I was just wondering if this bothers anyone else and what you do in your writing for future fuels. In my limited writing experience, I seem to resort to solar/radiant or geothermal power, since presumably this would be a common thing on any "live" planet, but these too seem limited in imagination to me at this moment.
Ask yourself these questions then you might be able to formulate an idea of which way you want to go with this idea.
Bryan
[This message has been edited by Monolith (edited June 09, 2004).]
Anyway, I'm not a sf writer. But if that gets anyone thinking then it's a good idea. Right? My point is that you're looking only at current fuel forms and looking for some way to manipulate them to fit into your fictional world. Well reach just a little further and explore what hasn't been explored yet. What substances are there that are not commonly considered fuel sources? You know there's a program in India that uses the excrement of all those millions of sacred cows to produce methane gas which they then use to fuel generators. Someone had to reach to come up with that one.
Now, here's a cool power source:
First, open a wormhole and keep it open permanently by inserting a tube made of exotic matter. (This is simple enough if you're already using wormholes for interstellar and time travel.)
Drag one end (A) of the wormhole and immerse it facing up in a water tank beneath a waterwheel. Drag the other end (B) of the wormhole and place it facing down above the waterwheel.
Since the water pressure at A will be greater than the air pressure at B, water will flow from A to B, exiting above the waterwheel, thus causing it to spin. Attach a dynamo to the waterwheel to produce electrical power.
Of course, you will lose some water to evaporation, but essentially it's perpetual motion.
In fact, you could take it even further. Before setting up the waterwheel, take wormhole end B, accelerate it to a large fraction of the speed of light, and then bring it back. It is now in the past relative to wormhole end A.
Place A in an empty water tank under a waterwheel. Place B above the waterwheel. Since B is in the past relative to A, the water that comes out of it will be water that falls into A in the future.
Now, if water does end up in A, it will show up in the past at B. And if water shows up in the past at B, it will fall, turn the waterwheel, and then end up at A. And, as I've already said, if water ends up at A it will show up in the past at B.
So if you're lucky, the water will just start pouring out of B, and you won't have to bother adding any water yourself.
I had to read that twice. Sorta confused but sorta not. But you have waaaaaaay too much time on your hands to do that to anyone that reads this thread. The science of that is just mind-boggling and could cause an anyuerism from too much thinking. But a waterwheel for hydroelectricity is a great idea.
OK. I'm rambling. Time to shut up.
quote:
So if you're lucky, the water will just start pouring out of B, and you won't have to bother adding any water yourself.
Yeah, but if you're unlucky, it won't be water that comes out. I think I'd want to make sure, just to be certain everything stayed clean and didn't get clogged up with all sorts of nasty minerals.
I like the gravity idea and it seems to me it might work, but not as the only source of power. I think you would have to power up the ship by some other means and then once you get going use gravity to maintain speed. Consider: in order to use the gravity from your destination to "pull you in" you would have to be far enough away from where you left from (and anything else in the area) that the gravitational force between you and your destination would dominate. Or....like tidal power.
Oh, this is cool! So, if you have a large space station and it is spinning, as it passes by planets and stars you can use the oscillating force to generate some kind of power - just like the moon creates tides on the earth and in some places, like in France and Nova Scotia, they have tidal power plants. Ok, this will work. But, I think it would have to be on a large scale, hmmmm, have to think about this. Great idea djvdakota!
Doc - I didn't mean to imply that hydrocarbons "dominate" the future literature, just that they do have a presence. My example is Asimov's Foundation. I didn't mention it before because I didn't want to start out criticizing the classics, but, hey, it's true. When the Glatcic Empire falls apart, they resort back to coal. As for other examples, I can't think of any off the top of my head (which is mostly filled with thoughts of gravity right now) but I know that I've seen it more than a few times before.
However, as for being simple and plentiful in the universe? Only if one can assume that the universe is peppered with many many planets that have massive amounts of carbon based plants that have been pressed into coal over millions of years. I admit, it could be true. I certainly don't know!
Back to writing though, if people take so much time and effort into creating beautiful novel worlds with interesting novel cultures, why not use a novel fuel source too? Especially since we know our current fuels to be so environmentally damaging.
I do agree that having a culture change from a "better" form of energy back to coal or oil is a good way of showing a digression.
edit: Regression, regression, I mean.
[This message has been edited by Lorien (edited June 10, 2004).]
But I didn't find your post to be intense....we just having a conversation.
