Why is Space a Vacuum

[Atrocities]

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 ]

[Karibu]

Mining black holes is propably Last thing mankind ever learns to do, if ever. As we know, black holes are virtually everLasting (but not practically. There are few events caused by laws of quantum mechanics, which result that even black holes will lose mass and vanish in time and I am not talking about millions of years, but 10^90 years) and nothing can escape from there.

However, even if we could extract some material from a singularity, I doubt it could be of any use. Basically it is assumed that it consists of only protons and neutrons which would combine combounds with the nearby matter (atoms, electrons, neutrons, other protons) at the very same moment they would be taken off from the high gravity area. However this is interesting theoretical discussion

[ January 28, 2004, 07:50: Message edited by: Karibu ]

[Suicide Junkie]

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?

Also known as ramscoops.

The element mix you'll find is essentially pure hydrogen with a tad of helium mixed in. Fly through at high speed, and scoop up those 10,000 molecules per cm^3
You'll have to sweep 3x10^17 cubic meters before you've got 1 gram of hydrogen though, so you need a big scoop.

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And the densities of nebulae are so very low, only "none" races could consider it breathable.
Plus, there are no convenient ways to move around, since the material is so very thin, and there aren't even any stars around to sail by.

Black holes are a bad idea to mine for matter.
Jupiter would be uneconomical to pull material up from.
Stars are much worse, and hotter too. Solar wind is too thin to bother with.
Neutron stars, well your digging equipment would be compacted into neutronium and join the star, and the gravity is much worse.
Black holes are insanely bad.

They do evaporate, though, and emit radiation like a blackbody. As they get smaller, their effective temperature goes up and they emit more, and shrink faster until boom.

In the Last second of its existence, according to theory IIRC, it will lose 1000 tons of mass as energy. Enough to sterilize the entire solar system from anywhere nearby.

Any decent sized hole has an effective temperature lower than the surrounding universe, and will just pull in photons and stray atoms to grow.
Eventually, as space expands, the surroundings will approach emptyness, and the huge hole will begin to evaporate.

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The scale of time you are talking about is many millions of years.
If the race is waiting for nebulae to form randomly, they'd be an incredibly ancient race.

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PS:
Fun trumps all! If it would be fun to play, go ahead and do it!

[Aiken]

Where is nothing can stop you from nebula mining. But only for organics. I doubt that minerals and rads are so widespread in nebulas. The only exception - it was formed by supernova bLast. When about 10e-1 percent (approximately) of heavy elements could be found in such system.
Btw, is it possible to give new Ability for Storm 1,2,3 system, e.g. "Planet - Change Organics Value" or a kind of this?

[ January 28, 2004, 16:09: Message edited by: aiken ]

[Karibu]

It would be nice to make a storm which would change the atmosphere of a planet. I would like to surprise my enemy to change their oxygen planet into carbon dioxide and look them suffocate in one turn (when planet size for their race changes)

This could actually be succesfull with only one ships, if there is no fighters and/or ships around a planet and you would put your "storm ship" into "Don't get hurt" battle plan. First, get into corner in battle and stay there, then change the planet

[oleg]

- How long can a man stay in Space without suit ?
- Almost indefinetly.

[Fyron]

Actually, if you have too much population on a planet, they do not suffocate, they just remain there. This can be seen by playing as a non-advanced storage techniques race and conquering a fully populated world of an advanced storage techniques race. Same thing happens with cargo and facilities. You can not add more until you remove enough to get something like 9/10 instead of 12/10.

Originally posted by oleg:
- How long can a man stay in Space without suit ?
- Almost indefinetly.

- How long can a man stay alive in Space without a suit?
- Almost 10 seconds maybe. But it would be a very painful 10 seconds!

[ January 28, 2004, 16:15: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]