How are you doing hard sci-fi?

[dragoner]

[Though IIRC a CERN paper saying that there might not be as much energy resulting from an antimatter explosion as once thought, which could mean E=MC^2 isn't exactly right.

Was this referring to proton/antiproton antimatter producing pions that have a non-zero rest mass, therefore not all of the products are converted to energy? In that case I wouldn't say e=mc^2 was incorrect, just that you have some mass left over, so you do not convert all the mass to energy.

I wouldn't say it is incorrect either, just that it begs further research, within the frame of reference, something not explained is happening.

 

[Anonymous]

I believe the final products and quantities are known but I could be wrong there. However, the interaction for protons is hard to model as there are lots of variables. The proton is comprised of 3 quarks and binding energy, and when it annihilates with an antiproton, each subcomponent (including the binding energy, which is the majority of the mass) reacts separately. Things can be ejected, or combine with other things before annihilating, resulting in incomplete conversion of matter to energy. I'd be surprised if we knew the exact processes that take place inside that ball of fun.

The common view that "total annihilation" occurs is true for electrons, which are single units.

For an antimatter rocket you probably want to use proton-antiproton reactions as one of the products is a long-lived, massive particle with a charge that can be steered by magnets to produce thrust.

 

[dragoner]

Yes, something was unaccounted for, that was the gist of the paper. An antimatter rocket harkens back to the atomic rockets of 40-50's science fiction; for now, and near future, finding a work around for the Ohm's Law Barrier that the VASIMR and other plasma (or ion) propulsion systems seem to have hit might be a little more hard science.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

An antimatter rocket will only work if you hand-wave combustion chamber material and radiation shielding.

Containment and segregation from matter particles, I imagine, would be priority 1, with priority 2 being the construction of conduits to channel antimatter particle plasma into the reaction chamber - not to mention something to turn the antimatter into a plasma of antiparticles in the first place.

Here's a good article on future propulsion systems: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/travelinginspace/future_propulsion.html

It mirrors what I hear from the propulsion engineers here, is that the idea to move away from the 'sitting on a bomb' type engines. Number one issue is to contain the combustion, currently, and maybe never, is no material is capable of withstanding a ordinary nuclear blast, much less a matter conversion event. If you could find a material that could, that would be interesting, as you would be invulnerable basically; fly through the Sun? No problem with the same material composing the hull, and no known weapon could touch you either. Though IIRC a CERN paper saying that there might not be as much energy resulting from an antimatter explosion as once thought, which could mean E=MC^2 isn't exactly right. Other concerns are safety, rocket engines explode, and a rocket filled with antimatter for the trip to Alpha Centauri, even in near Earth orbit could be a deadly event from the radiation cascading down on the planet. I have read that water can make for a good reaction mass, especially as it is so common an element, even with the water in Jupiter's troposphere, a small percentage of the total atmospheric composition, is larger than the entire mass of the Earth; water doesn't make for a very sexy propellant though. The future is unknown and unknowable really; if someone wrote a story in 1894 about how 50 years hence jet fighters would be contesting the skies against fleets of bombers that were turning Europe's cities to rubble, people would say they were daft. Wells did come close, writing about an atomic bomb before WW1, it was one of the reasons Szilard, was for and against it.

Question: What is the best way to contain antimatter?
Out of the box Answer: in a container made out of antimatter!
One of the properties of antimatter that is often overlooked is the ability to make things out of antimatter. You see every element in the periodic table has its antimatter counterpart. Positive and negative charges are symmetric. A positron has the same properties in mass and charge as an electron except for its opposite charge, the same could be said of the antiproton and antineutron. With these particles, you can basically make anything you could make out of matter with antimatter. One possible containment scheme is to have two starships, one made out of matter with tanks of matter fuel, and another starship made out of antimatter with antimatter tanks of antimatter fuel. Now the two starships are widely separated, and the antimatter starship sends a stream of antimatter fuel towards the matter starship, while the matter starship sends a stream of matter fuel towards the antimatter starship, each stream is intercepted by a magnetic rocket nozzle, and is annihilated with equal amounts of stored fuel injected into the nozzle of each respective ship. The Antimatter starship is of course unmanned and controlled remotely from the bridge of the matter starship. There is only enough fuel at a given time to annihilate a given amount of antifuel so as to propel each starship forward at a given acceleration. Lets say it is 1 gee of acceleration. Both matter and antimatter starships are accelerating at 1g in formation at the same rate keeping the same distance from one another as they go. Containment is not an issue for the antimatter starship since the entire ship is made out of antimatter, and there is insignificant amounts of matter for the antimatter to react to, excepting interstellar hydrogen and other matter particles floating around in the space between the stars, but not enough to blow up the ship.

 

[Anonymous]

It's not near enough future for my idea of hard science fiction tho and it's still riding a bomb.

