- Location
- usa
[X] Yes, donate the planetary defenses
[X] Yes, sell UV lasers to customers
[X] Keep Cortana name
[X] Default Halo Cortana
[X] Yes, sell UV lasers to customers
[X] Keep Cortana name
[X] Default Halo Cortana
Shepard Quest Mk VII, Age of Revy (ME/MCU)
- Thread starter tri2
- Start date
Eh; space elevators are over-hyped. Like even the most optimistic values put them at $220/kg to GEO. A fairly basic cargo ship at 188 million credits carrying 11,200m^3 of cargo could (on the low end for low density cargo) haul ~1,120 tonnes of mass up every 2 hours for an annualized cost (assuming 3x 20yr depreciation) of $0.006/kg.
Space elevators were a good idea back in the 90s when reusable rocket were considered a failure and scientists thought cheap large scale carbon nanotubes were right around the corner. Now neither of those a true. Sure in Shepard Quest we've got super materials to substitute for those carbon nanotubes but we've also got reliably reusable spaceships.
In both cases fuel is basically negligible in cost with the space elevator taking electricity (supplied by Helium-3 fusion reactors) and spacecrafts taking Helium-3. So instead we need to consider the annualized capital cost, and general running costs, compared to the total lift capacity. Even if we can make space elevators cheaper then even the most optimistic IRL estimates it doesn't change the fact that elevators are far more limited on total uplift capacity.
High end estimates for a space elevator are 2.7 million tonnes per year. The above ship does 4.9 million tonnes per year while also being more versatile and safer in case of an attack or accident.
Also, Space Elevators do exist in Mass Effect. In the lore, it is mentioned that the Batarians have space elevators on Klos.
masseffect.fandom.com
Klos
Location: Milky Way / Kite's Nest / Untrel System / Second planet Klos is a rock planet with almost no atmosphere to speak of. Consequently, the planet retains fairly little heat considering how close it orbits to an energetic star. The relatively mild temperature made Klos attractive for...
masseffect.fandom.com
- Location
- Leeds
Thats interesting. Could you answer some follow up questions?
IRL thats true.... but we do have cheap large scale carbon nanotubes don't we in quest, given that we've done all tech research apart from unobtanium we might even be able to do better than? And the space elevator would be arc reactor powered you know, if Revy is making it. And the space ship cost estimate is able to make use of bullshit mass effect physics in order to improve its numbers (I doubt you could get that low price IRL) so isn't there a way to improve the space elevator in the same way, for example using a mass effect field to counter act gravity which would greately decrease the stain on a cable?
I'm also curious about the deprecation costs, isn't that the normal lifetime of a spaceship? Considering that atmospheric exit and re-entry are probably the most damaging and fault prone sections of any space journey it seems like we'd have to revise that number down. And how are fuel costs considered, assuming the same power source (unless the space elevator is also calculating depreciation) I find it unlikely that the Space Elevator could be 5 orders of magnitude less power efficient, I assume that difference arises from the difference between IRL projected costs and ME projected costs. Obviously both transport methods have to do the same Work to deliver a payload to orbit, could you explain why space ships are more efficient than the elevator?
Last edited:
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
Cheap ground-to-orbit via eezo-assisted flight makes space elevators a poor proposition, except perhaps under conditions more ideal for such elevators, such as large slowly-rotating thin-atmosphered planets.
edit: Actually not sure how planet size (or rather, gravity) would affect viability of space elevators, since delta-v of reaching the height of a space elevator is only a low fraction of the delta-v of orbit at that height, and space elevators typically only help with the former.
edit2: unless the orbit is GEO, in which case the delta-v's are the same, so ignore above
Long term, once repulsors - a reaction-less drive - begin entering civilian use, space elevators should become completely obsolete.
