->Spaceagent: good idea with the black print at the back. There might be a problem of glue not sticking properly to the toner layer, but that's solvable.
->Elliott: lack of interest? Well, the kit is quite new and not based on any famous movie or book. So build threads are the only advertisements it can get
.
All right, let's go spoil Jan's backstory with a bit of science
.
First: who built the Robinson? The official story suggests some unspecified aliens (blue sun, unknown location names etc.), the ships themselves suggest earthlings (latin script, English words, five-fingered hand in Beam catcher's logo, two lovely nose arts and also the name of the complex). Now what? I applied a universal bipolar determinator (a.k.a. coin flip) and decided for the second variant. And I've already read two books about aliens escaping from supernovas, so it wouldn't be very original anyway
.
So it's our own civilization in an unspecified future. We haven't invented faster-than-light travel at that time, because otherwise a) we wouldn't be travelling in a sublight ark and b) we would already have colonies in other star systems, so one exploded sun wouldn't be such a trouble. But interplanetary flights are no problem.
Second: what energy sources do we have? It doesn't matter whether we can annihilate antimatter or not, because antimatter first needs to be made from energy made from something else. Neutronium annihilation and other comic book inventions are probably beyond our reach, so let's stay with nuclear fusion. Fission is too weak for practical space travel.
Third: what kind of propulsion do our spaceships use? The unoverlookable nozzles say good old reactive drive. That means we haven't yet discovered how to control gravity, otherwise our ships would look
different. Therefore we need some non-gravitational device which a) creates an illusion of gravity on ships' decks (those hulls don't look like having been designed to accommodate centrifuges), and b) allows the ships to land on planets even with their lack of streamlining. This could be repulsors: something that doesn't exist even in theory, but appears in sci-fi quite often. In our case, it might be a device emitting some unspecified force field which freely overlaps with matter and repulses it away from its focal point. Emitor's geometry determines focus and shape of the field - see fig. 1 and 2:
Fig. 3 shows what happens when a repulsor approaches a large solid mass, like ground: the field pushes against the mass and an equal reactive force pushes back on the emitter, creating thrust. Of course, the volume of air molecules between emitter and ground gets blown away too, so repulsion hovercrafts make the same dusty mess as today's propeller-driven ones (they have it all wrong in Star wars
). If we apply more power, we rise higher, ultimately hovering in the air like a helicopter. It needs more power (
Froude efficiency: the more kinetic energy lost in vortices behind an aircraft, the less of it remains to propel us forward), but it's possible. Repulsive field has nothing to push against in vacuum, but that's no problem: just squirt some fluid through the focal point, the field accelerates it and you get a rocket. And artificial gravity? Line your ceilings with low-power wide-field repulsors and they will push you against the floor. They will also blow the surrounding air around you, but if the field is homogenous enough, it should be no worse than the usual draft from ventilation ducts.
But repulsion drive has a big disadvantage in space: it needs reaction mass. Not very much because it can theoretically accelerate it to very high relativistic velocities, but eventually it will run out of it. Long-range cargo ships need something better: photon drive. A photon is a nonmaterial particle whose mass is non-zero only because it travels at the speed of light (zero gets multiplied by infinity in some equation, accidentally giving something real and positive). Energy consumption is high, but we can replenish hydrogen for fusion reactors in interstellar space (that's exactly what our ion refinery does) and recycle the fused helium in repulsion thrusters.
In case of Robinson, let's assume the two long-range freighters, Solar explorer and Next liner, have photon engines. Neucom (which looks like repulsor-only tourist vessel) also had to be equipped with some improvised variant because she is located above the axis of thrust of the two main engines and if she didn't balance it with her own drive, the complex would fly in circles.
Fourth: what is the usual lifespan of a spaceship in Robinson's era? I think it might be quite long. "Consumables" like personal electronics or cars become obsolete and are replaced faster and faster these days, but complex and expensive nuclear machinery stays in service for decades (for example: carrier ship USS Enterprise had clocked over 55 years). If a spaceship doesn't lose parts on takeoff, can be reused without a complete overhaul after each flight and is economically profitable, why couldn't it fly around for a century? So it's worth building it tough to actually survive that century. Of course, some scientific breakthrough might happen and make all contemporary spacecraft obsolete, but it looks like it hasn't happened yet (we all know how long it took (resp. will take) to get to first practical fusion reactor). This is not going to affect the model much, but at least it explains all the wear marks we can see on most of the surfaces.
I hope next time there will be something to take pictures of.