patgalea
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Commented on Normal service ...
Many thanks for linking to our Icarus Interstellar site Charlie. It was a fascinating conference, and we learned a lot from it. We realised that there are some misconceptions about Icarus Interstellar that we need to work on. Principally, we...
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brucecohenpdx commented on
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Hmmm ... let's run a BOTE calculation just for grins, to see how much shielding mass a really large space colony might be able to support. Going big, let's say that we're going to send out 1e6 people in a single "vehicle". On average, I can't see industrialized humans who are completely self-sufficient in terms of food and material goods production needing less than 300,000 meter3 per capita*. That's a sphere a little over 40 meters in radius, with a surface area of about 7000 meters2. If we wrap that in a thin skin standing 10 meters away from the...
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Charlie Stross commented on
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So we screwed the biodiversity of many small ecologies by introducing continental species. It sucks, but not the end of the world. There speaks a person who is unfamiliar with the role of pharmacognosy in keeping us alive....
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Charlie Stross commented on
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Math error. (I'd quibble over the need for 10 metres of head space; but I'll take it as a starting point.) However, I notice that you went from a per-capita volume of 300,000m^3 to total volume (you need to multiply by 10^6 for a million people). So, we need 300^9 cubic metres. I make the radius of that sphere a whisker over 4Km, i.e. surface area of roughly 220 x 10^6 square metres. With 10 metres of water for shielding, that gives us roughly 2.2 gigatons of water needed to shield our ship. (That's 2.2 cubic kilometres.) (Have I dropped...
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scentofviolets commented on
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As the cities grew, a farmer could always make more by selling his land than by growing crops on it, especially if developers had a hand in crafting the local planning ordinances that dictated how many houses could be built on farm land. "Obsf": The Good Earth Choice B is the system that's evolved to take advantage of your worst excesses. You live here by a matter of luck and constant adaptation. Obsf: John Varley's Millennium. The book, not the movie....
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Charlie Stross commented on
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I like the beer test. Added ornate twiddle: the ship should be able to produce a passable lambic. (Or, instead of a beer, scrumpy: the same principle -- natural fermentation implies a robust detritivore ecosystem -- applies.)...
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