Story(-ish): The Babble Files (updated 2408.5)

[Loser]

I am fifth, I think, in post count on PbC. And except for orders, most of my Posts have been technobabble.

I have not heard from Aaron.

Originally posted by Ragnarok:
Holy crap that is a long post! When I find a couple hours I will read through it.

That represents . . . many moons of gameplay. I was thinking about posting them separately, but that would be unnecessarilly padding my count.

I will post new technobabble in a per-turn fashion, so it should be more digestable.

[ June 29, 2004, 13:52: Message edited by: Loser ]

[Puke]

and dont forget all of the sideline drama. Loser does as much or more RP than most other people, and is on top of a bunch of major and minor plots in addition to all the technobabble.

[Raging Deadstar]

Truthfully No-one knows what "Doctor Loser" is up to behind the scenes When it becomes clear i'm sure going to regret Appealing for his pardon and enstatement as System lord of Avalon...

Good intentions and all

[ June 29, 2004, 23:26: Message edited by: Raging Deadstar ]

[Loser]

New Technology for 2407.9

Inferno Fueled Capital Ship Missile

Solid chemical rocket fuel has been used for centuries. In the early days of spaceflight it proved more reliable than liquid fuel and required less overhead on the launchpad to utilize. For this reason, the nations involved in our early spaceflight that used solid fuel rockets out performed those few nations that founded their program on liquid flue rockets.

Of course, the hardware invoved in the use of solid rocket fuel is far less reusable than that used with liquid rocket fuel, and as cost became a more important factor, and technology was developed that allowed more reuseability, solid rocket fuel fell out of favor in the area of spaceflight.

The relative stability of solid rocket fuel, and its lengthy 'shelf life', however, kept in it use in the military. Small weaponized rockets, no matter what their payloads, were almost universally built around solid rocket fuel, and this continues today.

Our gigantic Capital Ship Missiles are two-stage chemical rockets with a nuclear fusion payload and a guidance system that has never failed to hit a target that remained in range, not in tests and not in true combat. While it lacks the incredible speed of the Anti-Matter Torpedo, the relatively slow speed allows the guidance system to make course corrections to ensure contact with the enemy, something that the Anti-Matter Torpedo cannot guarantee.

The rocket fuel we currently use is made with a formula that has been in sue for centuries. Small changes have been made to provide a better purity of materials, but no major changes have been proposed until recently.

In the deep geothermal rifts of highly vulcanic Avalon VI B, a form of life similar to the archaea branch of microbiology was discovered that possesses a remakable tolarance for substances toxic to nearly any other form of life. The high temeratures and acidity of its natural environment were duplicated, with some difficulty, in a laboratory setting, and cultures were grown, genetically manipulated to produce a variety of substances.

One of the most remarkable substances the archaea were modified to produce is a rocket fuel dubbed 'Inferno' by the lead project team. The fuel is 'grown' by placing a special coating inside the rocket caseing and, after installing an insert to accomodate space for additional hardware, filling the interior with a highly acidic solution containing the archaea. This solution must maintain a temperature higher than the 'normal' boiling point of water, and so extrodinary pressure is also necessary to the manufacturing process.

Over the course of a scant few weeks, the archaea build the rocket fuel from the outside of the casing in, starting with the 'activator' coating on the interior. The fuel is assembled in a perfect crystiliine form, molecule by molecule.

This ideal arrangement of chemistry results in a dramatic improvement in the performance of the resulting rocket. The Inferno Fueled Captial Ship Missile is able to carry a heavier warhead to greater range at an increased speed. The demanding manufacturing process results in an increase in cost in both generals minerals and general radioactives and the launch tubes require a compelte redesign to facilitate the new missile's dimensions.

However, according to our simulations, the combat benefits far outweight the additional cost, and it is the recomendation of the Ministry of Science that ships using current or older Capital Ship Missiles be retrofitted to incorporate this new design.

Tight Reactor Plasma Missile

Both the Plasma Missile and the Anti-Matter Torpedo are driven by a T/CT reactor. In the Plasma Missile this reaction mass is comsumed at a relatively slow pace, converting the released energy to heat which then vaporizes elemental zinc, converting a significant portion of it to a plasma state. This mass of expanding gas and plasma provide propulsion for the weapon, and the reaction mass that remains when the weapon reaches its target serves as the destructive payload.

By contrast, in the Anti-Matter Torpedo the T/CT reaction directly results in propulsion in much the same manner that it would in a T/CT engine. This allows the missile to carry less reaction mass, decreasing the damage it deals. However, this method of propulsion allows the torpedo to travel at much greater speeds, to fast for Point-Defense Systems to intercept it.