Whatever the case, I say, test all you want. The more we, and by extension, the galaxy, is "tested", the more prepared we'll all become. What's that saying? "What doesn't kill us, makes us stronger."
edit: Actually not sure how planet size (or rather, gravity) would affect viability of space elevators, since delta-v of reaching the height of a space elevator is only a low fraction of the delta-v of orbit at that height, and space elevators typically only help with the former.
edit2: unless the orbit is GEO, in which case the delta-v's are the same, so ignore above
Long term, once repulsors - a reaction-less drive - begin entering civilian use, space elevators should become completely obsolete.
Yeah, Batarians/Collectors smuggled in some mk1 arc reactors, which don't have our flawless blackboxing tech. Hopefully, our later tech inhibits reverse engineering by the time the Reapers invade.
Whatever the case, I say, test all you want. The more we, and by extension, the galaxy, is "tested", the more prepared we'll all become. What's that saying? "What doesn't kill us, makes us stronger."
Last edited:
Planets with thin atmospheres are most likely where the space elevators are still in use in the Mass Effect Universe. As I mentioned previously, the Batarians have space elevators on Klos. It has a gravity of 1.26 g, but it has little to no atmosphere. I assume that the use of eezo insures that gravity is less of an issue for space elevators.
For the cost of the tether; it is expensive regardless. Steel cabling is $1+/m so even a steel a tether of over 100,000km (it has to extend well beyond GEO for physics reason) would cost 100+ million with thicker cabling costing more (I've seen up to $20/m from some quick googling). In other words even a best case scenario is putting the cable cost, let along the rest of the infrastructure to go with it, at around the same tier as the spacecraft.
For starship lifetimes; atmospheric transits aren't actually that straining. They seem that way because IRL every gram, let alone every kilogram, matters due to the immense costs of space travel. Current rockets can't afford to waste any fuel on gentle exits, or entries for that matter, because a kilogram of fuel wasted means you need an extra kilogram of fuel to finish your mission which means you lose a kilogram of payload. As you drop the cost of space travel however the penalty for wasting fuel becomes less and less; especially as you get more efficient drives so it isn't even that much of a mass penalty. By the time you have starships capable of the degree of Delta-V seen in Mass Effect wasting fuel slowing down for an easy reentry or taking it slow on take off for a smooth exit is just common sense.
I'm not really considering fuel costs because comparatively speaking they are negligible. To provide some perspective the high speed Brachistochrone transfer needed for a 2 hour turn around requires 37,834m/s of Delta-V which translates ~13 tonnes of fusion fuel. For comparison modern day rockets burn that much fuel in 20 seconds. That is without factoring in the Eezo core reducing the ship's mass. You could probably make the journey even faster then 2 hours since that is assuming a relatively low 10m/s/s acceleration while Eezo core mass reductions would allow for far higher accelerations.
The problem is the climbers. Once a starship is in orbit it can accelerate hard and fast to reach a destination ASAP but climbers are limited in a number of ways. The first and most obvious is that they are connected to the cable and thus are limited by how much friction the system can tolerate; friction-less connections like Maglev would help here but that system comes with its own issues like needing to coat the cable in magnets. Next is the problem of vibrations; as the climber climbs it will distort the cable by pulling against the direction of rotation (IE: the cable is accelerating the craft horizontally to orbital velocity so the climber's inertia will apply a force in the operation direction) which will cause vibrations. The faster you climb, the heavier the climber, and the more climbers on the cable simultaneously the more intense these vibrations will be. Then there is the question of peak acceleration; rocket engines apply a lot of thrust while most more normal systems, like Maglev, provide significantly less raw thrust which in turn means more acceleration.
Basically in its simplest terms the problem is that it will generally speaking take longer to climb a space elevator from the surface to GEO then it will to ride a rocket. Therefore a space elevator must carry either more cargo or do it cheaper. Cheaper is hard because the only major costs involved in either system are capital (which I've already shown are about equal) or manpower (which could easily go either way). More cargo is difficult because the heavier the crawler the most it distorts the cable so there is a clear upper limit there although I don't know how it compares with what we can cram into a starship.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
Wouldn't eezo alleviate the weight issue? I can see bulk cargo shipments slowly climbing up and down space elevators as viable under ideal conditions.
