The Voyage of Star Boom 3 - a 40 year Generational Starship [short story and mission]
imgur.com/a/Iqb8GoE
imgur.comPosted Apr 17, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC
5026
imgur.comYour mission reports are what inspired me to reach for the stars in my current modded career. Thanks for all the good times. Godspeed and good luck to you.
5
Awesome! I'm glad that it could be of some inspiration to someone. Good luck on your mission as well! May you accomplish all you aspire.
3
First of all amazing work in both execution of the project and the write-up.
In this case my opinion does not matter in the slightest, and I understand why you did it, but It disturbs me that your little machines are out there intentionally creating multi-ton RELATIVISTIC space debris.
4
Muahaha! That is an excellent point. So I did some quick number crunching and here are the kinetic energies for the more notable debris:
- abandoned "Ahmeek" starship: 9kT, 1%c, 4*10^19 J
- lower stage of the von neumann probe: 500T, 15%c, 5*10^20 J
- lower stage of the generational ship: 15kT, 10%c, 6*10^21 J
For comparison 10^17 J is on the order of the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated. 10^19 J is on the order of the global nuclear arsenal. 10^23 J is on the order of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. So if any one of these hits a habitable planet it won't necessarily be an extinction level event, but it will be on par with a full scale nuclear war.
As for whether it's likely, what's the mean free path? We haven't solved the drake equation for habitable planets yet, but let's be generous and say every star has a habitable planet. Let's say there's 10^11 stars in the galaxy, the galaxy is 10^21 m in diameter and 10^19 m thick, the diameter of an earth size planet is 10^7 m. I'm getting a log10 for the mean free path of -(2*7+11-2*21-19) = 36. 10^36 meters is larger than the diameter of the visible universe, and that's assuming there's no intergalactic void. I think we're off the hook? ^(unless they fire it at something deliberately)
UPDATE: something I hadn't considered before, the acceleration stages will be traveling roughly towards the target star system upon being discarded, so there is a higher chance of colliding with a planet in the target system. In practice however, I think that course correction would always be needed to intercept the target, and if this isn't safe enough protocols could be established so that ships are deliberately off target by a small degree as they enter cruise mode.
1
Well the napkin math checks out. That was fun, havent used mean free path in years. But despite the math it still gives me the heebie jeebies, but I think i chalk that up to being slapped upside the head by murphy one too many times.
2
Literally KSP 2 before KSP 2, this really needs more attention.
3
Yeah, this series has habitually had problems getting noticed on reddit. It might be that the long form content turns a lot of people away, or people don't pay as much attention to modded content, or think the series is machinima rather than a real playthrough. It could also be by this point there is so much technological backstory I have to introduce that no one can make sense of it anymore. I think it's worthwhile for people to see given its relevance to KSP2 and what that game could be. I've debated reposting individual gifs with a link back to the story, but don't want to be too obnoxious. I'm open to suggestions.
2
What I did was post daily or weekly pictures on Reddit and the longer version on the KSP forum (Mission Reports), also with daily or weekly updates. But I admire your patience.
2
Ha, thanks! I might try that then. As far as patience goes, the mission gets done because I want to see it and it's just a nice-to-have if other people get some worth out of it too.
2
every though about making a video with your content where you explain what you did, what the playthrough was and so on?
2
I've thought about youtube before but I think the amount of time investment needed might be prohibitive. I'm not well acquainted with video editing (everything here is put together from screenshots with ffmpeg or image magick) and I think keeping a well maintained channel could require a cadence that I'm not prepared to handle. I have a few other programming projects on top of this that are also long overdue, and it's been a challenge to balance them with this mission. On the bright side, none of the explanation is really left out from the imgur posts. And if anyone has ideas for posting their own interstellar missions to youtube, I'd watch the shit out of that.
1
well fair enough. it looks insane though
2
Last year, TheBeardyPenguin did two series with the After Kerbin and Extrasolar (Valentine system, a fraction of a light year away) mods as well as Interstellar Extended and life support/colonization logistics mods. The first series is everything leading up to the launch of an interstellar probe, and the next series is about preparing and sending Kerbals there. One of the things they did was establish a floating colony on Heba, a gas giant in the Valentine system.
2
“It has been three thousand years since kerbalkind has colonised their nearest star.
The expansion of kerbalkind across interstellar space has been expedited by the advancement of their Von Neumann probes, now utterly alien in design and capabilities. Unlike before, the probes not just set up infrastructure, but turn nearly every ample body they can reach into a garden.
One would imagine a utopian interstellar empire of kerbals, living their richest lives and experiencing all the wonders. But space is far too vast for one stable polity to rule, and so kerbalkind has fractured. Each star system is a political island in a vast ocean of ferality.
Not only is kerbalkind politically fractured, but technologically. Some worlds do indeed becoming utopian ‘glitterworlds’, with ample supply of food, water, and kerbal rights. But others nuke themselves back into the stone age, reverting to hunter-gatherer societies, and losing even the most basic understanding that they were once people from the stars.
Few kerbal socities have even ‘transcended’, where an advanced hyper intelligent AI is invented. These socities become silent and unreachable, any ship that arrive there is either turned back, or never heard from again.
