From: Greg Benage [gbenage@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 8:59 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP -----Original Message----- From: Robert P. Stefko To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Date: Friday, October 23, 1998 1:27 AM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP >If a spacecraft could somehow manage to pull a half gee all the way >to the Womrhole, it would take about three months to get there from Earth, >and probably another three months to reach Poseidon from the edge of the >Serpentis system (which is in line with the transit times mentioned in BP), >but I can't think of any drive system that can produce that much thrust over >that long a period of time without burning far too much reaction mass. Any >physicists on the list? Wanna take a crack at this problem? This subject will be addressed in Fluid Mechanics, but I'll offer my own preliminary thoughts here. First, the Serpentis wormhole's orbit is not nearly so far out. If it were anywhere close to as far removed from Poseidon as the Sol wormhole is from the inner system, that would pretty much kill any chance of feasibility for our already highly efficient fusion drives. Second, I think we have to assume pretty close to an "ideal" fusion rocket to have a ship that makes any kind of sense and meets the specifications implied in the books (~800 AU, ~6 months trip-time). To make it simple, we'd need to accelerate at 1-g for 10 days to 2 weeks to reach the necessary velocity. _The Starflight Handbook_ lists a range of specific impulses for fusion rockets that tops out at 200,000 seconds. NASA is producing models of fusion rocket spacecraft with a specific impulse of 130,000--which of course doesn't mean that you could actually build one, even if you did have a fusion reactor, but at least it's encouraging. You rocket-scientist types: is a fusion rocket with the above specs capable of doing what we need it to? I'm not up to the math, or I'd tell you myself. Keep in mind that, in the BP timeline, we've been developing working fusion reactors for almost 200 years, and we've presumably had significant advancements in superconducters, materials technology (as attested by the skyhooks), and plasma physics. Assuming it is, it still isn't going to be a real pretty ship: a huge fraction of its total mass (probably in the neighborhood of 100,000 metric tons) is going to be reaction mass, with a comparatively tiny payload. These ships will also be tremendously expensive--to construct, operate, and maintain. We can safely assume that most low-budget, low-priority transits through the wormhole will use much slower, more economical spacecraft. This is another reason Long John is pretty much the bottom line with respect to the colonization of Poseidon--no mundane resource would have the necessary value to overcome the expense and time-to-market limitations of travel through the wormhole. On the other hand, this technology will also have spin-off effects, from compact, highly-efficient reactors useful in military roles to the automated mines used to extract Helium-3 from the Moon and Belt. As for the impact of our fusion rockets on "spacefaring civilization" in BP (to answer the original poster's question), keep one thing in mind: while "spacefaring" might seem the most natural thing to the two million newcomers on Poseidon, and the handfull of millions scattered around the Solar System, the vast majority of the human population is still stuck on Earth. In 2199, the further colonization of other star systems probably seems less likely than it does for us today. We've practically had one system handed to us on a silver platter, and its colonization is still marginal. Take away Long John, and its impact on human civilization--in terms of both population and economics--would be negligible. Lacking radical breakthroughs in technology and/or the discovery of more wormholes, further interstellar expansion has to look like a longshot. Again, we'll talk about this stuff in Fluid Mechanics, and I'd love to get the input of the rocket scientists on the list (Leif, are you out there?). Thanks, Greg Benage Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Robert P. Stefko [rpsst16@pop.pitt.edu] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 1:57 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP Small problem. Ion drives are rediculously slow. It would take years to reach the Wormhole with even a "fast" ion drive, and the mass of the fuel would be so prohibitive the ship would move at a crawl (if it moved at all). Fusion rockets generate more thrust, but most theoretical designs are even less feasible than ion drives (again because of fuel—actually, reaction mass). If a spacecraft could somehow manage to pull a half gee all the way to the Womrhole, it would take about three months to get there from Earth, and probably another three months to reach Poseidon from the edge of the Serpentis system (which is in line with the transit times mentioned in BP), but I can't think of any drive system that can produce that much thrust over that long a period of time without burning far too much reaction mass. Any physicists on the list? Wanna take a crack at this problem? >I don't have the info handy, but I just read about NASA latest >project, Deep Space 1 which uses an ion drive. They say this will be >the future of most long range spacecraft once they perfect it. > >I'm sure in 200 yrs we would have it right. