The Colony Ship project. Help me build my ship!

Yup, there's a GURPS vehicle supplement available too!

 

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It's not often you fuck up, but when you do you do so in spades.

You take with you the plans for constructing all of the paraphenalia of civilisation, the rapid prototyping devices to build them, and the equipment to mine or harvest the initial resources. A vehicle the size I have proposed would be more than large enough for this.

 

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Make sure you have a plot device. This device can be in the engine room, or the cargo bay. And it will require lots of energy so make sure the ship has plenty of fuel..

 

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And it takes how long to get your 57-channel TV, 3 Rollers in the garage and popcorn in the microwave all set up?
All done within 10 years of arrival?
20?

 

That raises an interesting question. What would be the msot practical Power Source they could take with them to help speed things up during the colony settlement? Huge Batteries? Diesel? Helium 3? A Nuclear Reactor? I mean, it would help to have a little electricity at the beginning, even if its use is limited.

 

Harness the power of the sun.

 

Ok, that is doable. They could take some photovoltaic cells from Earth to set them up as a Power Source. Good idea. Building Windmills and Watermills is also something coming to my mind.

I wonder if the new colony will resist the urge of using fossil fuels, like coals...

 

You are being deliberately misleading in expressing the key ingredients of establishing an advanced civilisation.

Recall that this story is set in a future where technology has advanced to the point that an interstellar voyage is possible. Let us say that is approximately one hundred or two hundred years from now. By that time rapid prototyping technology will certainly have advanced to the point where most items can be produced, or grown from templates using suitable raw materials.

And to take just one of your points, the 57-channel TV. Well, no you won't have that within ten years. However, within ten days you will have installed in your prefabricated home a holographic projector suite linked to a vast library of drama, art and documentary that would make a 57-channel TV look about on a par with cave paintings.

 

nuclear fusion definitely.

It's dificult to do but if you can settle a planet, you can create nuclear fusion.

all you need for raw materials is hydrogen, you basically take hydrogen and transform it into one of the isotopes of hydrogen and that is your fuel.

A modern day reactor (theoretical reactor) would produce 5000 megawatts. Thats enough to power the state of California on one reactor.

But, I still gotta say like I did before, use an artificial singularity. first off, you dont have to refuel it, because the energy coming out of it comes out in the form of radiation that can be harnessed for energy. And, it really has no time limit, so it could be installed on the ship before the voyage.

But to be 100% honest, I think you should make the ship itself the colony.

Remember how I suggested that the ship looks like a plus sign from the front with two horizontal wings running the length of the body and vertical wings running the length of the body, make them extremely thick because they wont function as wings but as sections for the crew. And they should be sort of egg shaped where the front ends of the wings are tapered inwards toward the center of the ship in a roundish way, and the back should also be tapered similarly. So if you were to look from the top or from the side, the corresponding wings would look like a 0 or an egg shape.

This way, you could have the front of the wings basically fold outwards forming a sort of impromptu landings struts so you could basically land the ship vertically and the entire thing is your basic colony.

 

Hmmm - are you forgetting the ship you arrived in?
Surely you'd design it to land on the planet - which would provide an instant "starter colony" and you could use whatever powers the ship (either the drive or the internal systems) as the primary fuel source.

If you're not going to do that then I'd go with nuclear. If you can travel to the stars then surely you have the means of transporting the hazardous waste into space and launching it into the sun? Yes, there'd be the risk of meltdown at the plant - but again, given the abilities to travel the stars, surely this is a surmountable issue?


And with regard the 12x12ft living space you're going to force everyone to live in for 5 years - this isn't much more than a prison cell.
Hopefully you'll make up for it in vast spaces for the communal areas?
But personally I would not want to spend 5 years having to share a room just 12 x 12ft. Short trips... ok... but not 5 years.

Separate rooms 6ft x 12ft would be preferable - with shared washrooms etc - if you're going to cramp everyone so much.

 

Hell Make the Ship methane powered serve nothing but beans an wieners the entire trip. The story plot would be the one guy that cant stand the smell any more that tries to flush everyone into Space.

 

To me, that makes sense for short term missions or those lasting a few years, but I don't get why anyone would want to live under martial law for ever in a "military colony" where there is no hope of civilian oversight. In essence you are leaving the Earth to live in an aristocracy, with the military members being the aristocrats, and the captain as King.

That's very strange to me, but to each his own. As a reader, I'd want to know what led the civilian colonists to that. Perhaps things are so bad on Earth that anything is better.

 

was that.... a joke?

Was I supposed to laugh?

 

Well apparently it struck a cord of some kind with you as you made the effort to point it out..

 

How about a room for growing food?

 

What about a room for killing humans and eating thier flesh?

 

What about a secondary command bridge, just in case.

 

SHIP ARCHITECT:
This is a 12-deck Colony Ship combining classical neo-Georgian features with the efficiency of modern techniques. The colonists arrive here and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort, past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these...

COLONY SHIP COMMANDER:
Excuse me.

ARCHITECT:
Yes?

COMMANDER:
Did you say 'knives'?

ARCHITECT:
Rotating knives, yes.

COMMANDER:
Do I take it that you are proposing to slaughter our colonists?

SHIP ARCHITECT:
...Does that not fit in with your plans?

COMMANDER:
Not really. We asked for a simple Colony Ship.

SHIP ARCHITECT:
Oh. I hadn't fully divined your attitude towards the civilians.
You see, I mainly design slaughter houses.

COMMANDER:
Ah.

SHIP ARCHITECT:
Pity.

COMMANDER:
Yes.

SHIP ARCHITECT:
(indicating points of the model)
Mind you, this is a real beaut. None of your blood caked on the walls and flesh flying out of the windows incommoding the passing aliens with this one.
(confidentially)
My life has been leading up to this.

COMMANDER:
Yes, and well done, but we wanted a Colony Ship.

SHIP ARCHITECT:
May I ask you to reconsider.

COMMANDER:
Well...

SHIP ARCHITECT:
You wouldn't regret this. Think of the space-tourist trade.

COMMANDER:
I'm sorry. We want a Colony Ship, not an abattoir.

SHIP ARCHITECT:
...I see. Well, of course, this is just the sort of blinkered philistine pig-ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss for the struggling artist. You excrement, you whining hypocritical toadies with your colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding masonic secret handshakes. You wouldn't let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards. Well I wouldn't become a Freemason now if you went down on your lousy stinking knees and begged me.

COMMANDER:
(politely but dismissively)
Thank you...

 

:bravo:
You have no idea how close to the truth that is for some engineering projects...

But.. Tony Jacklin?

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(He's from my home town too.)

 

hehe

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