- Location
- Leeds
Again I'm not entirely sure we can apply real world costs here, for starters asteroid mining will probably have done a lot to reduce material costs.
But even still that is half the price of the spaceship, and I assume you always want a pair so that one can constantly be having climbers come up and then go down the other so that all of the tether is in use all the time. So they'd have comparatively similar construction costs.
(Since your hypothetical space ship is ferrying up and down constantly I assume there's some space station its docking at to transfer goods to larger interstellar freighter that couldn't handle atmospheric entry, so the cost of the space elevators counterweight station can be discounted. Frankly if space freight goes ground port to ground port the space elevator basically immediately collapses. I'm trying to think back to Novaria and Ferrus whats its place in ME1 to try and remember if this is justified )
Never mind I found the cost justification of the $220 amount:
Article: For a space elevator, the cost varies according to the design. Bradley C. Edwards received funding from NIAC from 2001 to 2003 to write a paper,[7] describing a space elevator design. In it he stated that: "The first space elevator would reduce lift costs immediately to $100 per pound" ($220/kg).[8][9]
The gravitational potential energy of any object in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), relative to Earth's surface, is about 50 MJ (15 kWh) of energy per kilogram (see geosynchronous orbit for details). Using wholesale electricity prices for 2008 to 2009, and the current 0.5% efficiency of power beaming, a space elevator would require US$220/kg just in electrical costs. Dr. Edwards expects technical advances to increase the efficiency to 2%.[10][11]
So it is literally just electricity costs which we can discount as arc reactor/fusion power makes that negligible. So the only questions that are left are how much can the elevator haul per unit time and lifetime expectancy.
E: I suppose technically there are also externalities like noise and pollution.
Nah, the elevator is going to have to dock in an orbital space station (and a large one at that) because otherwise things are going to need to dock at something, unless you are literally imagining this as a one time only thing or just delivering things that can fly off under their own power.. And it would be easier to build a dreadnought in space rather than clear a building site kilometers long on the ground where space is at a premium.
Last edited:
true l was thinking more along the lines of Warhammer 40k where there space elevators are so massive they end up transporting titan legions and sword class frigates from bottom of a forge world to the top and sword class is 1.6 kilometes long. then again its Warhammer and everything is crazy there so take it with a bag of salt
- Location
- United states
I'm not sure that fully space capable civilian cars would work for a setting like Mass Effect. I mean civilians can get space vehicles but overall they are pretty expensive and imagine that they may require special licences. But to it seems the real thing holding them would be that most governments would seem like they would be against the idea of everyone being able to buy spaceships instead of needing licenses since it seems like for a few reasons they'd want to keep track of which ones are being sold. It feels like with the repulsors the SA's reaction would be along the lines of 'why would civilians need something like that?'
That said we can probably start our own business where we have 'public space transportation'. Either having our own branch in charge of such things or selling our own vehicles to businesses. Something like our own personalized space vehicles that work for the space equivalent of trains and buses but for space travel. Hell, we can probably design our own space yachts based off cruisers meant to hold thousands of passengers.
Wait, were space buses, trains and yachts a thing in Mass Effect? If not we can get our foot in the market. Though imagine that we may want Eezo production to make it practical at the large scale.
That said we can probably start our own business where we have 'public space transportation'. Either having our own branch in charge of such things or selling our own vehicles to businesses. Something like our own personalized space vehicles that work for the space equivalent of trains and buses but for space travel. Hell, we can probably design our own space yachts based off cruisers meant to hold thousands of passengers.
Wait, were space buses, trains and yachts a thing in Mass Effect? If not we can get our foot in the market. Though imagine that we may want Eezo production to make it practical at the large scale.