As for coal and oil, we all need to remember where these resources come from. Living matter, oil and coal originally were plants and animal, well at least plants. So if you go to a planet that never had plants and animals, coal and oil are not going to be available. Also coal and oil do tend to take a long time to form, a newer planet will not have coal or oil in it's infancy stage.
If you are not sure what would power your space ships, then just come up with a fancy tech sounding word, and never explain it. This trick has worked for many authors over the years, it can work for us as well. I just finished a book a few weeks ago that used a power source that was never explained once. It was a self renewing device that provided large amounts of energy. Besides a minor bit of curiosity, I wasn't concerned that no one gave me a detailed description of how it worked.
Another good idea for anyone who writes sci fi, pay attention to the science web sites. Look at the new discoveries and the potential for those discoveries. A little imagination can turn those possibilities into some incredible items to be used in stories. I would also suggest reading Einstein's theories, or at least and explanation of them. If you spend small amounts of time keeping up with what we are doing right now with science, you will find the amount of research you need to do will be much lighter.
LDS
I like the cold fusion idea. Theoretically it's possible. What would it be like if it were perfect? What would it be like if some of the scientific theories, once cold fusion was figured out, had been wrong? Disaster? Better than expected? Some things to look into and think about and maybe use. What would be the possibilities of a perfected cold-fusion energy source? What could we do with it? As I understand it, once achieved it is theoretically clean (at least much cleaner than fission), cheap, endless in supply. HMMM. The conspiracy theorist in me just reared its ugly head. Such an energy source wouldn't sit well with the oil barons, would it?
http://www.infinite-energy.com/
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html
We'd probably start having wars over water instead of oil for our fuel needs if this came true. Or rather, who "owns" the water. Unless we came up with a spectacular way of storing all the energy that can be produced.
What if the reactor could be small, say like the size of a watch. You pour 5mL of water in in the morning and that generates your power for the day. What if the watch/bracelet were like a Tesla tower that just eminated energy that things around you, your car, the lights, then could pick up and use. That would be handy! It still keeps the comercialism side of it in business because you could have a variety of sizes and styles of these personal reactors. Still no good for the oil barons, but that's what they get for choosing a non-renewable resource!
Not necessarily. There are some theories that petroleum is actually abiotic in nature (i.e., it's not the result of decayed piological matter, but rather is created deap in the earth by non-biological processes.) See "Alternative Theories" on theis page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Used_oil
[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited June 10, 2004).]
You are absolutely right about the water ownership issue. We can see a shadow of it today in the use of natural gas to power cars. If such became universal reality the price of natural gas would become so high we wouldn't be able afford the gas needed to heat our homes and water.
And I really like the idea of a portable personal power source. Kind of like the technology of portable personal telephones was thirty years ago. Did you even see the correlations in your comment about them--the comparisons between your tiny power source and cel phones? The variety of sizes and colors. Even power source kiosks in the malls--Verizon Power Plugs!
And welcome to Hatrack!
And, yes, I guess they are all renewable on a geologic time scale, but certainly not in our lifetimes. Hmmm, but, if one could get oil from rocks on a short time scale, it would be quite the power source, but chunks of granite are kinda heavy to cart around space...has posibility though. Squeezing oil from a stone. Thanks, djvdakota! Glad to hear the brain juices are flowing. No, I didn't even think about the parallel to cell phones! I can just imagine it, everything suddenly becomes "Power". Power belts, Power neclaces, Power shoes. And can you imagine all the kitchy kinds of Personal Power Kiosks "perfect for your home or business"? Ack! Commercialism.
Now if all my meticulously created worlds could just have characters and stories.....getting there, getting there. And Hatrack is definitly helping.
Have you read OSC's Character and Viewpoint? If you haven't, DO IT!
I work backwards from you though. I start with characters and create them an event/milieu/idea. As they say, there are as many writing methods as there are writers. But that's why OSC's book is so good. He gives you the basics of structuring characters and lets you decide how to use them. If I'm not the first Hatracker to recommend this book I certainly won't be the last.
It would be interesting if we moved to Natural Gas instead of Oil. It would definatly be a different world. Since Russia has about 80% of the world's Nat Gas, and is rather rare in the middle east.
I think if Cold Fusion was turned plausible the Oil Barrons would have a hand in it. In fact they should be pushing for it they're just lazy.
