Power Generation In Op2/3

[dm-horus]

Ive been mining wikipedia for days now. I also actually went to the library to study up a bit for this...  :blush:

Every form of power generation present in OP2 has been explored or at least thought of in real life. So for the most part, methods of power generation will likely have to remain the same. The only one that i saw that hasnt been explored uses genetically engineered photosynthetic plant cells which are engineered to be far more efficient in producing biofuels. Maybe this could be applied to op3?

This is all ive come up with so far. Since fusion generators are so common in the outpost universe i dont think it would make much sense to reapply the science into massive power plants. i think solar satellite is really the ultimate power generation method.

MHD generators are another good way to go. also, using the magnetic field of a planet (or something else) to generate power is an excellent way to go. if any of you follow space technology, youd know about the electro-conductive tether experiment from '95. that is a means of generation similar to MHD but is far cheaper.

for those who dont know, if you put a tether made of conductive material into space and align it perpendicular to the magnetic field of a planet, the movement of the field along the tether moves electrons just like a farraday coil. in the tether experiment, 10 minutes into the test, so much current was going thru the tether that it melted and snapped off the test bed. not that the technology isnt sound, it just generates more power than anyone thought. its also thought that a space elevator, if ringed with electroconductive materials, would generate enough electricity to power the entire US, canada and mexico by static.

if theres anything you need studied or written up, let me know.

[Freeza-CII]

All the vecs in OP2 and OP3 have there own fission (maybe it was fusion) reactors in them they dont run on a liquid combustable.

1 you need Air and there wasnt much on New Terra and the OP3 planet "BOB" is supposedly simular to venus.

2 If you do the math to grow the amount of fuel you would need to power all the vec would be huge.   you would have to have 100 agidomes for just a 2 or 3 vecs.


Biodeisels made from soy beans are effiecent but to power the state of california you would need a field the size of china. o.O

Any liquid fuel you have to grow isnt going to work because of the space that you need to supply every one.

This tether experiment explain it alittle more please.  A MHD (Magneto Hydro Dynamics)  uses water and magnets some how lol.  I have heard of this being used in other games.  Its just they didnt use the power of the plants own magnetic feild they used another magnet.

[dm-horus]

the idea for biodeisel producing microorganisms i thought might work in the form of a power plant. a power plant that "grows" its own fuel. and, biodeisel doesnt have to be burned. it could be derived from a genetically modified version of an organsim native to Bob that produces fuel suitible for use in fusion generators (think superdense minerals in fluid suspension) i had no intention of presenting ideas for "fossil fuels" or the like. it just wouldnt work with the game. i hadnt intended on presenting a new concept for vehicle power, just power plants. i know an idea that is becoming more popular is to use modified solar algae. in the presense of sunlight the algae produce methane or hydrogen that is processed in a plasma generator (tokamak) or used in hydrogen fuel cells.

i cannot find information online about the tether. apparently nasa dropped research for it due to ISS funding issues and the site i remember seeing a couple years ago is gone. it was originally designed to power the ISS since it would require no real moving parts. just long wires extending about a 1/2 mile out from the station. 1 tether 1/4 mile long provides enough to power a small skyscraper with all its lights on. the ISS would have to problem for energy using this method, but as i said funding was cut and research was dropped. ill draw up a 3d model of the tether and test bed and post it in the file forum since theres no pictures available. wikipedia only showed what it looked like from earth. (since nobody knew how much power the tether would generate, it wasnt designed to handle the currents it actually encountered. as a result, the entire 2 mile long tether glowed in the sky and some people took photos thinking it was a UFO)

[Freeza-CII]

Nice so the teather is nothing more then a static collector the reverse of a vandagraph generator

[leeor_net]

The technologies that you've proposed are very much feasible. But, because there was very little time in which to conduct research into new power generation methods before New Terra became uninhabitable, we're stuck with what we've got originally. At least in the beginning of OP3.

Some of the other methods of power generation that you mentioned are excellent choices... for planets that are not like 'Bob' or Venus. Solar Power beamed down from Satellites would be unreliable. I believe that between the sulfuric acid and methane droplets in the upper atmosphere of 'Bob', the microwave beam directed to the planet would be refracted to a point that very little to no microwave energy would reach the surface collector grids... so Solar Power is not going to be effective.

