Clever people needed for Sci-Fi/Fantasy problems!!

[WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade]

Hello, I am obviously aware that here on Scribes we all ply in the noble and honourable art of Fantasy, and leave Sci-Fi for the nerds who wouldn't know a longsword from an arming sword, or a sallet from a barbute until it was rammed sideways up their. . . you get the idea.

So basically, if this is TOO out of places, Admins, fire away *holds hands up in surrender*

If, however, this stays, I've got some questions for sciencey people.

I've been playing about with the idea of a near-future scif/fantasy for a few months now, written about 12k of it, and it's going good. Real good. I get to do some great world building, and the weaponry and advanced warfare systems I can come up with is enough to make me squee - marines with nanonics in their bodies augmenting respiration, blood capacity of glucose and oxygen, muscle uptake of ATP - basically boosting their bodies, with computers in their heads linked to flying drones with sensors and missile pods, starships with swarms of mini-missile shotgun things called fists, 20mm autocannon as defence, railguns and 240mm cannon.

It's awesome, geeky fun.

However, I'm not that big a sci-fi buff. Never seen star wars, only a few episodes and movies of star trek, and my reading consits of lots of James S.A Corey and Peter.F.Hamilton and a dash of Heinlein. Not even read Dune, though I do own a battered copy.

My physics is also not great. I know what gravity is, and that we orbit the sun, and not a lot else

So. . . can anyone tell me how fast something travelling at a one Gee acceleration is going, i.e km per second? Secondly, does going from one Gee to two mean the numbers double?

Is a starship shield of streams of heavily energized and activated ions and plasma held in place by a magnetic field in any way plausible, and whilst we're on it, would an assualt rifle that held spare mags in place by the use of magnets, for an automatic reload time of less than a second or two, without any of the problems of added weight, worsened accuracy, plausible or not?

And yes, there is FTL travel, like Hamilton's expanse series in the form of "jumps" through wormholes between starship systems, though travel in populated systems is kept to going at a couple of gees, so it does take time to get to places.

 

[Russ]

Your first question is impossible to answer as asked. One "g", as yourself have noted is a rate of change, or an acceleration rate, not a speed. They are different things.

Your question is like saying "if I am pouring 5 ounces of beer every ten seconds, how much beer is in my stein?"

To know the speed of something, you need to know the starting speed, the rate of acceleration (in this case say one "g") and how long the acceleration has been occurring. To calculate speed you need to give us two more of the variables.

Some of your other questions don't seem to make sense either. If you really want to attempt this in a scientifically plausible fashion I would suggest some basic physics textbooks or courses, rather than internet posts. I don't see why holding spare mags in place with magnets would have any impact on the weight of the magazines, any more than holding them on with duct tape.

 

[johnsonjoshuak]

As said above, a g is a unit of acceleration. IIRC it's 1 (KPS)PS so every second that you are accelerating at 1g, you are adding 1KPS to your total speed.

This link has a cool calculator that I've used to calculate my sci-fi math.

The question about the rifle isn't quite worded in a way that I'm understanding. Keeping extra magazines in place is going to add extra weight to the rifle, but most trained soldiers will be able to compensate for the additional weight when they are firing.

 

[Russ]

As said above, a g is a unit of acceleration. IIRC it's 1 (KPS)PS so every second that you are accelerating at 1g, you are adding 1KPS to your total speed.

This link has a cool calculator that I've used to calculate my sci-fi math.

The question about the rifle isn't quite worded in a way that I'm understanding. Keeping extra magazines in place is going to add extra weight to the rifle, but most trained soldiers will be able to compensate for the additional weight when they are firing.

Hmmm...and here I thought a "g" was 9.8 meters per second squared at sea level...

I'd hate to have a trip and fall on your world!

 

[johnsonjoshuak]

See my math (or memory) is awful. I've been buried in fantasy for going on 5 years so ... maybe its 100g = 1kps2 ... hmm

 

[WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade]

Thanks for this!

How about we collab? I get to come up with fun ideas, and you do maths things?

But, yeah, John, I did word that section about the rifle wrong - the mags are floating in a magnetic field below the gun, they're not physically attached to it, though my reasons for it, other than cool and speed, are now starting to seem suspect.

 

[HylianShield]

When you pose these questions, my thoughts go to Metroid for some reason. For a fanfic, I took the Wave Beam and made it into a static projection from emitters on the bottoms of the suit's boots. A Waveboard. You're only limited by your imagination.

For instance, G Force. One G is equal to the strength of gravitational pull... on Earth. What if you're on a much denser planet with more mass? One G there could equal 2 or 3 times Earth's gravity.

As for the rifle, the practicality of keeping the mags on the weapon could be suspect if the weapon is lost. Why allow your enemies to have more than the minimum if they gain the upper hand? How about this: what about a vambrace (gauntlet) that stores the extra mags in a forearm compartment? Weapon runs out, you shed the mag, your forearm compartment opens, you brofist the new mag into the back of the gun (making it a back-loading mag is unorthodox and might be cooler since hardly anyone does it), and you're locked and loaded, all in less than two seconds.

Just a random idea. And for shields on a ship, you can make them whatever you want. A field of charged particles held in a spinning orbit by an atomic centrifuge at the center of the ship? Sure. An energy screen projected by emitters placed all around the hull? Why not? How about a kinetic barrier that is only activated when objects of sufficient mass or energy content are approaching at sufficient speed, as in Mass Effect? It worked there, and that's not real science.

Just because it's "Science Fiction" doesn't mean you necessarily HAVE to use real science. Like a magic system in Fantasy, your science system is only limited by your imagination. It's just magic with technology

 

[WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade]

Okay, brofisting ammo into guns. That's happening. Sure, he's got four shotgun barrels in one arm of his armour, (and it's not ridiculously bulky, think more like iron man, with a jet pack on the back), but that can be on one arm only or something.

