MILSPEC-555: "EVACUATING A PLANET"

Lab: Milspec-555
Professor: Hard Nose Grindstone III PhD.
Handout #4:


CONCEPT: FAST BUILT SHIPS

What can we put together fast people? We can build fast if we're not building for survivability or for battle -- with ordnance and ordnance support structure. We all should know how the building process works in the field. Certain yard hands need access to the ship before others, on and on down the line. If we're building a ship as transports only, then we can skip a lot of the middle men. Yardhands A-W are not needed. The ship can be built quickly.

Can we build ships in 25 % of the normal build time. Cutting corners drastically.


Assignment:
How fast can we pump these babies out?
Proposed Large Carriers: Rednek731

cthia wrote:Lab: Milspec-555
Professor: Hard Nose Grindstone III PhD.
Handout #4:


CONCEPT: FAST BUILT SHIPS

What can we put together fast people? We can build fast if we're not building for survivability or for battle -- with ordnance and ordnance support structure. We all should know how the building process works in the field. Certain yard hands need access to the ship before others, on and on down the line. If we're building a ship as transports only, then we can skip a lot of the middle men. Yardhands A-W are not needed. The ship can be built quickly.

Can we build ships in 25 % of the normal build time. Cutting corners drastically.


Assignment:
How fast can we pump these babies out?
Proposed Large Carriers: Rednek731

The likely bottlenecks are impeller node manufacturing, or possibly life support manufacturing and installation.

The impellers set for even the most basic freighter is 16 alpha nodes (8 in the forward and 8 in the aft ring), each of which is a many ton lump of high energy ultra precise molecular circuitry. Only the largest shipyards in the galaxy are going to have enough margin in their factories or suppliers to rapidly ramp up to the rate of production you'd need to build an evacuation fleet for a billion+ people.

The bulk hull is relatively easy and I'd guess the 1 fusion plant per ship isn't likely to be a major constraint. But life support capable of keeping, say, fifty thousand (10 times what Honorverse liners carry) alive for a couple months is lots of fiddly plumbing and venting (even more so if you want the ability to shut off sections for damage control in case of a fire or other shipboard emergency).

Large scale people movement for minimal resources is easiest if you use the hibernation tech. Should cut down on space and life support requirement significantly.

Large scale people movement for minimal resources is easiest if you use the hibernation tech. Should cut down on space and life support requirement significantly.

Which is fine in the small scale. People generally do not have tens of millions of cryo tubes lying around. Nor would they have the personnel in the numbers necessary to oversee the mass undertaking of freezing and thawing a population. And the whole process adds a non-trivial amount of time to embarkation/debarkation.

Potato wrote:

Large scale people movement for minimal resources is easiest if you use the hibernation tech. Should cut down on space and life support requirement significantly.

Which is fine in the small scale. People generally do not have tens of millions of cryo tubes lying around. Nor would they have the personnel in the numbers necessary to oversee the mass undertaking of freezing and thawing a population. And the whole process adds a non-trivial amount of time to embarkation/debarkation.

I think you're missing the point. They don't have spare life support for tens of millions of people either. Or spare room for them in their ships. They don't have the trained people to operate the number of ships for tens of millions of evacuees.

If you want to move a lot of people cheaply to a new world cryo is the best option. Even after the sail was invented they did that to save on resources for colonists. If you only need a short hop maybe you can cram them into airplane style seats or standing room without them all suffocating, but for longer trips cryo tubes are the cost effective way to do it.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Large scale people movement for minimal resources is easiest if you use the hibernation tech. Should cut down on space and life support requirement significantly.

Potato wrote:Which is fine in the small scale. People generally do not have tens of millions of cryo tubes lying around. Nor would they have the personnel in the numbers necessary to oversee the mass undertaking of freezing and thawing a population. And the whole process adds a non-trivial amount of time to embarkation/debarkation.

quite possibly a cat wrote:I think you're missing the point. They don't have spare life support for tens of millions of people either. Or spare room for them in their ships. They don't have the trained people to operate the number of ships for tens of millions of evacuees.

If you want to move a lot of people cheaply to a new world cryo is the best option. Even after the sail was invented they did that to save on resources for colonists. If you only need a short hop maybe you can cram them into airplane style seats or standing room without them all suffocating, but for longer trips cryo tubes are the cost effective way to do it.

Just as a side issue, I've always wondered about cryo in the Honorverse. Is it safe for children and pregnancies?

