[HN Gopher] Atomic Rocket
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Atomic Rocket
Author : based2
Score : 92 points
Date : 2023-10-22 20:15 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (projectrho.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (projectrho.com)
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| This is a gem of the old internet.
| m4rtink wrote:
| And its still very active and often updated! :-)
| sillywalk wrote:
| I was expecting a <BLINK> tag
| themadturk wrote:
| This site is nearly as bad as TVTropes. I don't go there
| often...but when I do, it takes me hours, if not days, to get
| back out.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Indeed. I'm a gigantic booster of "Atomic Everywhere"[1]
| myself, so this site has always been pure catnip.
|
| [1] To be clear, I don't favor mass production of something
| like the SLAM's PLUTO air-cooled reactor, spewing fission
| fragments and God knows what else. I'm not insane. But nuclear-
| electric distributed propulsion for aviation? Oh yeah.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| > nuclear ramjet
|
| I dunno what you are talking about, this is a fantastic idea.
| It will be fiiiine.
| selimnairb wrote:
| It either completes the entire launch sequence, or none of it.
| genewitch wrote:
| "this end points toward the ground. If this end is pointing
| toward space, you won't be going to space today"
| pacificmaelstrm wrote:
| "no stealth in space"
| j9461701 wrote:
| That's actually one of my issues with atomic rockets, some of
| its conclusions are a bit....massaged to ensure the end result
| it wants in terms of space combat even if it doesn't super make
| sense. As an example, even as an undergrad in physics the
| definitiveness of 'no stealth in space' struck me as
| implausible given what I knew about long range detection
| mechanisms.
|
| http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-hydrogen-steamer-ste...
|
| Very straight forward solution one person came up with, I'm
| sure there are dozens of other approaches to achieve the same
| result. Especially if you put military level budgets into
| figuring this out.
|
| The most logical form of space combat is, as boring as it
| sounds, undetectable suicide drones. Space battleships are both
| super cool sounding and also alas probably utterly impractical.
|
| Edit:
|
| "In terms of military tactics, introducing stealth ships is the
| equivalent of punching a hornet's nest. The standard fare of
| bright, bold warships pumping out gigawatts without care,
| streaking across the Solar System laden with weapons, are
| forced to become meek and paranoid affairs, as a stealth ship
| can dump a thousand tons of weapons out of nowhere, at any
| time."
|
| As an aside, this is something I wish scifi writers understood
| - don't include stealth ships in your stories without
| recognizing how they change the mechanics of war completely.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Atomic Rockets is such a fantastic site. Really good writing plus
| a great attention to detail. Chung is an Internet treasure.
| cj wrote:
| I've been binge watching For All Mankind, which takes place in an
| alternate reality where society kept on pushing further into
| space after landing on moon.
|
| It really makes me think what could have been if we dedicated
| more investment towards space travel/research.
| senectus1 wrote:
| that sounds really interesting. Thanks for the heads up.
| gcanyon wrote:
| I love that series. As someone barely old enough to have
| watched the moon landings, those first few minutes of the first
| episode hit me _way_ harder than I anticipated. I was literally
| near tears watching <spoiler>.
| war321 wrote:
| I had some gripes with the way the timeline developed later on
| (like why in a world where Saturn Vs and Sea Dragons are
| getting launched, are space shuttles exactly like our world
| getting made? And _getting launched to the moon?_ ) but overall
| I do appreciate the serious take at an alternate history work
| on mainstream television.
| jessriedel wrote:
| One of the biggest causes of lack of realism is the audience.
| People know right away that "shuttle" means "post-Apollo
| spaceship", and they don't know enough about them to
| understand why it makes no sense to take it to the moon.
| shiroiuma wrote:
| I haven't seen this show yet, but I know a little about why
| the STS was developed and why it was really a bad idea
| (basically the military wanted the ability to launch _and
| recover_ spy satellites intact without anyone seeing, and
| this drove the requirements).
|
| However, if you have a big settlement on the Moon, wouldn't
| a "space truck" actually make a lot of sense, for carrying
| large cargo loads both to and from the Moon? What am I
| missing?
| thedrbrian wrote:
| >what am I missing?
|
| The wings, wheeled landing gear, all that aerodynamic
| streamlining,etc. everything that makes it useful to fly
| in the atmosphere is dead weight on its way to the moon.
| Best off sending the supplies up in a simple capsule and
| using something like a space tug to take the capsule to
| the moon
|
| https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacetug.php
| bbarnett wrote:
| Strong disagree. It's not the audience, because the
| audience watches loads of scifi without such things.
|
| A lot of Apple TV is just weird. I suspect weird people
| have creative input, EG Apple execs, who shouldn't.