A though that had just crossed my mind, however, is the use of the atmospheric tempurature to vaporize water to create the preassure necessary to spin the generators. By using the surface tempuratures (anywhere between 250 - 400 farenheight), water could be turned into steam which would then move generators inside the power system. It's a tried and true method of generating power, will likely be very reliable for a long time and is safe and clean. No fuels need to be burned, no dangerous materials need to be used, and the potentially catastrophic explosions from a magnetic field breach from a Tokamak Reactor would be a thing of the past.

Your points are good and very much something to consider. What do you think about the idea I just had? It seems in my mind that it would work and would probably work well. It would just require good maintenance (as the water boiling piping would be constructed of much thinner, heat conductive materials than the rest of the structure).

[Freeza-CII]

Leeor i think the photo graphed Venus with a microwave device.  If so then microwave would be no problem.  The only problem i see with send power by microwave is a microwave is a radiation that is weaker then visible light.  Plus like Light it doesnt tend to be sent out in a confined beam.  That is why we have collector dishes.  If a high wave would to be used like Gamma or Xray (which can be more confined then microwave) then the energy transfer would be higher.

That steam generator is nothing more then a Geocon ^_^.  

With all this Acid in the air on "BOB" I could see some kind of lead acid battery being used.  Or a Electrolyte battery that uses a acid and a something (i forgot lol).

Here is a Idea tho one that I personally would like to try

Magnets

Use magnets to push a fly wheel that has magnets in its rim using the equal forces trick that repell them then the fly wheel can turn the generator shaft.

[dm-horus]

mircowaves wouldnt be hindered by a venus-like atmosphere since venus probes use microwaves to study surface features right now. however, the magnitude of such a beam would probably cause the local atmosphere to flouresce due to chemicals present in the air. i remember you mentioning something about a couple non-noble gasses? i dont think anyone would use a technology that would effectively gives away their position from thousands of miles away. so solar satellite power still doesnt work.

The main problem with using higher energy waveform levels is that they generate massive amounts of heat. if you modulated a power beam to x-ray levels, it would essentially become a death ray and anything within 20 miles of the pickup array would cook. the worlds largest xray antenna is in arizona and facility managers have to go out every week to pick up birds that have flown within a mile of the antenna and been cooked in midair. aside from that, using the power levels necessary to power a colony would not only irradiate everyone near it, but probably melt the structure.

I hadnt realized the surface conditions for bob were so intense! what is the pressure on the surface? keep in mind, on venus teh surface pressure is so intense that volcanoes erupt 'out' not 'up'. thats why no probe has ever lasted more than 2 hours on the surface of venus. if the issue is simply temperature, anything designedto survive in space would certainly withstand that kind of heat on a planet as ship hulls would experience temp changes ranging from near absolute zero to +1200 degrees.

i really like the idea of having the game on a planet of this type! i dont think there's been any other game that has taken place on such a planet. which makes little sense to me as we are much more likely to encounter a venus-like planet than an earth-like one (not counting barren).

your idea for using surface temps to heat water to flash-point sounds like a great idea to me! all you would need is basically a heat-sink only in reverse. the only problem i can see is getting a large enough supply of water. using atmospheric converters would take time. current electrode atmospheric conversion takes months to generate the amount of water needed to supply just one generator, but that is a start. perhaps thru research in superconductors would make these more efficient. however this would still require a large intake. so far, i like the idea. i see no reason why it wouldnt work. it would certainly render geocon's obsolete as it would basically be an above-ground geocon.

using electroconductive tethers would be cheap and simple, but would require substantial starship technology. it could be a reliable means of generating power, but not early in the game by far. by then i would say that it would only be effective for powering space-based structures.