But that is awesome.

As for not using real science - I know I don't have to, but my writing style likes facts. I don't throw them out all the time in wild, self-mastabatory info dumps, but I like to put enough in to make it realistic - for fantasy, this is easer than Sci-fi, because it's a lot simpler to find out materials and weight of war arrows (my fantasy MC is an archer), or even to create a flintlock, gunpowder-fueled double-bowed repeating crossbow than sci-fi.

But then, what's writing if not challenging yourself and writing new, tricky situations and topics??

P.S Brofisting ammo into guns. . . *squees*

 

[Galahad W-528]

Just a heads up, this isn't related to your question but I digress....

20mm cannons aren't exactly the best shipboard weapons on any ship, whether it's a modern even lightly armed cruiser or a lightweight, deep space prowler. 20mm is the kind of weapon that modern infantry fighting vehicles like the old M2 Bradley used against exactly that, infantry. Mounting those on a ship would be ineffective except inside the ship's corridors where they could be turned against boarders as automated turrets or something of the like.

The 240 is getting closer to something you want, but to put it in perspective, the Abrams main battle tank is equipped with a 120mm cannon, and typically that's too small for modern ships, let alone science fiction or especially science fantasy vessels that could, nay, need the thickness of a nuclear proof bunker loaded with elements like titanium, lead, iridium, and others to make extremely stubbornly indestructible armor just to survive space and all the cosmic radiation, high speed impacts, and other threats in space. It's why we still haven't launched a mission to Mars and likely won't for a long time cause we can't properly shield our astronauts.

Just wanted to let you know about the calibers your using, but I like the Fists idea, they sound like mean little buggers to attack ground forces with or even enemy fights if the guage and powder is right, like an overpowered AA12 with jet engines.

 

[ThinkerX]

Issue with big ship mounted projectile cannons - recoil:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Hence, you fire that gun without compensating for the recoil somehow, you are in effect changing your course - whether you want to or not.

And yes, G is a unit of acceleration. Been ages since I did the math, but starting from 'zero' (impossible, as everything in the universe has some motion), you could reach just shy of the speed of light in something on the order of six months (really will have to redo the math again sometime). BUT - that also takes a giant amount of fuel. Try doing it with fusion engines...to get a spacecraft the size of a cruise ship to even half light speed will require a fuel mass the size of a large asteroid - something on the order of a couple hundred miles across. (And then you have to slow down again).

For the past year, I have been closely following a series of threads on another site discussing a very debatable option that does not use propellant (fuel), though even if it is valid (huge 'if') top acceleration would be on the order of 0.1 gravities, and probably far less than that. Something on the order of 20 - 30 years to get to Alpha Centari.

At .95 light speed, 'time dilation' is about 3 to 1. Hence, you head for a star fifteen light years off at that speed, only 5 years passes for the crew.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

OK, to add to the others, 1g is the force equivalent to the acceleration in Earth's gravitational field. If you fell on Earth and there was no air for friction to slow you down, your velocity would increase by 9.8 metres per second every second. So at one second you're falling at 9.8 m/s. At two seconds 19.6 m/s. At 3 seconds 29.4 m/s and so on. If you on the other hand stand on the surface of the earth while gravity pulls you down at this acceleration, the force you feel is called one g. And to reach the speed of light accelerating at one g, takes 330,000,000 / 9.8 seconds or 389 days. To reach Alpha Centauri at this acceleration and assuming you can't exceed the speed of light, would take about five and a half years. To accelerate faster is possible but the forces on the body increase proportionally. So say your ship accelerated at two gs, the typical 80 kg guy would feel as though he weighed 160 kg, and the strain on his bodily organs would have increased proportionally as well. Falls of course, would be a major safety issue. So really, unless you've got some magical sci fi way of countering the accelerative forces - eg inertial stabilisers from Star Trek, anything much more than one g is not an option.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Androxine Vortex]

As I can not contribute much on this subject, I, being someone who only writes in fantasy, will tell you the secret weapon available to every fantasy writer when trying to explain something...

Magic.
It fixes every problem

 

[Galahad W-528]

Magnetic Recoilless Cannons! Or maybe auxiliary compensators scattered throughout the ship to adjust trajectories that could be used for all sorts of aeronautics and maneuvers.

I don't know much about acceleration, I've only ever taken a basic physics class so far, but I do remember reading somewhere that it could be possible to cause a dip in the fabric of space using (I vaguely remember) gravity, essentially encapsulating yourself in a bubble of space that on the inside isn't going very fast and not breaking any light speed rules, but on the outside be constantly accelerating till the halfway point where you just slam the brakes by reversing the tilt of your gravitational bubble. It would mean generating your own gravity, but it sounds more effective than just brute forcing it through space on literally a ship load of fuel. You'd be going faster than light but technically not breaking the speed rule since the ship's motion wouldn't be very fast at all (if anything, you probably don't want to try just dipping out of the faster than light bubble if you don't want to be spaggettified or something crazy like that).

All said and done, you could just make up something believable and roll with that instead. This is a fantasy writing forum, no one is going to slam you for mixing the genres a little.

 

[Queshire]

Personally, despite the tag line saying "The Art of Fantasy Storytelling" I think that anyone on this site who would have a problem with non-fantasy writing or questions would have to be an ass.

Now, one thing that MASSIVELY surprised me after all the sci-fi I've consumed over the years is just how wrong people get space travel. There's this game out, Kerbal Space Program. There's plenty of Youtube videos out on it. While it is just a game, it is an excellent resource for a writer when it comes to space navigation.