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Space Gas Stations


Anaximander

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If the game goes the way of logic and science (and stuff), would it be a good thing having an economy path based on creating things like uranium-238 ( a very basic example ), by running "farms" of said isotope harvesting devices, which in turn could be manufactured into the fuel spaceships require to function? Cause I'm tots down for running a gas station in space :P

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I think it would fit really well into the game. Maybe something they would consider to add in the long term tough.

Hovewer, to make the gas station idea work, fuel needs to be hard to produce, hard to storage, or by any means unconvenient for a normal cmd to produce. This would require many playerbuilt gas stations around the universe too. 

In the case you'll just produce an "higher level fuel" (while the low level one is available to everyone easily), you wouldn't probably need a gas station, since just a few people will need/buy it, and it'd be probably more convenient to stick your factory on a planet, managing personally every single order, sending transport ships to delievr. 

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I think it would fit really well into the game. Maybe something they would consider to add in the long term tough.

Hovewer, to make the gas station idea work, fuel needs to be hard to produce, hard to storage, or by any means unconvenient for a normal cmd to produce. This would require many playerbuilt gas stations around the universe too. 

In the case you'll just produce an "higher level fuel" (while the low level one is available to everyone easily), you wouldn't probably need a gas station, since just a few people will need/buy it, and it'd be probably more convenient to stick your factory on a planet, managing personally every single order, sending transport ships to delievr. 

Maybe heavy idrogen isotopes to use in the nuclear fuscion engines...  :)

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@Shynras

Well, in gas there are octanes to count its efficiency. Sadly, when it comes to radioactive isotopes, it's not the fuel that is subject to upgrades but the engines that utilise them. So it's the problem of "your ride is cost efficient but expensive" VS "THe Dark Side of owning the Millenium Pile of Junk."


@Asimos

You mean like heavy water for cold fusion reactors ? Sure, that can be a good idea, although fusion would not be "fast burning" so to speak, thus, cold fusion could be used for powering lights in cities, near a body of water, while uranium and plutonium could be used for ships to go fast.

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@Asimos

Oh, you mean fusion/fission rockets, like how the hydrogen bomb works. Yeah, that's cool, but to have thermonuclear fusion you still need plutonium and a neutron primer to start the whole process :P Maybe it will be an advanced mechanism or an engine of sorts. I guess having a gas station in space will have its hazards :P

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I do not think in ITER they have planned to turn the fusion with a fusion reaction... They start directly with the heating of the gas hydrogen, as happens in the core of the sun... And they will be ready, hopefully, in a couple of decades!  B)


 


But at the end it's just an idea as any other to have a fuel market, so ... Anything else will work equally well!  :D


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I'm pretty sure they will not blast a fission nuke in the middle of the France! Here in Europe we already have a big deal with the Brexit-nuke in England! :P

 

 

The magnetic fields create a high-intensity electrical current through induction, and as this current travels through the plasma, electrons and ions become energized and collide.

https://www.iter.org/sci/PlasmaHeating

 

Anyhow, as mentioned before, mine is just a pretext, then... Finghers crossed for any kind of space gas station they will make usefull! :D

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On the topic of energy, why not include huge capacity batteries or even super capacitors to supply energy? Pack the physical part of the battery into some sort of container with the nanopack technology and boy do you have a lot of energy in a very small space that weighs very little. Some sort of Dyson Sphere could be constructed to harness stars' energies to charge these batteries and capacitors at a fast enough rate. But only fast enough.

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@Velenka


Batteries are not that simple and practical. You see, power cores/reactors, have the possibility of "overclocking" so to speak, in cases you need more speed. It's the exact same thing as with electric cars and normal cars. Electric cars have a maximum output, that limits their horepower. While fueled engines can be amped up if need be (or even overcharged, in the case of nitrogen being injected into the burning cycle of the engine). Same concept can be applied to spaceships. 


And practically speaking, solar-power is not really that much of an option. Your ship would have to be near-pitch black to absorb the maximum of the star's heat, therefore the hull of the ship has to be really brittle to be near-pitch black, making it feel like paper when shot by a ballistics weapon. Physics are not that simple to deal with :P 

But reactors are a win-win solution. 

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How would the use of reactors effect the time in between fill ups at a gas station.  Depending on how much "overclocking" is used.  I don't think anyone wants to spend the last hour of everyday finding a gas station to be able to keep flying around the next day.  Also would there be any waste from the reactors, I know fission power stations today produce waste, but I am not sure about fusion and weather of not the problem couldn't just be solved by dumping it in space.  

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@CaptainTwerkmotor

 

In reality, you always put a battery with more than maximum possible power usage of the device when you create something. It would be the same here. Your logic also follows for reactors. You can't put a small 1 hp lawnmower engine inside of this

ship2.jpg

and expect to "supercharge" it.

 

As to solar panels, my suggestion was that the Dyson Sphere has the solar panels, huge arrays of them, not to have them on the ships themselves. Dyson spheres would be just a recharging station.

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How would the use of reactors effect the time in between fill ups at a gas station.  Depending on how much "overclocking" is used.  I don't think anyone wants to spend the last hour of everyday finding a gas station to be able to keep flying around the next day.  Also would there be any waste from the reactors, I know fission power stations today produce waste, but I am not sure about fusion and weather of not the problem couldn't just be solved by dumping it in space.  