[Betaray]

heres a question ive been wondering

how do they get fuel for fusion?

the fuel that would be used in the tokamoks would be D-He3, but duterioum is found in seawater, wich of corse New Terra has none, I dont know if there are any hydrogen bonded alloys in the soil, but the chance of them being duterioum are very small, and would require substantional mining to get even a small amount

He3 would be even more hard to come by, because New terra does have a magnetic field it would not be bombarded by alpha particles that decay into He3 like the moon, and the closest known He3 sourse would be a gas giant, wich during the coloneys life, would be very inaccessible

the starship was nearly out of fuel, so bringing fuel of sufficant quantitys would not work, so how would they keep a steady power supply?

if they used a simmiler design to what I have for cold fusion for the vecs and possibly for the CC, that would use the duterioum, and as a biproduct would produce he3, but the question remains, where would they get the duterioum?

any thoughts?

[dm-horus]

how do they get fuel for fusion?

deuterium can be produced in the lab but only with MASSIVE amounts of electricity. the nazis had 4 river dam power plants feeding electricity into a facility the size of a small city for 3 years and all they ever produced was one single barrel of 99.9% pure deuterium. producing deuterium nowadays is mostly for scientific research. when i worked in my lab, it cost a couple hundred for a single vial of deuterium and even then it wasnt pure. refining saltwater does get you deuterium. in every 100 gallons you get one ounce of deuterium so it would be very costly in terms of water supply. so its sort of a chicken and the egg type thing. i honestly dont know WHAT is used as fissionable material but i made some effort in coming up with something. considering both colonys have a big focus on genetics, i assumed the answer would lie there.

i thought up the idea on my own but now i think it more closely resembles nibbler on futurama

[Betaray]

exactly, they extract duterium from water, so where is all the water?

[Hooman]

I don't think that above ground geocon idea will work. Energy like that isn't easily harvestable. You need a difference in temperature to harvest heat energy. With a geocon, the interior of the planet is hotter than the surface temperature, which is what allows you to harvest the energy. But with what you're proposing, you're trying to just harvest energy out of the air. I doubt there would be enough variance in temperature to harvest a reasonable about of energy. This is sorta that second law of thermodynamics here. You should be losing energy to heat during every conversion. What you're suggesting is harvest raw heat enegy, which just plain doesn't make sense when you think about it.
 

[Betaray]

plus lets not forget that venus like worlds have very little water as well

any water that they had would have evaporated into the upper atmosphere, and would be dissocoated into ions by ultraviolet light, and escape into space

so any form of power generation that requires vast quantites of water would be infeasible

[Freeza-CII]

If there isnt alot of water how do you think they will get he agridomes to work .

As for reactor material its called mining.

[Betaray]

agradomes dont require as much water as power genaraters

I said before, new terra has a magnetic field, so he3 wouldnt develop in its soil, and duterium isnt found in the soil, and you need to process millions of gallions of water to get a small amount of duterioum

[dm-horus]

to be honest, i dont particularly like the idea of planet Bob in regard to power generation. harnessing local resources is one thing, but dealing with temps that are more likely to be measured in kelvins is getting a little out of control. plastics in door seals wont hold up and since (at least from what i gathered in the novella) plastics are a major part of construction for the colonists. i also doubt that the colonists could significantly modify construction standards and research new building materials while on the starship before landing on planet Bob so that the atmosphere doesnt eat away at structures. hi temps and toxic atmosphere would break down most of what visits the surface. without knowing more plot, i dont know how this would all work. to be honest, youd be better off making planet Bob a frozen world. Co2 freezes nicely and is plentiful in the universe so it would not be much of a rarity. i always wanted to put an OP2 sequel on a large moon in orbit around a gas giant. THAT would make harvesting valuable resources difficult (requiring more focus on starship tech) but certainly not impossible. if you had a planet the size of a small star that was basically a giant ball of fuel, youd figure out a way to get there anyway, im getting off topic.
the point about fuel i made is that power sources would have to be set up so that they could go without refueling for a long time. that means whoever built it would work under the assumption that the worst case scenario is that you cannot find a large source of fuel. knowing that most structures have at least rudimentary labs and a major focus of colonists is advanced science, i postulated that in essence, all one would need to make at least a starting supply of fuel (enough for a single CC perhaps) would be a small kit that included growth media, a vial of fuel making microorganisms and an incubator. this would fit with what is seen in op2 as CCc pop up without prior labs. CCs are known to have rudimentary labs in them already so it would make sense that the core structure would be capable of sustaining itself. the only true way to sustain itself would be if it made its own fuel. and since the player always has the ability to build a CC even before it has any sort of mine, it stands to reason that at least some amount of reactor fuel is available. keep in mind the amount of fuel needed to run a reactor of this type would be the size of a golf ball. current tokamaks use fuel the size of a softball. new plans for tokamaks utilize a a lump of fuel no larger than a speck of dust to generate megawatt power.