In both cases, the T/CT reaction mass and the reaction itself are contained within powerfull magnetic bottles, powered themselves by the T/CT reaction. The magnetic fields that comprise these bottles operate with some degree of variance, and the volume occupied by the reaction mass fluctuates significantly. This means that volume in excess of that taken by the reaction mass, and thus additional hardware, must be provided on the missile itself.

Obviously storing the reaction mass in the missile or torpedo, while on the ship, would provide require a constant drain on that same mass, so the Contra-Terrene mass is drawn from the ship's reactor jsut prior to the firing of the missile. This complicated procedure is one of the reasons for the lengthy reload time on both weapons, but it is necessary so that the fuel is not wasted.

An improvement to the magnetic bottle technology, implemented specifically for the temporary demands of the Plasma Missile, has been developed by building on the inovative work of a young prodigy on Palaquin Aurora Ruathia. This young man has demonstrated a understanding of electro-magnetic fields that far surpasses that of even the leading theorists in the field, and has constructed test systems with minimal grant funding and a precarious lack of experience that have outperformed industry-standard technolgy.

Like any intuitive inventor, many of his designs are without worth and many of his experiements have failed, but the equipment he assembled in one test resulted in a magnetic field with remarkably little fluctuation. By addapting this technology to the Plasma Missile we are able to increase the reaction mass that can be transfered to the missile and there stored during its operation.

This results in a twenty-five percent increase in the range of the weapon and something near to a twenty-percent increase in point-blank damage output. The speed of the weapon has not been increased, and you may note that our Capital Ship Missiles now match it. There is also a very significant increase in the cost of the design, both in general minerals and general radioatives.

[Loser]

New Technology for 2408.1

Core Mining Facility

Drawing minerals from the depths of the planetary bodies on which we live not only means setting shafts deep into the ground, it means developing equipment and shafts themselves that can withstand the torrentous currents, hellacious pressures, and incredible temperatures that exist deep within any body large enough to support a population.

To reach these depths, and more importantly to provide equipment with a useful lifespan at these depths, it must be possible to extend solid structures into the mantle of a rocky world or the equivelent inhospitable area of an icy or gaseous world. These structures must allow the passage of quipment to draw minerals from deep in the mantle or even the rich core of a world, must be maintainable and accessable for said maintainance, and must be able to hold back the mammoth forces that surround them.

To achieve this, a diamond ceramic scafold is lowered into the magmic masses a a borehole established at the crust-magma discontinuity. Supercoils capable of generating powerfull magnetic fields are brought down to the surface of the magma, and then down below the discontinueity, as they travel down the scafold and push the magmic mass, high-pressure gasses, or dangerous fluids away from the scafold.

The next layer of the scafold is wider, and the process is continued, with the scafold slowly being lowered below the dinscontinueity, pushing the surrounding material away from it as it goes. Eventually, a conic strucutre will extend down to the core of the world, from which rich metalics may be mined, if the world possesses them.

Because the gravity involved decreases as the mass 'below' the work is decreased, as the work approaches the core of the world, this cone can be of a relativly narrow width, making it feasible to actually reach all the way to the core, or at least the core/mantle interface. Nonetheless, the scafold is a truely immense constuction project, and will consume the major portion of its own mineral yeild in its maintainance.

The design incorporates a total of fifteen layers of redundancy in the magnetic field, as a breach would result in magma or other dangerous super-heated, super-pressurized substances flooding the entirety of the cone almost immidiately. The would destroy any equpiment within the scaffold, kill any personel working below the crust/mantle interface, and likely render irrecoverable the remainder of the scaffold, if it did not simply destory it.

While the constuction costs of this titanic project are two-thirds again those of our original Mineral Mining Facilities, it should yield entirely on quarter more general minerals anually, allowing the project to pay off its additional costs, even with its extravagant maintainance fees, and continue returning superior mineral yeilds.

Vaporizing Miners

By using the same diamond ceramic consturction materials and close manipulation of magnetic fields, the Ministry of Science, in cooperation with Avalon Heavey Industries, has developed an advanced means for remote minging of general minerals.

Rather than physically extracting the valueble minerals form asteriods or other uninhabited bodies by means of digging hardware or conventional explosives, this new design brings to bear powerfull close range T/CT accelerators much like the Anti-Proton Beam.

Individual ions of anti-hydrogen are thrown at the target from a close range, and the resulting heat of the reaction converts much of the target area into a vapor. These vapors are cought by the same machinery on whch the vaporizing beams are mounted, and diverted from their ballisitic courses byu powerfull magnetic fields.

The diamond ceramic construction of major components of the vaporizing miner machinery allows the robotic drone to keep up this abusive behavior for extended periods, likely outLasting the usefullness of the mined body.

