Outpost Universe Forums
Off Topic => General Interest => Topic started by: dm-horus on November 18, 2005, 10:24:38 AM
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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.
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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.
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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)
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Nice so the teather is nothing more then a static collector the reverse of a vandagraph generator
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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 :P
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exactly, they extract duterium from water, so where is all the water?
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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.
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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
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If there isnt alot of water how do you think they will get he agridomes to work :P.
As for reactor material its called mining.
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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
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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How important is it that the planet remain of a fixed type? Would it be easy to make mods for a different planet?
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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 :P
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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:
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/Sirbomber/cheetosfactory.jpg)The Plymouth Cheetos Factory in action.
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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. :o
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yeah theres tons of ways to get energy. the only question is if any structure built to collect it would survive long enough to be of use :P bob sounds pretty hostile. and its NOT as simple as building them with traces of some compound that negates its effects ;)
something else that bothered me: in the forums someone on the OP3 team (i forget who, prolly lee) said that OP3 is supposed to be just like op2 only in 3d. however in other threads ppl (like stormy) are saying that OP3 basically takes place outside of the op2 story arc. something about a second starship. which is the right one?
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I've never heard anyone say OP3 was gonna be just like OP2 except in 3D. Sure it's an Outpost game, so it'll be similar in some ways, but it sounds fairly different to me.
From what I've heard so far of their story line, when Earth was destroyed there were actually two starships built, and sent in different directions. I think this might have had something to do with the storyline from the original Outpost, but I wouldn't really know. I'm not familiar with that game. Anyways, seems this is the story of the other starship maybe? (I guess that could kill any discussion of blight/savant debates, since it wouldn't really apply to the other story :P )
Or I could just be very very wrong about all this. If it's not a technical programming detail, I'm prone to forget or have things get mixed up. :(
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I got a PM(?) from someone in IRC (possibly Harky) who said "basically its going to be like op2 in 3d." When I saw that, I jumped a bit because up until then (if you knew about my initial incident with op3, you know what i mean) it was made clear that its not this simple. i made sure to make a note of it as whoever mentioned this was obviously in the core team (asking me if i know how to code). im not trying to start a sidition or anything, but im just trying to say that i got mixed signals here :P im going under the assumption that this is a vastly different storyline and i agree that all discussions about blight in regard to op3 SHOULD BE DROPPED. bringing back the microbe might be great for an op2 addon but i doubt theres a place for it in op3.
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Well, Part of the story involves the blight, but there are elements that make it a LOT different than it is in OP2. Most of the game doesn't have to do with the Blight, and also, there is NO blight on "Bob" (big super duper line ). I think you can guess the rest. Maybe... I don't want to ruin the story for you :P That's why i'm cautious
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Well even if the planet is so hot that the rubber or plastic fails dont really matter. There is only a certain degree of realism you want in the game. After you pass that you just have a game that becomes very anal in the realism department and then no one will play it for the buildings blow up when you start the game.
I love the cheeto factory lol
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i agree. i kinda started splitting hairs there :P its a common thing i do :P:P
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I was wondering though: How could they ever have ended up in such a hostile place? Their choices are basically Venus or Pluto? They sent out probes to make sure that wouldn't happen. They didn't just play rock-paper-scissors and let the winner pick which way they went...
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Ive got no idea. but its their story and their game. they can do it however they want. since i cant make games from scratch on my own, ill make mods for other games that tells the story i like. anyone can do that, too :P
mincing story and technical ideas is great but only makes a big difference if ppl decide to use them. i think everyones got their choices made. i wonder about those things myself, tho. maybe some unforseen problem forced them to pick a nearby planet that wasnt ideal?
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maybe some unforseen problem forced them to pick a nearby planet that wasnt ideal?
What, the janitor relieved himself on the Command Module?
Well, I suppose it is their story...
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DM-Horus is on the right track. But that's more than I ever wanted to say... ;-)
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of corse, op1 was never very realistic with their plantets eather, just on the frount of the box it shows a coloney on a volcanic planet with an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, methane, and sulphuric acid, and surface tempretures of 900 F
also I remember landing on a planet that had an escape velocity of .000001 mph lol
so I guess even with op1, supposidly the more real of the 2, realism isnt that much of a factor when it comes to planetary envirments, so even though im normally anal about stuff like this, I would say, do whatever the hell you want, and who cares about if its real or not
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well i think that the option of using stem was never explored enought
i think that it should be put into biger scale not so tiny like one over
a big vent
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We need to remember that OP1 was not a finished product. There were still mistakes in it but the science behind it was sound... well... the science that was used to develop the design. The game was broken in a lot of ways.
Anyway, I believe we'll be sticking with Tokamak's because they're effective (albeit dangerous) and that was the main source of power for both OP1/OP2.