water-
with surface temps of that level, any water present near the surface would be present only as water vapor in the atmosphere. knowing the types of chemicals present would help me postulate a precise altitude but regardless, water vapor would rise in the atmosphere to a level at which it would condense meaning an altitude where temps are lower. it would form a thick cloud layer depending upon how much water vapor is present. very very very little is likely on a planet of this type.

as far as i can tell NOBODY has tried to explain where the colonists are getting ANY natural resources. and i dont mean ore. i mean things nobody thought of like AIR and WATER or maybe HYDROGEN. not every planet is full of hydroxyls. i understand if you dont want to work that into the game because that would be more or less splitting hairs, but some background information on what exactly is done would help when thinking up these new technologies for the game.

[Stormy]

Hm.... all these ideas.... I don't have a lot to say about the ideas ... .but anyway..
We would need to come up with methods of doing the poles swinging back and forth... preferably using a function similar to Softbodies in Blender.

I also see all the space structures visible from space.... but that would require a change in the UI. How about a way to switch between planetary view and RTS view.... Hm..... Making the planet cold could be interesting none the less... I kinda like your Idea DM-Horrus... maybe have it take place next to a Gas Giant?

Core team people, we all need input and also, the community needs to help decide on this too

stormy :op2:

[omagaalpha]

wow that quike lot infomation dm horas. But air and water  is something that essence which why outpost 1 had chap faculty so colony good supply of it. which if you think you about beside cc also chap faculty so colonist can brethe oxygen.

[Betaray]

yes I also agree, if I were running the starship, I would land on a frozen moon around a gas giant, over a venus world any day

CO2 can be disasoated into oxygen and carbon, there would most likely be frozen water and nitrogen not far below the surface, and comets would semi regularry hit the surface   so that takes care of the organics, and the gas giant would provide us with almost infonate fusion fuel (remember the starship has an apporatas to extract hydrogen from gas giants, I do beleave that it could be jurry rigged to allow the hydrogen to be ferried to the planet)

although, this plant would have to be outside of the planets radiation belt, like jupiter, any moons that are closer than ganimead are uninhabitable, because of the intence radiation, and even on ganimede people could only come out for a few hours at a time so they arnt exposed to dangerous doses of radiation, and even than, when the moon passes though the magno tail of the gas giant, radiation levels will spike for a month or 2, and anyone caught on the surface would die

so mabe we should return to the half coloney underground idea like op1

another thing would be a hot core, if the moon is close enough that the gravity can heat the core simmiler to an Io and Europa style, without the radiation I described above, it would allow for liquid pools of water and other organics trapped under the ice, and well as provideing an excelent heat sink for both geothermal and fusion power sources

now for food production, gas giants cant exist that close to their sun, or else the heat would slowly evaporate them, so this moon will receave concidably less sunlight than earth does, and what new terra did, and you cant expect it to be rotateing like a planet with the strong pull of the gas giant tugging at it, it may be tidally locked, like our moon, wich means it would have day night cycles on the order between a few weeks, to several months, so how would we tackle this?

mabe new ganeticly enhanced plants that dont need that much sunlight?, mabe the starship would deploy a solar reflector that would orbit around the L1 point between the moon and the gas giant, to reflect more light on the planet, and by rotateing it, crate some sort of normal day night effect

the challanges are daunting, but im sure that the builders of the starship thought of everything, and it would be possible

 

[omagaalpha]

I like say reflector idea problemly most like what they have begin with for don't think on New Terra they made new plant can substance long hours.
But agiculture dome could have special light put in them to make up for lack light need for plants.  So in way it does not matter how much sunlight planet gets for coloney surival. But would has consider if for some reason deceided terraform planet again without test it on local planet that they are not on.

Hope you people can understand what I saying.