To my mind, the further into the future we go the more we can hand wave, the more we get away from plausible because we just hand wave the stuff we haven't a clue about. Sure we can put together all kinds of theoretical ideas but we're well into the realm of fantasy.

I also think that technology will transform society and the challenges of role playing in a whole new society are the things I want a setting to deal with as much as the technology.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

It's not near enough future for my idea of hard science fiction tho and it's still riding a bomb.

To my mind, the further into the future we go the more we can hand wave, the more we get away from plausible because we just hand wave the stuff we haven't a clue about. Sure we can put together all kinds of theoretical ideas but we're well into the realm of fantasy.

I also think that technology will transform society and the challenges of role playing in a whole new society are the things I want a setting to deal with as much as the technology.

Actually we don't know how "near future" it is, there is no telling what artificial minds can come up with. I think artificial minds with intelligence superior to humans is just a few decades away, and with that technology will accelerate!

 

[dragoner]

To my mind, the further into the future we go the more we can hand wave, the more we get away from plausible because we just hand wave the stuff we haven't a clue about. Sure we can put together all kinds of theoretical ideas but we're well into the realm of fantasy.

I also think that technology will transform society and the challenges of role playing in a whole new society are the things I want a setting to deal with as much as the technology.

It is all a moving target. I think one thing that unnerves people about science and technology is that with new data, everything can change; which is for the most part opposite the mindset of laws, scripture, game rules, etc.. What I have been thinking about for Hard Science Fiction lately, or just a continuum science fiction type game, is to create a modular set of rules that can go from totally plausible to fairly squishy, with attached settings. There is definitely demand for a Hard SF game.

 

[Anonymous]

Question: What is the best way to contain antimatter? Out of the box Answer: in a container made out of antimatter!
One of the properties of antimatter that is often overlooked is the ability to make things out of antimatter. You see every element in the periodic table has its antimatter counterpart. Positive and negative charges are symmetric. A positron has the same properties in mass and charge as an electron except for its opposite charge, the same could be said of the antiproton and antineutron. With these particles, you can basically make anything you could make out of matter with antimatter.

Antimatter and matter don't necessarily have the same properties. For more information look up "CP Violation" in your favorite science encyclopedia. We actually do't know what happens if you build a complex machine out of antimatter. We haven't enough antimatter to try it. We do however, know of differences in the behaviour of some particles with their anti-particles.

 

[Anonymous]

Actually we don't know how "near future" it is, there is no telling what artificial minds can come up with. I think artificial minds with intelligence superior to humans is just a few decades away, and with that technology will accelerate!

Understood and agreed.

It is all a moving target. I think one thing that unnerves people about science and technology is that with new data, everything can change; which is for the most part opposite the mindset of laws, scripture, game rules, etc.. What I have been thinking about for Hard Science Fiction lately, or just a continuum science fiction type game, is to create a modular set of rules that can go from totally plausible to fairly squishy, with attached settings. There is definitely demand for a Hard SF game.

Which is why I think most rules are tied to a setting and that setting is for a fairly small amount of time. If the rules are too vague it creates too much work for the GM or space for interpretations to cause conflict. If the rules are too tight they can't flex as the game needs them to, the holy grail of rules huh?

Traveller being a space opera setting with its technology rooted in the 50s to my mind means it's not going to attract the newer players, I'm sure there are players like me that would like for it to work for a harder sci-fi setting but as I've been working on that setting, I've moved further from MgT as my first choice of rules to a hybrid/home brew. Which brings me nicely back to the OP.

 

[Anonymous]

Which is why I think most rules are tied to a setting and that setting is for a fairly small amount of time. If the rules are too vague it creates too much work for the GM or space for interpretations to cause conflict. If the rules are too tight they can't flex as the game needs them to, the holy grail of rules huh?
Traveller being a space opera setting with its technology rooted in the 50s to my mind means it's not going to attract the newer players, I'm sure there are players like me that would like for it to work for a harder sci-fi setting but as I've been working on that setting, I've moved further from MgT as my first choice of rules to a hybrid/home brew. Which brings me nicely back to the OP.

I do not think the technology assumptions of Traveller is a problem: once a game starts, it continues from week to week and people learn to accept the "quirks" of the setting.

The problem for me is that it's hard to start it initially. I've noticed a key difference with the "younger" generations is that they tend to be driven by information rather than abstract experience and this information must include sufficient detail that they can visualise a setting in their heads. People are used to being shown what to play on their tablets and don't want to have to imagine it. "Spending two hours trying a new thing" has been replaced by "Spending 2 hours googling a thing, and then deciding in a few seconds".

Gurps has a decent hard-sf sourcebook, and you might want to look at Firefly too: they don't have FTL and most of their adventures are "Free Trader Beowulf out on the frontier, on the run from the police again".

