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Post by the light works on Jan 28, 2018 16:28:53 GMT
It also depends on whether the colony is the equivalent of kids going camping in the backyard, or building a research station in Antarctica. is the spaceport going to be busy like Heathrow, or is it going to see an occasional starship when somebody is going that way, anyway. If we were doing such an orbital spaceport, then it'd be the main transit hub and so likely would be fairly busy. so does the colony have major exports, or is it in the middle of a collection of trade routes? or to be more specific, why does the colony have so much interstellar commerce going on?
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Post by ironhold on Jan 28, 2018 16:36:48 GMT
If we were doing such an orbital spaceport, then it'd be the main transit hub and so likely would be fairly busy. so does the colony have major exports, or is it in the middle of a collection of trade routes? or to be more specific, why does the colony have so much interstellar commerce going on? If we go with the hypothetical numbers, then we're still looking at over a million people on a planet that's still being developed out. That's going to be a lot of supplies coming in, resources and other items going out, people transiting from location to location, and other matters. Probably not LAX, but easily Salt Lake International.
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Post by the light works on Jan 28, 2018 17:03:03 GMT
so does the colony have major exports, or is it in the middle of a collection of trade routes? or to be more specific, why does the colony have so much interstellar commerce going on? If we go with the hypothetical numbers, then we're still looking at over a million people on a planet that's still being developed out. That's going to be a lot of supplies coming in, resources and other items going out, people transiting from location to location, and other matters. Probably not LAX, but easily Salt Lake International. so why haven't they built an industrial base to manufacture their needed supplies on site? keep im mind, my perspective on colonization is based on the fact the original family homestead in Oregon was staked in the fall and wasn't registered until the following spring when my ancestor had time to go to town to file.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jan 28, 2018 17:30:27 GMT
A space station could be expanded fairly easily as, unlike a spaceport on the ground, it doesn't have issues with room to grow.
Chances are that even if the original colony was intended to be small, and not expected to see much trade it would probably be oversized as originally built. Original construction is probably going to consist of prefabricated sections brought in on ships and bolted together in orbit; More or less how the ISS was built.
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Post by mrfatso on Jan 28, 2018 21:17:17 GMT
If we go with the hypothetical numbers, then we're still looking at over a million people on a planet that's still being developed out. That's going to be a lot of supplies coming in, resources and other items going out, people transiting from location to location, and other matters. Probably not LAX, but easily Salt Lake International. so why haven't they built an industrial base to manufacture their needed supplies on site? keep im mind, my perspective on colonization is based on the fact the original family homestead in Oregon was staked in the fall and wasn't registered until the following spring when my ancestor had time to go to town to file. If you look at some of the plans to travel to Mars and back they include sending automated factories to create supplies like oxygen and hydrogen before any humans land. Ironholds colony world could be seeded with useful facilities before anyone touches down on planet. Making sure there is some kind of infrastructure on planet before the colonists arrive is more likely to lead to success than building things up afterwards.
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Post by the light works on Jan 28, 2018 23:13:49 GMT
so why haven't they built an industrial base to manufacture their needed supplies on site? keep im mind, my perspective on colonization is based on the fact the original family homestead in Oregon was staked in the fall and wasn't registered until the following spring when my ancestor had time to go to town to file. If you look at some of the plans to travel to Mars and back they include sending automated factories to create supplies like oxygen and hydrogen before any humans land. Ironholds colony world could be seeded with useful facilities before anyone touches down on planet. Making sure there is some kind of infrastructure on planet before the colonists arrive is more likely to lead to success than building things up afterwards. the Americas did have a period in the colonial development where various interests were extracting resources, but still, when we are talking about a planet with a bit over half the population of Utah, having the interstellar spaceport be as busy as the airport in Salt Lake City seems like disproportionately high traffic, unless there is a specific reason why that much traffic is coming and going. one reason would be if the planet was a hub in multiple interstellar routes, so there was a lot of traffic through the port.
