Important Internet Spaceships part 1 - set the course
Thinking about design tradeoffs at my work and at some of my hobbies lead me to a strange idea... Let's say we want to build a manned interstellar spaceship meant to reach nearest star systems without any faster-than-light cosmo-fantasy technologies. What will be the key characteristics of it's construction? Which goals we must seek the most while in highlevel design stage? Let's think like an architects, not just an engineers.
My pick is:
1. Survivability of the crew. Our first and foremost priority. As with hundreds of years ago, crew, our people, is our most valuable resource. Not just from ethical point-of-view, it's also a practical one. Human adapt, survive, have the ability to self-replicate. We build the machines to build machines to carry us at some distant places. Manned mission could be a success only if the crew reach it's destination. And that doesn't mean just biological shielding and life support systems, it's also a preservation of society. We have a long flight ahead, yes, more than one generation will live here.
2.Survivability of the construction. We must survive. So the key construction points must survive (with humans as number 1 components, yes). And we can't build a city-size machine without some bugs (look for software engineering, yes :P). So it's not indestructibility build-to-last parts. It's repairability, redundancy, multi-purposing of the components. Build something stronger from weaker parts. If something will broke we should be able to replace it, reroute it, repurpose it. Just look at some offroad legends like LR Defender, it's not reliability but repairability and heroic actions of the "crew" what makes that cars an Africa legend, something that venture "where no car rode before". Everything could break, even the most reliable parts. We must build our ship according to that. Nothing is perfect, no part is everlasting and indestructible.
3. Versatility of whole construction and its parts. The travel will take a few human generations and look at the technological improvements we made at last 30-40 years. Our space mission could benefit greatly from such technological breakthroughs if we could upgrade our ship on the go. Make better machines, to build better machines to build ship parts, with limited onboard resources. Recycling. Rebuilding. Conservation of energy. We could receive technology updates fom our planet back there, even ready-to-deploy upgrade plans and we could have something better at the end than the steam train we started with. Okay, the Earth discovered faster-than-light travel, let's download and install the upgrade and up we go to Tau Ceti!
1-3 is closely related to each other. Humans means versatility and survival. Survival of some key construction points is crucial, but with enough human and technical ability to adapt we could rebuild everything else, using broken parts as source of materials for a new (and with some updates) even better ones. Our steam engine broke, we could build gasoline engine from the same material. I think there is enough raw materials in some old transistor receivers to build quite a few iPods, if only we could have the ability to recycle it properly and have enough energy and knowledge.
4. Power source longevity ...
5. Engine speed and efficiency ...
6. ...
Will be continued in the next post.
My pick is:
1. Survivability of the crew. Our first and foremost priority. As with hundreds of years ago, crew, our people, is our most valuable resource. Not just from ethical point-of-view, it's also a practical one. Human adapt, survive, have the ability to self-replicate. We build the machines to build machines to carry us at some distant places. Manned mission could be a success only if the crew reach it's destination. And that doesn't mean just biological shielding and life support systems, it's also a preservation of society. We have a long flight ahead, yes, more than one generation will live here.
2.Survivability of the construction. We must survive. So the key construction points must survive (with humans as number 1 components, yes). And we can't build a city-size machine without some bugs (look for software engineering, yes :P). So it's not indestructibility build-to-last parts. It's repairability, redundancy, multi-purposing of the components. Build something stronger from weaker parts. If something will broke we should be able to replace it, reroute it, repurpose it. Just look at some offroad legends like LR Defender, it's not reliability but repairability and heroic actions of the "crew" what makes that cars an Africa legend, something that venture "where no car rode before". Everything could break, even the most reliable parts. We must build our ship according to that. Nothing is perfect, no part is everlasting and indestructible.
3. Versatility of whole construction and its parts. The travel will take a few human generations and look at the technological improvements we made at last 30-40 years. Our space mission could benefit greatly from such technological breakthroughs if we could upgrade our ship on the go. Make better machines, to build better machines to build ship parts, with limited onboard resources. Recycling. Rebuilding. Conservation of energy. We could receive technology updates fom our planet back there, even ready-to-deploy upgrade plans and we could have something better at the end than the steam train we started with. Okay, the Earth discovered faster-than-light travel, let's download and install the upgrade and up we go to Tau Ceti!
1-3 is closely related to each other. Humans means versatility and survival. Survival of some key construction points is crucial, but with enough human and technical ability to adapt we could rebuild everything else, using broken parts as source of materials for a new (and with some updates) even better ones. Our steam engine broke, we could build gasoline engine from the same material. I think there is enough raw materials in some old transistor receivers to build quite a few iPods, if only we could have the ability to recycle it properly and have enough energy and knowledge.
4. Power source longevity ...
5. Engine speed and efficiency ...
6. ...
Will be continued in the next post.