I love the perpetual motion idea, but I think there would have to be Water inserted at some point. But then if you had a machine that could generate water out of nowhere, energy would be a minor concern, you could rule the universe. First you get the water then you get the power.
Can you just imagine having a war with Tesla Death Rays?
(Sorry I'm ranting, a thousand appolagations.
The thing is, you need very little in the way of infrastructure to be able to use oil as a fuel source. Waterwheels and such may have even lower prerequisite requirments, but good sites for hydro are quite limited (and do have a substantial environmental impact). Anyone here ever cook over a log fire? I have, and I've used 'em to keep warm at night too. That's a power source older than waterwheels, even.
How about muscle power fueled by food? I know darn well that most of you still use that as a practical power source. That's even more primative than burning logs.
quote:
First, open a wormhole and keep it open permanently by inserting a tube made of exotic matter. (This is simple enough if you're already using wormholes for interstellar and time travel.)
quote:Uh, I don't know any reason that this would work. For one thing, you need to go FTL to get back out of one of my wormholes, for a non-FTL object, both ends just act like black holes. But even presuming that the wormhole is a forced transit type which doesn't contain a singularity region (which is impossible but okay), wouldn't the gravitational gradient still exist?
Drag one end (A) of the wormhole and immerse it facing up in a water tank beneath a waterwheel. Drag the other end (B) of the wormhole and place it facing down above the waterwheel.
And I'm not going to get into your paradox, except to say that it involves a non-consistent solution, and so far physics has determined that you can't force a non-consistent solution by using a wormhole. Also, as above, you can't beat a gravitational gradient just by using a wormhole.
I think a better thing would be to just take a regular black hole on the threshhold and figure out a way to collect the Hawking radiation. 100% matter to energy conversion, small package, easy refills with any sort of matter.
Fusion is also a good one. After all, if you have a containment failure, you just fry your generator, you don't let loose something that's going to eat the whole damn planet. That seems a lot safer, somehow.
One idea that I find particularly interesting is based on the fact that at the molecular level, ye olde laws of thermodynamics break down a bit. So you could theoretically create a thermo-electric molecule that would simply absorb heat and turn it into electricity. Presto! Tiny batteries that run off your body heat.
Water...there's quite a bit of it. Hydrogen is abundant throughout the known universe, and you can create oxygen easily enough through sustained fusion. We can already do it by sustained neutron bombardment.
But again, all these more advanced technologies require lots of infrastructure. If I'm out in the boonies and I want to have extra heat, I chop up some logs for a fire. If abiotic geological hydrocarbons are available locally, then I'll burn that (maybe...depends, actually). If I'm building a simple mechanical power source and I don't have any plutonium handy (and that stuff is kinda hard to get sometimes), I'll use petrol for a fuel source, right?
Of course, a coal fired space-ship would just be plain dumb. But that's because by the time you've build a space-ship, you obviously have all the infrastructural prerequisites for more advanced power sources...at the very least you can do H2 and LOX. Hydrocarbons and O2 just don't have anywere near the same punch per pound.
1. It's a perpetual motion machine.
2. Even worse, it's a perpetual motion machine that generates excess energy.
3. By the end of my post, it's a perpetual motion machine creating water (or, as Jules pointed out, maybe something else) out of a closed time loop.
Plus if somebody sabotages/seriously damages your reactor, it will badly damage your ship, but probably not destroy it utterly. Which is useful for plot devices.
quote:
but i doubt it could be 'collected' in a bucket like water.
You know, years ago, no one thought that you could stop light. Now they can, and better yet it has some side effects that can create a communication system that can determine if someone has interfered with it along the way. Give them some time and they will have a unbreakable encryption system, well at least for a while.
I just wanted to point out that the only thing that is impossible is the things we haven't learned how to manipulate yet. I would have to do a bit of research, but I thought Einstein said gravity was an actual particle, or a form of energy. (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). So could we one day collect and use it...maybe.
As for anti-matter, it isn't impossible either. I can understand not wanting to use it because of it's star trek misuse. But as long as you stay away from warp drives, anti-matter could be a viable energy source. As long as it is contained and used in a controlled manner, it would provide massive amounts of energy.
Just a few thoughts.