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Post by mrfatso on Jan 29, 2018 7:08:57 GMT
If you look at some of the plans to travel to Mars and back they include sending automated factories to create supplies like oxygen and hydrogen before any humans land. Ironholds colony world could be seeded with useful facilities before anyone touches down on planet. Making sure there is some kind of infrastructure on planet before the colonists arrive is more likely to lead to success than building things up afterwards. the Americas did have a period in the colonial development where various interests were extracting resources, but still, when we are talking about a planet with a bit over half the population of Utah, having the interstellar spaceport be as busy as the airport in Salt Lake City seems like disproportionately high traffic, unless there is a specific reason why that much traffic is coming and going. one reason would be if the planet was a hub in multiple interstellar routes, so there was a lot of traffic through the port. Another reason would be if the planet was a source of a particular reasource and there was a lot of extraction going on, Rare minerals, wood, grain etc anything that a high tech society might desire.
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Post by mrfatso on Jan 29, 2018 9:40:11 GMT
Having said that Ironhold there is not a one size fits all ideal solution for what you are describing, it will depend on what technologies your universe has and how they all work together.
Is cargo brought in by a myriad of Millenium Falcon sized vessels, or are the the equivalent of Guild Highliners or Battletech Jumpships bringing cargo dropships?
Is cargo moved by shuttles or transporters?
Is the world a bit beaten up like Star Wars where not very thing works okay and people are sometimes a bit shady or is it clean an nice like STNG or the Orville?
What story do you want to tell?
All of these will have a bearing on what you want to use for your spaceport and the colony it supports.
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 29, 2018 10:48:36 GMT
Having a in-space space port could be rather useful in freight forwarding for local and long distance transport. If more than one world in a locality is dependant on trade, having that as a local hub, you could route all fright from larger ships through that hub, being then decanted and moved to smaller ships for local delivery to other local planets or down to the surface on an elevator. I am thinking the idea of an elevator with geo-stationary space hub and lift cables down to surface with slower moving but higher volume payloads, say one shipping crate at a time on a system that has multiple "cars" rather like a cable car system, would be more useful than actual space-shuttle type ships doing the shuttle work?.
This on its own would give good reason for the placing of that space port where it is, its a major transport hub from inter-galaxy to local work.
The space port then combines the needs from water borne shipping to over-land shipping on the surface, and a elevator to a massive storage unit in the sky for space borne transport, its a dock, airport, space port, and storage facility all in one, and if that is serving as a local hub for many local solar systems, the need for localised inter species to work together may be also the exact need for them to work together....
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Post by mrfatso on Jan 29, 2018 13:06:15 GMT
Really it depends on what tech Ironhold wants to use, even simpler would be Star Trek style transporters to beam a shipping container down, but it all depends on what he wants to do.
To give an example have you read David Webers Honor Harrington series? His spacecraft and their technology are designed by him to create the conditions were broadsides in space work the series is Napoleonic naval,combat in space.
You could have a system like a paternoster lift, continually cycling where containers are slotted into postion for travel down to the surface and up again.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jan 29, 2018 13:40:43 GMT
Space Elevators are (or would be) massive undertakings even for a spacefairing civilization due to the size of the planetary anchor; We'd be talking a base structure larger than the city of New York.
The technology itself is actually fairly simple, we are not that far off having the technology to build such a thing outselves as the only part we need is a cable strong enough. And the study of carbon nanotubes holds the promise of being able to deal with that issue.
Cost and materials are the biggest stumbling blocks, and the reason why you would not see such a structure on a colony world even a few generations after its settlement. This is not something you could transport in, as I said you'd be talking about a base structure larger the New York City. Transporting that much material and equipment would require a massive number of ships over several years doing nothing but constantly bringing in material, dropping it off and then leaving. To put this in context if you combined the budgets for ALL space agencies worldwide since their creation you'd maybe have enough funds to cover about 10% of the overall construction.
Space Elevators are massive long term projects that practically speaking would need to be built by the worlds they are intended for. This would require a large enough population and large industrial base to support the construction over sevral years, if not decades.
In regards cargo ships in Sci-Fi;
The standard trope here is for small cargo ships and massive military ships, even in the (fairly grounded) Battletech universe you have warships a mile or more in length while the largest cargo/transport ships are at best half that. In film and TV this is usually a result of wanting to show the captain and/or crew as being 'free spirits'. Han Solo would not be much of a Rogue if the Millenium Falcon was the size of a Cruise liner and had a crew of 50. The reality, based on modern ocean going ships, is that cargo ships would be considerably larger than their military counterparts; The largest Military ship ever built is the aircraft Carrier USS Enterprise, which in a top ten list of the largest ships ever built comes in at number nine.