I do believe that other sources of power should be explored as well and DM-Horus has some great ideas.
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I think that Solar power should be available. Its True thats the one main energy producing object that was sent with the starship from new terra to "bob".. Why include a Solar sat in the Orbital Package and decide to land on such a harsh environment..
Orbital Package
"This group of satellites and probes, to be deployed upon reaching our destination planet, includes EDWARD, a communications satellite, a solar power satellite, orbital observers, and several types of atmospheric and geologic probes."
it seems like the colonies properly prepared this time to launch to space.. so why use the outdated tokamak if the solar power was included on teh ship, even the research for mhd would be there and resources available to build it at the beggigng of the game? Also why would they travel to a venus like planet when they were well prepared. in op2 it seemed like everything that they developped was automated so that they wouldent run out of fuel, and the stasis preserved all the colonists wihtout reducing thier lifetimes... also thousands of planets would be checked, so im sure there would be a better choise than a venus like planet.
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here what i say about fusion: The sun is a big fusion reactor.
how its work: with enough pressure and enough heat two H element merge into one He and thus produce massive energy
this reaction goes until no more H is avaible
so why would you botter using deuterium. you can just use simple hydrogen and this is present almost everywhere
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i like the idea of tokamaks anyway, so i say stick with them. theres no reason to change it. also, deuterium is basically useless unless fused with tritium where a large reaction is formed. 3H to 3H fusion would take more energy to sustain than is produced. since deuterium and tritium occur naturally only in very minute amounts, natural harvesting and artificial refinement would take up much more energy than a tokamak.
does anybody know if the tokamaks in op1/op2 are designed to work the same as current tokamaks?
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Yeah, just stick with tokamaks.
lordly_dragon, you can't really just fuse any two hydrogen atoms. You need "heavy" hydrogen atoms for it to really work. Helium is not stable without neutrons in the nucleus. If you use regular hydrogen, the most common isotope doesn't have any neutrons in the nucleus. Thus the helium atom they might form wouldn't be stable and would just break apart, if it was ever formed at all. There won't be any energy released since you won't have transformed hydrogen into helium, or the unstable helium breaking apart would have absorbed the energy it had originally released in fusing when it breaks apart. (Which sound a little silly, so I suspect you'd just have one hell of a time trying to get a helium atom to form at all). Keep in mind that protons repel each other, and you need neutrons to help stablize the nucleus. Thus no neutrons means likely no reaction. (And if there is any wonder, Deuterium and Tritium are just "heavy" Hydrogen with either 1 or 2 neutrons in the nucleus).
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yes, what the sun does is a form of fusion called proton proton fusion, wich goes though several dozen steps, including one where anti-matter is produced and annilated
the problem is, making proton proton fusion is over a million orders of magnatude harder than making duterium tritium fusion
so chances are that we will have to rely on duterum (the reactor can bread its own tritum)
now if the BOB has water ice, than the question of fusion fuel is mute, as they would have more than enough, and if it is the correct kind of ice, it could also have pockets of He3 in it (iceatoids in the ort cloud are thought to have it) so an ice planet would be perfact for colonization
plus I think it would be funny watching lynx skid around on the ice lol
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plus I think it would be funny watching lynx skid around on the ice lol
Ahh, now we're talking great new features. (thumbsup)
I'm still a little skeptical about the whole anti-matter stuff. I've never heard anything about it from a particularly reputable source. (That is, something that isn't Startrek which is known to be made up, and something that isn't from over the internet where you just have no idea where it's comming from).
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its just a step in the proton proton fusion chain, it does nothing significant, except emit a huge amount of gamarays
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That makes no sense to me.
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http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/procyc.html (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/procyc.html)
note the e+ that is a positron, an anti electron, it produces gamma rays, and aparently nutrenos as well
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Ahh, that makes a little more sense now. Although, it doesn't much explain what happens with that e+.
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isnt in obvious? within a milisecond it collides with the much more abundent ordanary matter, thus creating the gamarays and the nutrienos
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Umm, no. I'd say it's not entirely obvious. I mean I've never studied this stuff, and I'm not familiar with the properties of all these particles. Although, I guess the notation was meant to be suggestive. That and thinking back, this started from mention of anti-matter. But that webpage said nothing about anti-matter than I saw. How do I know if matter is converted to energy there? Maybe it just forms another neutral particle. I really don't have the details here.