[Betaray]

no not really

for the reflector, all it would need to be is half of the diameter of the planet, and if it is made out of .001 micron thick alumioum it would weigh at around teh same as a aircraft carrier, so its possible to build

any spacefareing civilasation worth its salt would have solar sail technology, so think it would be viable, it would be on the starship because they would want to maximize the type of planets availible for colonization

also growing agraculture with artifical lighting would be extreamly ineffiecant, to put it in perspective, a single square meter of cropland absorbes the same amount of energy in an hour as a small city uses in a year, now ganeticly enhanced crops may be made that use less energy, but they will still consume a huge amount of energy

to put it in an op2 perspective, if the agradomes were artifially lighted, they would require on the order of about 200 power and produce half of the normal crop yield

[omagaalpha]

lol maybe made some advancement since earth day so now it not.
Hehehe actual did not know that it was that ineffiecient .
 Actual reflecter if easy make the reflect part maybe weld it anoth satellate so that it stay in orbit . think they mostly made it when arrived at bob for you got remember when left new terra that they kindy in hurry leave so probly did not of think of something like that when they were try to excape the blight.

[Hooman]

How important is it that the planet remain of a fixed type? Would it be easy to make mods for a different planet?

[dm-horus]

Personally, I like the idea of a frozen planet bob. it opens up a lot of opportunities that would let us explain away a lot of the technical issues and any we might have in the future. like if we discover something that wouldnt work we can say "well, its a frozen world so ________..." Something to keep in mind is that the first planet ever discovered via interferometry (outside of our solar system, orbiting a distant star) was a gas giant that was so close to its sun that at certain times its orbit would have the planet pass partially inside the star. Nobody knows how a gas giant could be that close and still have an atmosphere, but there it is. What Im trying to say is that Ive got about a dozen "orbit simulators" that Ive been playing with for years. If anyone would like, I can create a solar system you might want to see in OP3 and I could actually give you exact values. By values I mean I could tell you exactly what time it is on the surface of any planet in the system down to seconds. So if anyone is ever curious and is wondering "what if?" about planetary systems or orbits, let me know and I can run a sim. I will post pertinent data and anything else of value. Ive also got an orbit simulator that lets you record avi's and will actually let you texture wrap custom planets. If anyone here plays DarkSpace, I can import solar systems into that and if we really wanted to, anyone who wants to see could download DarkSpace (tiny) and actually fly thru the solar system in the "flyby" camera seen in lobbies before selecting a fleet. Those are some of the ways I could simulate ideas for solar systems. Ive also been reading other threads about resources and getting a third resource. Why not crystal? PPL are talking about mining gases from the atmosphere but that wouldnt make sense. Youd have to create a resourcing system VASTLY different from what anyone is used to and I really dont think it would work with the game. However, I do think reousrcing gas from a gas giant would work for Starship related tech since thats what is done in OP2 anyway. But regular reourcing for beginning the game would be much too difficult. But, harvesting crystals that are laced with rare minerals or even infused with rare gas wouldnt be too far off. Also, most high powered rocket fuels can crystalize so if it is necessary, starship tech could require its own resource being this crystal which is processed into fuel. Anyway. I had some other things to say but I forgot them. Ill prolly edit this later to include them

[Sirbomber]

On planets without a lot of sun they'd eat foods that don't require a lot of sun. Or they'd have snack food or something. Observe:
The Plymouth Cheetos Factory in action.

[Hooman]

Lol. Kickass. I'm gonna have to ask how you made it though?  :lol:

But yeah, thinking about this power issue further, I don't suspect power would be all that much of an issue. If it's needed, people will find a way. There are lots of sources of energy. If they've stopped in a solar system, there is at least solar power for anything left in orbit. If they're on a planet, there is no doubt going to be either chemical or nuclear reactions (unless the planet is solid iron?) they can make use of. Just because we might not know how to react certain things now, does't mean we won't ever know. If there are no suitable nuclear materials for a nuclear reaction, then you can always rely on chemical reactions. That should at least get you to another planet in the solar system to mine from. (Or maybe even the next solar system, if you're willing to wait). And on a planet like 'Bob', I'm sure there are LOTS of chemicals for you to react.