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Robert P. Stefko [rpsst16@pop.pitt.edu] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 10:40 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP Warning! This is a long message. >This subject will be addressed in Fluid Mechanics, but I'll offer my >own preliminary thoughts here. First, the Serpentis wormhole's orbit >is not nearly so far out. If it were anywhere close to as far removed >from Poseidon as the Sol wormhole is from the inner system, that >would pretty much kill any chance of feasibility for our already highly >efficient fusion drives. Is there any particular reason why the Wormhole is not as distant from Serpentis, an essentially sunlike star, as it is from Sol? If there is no natural explanation, it would seem to indicate a deliberate decision on the part of the Creators. A bit of ancient favoritism, perhaps? >Second, I think we have to assume pretty close to an "ideal" fusion >rocket to have a ship that makes any kind of sense and meets the >specifications implied in the books (~800 AU, ~6 months trip-time). >To make it simple, we'd need to accelerate at 1-g for 10 days to 2 >weeks to reach the necessary velocity. _The Starflight Handbook_ >lists a range of specific impulses for fusion rockets that tops out at >200,000 seconds. NASA is producing models of fusion rocket >spacecraft with a specific impulse of 130,000--which of course >doesn't mean that you could actually build one, even if you did have a >fusion reactor, but at least it's encouraging. > >You rocket-scientist types: is a fusion rocket with the above specs >capable of doing what we need it to? I'm not up to the math, or I'd tell >you myself. Keep in mind that, in the BP timeline, we've been >developing working fusion reactors for almost 200 years, and we've >presumably had significant advancements in superconducters, >materials technology (as attested by the skyhooks), and plasma >physics. Assuming it is, it still isn't going to be a real pretty ship: a >huge fraction of its total mass (probably in the neighborhood of >100,000 metric tons) is going to be reaction mass, with a >comparatively tiny payload. Technology isn't the problem (at least not in the BP setting). Mass is. You need a lot of it just to accelerate for a little while. One gee for ten to fourteen days is beyond the capabilities of any drive system I've yet seen in science and engineering literature. (Keep in mind that the 10-14 day range is just to accelerate; you still need to decelerate for an equal period of time at the other end of your trip, which requires even more reaction mass.) >These ships will also be tremendously expensive--to construct, >operate, and maintain. We can safely assume that most low-budget, >low-priority transits through the wormhole will use much slower, more >economical spacecraft. This is another reason Long John is pretty >much the bottom line with respect to the colonization of Poseidon--no >mundane resource would have the necessary value to overcome the >expense and time-to-market limitations of travel through the >wormhole. On the other hand, this technology will also have spin-off >effects, from compact, highly-efficient reactors useful in military roles >to the automated mines used to extract Helium-3 from the Moon and >Belt. Anything slower than a fusion or antimatter thermal rocket is going to take years to make the trip, maybe even decades. >As for the impact of our fusion rockets on "spacefaring civilization" in >BP (to answer the original poster's question), keep one thing in >mind: while "spacefaring" might seem the most natural thing to the >two million newcomers on Poseidon, and the handfull of millions >scattered around the Solar System, the vast majority of the human >population is still stuck on Earth. In 2199, the further colonization of >other star systems probably seems less likely than it does for us >today. We've practically had one system handed to us on a silver >platter, and its colonization is still marginal. Take away Long John, >and its impact on human civilization--in terms of both population and >economics--would be negligible. Lacking radical breakthroughs in >technology and/or the discovery of more wormholes, further >interstellar expansion has to look like a longshot. At present, we also don't have an authoritarian world government (stable or not) or a biological disaster in our recent past to focus our efforts on survival. The people of BP have both. Earth today is also