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Post by ironhold on Jan 29, 2018 19:21:10 GMT
Basically, we're talking Star Wars, at best.
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Post by mrfatso on Jan 29, 2018 23:22:51 GMT
So a bit down and dirty, things might fall through the cracks type world.
What type of space ships do you envision small freighters like the Falcons, Serenity etc. or something else?
Will they be independent traders with a Han Solo or Malcom Reynolds in command as Cyber suggests, or owned by sinister corporations (who definitely should not send anyone to checkout mysterious crashed alien spacecraft and their contents... look at those strange looking eggs why don't you).?
All these things will have a bearing on what your spaceport and colony are like, a world of Independant people will be very differ than one controlled by shadowy corporate overlords.
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Post by ironhold on Jan 30, 2018 0:04:32 GMT
Given how much attention is on it, it'd be a pretty brazen criminal to try and do anything.
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Post by the light works on Jan 30, 2018 1:29:43 GMT
well, with star wars travel modes, there isn't really a significant reason to have any sort of central space cargo terminal. ships can hyper right to the planet, and set down pretty much anywhere
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Post by wvengineer on Jan 30, 2018 5:45:42 GMT
One question is how involved is hyperspace travel? If it is something that it very complex and expensive to operate, than that would lead to wanting to centralize as much as possible. Think of your super container ships or a freight train. However if it is something that is cheap and easy, then it could be a large fleet of smaller ships, think of semi trucks in space. Another way to look at it is how delicate is the equipment to go to go to hyperspace? Something like the Enterprise XCV 330 would damage the hyberpace engine to try to navigate it in atmosphere. Even if it were a small craft, you would still need the orbital transfer yard. And by oribital, I mean space born. it doen't nessacarly have to be around the planet in question. One of the Legrance points would make sense. L2 would seam to be the best option for deep space access. An interesting thing about the Millennium Falcon, the original concept for that ship was a space version of a barge tugboat. The forked triangular nose and large engines were envisioned to push large cargo containers. The offset cockpit was to give visibility around the cargo pods that would have been directly in front of the ship. Illustration here: https://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/4k4cw6/the_millennium_falcon_was_a_freighter_heres_how/
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Post by the light works on Jan 30, 2018 6:06:20 GMT
One question is how involved is hyperspace travel? If it is something that it very complex and expensive to operate, than that would lead to wanting to centralize as much as possible. Think of your super container ships or a freight train. However if it is something that is cheap and easy, then it could be a large fleet of smaller ships, think of semi trucks in space. Another way to look at it is how delicate is the equipment to go to go to hyperspace? Something like the Enterprise XCV 330 would damage the hyberpace engine to try to navigate it in atmosphere. Even if it were a small craft, you would still need the orbital transfer yard. And by oribital, I mean space born. it doen't nessacarly have to be around the planet in question. One of the Legrance points would make sense. L2 would seam to be the best option for deep space access. An interesting thing about the Millennium Falcon, the original concept for that ship was a space version of a barge tugboat. The forked triangular nose and large engines were envisioned to push large cargo containers. The offset cockpit was to give visibility around the cargo pods that would have been directly in front of the ship. Illustration here: https://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/4k4cw6/the_millennium_falcon_was_a_freighter_heres_how/ or there's this movie. I think it was a B movie. www.imdb.com/title/tt0120199/
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Post by mrfatso on Jan 30, 2018 9:37:31 GMT
Given how much attention is on it, it'd be a pretty brazen criminal to try and do anything. I think you underestimate the criminal community, there would be no drugs in the prison system of attention stopped them.
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Post by ironhold on Jan 26, 2019 4:41:21 GMT
Idea that came to me earlier.
Basically, it would be for a type of anti-aircraft weapon.
The device would lob large cluster munitions into the air. Once the munitions either impact something or hit a designated altitude, they'll explode and basically release giant metal shot.
These would be a type of remote-activated unit, essentially an ambush or trap for passing aircraft.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 26, 2019 5:23:38 GMT
Idea that came to me earlier. Basically, it would be for a type of anti-aircraft weapon. The device would lob large cluster munitions into the air. Once the munitions either impact something or hit a designated altitude, they'll explode and basically release giant metal shot. These would be a type of remote-activated unit, essentially an ambush or trap for passing aircraft. Isn't that pretty much what the German Flack guns of WW-2 did?
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