The sorting process in the magnetic fields and the comprehensive gathering techniques of the explosive, vaporizing extraction technique allow an increase in productivity in excess of thrity percent over the original design, while intial constuction and maintainance costs are increased by fifty percent. However, this technique will wear down the mineral content of any given body no faster than our original approach, thereby making it a far more efficient course to pursue.

[Loser]

New Technology for 2408.2

Sympathetic Shield Depleter

While working with Shield Depletion technology in laboratory settings, it has been observed that a certain feedback is transmitted back through the projected 'leech field' of the Shield Depleter to the projector itself. Those who may be familiar with this ordanace should recall that shield depletion technology relies on a leech field projector, much like the ones used in shield generators, manipulating the target's shields in such a fashion that they burn themselves out.

The weak feedback generated by the interation of the two leech fields, the first created by the shield generator, the second by the shield depleter, was simple enough to filter out through compensation routines in the projection systems, and has been paid little mind, until now.

While putting the generous funding of the Ministry of Science to good work on Palaquin IX, researchers discovered that working the feedback into the modulation of the projector allowed the shield depeleter to better destabilize the target shield. While this new design comes at a significant increase in cost, twenty-five percent more general minerals and radioactives, it both increases its degredeous effects by twenty-five percent and increases the effective range of the weapon dramatically. The Sympathetic Shield Depleter now has an effective range forty-percent beyond that of our best DU Cannons, allowing our ships to make initial engangements to lower the defenses of the enemy at extrordinary ranges.

Quad Ionic Dispersers

With refined miniturization and higher grades of materials the Ministry of Science, in cooperation with Burning Stone Labs, has developed what we believe to be the ultimate refinement to our engine destorying weapons technology.

With more precice and finite machinery, a single battery of Ionic Dispersers can now incorporate four separate 'guns', feeding from the same power supply, contra-terrene mass, and coordinatation andtargeting system. By carefully controlling these smaller delivery systems we are able to prevent the loss of range while increasing the damage dealt, specifically to engines, by over thrity percent.

While this weapon is significantly more expensive than the Piercing Shell DU Cannon, requiring twice the supply of general minerals and ten times the supply of general radioactives, it is now equal to our mainline DU Cannon in damage and slightly betters it in range.

Because of the specific targetting capabilities of the Ionic Disperser, in that after the elimination of shields it first destroys engines, the military theorists of the Ministry of Science have requested that Burning Stone Labs make available updates incorporating the Quad Ionic Disperser to current warship designs built around the DU Cannon. While these ships will have an increased cost in produciton and maintainance, they will also bve capable of specifically imobilizing enemy vessels.

Independant Module Repair Bay

With the increasing number of retrofits expected on the ships of the Republic, those just built and those which have already been in service for soem time, efforts have recently been focused on improvments to our repair capabilities.

A repair bay lacks the construction capabilities of the Space Yard component, relying on more limitied modifications to a ship's frame and replacement components provided either by local Space Yards or imported through the Merchant Guild. The advantage of a repair bay, however, is that it does not dominate the design of a ship or space station as does a Space yard component, and so multiple instances of the same component may be added.

Our most recent design, the Extension Cavity Repair Bay, slides a significant portion of the repair hardware out of the ship, in order both to make better use of the repair equipment, by increasing the workable surface area, and to provide a cavity in the space vacated by the extended hardware. This hollow place may be presuriazed or subjected to the ship's artificial gravity as needed, allowing work to be completed in a more timely fashion. Limitations of engineering and systems coordination have demanded that the extended repair module remain attatched to the ship, until now.

A young engineering student in the research complexes of Calonica IX, working under a grant jointly funded by the Ministry of Science and the Primus Corporation, has put forwrad an elegant combination of magneto-mechanical locks and control systems that will allow the extended repair module to detatch from the vessel or space station and move independantly on manuvering proulsion systems. This not only clears a more accessable repair cavity back on the vessel or space station, but allows the repait module itself to manuver around, over, and even inside of the vessel or space station that it is repairing, much like a gangantuan Version of the skeletal construction barges used in conjuction with our various Space Yard construction implementations.

At no increase in size or production of maintainance cost, this new design increases the repair capabilities of our bays by sixty percent over our previous designs, nearly three times the capacity of our original repair bays. Unfortunately, the complex alterations made to the system would require that any ship wishing to refit to this new design make use of construction facility or component services.

A Star Base outfitted entirely with this new repair technology and a Simplified Ship's Computer would posses the ability to implement repairs at over twenty-five times the rate of our most advanced Base Space Yard, the Ganymede Industrial SD II at something close to twice the total cost in both production and maintainance.