not nearly as abysmal a place as it is in BP. Nations are individually strong now, and their agendas are short sighted and focused on immediate gain. Space exploration is not a high priority because it doesn't serve a purpose like it did during the Cold War (when it was a form of nonviolent competition with the Soviets). Space industry, however, is deemed important because it holds the potential for tremendous profit in a short span of time (10 to 20 years). For the people of BP Earth, however, space is the key to mankind's survival, both in that the Long John (at the moment, available only on Poseidon) offers the possibility of immortality and that spreading humanity to other worlds decreases the chance of another global calamity knocking the species below the threshold of viability. So in this light, the nature of space propulsion in the BP universe is important, because it decides how accessible space is to humanity as a whole. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Leif Magnar Kjønnøy [leifmk@pvv.ntnu.no] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 9:37 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP On Fri, 23 Oct 1998, Greg Benage wrote: > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert P. Stefko > To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM > Date: Friday, October 23, 1998 1:27 AM > Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP > > > >If a spacecraft could somehow manage to pull a half gee all the way > >to the Womrhole, it would take about three months to get there from Earth, > >and probably another three months to reach Poseidon from the edge of the > >Serpentis system (which is in line with the transit times mentioned in BP), > >but I can't think of any drive system that can produce that much thrust > over > >that long a period of time without burning far too much reaction mass. Any > >physicists on the list? Wanna take a crack at this problem? > > This subject will be addressed in Fluid Mechanics, but I'll offer my own > preliminary thoughts here. First, the Serpentis wormhole's orbit is not > nearly so far out. If it were anywhere close to as far removed from Poseidon > as the Sol wormhole is from the inner system, that would pretty much kill > any chance of feasibility for our already highly efficient fusion drives. > > Second, I think we have to assume pretty close to an "ideal" fusion rocket > to have a ship that makes any kind of sense and meets the specifications > implied in the books (~800 AU, ~6 months trip-time). To make it simple, we'd > need to accelerate at 1-g for 10 days to 2 weeks to reach the necessary > velocity. _The Starflight Handbook_ lists a range of specific impulses for > fusion rockets that tops out at 200,000 seconds. NASA is producing models of > fusion rocket spacecraft with a specific impulse of 130,000--which of course > doesn't mean that you could actually build one, even if you did have a > fusion reactor, but at least it's encouraging. Theoretical limits to exhaust velocities for fusion rockets may be as high as 5% to 12% of lightspeed depending on what is being fused -- this means a specific impulse (ugly unit, sad consequence of the funny-names-system still being in general use by American engineers when the US space program began) of 1.5 to 3.6 *million*, but rockets like that would have a truly atrocious mass/thrust ratio and thus only be capable of very slow acceleration (on the order of a few milli-gravities at best, probably); therefore they're likely to be useless for missions of the type we want, since they would take many (many, many) years to reach the speed we need -- we want something with higher acceleration so we'll actually get there before we die from old age. > You rocket-scientist types: is a fusion rocket with the above specs > capable of doing what we need it to? I'm not up to the math, or I'd > tell you myself. What you need to get out to the wormhole around Sol in six months, presuming the distance of nearly 800 AU is correct, is a delta-V of about 7.5 million m/s. Double that if you want to be able to slow down to a reasonable speed before passing through it. This is actually about an order of magnitude less than the best possible exhaust velocities, but let's assume that what we have is an intermediate design with a specific impulse of about 200,000 (exhaust velocity 2 million m/s) and able to generate a reasonable thrust. The good old rocket equation [delta-V = exhaust velocity * ln (initial mass / final mass)] then tells us that we need about 1800 times as much fuel as everything else, by mass. Forget about constant acceleration, but that's not important anyway. Now, if we want the burn period to be short compared to the total flight time (and we do want that, since otherwise the trip will take noticeably longer than six months), we need a rocket that's able to go through about one-thousandth (or more) of its own mass per second (that yields a total burn time of 18 days or so -- of which only ten