[HN Gopher] Atomic Rocket ___________________________________________________________________ Atomic Rocket Author : based2 Score : 92 points Date : 2023-10-22 20:15 UTC (12 hours ago)
web link (projectrho.com)
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 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 . | 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/ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-23 09:00 UTC)