 

[dragoner]

It is all a moving target. I think one thing that unnerves people about science and technology is that with new data, everything can change; which is for the most part opposite the mindset of laws, scripture, game rules, etc.. What I have been thinking about for Hard Science Fiction lately, or just a continuum science fiction type game, is to create a modular set of rules that can go from totally plausible to fairly squishy, with attached settings. There is definitely demand for a Hard SF game.

Which is why I think most rules are tied to a setting and that setting is for a fairly small amount of time. If the rules are too vague it creates too much work for the GM or space for interpretations to cause conflict. If the rules are too tight they can't flex as the game needs them to, the holy grail of rules huh?

Personally I think it is more in the setting, and play-styles, to quote something Don McKinney said to me: "Why would you let a grognard into your game?" Same goes for rules lawyers. No rules sets can fix those ills. Holy Grails are just another myth. You are right in that some games are tied to their rules; funnily enough Traveller didn't start off this way, it was even hard SF-ish - spacecraft only had lasers and missiles and had to do the flip and burn. I think the solarpunk campaign I'm thinking of will not make too many usual suspects happy, but I'm playing and looking at a lot of different games, besides my long running Traveller game, which I sort of tried to kill but it came back. Ever had a player captured by aliens, interrogated, given weird drugs, then they wake up in alley on some strange habitat ring with Ilia Volyova looking down on them? I did it. It almost has become 'how I stopped worrying and came to love the bomb'.

 

[Anonymous]

I started writing a reply but need to clarify my thoughts before posting tho as I'm straying way off topic I might save it for the pub...

 

[dragoner]

Yeah, maybe I'm way too off piste as well ...

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Question: What is the best way to contain antimatter? Out of the box Answer: in a container made out of antimatter!
One of the properties of antimatter that is often overlooked is the ability to make things out of antimatter. You see every element in the periodic table has its antimatter counterpart. Positive and negative charges are symmetric. A positron has the same properties in mass and charge as an electron except for its opposite charge, the same could be said of the antiproton and antineutron. With these particles, you can basically make anything you could make out of matter with antimatter.

Antimatter and matter don't necessarily have the same properties. For more information look up "CP Violation" in your favorite science encyclopedia. We actually do't know what happens if you build a complex machine out of antimatter. We haven't enough antimatter to try it. We do however, know of differences in the behaviour of some particles with their anti-particles.

Our limited cranial capacity doesn't help us to find a solution to build a complex object out of antimatter, but some superhuman artificial mind might be able to figure out the trick. If we knew exactly how to do it, it wouldn't be science fiction, it would be fact! I was thinking of putting in my 3d setting an "asteroid belt" made out of antimatter, it also includes a ringworld and an artificial planet, and its set one million years in the future. I was thinking of having some beings made out of antimatter that make antimatter spaceships and sell them to matter beings. I think there must be a way to manipulate antimatter without touching it.

As for the twin matter and antimatter spaceships, they would work like this, The antimatter spaceship would heat its antimatter fuel to a plasma and accelerate it towards the matter ship as part of a plasma or ion beam, the matter ship would then funnel the antimatter beam into its engine nozzle with magnetic fields, in a similar way it would handle fusion plasma, and then it would mix it with an onboard fueled matter stream to trigger annihilation, the matter ship would also send a matter plasma beam towards the antimatter ship, which would them do the same but in reverse. The matter ship and antimatter ship would stay far apart, in case for example the antimatter ship got hit by an asteroid, about twice the mass of the ship would be converted into energy, the matter ship would stay far enough away from that potential explosion to be safe. The plasma beams would be traveling at close to the speed of light to limit their spreading out and mixing with the opposite beam before reaching the opposite ship. The crew in the matter ship would be heavily shielded and protected from all potential matter/antimatter explosions should they occur.

In a Traveller game this would leave an interesting question of trying to determine which ship was matter and which was antimatter. Probably the antimatter ship would be slightly smaller as that would be the matter ship's fuel supply, it would have no staterooms or other such crew or passenger accommodations.

 

[Condottiere]

Find some third neutrally charged material, and build a magnetic bottle out of that.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Find some third neutrally charged material, and build a magnetic bottle out of that.

Now we are getting into softer science fiction by inventing a new type of matter, there is the Scrith of Larry Niven's ringworld, there are theories about something like it existing. There is a lot of dark matter floating around in the cosmos, making up 90% of the mass, but we really don't know what it is, or have detected any such particles directly. Orion's Arm has magmatter, which is made out of magnetic monopoles in the same manner that normal matter is made out of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but no magnetic monopole has ever been detected or created in a laboratory. Any fiction involving magmatter, or scrith or something like it is on the softer side of science fiction, something with FTL drives and FTL comms is even softer, that is my opinion.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

http://www.universetoday.com/15403/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-to-the-nearest-star/
I'd like to call your attention to this article, which neatly sums up hard science fiction to soft, as far as space travel is concerned.