This spcecific design is now being investigated by Burning Stone Labs. Only the constuction and space station experience of Avalon Heavy Industries will allow the constuction of this behemoth, currently designated the Scarab

[Loser]

Picoturion Fire storm

Adumas
System Lord
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Doctor Loser:
In the wake of the Picoturion III Fire storm, I am planning to send a reconnaissance party to the surface to assess the damage and determine if it can be recolonized. Long range scans do validate that it is still and Ice Planet with its oxygen atmosphere intact. The condition sensors indicate that it is Optimal, but I believe this needs to be verified by surface inspection. The Picoturion scientists are still puzzled by the fact we had a firestorm on an ice planet. I am glad to say that we did rescue all the population before hand and that no one was lost. This monthe we will start construction of a new Polaris ship to be ready to recolonize the planet.
The reconnaissance will be done by the crew of the RTS Onyx next month as they stop by on their way to the Pico Military Base. Are there any special precautions that the crew should take, and do you have any suggestions as to what to look for, or what special tests to perform.
I will post any findings into this log.
Adumas, Picoturion System Lord.

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Doctor Loser
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To the Office of Adumas, Picoturion System Lord,

A Firestorm is a catacylsmic checmical reaction that occurs due to reactions between chemicals in the atmosphere or crust of a world. Though localized fires may occur in differring periods on many worlds a Firestorm requires that a significant portion of the planet's surface is subject to intense and destructive heat levels.

The recent Firestorm on Picoturion III appears to have been the result of the natural life cycle of the planet's primary flora, a variety of grass-like xeno-fungal species collectively referred to as Picoturion Red Grass. This life form exists as symbiotic relationship between the fungal stalks and blade-like structures and a wide variety of microscopic flora that inhabits and is contained by the grass-like lifeform. The microscopic life preforms a form of radiosynthesis that converts a wide range of electro-magnetic radiation into chemical energy, off which both the microscopic single-celled flora and the complex fungus subsist.

This form of radiosynthesis can be found on any number of iceworlds with oxygen atmospheres, and relies on a complex polymer as its liquid suspension, as normal water would freeze and destructivly cyrstalize at the temperatures found on the surface of such worlds.

What is unique about the life on Picoturion III is that it will nearly destory itself on a geologically frequent basis. WHile the manner in which these Firestorms melt much of the surface of the world makes determining certain aspects of the past fairly difficult, the Ministry of Science believes that the Picoturion Red Grasses reach this stage of their lifecycle every twenty or thrity thousand years.

Based on the buildup of decaying plant and animal matter on the surface of the world, the Red Grasses begin to produce highly flamible chemicals and, over the course of a century of two, this stockpile reaches a level where the inert materials in which these reactants are infused become unable to unable to truely contain them. When the reactants reach a level, in some local area, where the Red Grasses are no longer able to contain them, they begin to leak into the atmosphere.

Within weeks, the presence of the reactants in the atmosphere signals a world-wide change in the metabolism of the Red Grasses, and they begin to produce chemicals that break down the inert stabilizer that had, up to that point, been keepign the reactants in check.

Eventually, the reactant reaches concentration levels in the atmosphere that guarantee the begining of the Firestorm. Flames and waves of explosive heat wash over the planet, and the worlds atmosphere actually extends to three tiems its normal altitude. nearly all life on the surface of the world is reduced to ash, save for specialized, hardened pods produced by the Red Grasses that protect their spores and a hibernating culture of the micro-flora with which they live.

On some areas of the globe the heat will be so intense that it will melt clear through the crust, which is only a few hundred meters thick in any case, exposing the liquid water layer to the burning atmosphere. The life-rich upper reaches of the watery depths of Picoturion III will then begin to boil, and the chruning, steaming, dealy new sea will casts large amounts of biomass high into the atmosphere. In this way, the Red Grasses not only reset the biomass on the surface of Picoturion III to a digestable form, they add to it from the more life-rich subcrustal sea.

It is suspected that this bizarre life cycle also ensures the supremacy of the Red Grasses on the surface of Picoturion III. Should any other lifeform develop between cycles, the Firestorm is almost guaranteed to eliminate it.

Since our people lived on Picoturion III in habitates built in the subcrustal seas, hard mounted to the underside of the frozen crust, the condition of the planet is not greatly altered, from our points of view. Whatever habitats we might have had on Picoturion III are surely now destroyed, as even where the crust is not penetrated it is weaked to the point that it would not have been able to support our massive arcologies, and many lives would have been lost were it not for the quick thinking and fast actions on your part and that of the Ministry of Transportation.

If you have any further questions about this phenomenom, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Dr. Loser
Minister of Science
Lord Avalon