- Location
- Leeds
I think we're talking less about civilian 'individual' and more about civilian 'corporate'. Zac1's proposal was about being able to bridge the gap I guess.
Realistically however there must be smaller scale operations because I have a hard time imagining a big corp dealing in the mess that is Omega. Its terrible as a market to compete in, and its a space ship so the only resources you could extract would be scrapping it.
- Location
- United states
Something i really don't get is why people keep insisting that we should sell repulsors to civilians. I'm actually with SA on this, we don't need to sell all our stuff to everyone including civilians and doing so seems pretty irresponsible since Civilians don't honestly need something like repulsors on their cars.
I feel like there would in fact be plenty of businesses willing to work on Omega if only due to the fact that numerous merc groups have connections. Also we do see a few shady big companies doing shady stuff so doesn't seem that surprising.
- Location
- Florida
By letting us create Dead Space style R.I.G's (Resource Integration Gear) for sale. R.I.G's are bullshit yet still fit the civilian market.
Edit: I mean't "civilian", not "villian".
Last edited:
- Location
- Leeds
Hiring mercenaries sure. But you don't need to go to Omega to hire an Interstellar organisation like the Blue Suns.
And you definitely don't route freight through it. Which was the larger context of the talk.
Hey, I just wanted to quickly pop in and state my immense appreciation for this quest being continued. I nearly had withdrawal symptoms when I had read through everything there was in late 2020, so this made my day. I'll get to reading right away and hope to participate soon!
Last edited:
- Location
- Leeds
Give each civilian a discretionary budget of around a million to spend on power armour.
HanEmpire
Delicious
This means we have to make the brain shield so advanced and small that we can make it standard issue for PI employees.
- Location
- U.S.
welcome aboard! Hope you enjoy it!
In regard to Cortana's name and her appearance, I got to wonder if the Halo Franchise exists in this universe and that is how Revy got the idea for Cortana and for Cortana's appearance. Considering that Revy is a huge 20th to 21st-century pop culture geek. As mentioned previously, it has been established that Revy is a huge fan of really old-school classic franchises like 40k and Japanese 20th-century anime.
Considering Halo, I am kind of hoping that Revy creates more AIs like Cortana for her use and the SA use in the future. Even though it is rather unlikely.
I am hoping that Revy and AI Cortana's first conversation will be very Revy like. Maybe showing Revy being a bit nervous about Cortana's chosen name and appearance. As she did chose it because of her interest in a 21-century game.
Considering Halo, I am kind of hoping that Revy creates more AIs like Cortana for her use and the SA use in the future. Even though it is rather unlikely.
I am hoping that Revy and AI Cortana's first conversation will be very Revy like. Maybe showing Revy being a bit nervous about Cortana's chosen name and appearance. As she did chose it because of her interest in a 21-century game.
- Location
- Florida
Personally I hope that Halo (the franchise) doesn't exist in this setting so that we could have a 'United We Stand' scenario in the future. Imagining this settings Citadel (and HSA) fighting the Covenant in a true interstellar/intra-galactic war for domination/supremacy.
What can we do to boost the economy? I know that we've kicked off a palladium rush and developed the Terran mobile base tech for it (slightly hampered by restrictions on Repulser sales), we've been opening up shop in the human colonies and we've unlocked PNP skills. What can we do to make the phrase "human economic miracle" a thing? Better factories? Knowledge implementation chairs? Relay Network 2.0? I want to make human per capita income and quality of life easily the equal to even the most sophisticated Asari colonies.
On an unrelated note, what's the thread's opinion on reaching out to the Illuminate military and asking what they want in their military? I kinda want to use ParSec as a military laboratory, seeing what works best and building the military of tomorrow there. That means they get things like 5 meter mechs that can lift IFVs with their mind, Hanar powered armor, dedicated mobile oppression barges, all the bells and whistles we think up but militaries may or may not be interested in and put them into the mix to see how they flesh out. Also, unintentionally, the New Model Army for fighting Reapers.