| keyle wrote:
| It's a great show.
| clarionbell wrote:
| I don't really like the series. I mean, on one level it's
| awesome, filling the same niche as Star Trek used to,
| optimistic sci-fi.
|
| On the other hand, it feels slightly odd that everything in
| this alt-history just falls nicely into place. Everything is
| better, society, technology, even little things like king
| Charles marrying Camilla instead of Diana. It feels like
| someone doused the reality in sugar.
|
| Which is not bad per se. I had my fill of bleak dystopias. But
| it is starting to stretch disbelief.
| metadat wrote:
| If you didn't click the second link on the main portion of the
| page page, do yourself the favor:
|
| https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v35n05_1974-05/page/n107/...
|
| "Last Tuesday I got a call from a national magazine ... What he
| wasn't interested in is a list of science fiction predictions
| which just aren't going to happen. Except in rare moods, neither
| am I. ..."
|
| It's that rare HN gold.
| pugworthy wrote:
| The View From Chaos Manor was such fun to read back when it was
| in print.
| thombat wrote:
| How have I never seen this gem before? Belters banished by
| basic orbital mechanics, already 50 years ago!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It got me at Belter civilization apparently being already a
| well-established sci-fi trope half a decade ago. And here I
| thought _The Expanse_ was the first to dive deep into this
| idea. I need to seriously catch up with sci-fi stories from
| before 1980s.
|
| Also nice that, before completely ruining the idea of the
| Belters, and apparently also having "science robbing sf
| writers of Mars and Venus" (presumably in earlier
| installments of this work?), he proposed a working model for
| independent civilization settling Jovian moons. I wonder if
| there's an updated version of the table somewhere, with the
| numbers reflecting current knowledge of the Jovian area and
| space propulsion.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| One thing with the early sci-fi is you will have to pretend
| you don't know what we now know about the other planets.
| Asimov (The Martian Way I think got Saturn's rings very
| wrong) and Heinlein (Mars and Venus are both depicted very
| wrongly and still a very entertaining story in Double Star)
| had a few stories and novellas.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Well-written relatively hard but outdated scifi is, in
| effect, well-written slightly-softer scifi.
| thombat wrote:
| Indeed - I hadn't noticed the publication date before
| encountering the remark about Pioneer's Jovian encounter
| still being in the future! High time for an update;
| although many of the additional moons may not be of direct
| interest to settlers ("By most counts, Jupiter has between
| 80 and 95 moons, but neither number captures the complexity
| of the Jovian system of moons, rings and asteroids." -
| https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/) but the much
| richer picture of the larger moons and the surprising
| radiation environment should either grant the Jovians their
| empire, or sadly banish them too.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| From the linked article:
|
| > The English system of measures will be as dead as the dodo
| within our lifetimes.
|
| haha oh my
| WJW wrote:
| That's a fantastic article and it makes a very coherent point
| about why "Belter civilization" will never make economic sense,
| but I think it could still work very well as a society of
| authority-mistrusting homesteaders. Like doomsday preppers but
| off-planet.
|
| The Orions Arm universe has the Hiders [1], who do not trust
| the ruling class for one reason or the other and set off in
| spaceships to hide in the Oort clouds.
|
| [1] https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45bd1a9eb4a5c
| jimmcslim wrote:
| Great site, but also kind of depressing as a reminder that thanks
| to the rocket equation we aren't going anywhere fast...
| m4rtink wrote:
| No need to worry, the Orion drive and Nuclear Salt Water Rocket
| are there to save the day! ;-)
| spamtarget wrote:
| if you like Atomic Rocket, check out Orion's Arm:
|
| https://www.orionsarm.com/
|
| It's about painting future timeline for humanity that goes on for
| eons
| clarionbell wrote:
| Muuh: Colonize Titan, refuse to elaborate further, leave.
| pugworthy wrote:
| Really a classic site - been following Winchell Chung for some
| time.
| war321 wrote:
| Definitely an amazing resource for people writing hard scifi.
| jfoutz wrote:
| Wasn't mars supposed to be the next stop, with a similar
| approach? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_C-5N with maybe
| some design choices coming from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Hopefully this link works. Half of a NASA chart from 1970
| showing where we would head:
|
| https://www.therpf.com/forums/attachments/space-flight-evolu...
| Falkon1313 wrote:
| If you like the Atomic Rocket site, you might also enjoy
| Rocketpunk Manifesto. Unfortunately it's been silent since 2017,
| but there are 10 years of thought-provoking posts and comment
| threads to read.
|
| http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/
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(page generated 2023-10-23 09:00 UTC)