08-06-2016, 03:35 AM
(08-06-2016, 03:16 AM)Rahizel Wrote: What say you about most sci fi settings with advanced spacefaring tech just seem to have an almost complete ignorance to gravity and inertia.
You CANNOT travel in straight lines in a solar system, unless you want to use a hundred or times more fuel than needed.
Why do proposed flights to mars take years? Because for every pound of fuel you use to accelerate you need to carry another pound to decelerate which means bring more to accelerate because so far the only way we know how to move in space... is basically like trying to propel a gun with recoil.
Did I mention the part where every ounce of weight adds to an exponential decay in fuel efficiency?
Did I mention that I learned a lot of this from Scott Manley and Kerbal Space Program?
I didn't say anything about a straight line, the minute maneuvers of accounting for gravity aren't really worth mentioning 9/10 anyways. it's not like you'll be doing fucking laps around anything, especially if there's something like the Frame Shift Drive in play which allows you to literally cut a straight path between A and B with 0 regard for any obstacles in local space smaller than a large asteroid.
If you want to travel between planets with current NASA tech you're a special kind of masochistic, even jumping 10 years into the future and you can suspension of disbelief to slap EM drives on or something where fuel becomes a virtual non-issue. You generally need to assume more effective thrust generation and weight savings than we currently have to make interplanetary travel seem practical even if you don't eliminate chem thrusters though.
Kerbal is very good for the trials and tribulations of a fledgling space program and Scott Manley knows his space shit, but only so much of either can be applied to science FICTION because you can't get away with providing your own version of the future without employing the suspension of disbelief. Even if you write your story using nothing but purely modern tech, you are still calling on the suspension of disbelief by telling the reader that things happened this way to make things the way they are, when in reality that same thing could very well go that way.
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