hours is the deceleration burn; this would imply peak accelerations of one thousand gravities, which won't be done -- so the final stages of the burn will be done at much lower power and take longer time, but we need the rocket to be that powerful for the initial acceleration). So let's assume that each kilogram of rocket can heat up and eject one gram of reaction mass per second. At 2 million m/s this has a kinetic energy of 2 * 10^9 J, which means that we need a fusion technology capable of producing power densities on the order of gigajoules per kilogram of power plant. This is pretty impressive, and contradicts the numbers from the first issue of Undercurrents (which I don't remember off the top of my head, but I believe that a power density on the order of a kilowatt per kilogram is stated -- a factor of one million times less than what we need). It might conceivably be within the bounds of the possible, but it *would* imply that more effective fusion power plants could also be built. [snippety snip] Possible small fixes: Increasing travel time to one full year means we only need half as much delta-V; that requires a mere 42 (yeah!) times as much fuel as everything else, and we can allow ourselves maybe a month of accelerating and decelerating. At that point, the power density of the rocket can be scaled down to a mere few tens of kilowatts per kilogram -- only one or two orders of magnitude better than the ordinary fusion plants from Undercurrents (and at least some of that improvement can be explained away by reduced need for shielding, and by economies of scale if we keep our fusion rockets big), which will allow us to remain happy with the rest of the setting (perhaps fusion reactors that efficient cannot be built below a certain size, so you'd find them powering cities and large ocean liners, but not cars and rollerskates). Retconning the wormhole to be a lot closer than the ~800 AU figure would make everything easier, except for explaining why we haven't spotted it yet... (perhaps it's actually on a very eccentric orbit and is only now coming close enough to spot -- an object that far out would have an orbital period in the tens of thousands of years). > Again, we'll talk about this stuff in Fluid Mechanics, and I'd love to > get the input of the rocket scientists on the list (Leif, are you out > there?). I'm right here. Not a rocket scientist, I just play one in RPGs.... Leif Kj{\o}nn{\o}y | Skyclad: "Life's just a process of delamination, www.pvv.org/~leifmk| stripping your hopes, dissecting them gently. Math geek and gamer| I've opened my heart and to my consternation GURPS, Harn, CORPS | when I peered inside it was small, dark and empty." *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Greg Benage [gbenage@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 1:12 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP -----Original Message----- From: Robert P. Stefko To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Date: Friday, October 23, 1998 10:41 AM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP >Is there any particular reason why the Wormhole is not as distant from >Serpentis, an essentially sunlike star, as it is from Sol? If there is no >natural explanation, it would seem to indicate a deliberate decision on the >part of the Creators. A bit of ancient favoritism, perhaps? If the wormhole is naturally occurring, there's no reason to expect it to be at any particular orbital distance rather than another. It *would* be a coincidence if the two wormhole termini were the same distance from their respective stars, I suppose. If the wormhole is not naturally occurring, there would have presumably been some design intent behind their placement. >Anything slower than a fusion or antimatter thermal rocket is going to take >years to make the trip, maybe even decades. Sure--any interstellar spacecraft in the BP universe is going to use fusion rockets; the question is how efficient the rocket has to be and how you weight the reaction mass-travel time tradeoff. >At present, we also don't have an authoritarian world government (stable or >not) or a biological disaster in our recent past to focus our efforts on >survival. The people of BP have both. Earth today is also not nearly as >abysmal a place as it is in BP. I agree to an extent--this is, of course, the driving force behind the colonization of Poseidon. However, at least for the people that make the decisions, Earth probably isn't such an "abysmal" place. I'm sure the Ballards don't consider it abysmal; I'm sure the billionaires living in Xanadu don't consider it abysmal. The people for whom the planet is abysmal generally aren't in a position to dictate long-term (decades or centuries) space exploration programs. >For the people of BP Earth, however, space is the key to mankind's >survival, both in that the Long John (at the moment, available only on >Poseidon) offers the possibility of immortality and that spreading humanity >to other