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I thought it was just common physics sence, when antimatter touches regular matter, they annilate eachother produceing pure energy, in for form of gama rays
that site probly isnt the best, it was just the first site on a google search
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Yeah that's all fine and dandy provided you believe antimatter really exists. I think the whole idea just sounds a bit suspect. I've only ever really heard about it in sci-fi, and places on the internet that I wouldn't trust much. It's not exactly easy to be sure of anyone's credentials on the internet. Nor is there any sort of accountability, since if you make a remark on the internet (and really have a PHD in physics) it's not gonna ruin your career. But ifyou made some false remark in some reputable science jornal and have your name stuck to it, well, it's a little different.
So yeah, I'm a little hesitant to believe there is such a thing as anti-matter. Without such a belief, it's not so obvious what's gonna happen with that positron. I guess that's basically what I'm trying to say. Although, that reaction you posted a link to was rather nice and informative to see. That wasn't something I was familiar with. (Although, I have a strange feeling I may have seen something like it before). Anyways, thanks for that one.
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Antimatter is such a staple of science fiction that many people believe that it is science fiction, but antimatter is real. We don't ordinarily encounter it in daily life because the universe, or at least our region of it, was created with an excess of ordinary matter over antimatter. Thus all teh antimatter (or all the antimatter in our galaxy) has been annihilated, leaving nothing but the common stuff. But, as a result of the fact that energy can also be turned into matter in accord with the Einstein formula, evanescent antiparticles are created by cosmic-ray impacts with the Earth's atmosphere. We have also heen able to create antiparticles in high-energy accelerators and have succeeded in combining antiprotons with antielectrons (or positrons) to produce antihydrogen atoms. These antihydrogen atoms have been furthercombined togather to form antihydrogen molecules. Antiprotons can be stored in special jars called "Penning traps" in which magnetic fields are used to keep the ions from hitting the wall (where they would annihilate). In this way, up to several million antiprotons at a time can be stored for extended periods. Using big collection rings at leading high-energy physics accelator facilities such as Fermilab and CERN, up to a trillion antiprotons at a time have been collected. This represents about 1.7 picograms (a picogram is a trillionth of a gram) of antimatter. If this much antimatter were allowed to annihilate, it would release about 300 joules (J) of energy, enough to light a 60-W light bulb for 5 seconds. Tiny amounts of antihydrogen atoms and molecules have also been confined, using the pushing power of lasers to herd them away from the chamber walls.
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for every particle there is an antiparticle. so, not just matter but for energy as well as gravity. although the existance of most of these is theoretical since the nature of antiparticles is such that our means (utilizing matter, namely in our detectors and how we perceive reality) of capturing or detecting them is ineffective or sometimes impossible. Certain antiparticles are detectable in particle accelerators and this is why it was such a shame that the massive supercollider project was cancelled. I believe ive heard about a french project that is twice as large is being developed and the types of matter/particles/etc that will be detected using it should be impressive.
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basicly power generation works in magical and mysterious ways in outpost universe and once it is found out that its powered by serveral thousand hamster wheels the universe will end and the outpost universe will colapse on itself and become one singularity of Outpostism lol
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I was reading through and noted that DM-Horus was told by someone that OP3 was OP2 in 3D and that it was possibly Harky that said this.
As far as I know, Harky is not part of OP3's development team.
Second, OP3 is not at all OP2 in 3D. That's Levi's idea and something that he may want to take on at a later time (Levi, I know that you wanted to use another 3D RTS engine but OP3's may work better for you when it's done!).
OP3 is a new story alltogether.
As far as why they landed on a hostile planet, DM-Horus was pretty much on the right track when he said "something unforseen may have happened that caused them to land on a non-ideal planet". That is very much the case.
Furhter, some of OP1's planets weren't realistic. I know that... It does state in its manual that it is based on Science Fact not that it is Science Fact.
Also, OP3 will be looking back a little bit ... well... a lot at OP1. Not in its gameplay but in its backstory and several method's and that kind of thing. After we clear up these posts stormy, myself, TH300 and Zanco will release more information about what OP3 will really be like.
OP3 is also based on Science Fact but it is very heavily influenced by science fiction. And no, there won't be any new 'features' like the shields you see in Star Trek and Star Wars and that kind of thing (I remember someone mentioning something like that). There is shield of some sort but it is nowhere near that kind of technology.
... Oh yeah, I think Hooman was asking about OP3 being strictly based on a single planet in terms of gameplay (like OP2). No... it's not. The maps are not hard-coded to work the way we want them to. Textures and materials used on the map are entirely customizable by any user and easily done at that. There will be several planet 'styles' available so that new user-defined maps can be created that may not have been used for the campaigns (for instance, I don't think there are going to be any ice or icecap maps for the campaigns but the style will certainly be available). Also, if there is a maptype that's not available it will be easy enough to add the style to the game by adding it to the 'Logic Module' (to be described in another post).
Just thought I'd get that out of the way a bit... Hopefully I've answered more questions than I've created. Until next time!