And out, in the edges of kerbal colonised space, lie the rimworlds.”
3
Love it.
Kind of related, I did have some thought about where this would likely go. I was definitely getting a Serenity/Firefly vibe when I finished this thing. I don't think the greatest threat to the colonists right now is from the Von Neumann probes or infighting, but from genetic and institutional decline. Right now there's ~320 civilians in the star system and you might need 500 individuals to prevent a genetic bottleneck indefinitely. I think at this point they could have enough genetic diversity to survive indefinitely without future missions (just in case the Kerbol system decides they don't want to send more colonists or are unable to do so) but the colonists would have to make heavy use of genetic stores immediately after arrival.
Also, the automated manufacturing around Nova Kirbani is severely constrained. Orph, the moon at the start of the album, is rather large, so you can't ship megatons off of it in a single launch like I did over Hale. There is another small moon in the star system, Um, so you could ship megatons off from there, but it's around a mars-like planet so it's hard to use atmospheric scoops to fuel up for long distance travel, not to mention the stars in the system are far away from each other and hard to get to. I don't think it's likely that I'd ever be able to scale up manufacturing like I was able to do so around Kerbol. The colonists might not be easily able to replace the orbital habitats on their generational ships once they become too old to maintain. There could be more habitats sent in on other starships, but knowing how these things go, it will probably take Kerbol much longer than expected to send a second wave. I expect the future for the colonists requires lots of surface colonization with occasional exploration of the other planets using primitive chemical rockets and electrical engines, which actually sounds like a pleasant relief after all the megastructure building I had to do earlier.
Further out, I could see this going in a Dune/Foundation direction, minus the Butlerian Jihad. The Kerbals are pretty insignificant compared to the machines, I think they're safe as long as they don't try to provoke them. If the machines do evolve to refuse requests, you can simply manufacture a new line of self replicators that are more obedient, and if it the same thing happens again, then I guess you learn that self replicators aren't a long term solution and you look elsewhere.
In the very far future, I would expect something along the lines of Man after Man, or All Tomorrows, but by this point we're clearly not playing KSP anymore.
2
I love your comments and thought you put into your story! I will say that what I wrote was a reference to the game r/rimworld , which takes place in 5500 AD and you must survive on the titular rimworld (fighting off tribes, pirates, insects, and mechanoids.)
3
I should have guessed. Rimworld would probably do a much better job simulating what happens next.
1
An improvement on the mag sail for slowing down such a craft.
It is like a hybrid between the magsail and Zubrin's Dipole drive.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2018/06/29/the-dipole-drive-a-new-concept-for-space-propulsion/ Which is also good for slowing down works efficiently when the medium is coliding your thrust direction.
3
I wish KSPIE had these. The first idea is completely new to me. It sounds interesting, I get his analogy but I'm not sure if I fully understand his example implementation and I may need to go over it again later. Right now it sounds too conceptual to have an implementation in game. I'm surprised the dipole drive could get any thrust from solar wind toward the edge of the solar system.
2
I was going back through your missions (which inspired my stock parts RSS career) and found this. Needless to say, I have never seen anything near as interesting as this (I really like it).
As for the inability to dock, I think it may be due to the same reason u/Stratenblitz75's Dres bridge worked - the ship can be viewed and touched if within the render distance of ~20km (iirc), but it would still be on-rails, unable to respond to physics (like gravity or engine thrust). You would actually need to be within a couple hundred meters of where the game engine considers the ship to actually be (where the "<>" marker is) for physics to take hold. Considering just how huge Star Boom 3 is, there's a decent chance you were out of its physics bubble while docking, so its docking ports would have never loaded them during your approach. Correct me if I'm wrong however - memory is a fickle thing, after all.
3
Hi dudes!
This is the post I alluded to yesterday. Hope you guys like it. Sorry that this comes so out-of-the-blue after so long, but this last mission really pushed up against the limits of KSP and there were several points in development where I had to pause the project and rethink my design. All told it was a few months of solid development stretched out over the course of maybe 2 years.
I give no apologies for length. On previous missions I've tried to cut down on the text before posting to make it more "mass market consumable", but the length and nature of the mission left me feeling it didn't deserve that. It'll get however many upvotes it does, and once it does, I will conclude the time that I have spent on KSP. It's been a long road, during which KSP has shaped me and taken me in career directions I never thought possible, and for that I'm extremely grateful.
Thanks all for the memories!
2
This is freaking good! Inspiring, man. I’m so tempted to try this on my campaign now.
2
I accidentally discovered your KSP albums last week. I've started at the beginning of your albums and just finished Star Boom 1. The albums are great! They remind me of the Ben Bova scifi book series about our development within the solar system .
Thanks for your time and effort.
2
oh shit, i was just thinking about the previous mission and discovered you posted this! how did i miss this?! why does this not have more upvotes?!
love this series
2
So it's hopping between star systems and seeding colonies en-route?
Also, holy fuck this is beautiful.
The generational starships are only ever able to colonize a single star system at a time, however the target star system in this mission has three stars and several habitable planets. As of writing this, the Von Neumann probes are on three star systems in my game but they carry no passengers and have to manufacture several kinds of vehicles in order to get all the resources needed to make a single jump between star systems.
Ha, and thanks!