worlds decreases the chance of another global calamity knocking the >species below the threshold of viability. So in this light, the nature of >space propulsion in the BP universe is important, because it decides how >accessible space is to humanity as a whole. I'll put it this way--I'm sure there are many people in the BP universe who feel exactly the way you do. I think sometimes we forget that there should typically be just as much disagreement and debate over important issues in fictional settings as there is in the real world. That said, I'm not convinced that long-term concerns about the viability of the human species are capable of driving short-term, immediate economic and political decision-making. The Long John rush is driven by market-forces--there is tremendous demand for longevity treatments and other biotech spinoffs and it's an exceedingly profitable industry. The market is distributing the stuff, to whomever can afford it. It is not being distributed according to some long-term plan to transform humanity (though I'm sure there would be a vocal extropian crowd calling for just that) and ensure the survival of the species. My point is, whenever the possibility of further interstellar expansion comes up, some political official or Incorporate board is going to ask a single question: Why? What is my probable return on this proposed multibillion or multitrillion scrip investment? If the answer is, "Well, humanity can't take the chance of another global catastrophe wiping us out--we have to expand into space," it's probably not going to be all that convincing. Even if, from a long-term, global perspective, it's exactly the right thing to do. Now, as I said, future technological changes could alter this equation. What if Long John and its products do have a transforming effect on humanity? If humans can expect a lifetime of 1000 years or more, maybe they begin to look at long-term projects in an entirely different way. That's not the situation in 2199, but if you extrapolate from present trends, it looks like a possibility... Greg Benage Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: wil liam hindmarch [hindmarc@stu.beloit.edu] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 1:16 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP At 11:40 AM 10/23/98 -0400, you wrote: Spoiler ahead. Access Denied. >Technology isn't the problem (at least not in the BP setting). Mass is. You >need a lot of it just to accelerate for a little while. One gee for ten to >fourteen days is beyond the capabilities of any drive system I've yet seen >in science and engineering literature. (Keep in mind that the 10-14 day >range is just to accelerate; you still need to decelerate for an equal >period of time at the other end of your trip, which requires even more >reaction mass.) Now, considering we don't know a lot about wormhole physics, wouldn't it be possible for the Serpentis wormhole to be specifically designed to force drag onto travelling spacecraft so that they are already much slower when they reach the other side? This could allow for much less energy expenditure just to slow the craft. Perhaps, via some strange Creator technological breakthrough, the wormhole even imposes a rate of deceleration on the craft designed specifically for the distance from the wormhole to Poseidon. After all, that does seem to be the original design purpose of the wormhole, and if the Creators can make wormholes, why can't they engineer them to do what they want? Imagine that only serious spacers have this information - which highly suggests a manufactured wormhole - what would happen if the news got out? Many, many people would assume its a coincidence, some cosmic rule that makes something about acceleration equal to something about distance. But others, still many others, would immediately be off on ET kicks again. It seems like we're discussing the science of typical spacefaring accel/decel problems which (aside from being talked-to-death in the 1960s) doesn't take advantage of the big space travel sf concept available to BP: the wormhole. It's there, let's use it. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Rnjarra@aol.com Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 4:28 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Cc: G.O.G.