I'm thinking about a sublight interstellar craft with the Vehicles
rules. The optimized fusion rocket allows perhaps 2% of lightspeed,
so trips will take centuries. That leaves cryosleep and generation
ships. The sleeper doesn't translate well into Spaceships, so I'm
looking at a generation ship.
* Fusion reactors are supposed to last 200 years. I'm assuming that
is from first ignition, not from construction, or I wouldn't have
a chance anyway. Ten reactors can last 2,000 years and roughly 10
parsec ...
Well, the energy supply.
hmm, from pp. VE 86 and 146:
A single 1kW TL9 reactor costs 5,000,200$ (200$/lb*20001lbs+1000000$)
and thus requires 10.7 man hours of maintenance per day.
A 1MW reactor costs 5,200,000$ and requires 11.0 m-h/day...
A 1GW reactor costs 7,000,000$ and requires 12.7 m-h/day...
* Vehicles says nothing about the efficiency of total life support.
If I call it 99.9%, the ship would need provisions for 2 years.
I don't envision actual foodstuffs, more like spare seeds and
fertilizer, but mass is mass. Does that sound reasonable?
I'd assume that TLS would need filters and restocks of base algae anyway...
plus the officers and politicians would want to store tasteful foods
anyways, which would add energy to the otherwise closed system...
* How much of a population do I need? There might be frozen ova to
help with genetic diversity, but it wouldn't do to have the only
qualified engineer slip and break his neck. There must be some
redundancy. And even if there are hundreds of people, the kids
will grow up weird in that small world.
Is it intended just to get the crew there?
The population will still need doctors, clerks, stewards, etc, to help
the starship crew.
It all depends on how large the ship is...
Wikipedia suggests that about 4200 breeding individuals are required to
have a sustainable population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population
With science, the 'individuals' could be introduced artificially as you
noted.
* How do I handle spare parts? There must be some manufacturing
capability, call it complete workshops and minifacs from UT,
but they still need materials.
Can you assume that there will be many stores of electronic boards and
such, any surplus of which is a head-start for the colony upon arrival?
* What is the mission plan once the ship arrives in a system? I
guess they'll capture an asteroid and begin mining and building
and breeding. Bringing landers and terraforming gear takes too
much mass, so they are only blueprints on file.
right -- you'll need telescopes and astronomers to find target asteroids.
subsystem craft as well. --
A fraction of the total delta-V should be ample for insystem
purposes.
just catching into solar orbit until they can maneuver to locate a
target asteroid and collect solar wind for the fusion rocket?
Thoughts?
will the craft also be in touch with a receive-only lasercom receiving
tech and blueprints from home?
that would be another reason to wait until you arrive for anything that
you could possibly minifac :)
--
Eric Funk
Knowledge Brings Fear -- Motto of Mars University, Futurama
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