IIRC, in The Universe of Honor Harrington RFC stated that cyro slows down biological processes by a factor of about 100. And that people in cryo had to be thawed out and exercise for one month about every 60 years. During those 60 years they physically age 6 months.

(I know the math isn't quite right, but those are the numbers I remember.)

The point, I'm curious about, is that while an adult's body doesn't generally change much in 6 months, a fetus or an infant definitely does.

So can a body undergoing that sort of change be placed in cyro at all? Maybe they would have to be roused more frequently? I'd like to know what the rest of you think about this.

(Edited once: 01:20 PST 15 Feb. 2018)

H A R V A R D B O G O T A C A M P U S

TA: Handout #5



Self_Evacuatables
At least 30 % of a planet are self_evacuatable. That number rises tremendously on a planet like Manticore, or Earth, where the average mean household income is very high. Which is why I estimate 50 % of Manticore are self_evacs. They'll be off the planet in no time.

The Andermani, Beowulf, Gryphon, Haven will all divert every conceivable ship there. The money is there. Ubers will hang out in the system wanting to make a quick buck that's twice their yearly salary on one run!

Manticore 1.5B pop. = 500M -750M+ population = self_evacs.*

This statement will be common, tied up in the human element...
"Mom, I'm gonna ride with the Hamptons out of system. I'll see you in a few months. I've got enough money to tide me over. Like you suggested, I've got one of the accounts if I need it."

Who owns a car?
Who owns flight to space?
Commercial flight to space.



*Based on 50 % of Manticore pop. based on 1.5B.
Higher population will directly affect self_evacs.

H A R V A R D B O G O T A C A M P U S

Lecture: Atmospheric wedge landings.

Traditionally, wedges are not permitted to land because of damage to the atmosphere?

If that is the case, in permanent evacuations, wedge landings will be permitted if wedge landings are possible. Perhaps specialized landing sites will have to be built.

cthia wrote:

H A R V A R D B O G O T A C A M P U S

Lecture: Atmospheric wedge landings.

Traditionally, wedges are not permitted to land because of damage to the atmosphere?

If that is the case, in permanent evacuations, wedge landings will be permitted if wedge landings are possible. Perhaps specialized landing sites will have to be built.

Wedge in atmosphere would be bad enough, a pinnace would be accelerating over 10 square km of air to a noticeable fraction of the speed of light every moment it operating in atmosphere.

Actually letting the wedge touch ground would be even worse - it'd dig a couple km deep hole in the planetary crust. Though it would solve your evacuation problems since your touchdown would kill everybody within miles of the landing zone. (And that's just a pinnace - try to operate a starship with its 150 - 300 square km wedge, plunging up to 180 km deep into the crust, and you'd be depopulating large countries)


Though what you might be able to do is crunch a ship down into the ground using counter grav and thrusters. It'd still be an environmental disaster, but it'd only be irradiating and fusing the local area - not pointing the world's most powerful particle accelerator out its tail. If you could - and could get people across the blistering hot, somewhat radioactive, area around it you might be able to board more quickly than using shuttles.

cthia wrote:

H A R V A R D B O G O T A C A M P U S

Lecture: Atmospheric wedge landings.

Traditionally, wedges are not permitted to land because of damage to the atmosphere?

If that is the case, in permanent evacuations, wedge landings will be permitted if wedge landings are possible. Perhaps specialized landing sites will have to be built.

Jonathan_S wrote:Wedge in atmosphere would be bad enough, a pinnace would be accelerating over 10 square km of air to a noticeable fraction of the speed of light every moment it operating in atmosphere.

Actually letting the wedge touch ground would be even worse - it's dig a couple km deep hole in the planetary crust. Though it would solve your evacuation problems since your touchdown would kill everybody within miles of the landing zone.


Though what you might be able to do is crunch a ship down into the ground using counter grav and thrusters. It'd still be an environmental disaster, but it'd only be irradiating and fusing the local area - not pointing the worlds most powerful particle accelerator out it's tail. If you could - and could get people across the blistering hot, somewhat radioactive, area around it you might be able to board more quickly than using shuttles.

Huge sonic boom. Structural damage to buildings etc. We don't care about natural disasters. We only care about not killing people ourselves and getting as many people possible off of this doomed rock.

Perhaps counter-grav assisted landing sites built in geographically desired regions. In the desert on Earth. Grand Canyon? I need solutions people. You are all we've got and the cloud of death draws e'er nigh.