It could use the waste of the reactor as a way to produce elements. The devs have said that fuel will be a limitation, as to get into a new planet far far away where jumpgates do not exist, you would have there the slow way. So yeah, Fuel stations could be a thing. People could make mone by acting as roaming gas tankers O.o

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@CaptainTwerkmotor, In the interview with XPGamers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1WMwIDWFKI) they talk about a probe that is sent ahead of you that builds the stargate at the destination for you, I am not sure if this will be the only method or that you will also be able to fly there your self, but I think it would pretty immersion breaking if you couldn't.

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@Cosmicdragon


Yeah, can't think anything more immersive other than 5 weeks in space towards a star :P In any case, fuel should be stored in quantities and hopefully, physics will be in the game, thus you could give your ship a heavy push and then simply "glide" your way towards your destination without burning fuel. You know, Law of Motion numero Uno.

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@CaptainTwerkmotor, don't forget to put the brakes on the front of your colony ship. :) 

Come to think of it, I wonder how many people will forget that engines can be used to brake speed and gain speed. Space car-wrecks incoming :P

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When it comes to fuel in space ships I feel we are thinking too much about whats possible today. In a hundred years physics will be completely different and what we think of as average will be antiquated by then. New engines, new fuels and new ideas will be mainstream and if we are talking about fuel in space to be mined and used, why not etha ne or methane in some highly efficient future engine? Maybe a high performance Ion drive, or Plasma reactor drive? Something we know nothing of today. But ethane, methane and other fuels are abundant in space, entire moons, asteroids and planets covered in liquid or frozen fuel, so it makes sense that the future would use that since its already available.

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Plasma needs temperatures procurred by nuclear fusion. So there's no "plasma engine", there are Fusion Reactors. There's a reason why certain radioactive elements produce more heat. They are radioactive (no, duh). Methane is not that powerful. As they say "not all that glitters is gold", like-wise, just because something catches fire, doesn't mean it can produce enough energy to move a starship. 


Current technology, in air-carriers, utilise nuclear reactors to move said ships. The only alternative source other than radioactive elements would be anti-ammter, which produces A LOT of energy when consumed ,but that's highly dangerous and hard to produce. But radioactive material can be produced in "space-futre" far faster than anti-matter (given our current rates of production). 

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If the game goes the way of logic and science (and stuff), would it be a good thing having an economy path based on creating things like uranium-238 ( a very basic example ), by running "farms" of said isotope harvesting devices, which in turn could be manufactured into the fuel spaceships require to function? Cause I'm tots down for running a gas station in space :P

 

You have a far higher chance mining U238 in the crust's of planets than in outer space o.O

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@OnePercent

I meant producing it in reactors mate. Like we do here and now. But in higher quantities of course. Uranium is ENRICHED to the 238 isotope. It's not naturally occuring as an element, at least not in the capacities we as a society demand. It's a good mechanism as of gameplay/economic standpoint, investing your materials and time in creating a U-238 farm facility, then turning it into a more refined fuel. And who knows, maybe we can use the depleted uranium to make super-alloys. Possibly requiring the player to wear lead armors to withstand the sipping radiation out of the depleted uranium... but, I digress. The point was not mining U-238, but producing it in reactors.

And since I have an affinity for puns...


You dig? :P

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You have a far higher chance mining U238 in the crust's of planets than in outer space o.O

 

Nope, U238 is the naturally occurring isotope of uranium found in the earths crust, It's also what you call "depleted uranium"

 

Uranium 235 is also naturally occurring in nature but makes up less than 1% of the naturally occurring more abundant Uranium 238.

 

Enrichment is the process of mining tons of Normal Uranium and Isotopically separating the small percentage of Uranium 235, the fissionable isotope of uranium from the Fertile isotope of uranium (U238) This is done in several stages in Centrifugals, Repeated again until the level of enrichment is established.

 

For nuclear reactors, Enrichment is around 2-5% Uranium 235 to Uranium 238 ratio, For more military oriented tasks, they enrich fuel up to 90%+ so they can reach critical mass in nuclear warheads. To get Plutonium, Uranium 238 is bombarded with neutrons which transmutes the Uranium eventually into Plutonium 239, Which can achieve a lower critical mass than Uranium 235 and is thus; More suited for weaponry.  

 

Depleted uranium is a thing for Military reactors, Which run at about 25% enrichment as the military have more tricks up their sleeves, Once the U235 is used up the depleted uranium 238 can be used for armor and alloys as you said. 

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@OcePercent

Holy siht, you are right, got totally wrong on the U-238 part. Indeed, you are right.

In any case. You get the idea. Centrifugal Farms. Although, the way I see it, they probably will go with the "Fusion Cell" idea of having water being used to create Heavy Water, yada-yada, physics, Cold Fusion. It would be a much more organic way and more accessible for players who act as outposts for their greater organisation or group, making planets with water more sought after.

 

 

Perhaps depleted uranium could be a thing for making alloys, but then again... who says that we couldn't mine rhenium or something. Can you imagine hitting the jackpot on an asteroid packed to the brim with rhenium? O_o Rhenium diboride is perhaps the strongest alloy known to man. That's some wolverine shit right there >_>


And before anyone says it, graphene is not an alloy. I said "strongest alloy".



 

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I believe the question we should be asking to NovaQuark is; Are we going to be dealing with an entire periodic table of elements for our materials or will you use a simplified or Original version of material sets? 

 

If we're dealing with the former, than the ideas you have can potentially be created. 

 

Judging by the path DU is going with its narrative, I can see that they'll opt for more simplistic approach, "civilization is destroyed, The ark ships travel and end up in Alioth system etc etc" Seems they will simply have prefabbed Power cores or something like that with a tech tree we have to farm to progress. Not allowing us to create our own nuclear reactors but I wish there was a game that existed like that.

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