Ok the reason I brought this up was A) I honestly did not understand the nature of space as a vacuum, that being explained now, and thank you all, I move on to my other thought.
Nebula's are basically gasses being held in place by a gravitational force or other. These nebula can be pretty much any gas combination. So to turn this toward an SEIV topic, would it be possible to make a component that could use the inherent gasses of a nebula and convert them into energy for a ship or say stationary Starbase where a Q-reactor was not present?
The idea I have in mind is to make nebula system even more of a strategic asset then they currently are.
If you could mine a nebula for resources and use those resources for production or supply generation depending upon the component used, then nebula systems become far more useful in a game. You would want to protect them from nebula busters or other.
That being said, why not consider the possibility of mining the entrance to a black hole. We all know that matter is pulled into a black hole and super compacted to extremely dense material, so why can we not mine that material? Of course this would require a means to remain neutrally buoyant against the gravitational event horizon of a gravity well, and components to mine for resources at an accelerated rate. The cost would be high, but the pay off would be well worth it.
Also, as a twist to the normal use of a nebula, have breathable ones where you could establish colonies similar to ring worlds, but more along the lines of platforms or rafts that a colony can be built upon. So long as the nebula was breathable gas, IE hydrogen, oxygen, etc it could support a limited number of these colonies.
What about randomly forming nebula? Basically from what I recall from the discovery channel, a nebula is could be formed when a star explodes and the gasses within it are released. There is still enough density from the Stars core to keep the ever expanding gasses held together via gravity, thus creating a nebula. Kind of like a big bag of sun gasses held together and prevented from dissipating by what was left of the stars core and its gravity. So a nebula is formed, why can it not be used as a source for material or a home for a race that can live off of the gasses contained within?
These were just some thoughts I had about trying to make nebula a more useful part of the game.
Edit: Spelling error, thanks Narf for pointing it out.
I owe you one.
[ January 28, 2004, 07:06: Message edited by: Atrocities ]