@t-online.de Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP First: I'd love to discuss this in depth but I don't have the time at the moment. As Leif so precisely pointed out, conventional acceleration using the fusion rocket principle would be stressed to the physical and economical limits if you wanted to reach the travel times stated in BP. Forgive me, Jeff for sugesting that, but I deem it likely that a technological breakthrough in the field of space travel will occur during the next two centuries. In order to keep with the spirit of BP I would suggest a field that is currently on the brink of yielding theoritically feasable concepts. That field in my oppinion would be gravitronics. Recently several scientists have claimed to have detected a gravitronic field [too many fields here; that seems to be my favorite word of the night] in the vicinity of large superconducting magnets. NASA has initiated a project that is looking into the possibility of accelerating spacecraft by gravitronic fields. One initial concept is to increase gravity in front of the spacecraft and to decrease it at the rear, essentially the push-pull configuration. Instaed of using mass to accelerate the ship, you would be using energy in the form of gravitronic waves. In order for this to be more effective than the conventional method you would first of all need a high energy yield in respect to the mass of the energy storage medium and most importantly a good transformation ratio of electrical (?) energy to gravitronic energy. This does not imply that your spaceship would have a good freight/mass ratio. The devices to create and direct the gravitonic waves could be huge and relatively inefficient but the energy source and storage medium, e.g. a fusion reactor, could constitute a less significant part of the total mass. This would allow you to build spacecraft with a long range but lacking significant acceleration above what would be needed for the travel times stated in BP. MAX *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Alexandre "Tarrask" Filho [fatima@openline.com.br] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 3:52 PM To: blue_planet@lists.MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - PBeM Blue Planet Hello folks... As you asked, I will start running a Play by email based on Poseidon. I'd like to start as soon as possible, and if someone in the list is interested in playing, msg me. All players will be normal characters (created with the normal stats and ChIPS) and the game will run in a mailing list. Again, if someone wants to play, tell me... ******************************************* *Alexandre Freire Filho * *Nick: Tarrask * *fatima@openline.com.br * *lordtarrask@hotmail.com * *ICQ: 4477330 * *Kindred: Peter Swanson, Malkavian * *Jampa by Night: Carlos Gonçalves, caitiff* *PBeM Blue Planet: 1st. Tenente Tom Petty * *PBeM Changeling: Kubla Kahn, Pooka Wilder* *******************************************------ |"Send me dead flowers every morning | | Send me dead flowers by the mail | | Send me dead flowers in my wedding | | And I won't forget to put roses in your grave"| | The Rolling Stones, Dead Flowers | ------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Guilherme A Oliveira [gsi00074@gsaix2.cc.GaSou.EDU] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 9:26 PM To: blueplanet Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Access Denied prices $29.95 for the core background and rules is a bargain considering what you get in it. I would be more than happy to pay up to $20.00 for AD, especially since I have just done so for Archipelago... even though the postperson crammed it in my mailbox (jerk)! It seems to me that there are more players than GMs for this anyway. As a GM, the concept of AD is great. I was surprised to hear that more background info was to be included anyway. As long as some of the money made from the product is donated the price is really not that important- within reason of course. I just want my presentation of the BP universe to flow, and flipping back and forth to find the right charts is time consuming and distracting. In my most humble opinion... JIM *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Robert P. Stefko [rpsst16@pop.pitt.edu] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 10:21 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP Ahah . . . True. But some long-term planning on the part of the power elite is beneficial in the short-term, since it presents a concerned image to the public and keeps fears of another Blight under control. Let the people think nothing is being done to prevent or lessen the effects of another global cataclysm and you invite revolution. (If it were not for the GEO, I think it would be good PR for Lavender Organics to reveal their plans to terraform Mars. There is a solid long-term effort that is not immediately profitable, but will benefit everyone—especially Lavender Organics—in the long run. And of course, information on how gene-altered organisms will be used in the process need not be revealed to the public.) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Robert P. Stefko [rpsst16@pop.pitt.edu] Sent: Friday, October 23, 1998 10:45 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Spacecraft Propulsion in BP This sounds a lot like the Alcubierre warp drive. Unfortunately, that particular model has been rejected because (IIRC) the energy requirements of the drive are enormous, beyond anything we can hope to meet. Such a drive, introduced to any sci-fi setting, would reside in the realm of superscience, which clashes with the style of BP. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.