off a fuel
bladder halfway. Jump back to get another, then jump back to the one they
dropped off. Then they would refuel from the bladder allowing a jump-3 ship
to bridge a jump-6 gap.
As for orbital colonies, I have a fasination with them so I am attempting to
design an O'neill colony using traveller FF&S rules. For reasons Ray
mentioned (cheap anti-grav) colonies would only be viable at lower (TL8 - 10)
tech levels. I'm using TL10 as a cut off because since you have this TL8
monster in orbit you might as well use it and upgrade parts of it.
Using the statistical functions in my HP-48 I have extrapolated the ship hull
tables to attempt to get realistic Traveller numbers for the hull. Figuring
Light alloys would be the easiest material to use in terms of economics (mass
drivers sending lunar materials to orbit or asteroid mining) I have come up
with a 6.46E10 hull rating that encloses 9.044E11 cubic meters or in simpler
terms the hull is a cylinder 6km in diameter and 32km long. It has a hull
thickness of 50cm giving an armor rating of 85. O'neill's figures state that
based on medical observations of astronauts on the Apollo missions, 50cm of
rock will adequately protect a human for a 30 year stay in open space. Low
earth orbit studies don't work because the crew is still protected by the
Earth's magnetic field. I also gave the hull an internal structure good for
8G's of acceleration in an effort to allow for the stresses the hull will see
due to the use of station keeping thrusters plus the rotation of the colony.
The mass in metric tons so far is 1.4e9 tonnes for the hull and 1.35e8 tonnes
for the internal structure. Price so far is 3.5e6 MCr.
I also intend to add an average of 10 meters of rock and dirt to the station
for landscaping purposes. This mass has not been accounted for yet. Other
systems like solar power, nuclear fission (to be added as a backup at TL9),
fuel storage and docking bays have not been figured in yet. The mirrors to
reflect sunlight into the station have also not be added yet. I did figure out
the normal extended life support for a smaller station and that required at
least 50 GW of power to operate (hence the need for fusion).
I intend to post my final design when completed (It'll take a while yet <g>).
So comments at this time are welcome. As a last note, A colony of this size
can support at least 2 million inhabitants. Extended life support is not
necessary since the colony does have a working ecosystem. The fusion power
option may be useful for a colony out in our asteroid belt where the sun will
probably be too weak to support a natural ecosystem. And finally, O'neill
states that the maximum size of a colony using current (1970's-80's) tech and
Light alloy / Iron materials is 15miles in dia and 75 miles long.
Given the interlocked structure of the Imperium there really was no drive for
any planet to go through the expense of constructing colonies such as these.
But here in the new era, or in your own campaign, I can see colonies present
in lower TL systems as those systems develop their own path to the stars.
One other component is needed to build large colonies, and that is a smaller
factory colony (not larger than Babalon 5) to build the components for the
large colonies.
Such colonies would also be virus resistant (in my mind) due to the low TL
present. The colony doesn't really need a large networked computer. Once
it's in a stable orbit and is spinning it stays that way. I'm sure a small
computer (to small to host a fully sentient AI) is all that is necessary to
provide the station keeping and rotational corrections needed. The main
reason Starship computers are so complex (as I understand it) is because of
the complex nature of the Jump calculations and the extreme precision needed
to energize the jump coils (See the Starship Operators Manual from DGP)
Any feedback? Comments?
John Bucsek [email removed]