LDS
quote:I am not responsible for the content of this post. --rickfisher
Gravity is not a form of energy, it's a field that effects the energy of things in it. It can be used as an energy source in a one-way sort of process. The obvious example is to drop something and have it accelerate. It's one-way because, once it's down, you need to supply energy to get it back up. A more science-fictional use is to lower some mass into a black hole by means of a pulley driving some machinery. The theoretical effectiveness of this technique would equal that of anti-matter (which is a lot more than it's made out to be in Star Trek, except that it wouldn't give you warp drive no matter what). Another use for gravity is to create an artificial gravitational field, and use that to propel your ship. This could allow you to go faster than the speed of light (with respect to the outside universe, not with respect to the space around you).As to the graviton (not "gravitron") approach--that is a lot more complicated, and no one understands it, except me.
What the physicists think they know is that the gravitational field is made of "virtual" gravitons. This means they don't have any energy, and can't be detected as waves or particles. In order for a graviton to become "real," a mass has to accelerate. This produces what is officially called a gravity wave. Like any quantum entity, it also has particle properties. Actually, most gravity waves are each made of multiple gravitons (just like most light emissions contain more than one photon). If you don't understand this, don't worry, it doesn't make sense. This is just what they think. Also, before you use anti-matter as an energy source, consider that it would be more efficient to directly use the energy of whatever you used to produce the anti-matter in the first place.
[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited June 16, 2004).]
quote:
[antimatter] wouldn't give you warp drive no matter what
I understand that a man called Alcubierre worked out something approximating a warp drive, but it required matter with negative mass. Antimatter has the usual positive mass, I believe.
quote:
If you don't understand this, don't worry, it doesn't make sense
I think most of us are used to that by now. I'm still confused by particle-wave duality
The actual process that we use to create anti-protons and positrons currently uses more energy than you could get from the anti-particle annihilation--but this is not a theoretical barrier. In the actual process we use, most of the energy is simply wasted, it doesn't help with the conversion at all. The amount of energy directly absorbed by the particle being converted is very small compared to its annihilation energy.
So if you had a more efficient means of converting matter to antimatter, it would be entirely practical to derive energy from an antimatter reaction. In a sense, it is just like fusion. The theoretical initiation energy is far less than the strong force energy released by the reaction (which is why H-bombs work at all). But in a practical sense, controlling that initiation short of just slapping a liter of heavy water with a small fission bomb isn't very easy.
It is a problem of scale. It is easy enough to deliver the initiation energy for a few fractions of a gram of deuterium/tritium and get out more than you put in. But to deliver the energy for micrograms at a time is rather more tricky.
And to use antimatter, you have to be even more careful about not making too much. Right now we only make it a couple of particles at a time. That is quite wasteful of energy, but making more would be quite wasteful of both your lab materiel and personnel.
quote:
ie its cheaper to get out of the ground, provides more energy, but is harder on the environment than oil... if such a thing could exist
It's called Oilent Green...
quote:Yes, that's the starting point for all the nonsense. It works much better to think of everything as waves, and leave it at that.
I'm still confused by particle-wave duality
quote:How? It seems that this would violate several conservation laws.
Actually, you can simply convert regular protons and electrons into anti-protons and positrons.
[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited June 16, 2004).]
quote:
Actually, you can simply convert regular protons and electrons into anti-protons and positrons.
But it wouldn't violate any conservation laws.
Let's say you have a process that takes only a small amount of energy to convert protons to antiprotons and electrons to positrons. You then combine them to form anti-hydrogen.
Combining the antihydrogen with regular hydrogen results in mutual annihilation of the matter and antimatter, producing a huge amount of energy -- far more than the energy used to turn the protons into anti-protons and the electrons into positrons.
But you have not violated conservation of matter and energy, because the energy of the reaction does not come from nothing; it is the result of the conversion of matter into energy. You would produce the same amount of energy if you could directly convert two regular hydrogen atoms from matter to energy. Converting one atom to anti-matter merely gives us a way to convert both atoms to energy, it does not create energy that did not exist before.
As for conservation of charge, imagine a really simple process that gets a proton to emit a positron and absorb an electron. You would end up with a positron and an antiproton. One positive charge and one negative charge, same as before.
[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited June 17, 2004).]
"Don't use Antimatter in your stories. Just don't. It felt old in the '50s and will certainly feel trite to modern readers."
For cgamble; coal, whale (or most any animal derived) oil (including Oilent Green), wood, straw...I could go on at length. There are many, many, many things that we could burn get more cheaply and pay a higher long term price from using as fuel.
The actual process that we currently use to make anti-protons and positrons is basically as Eric describes, though the proton first absorbs an electron, then emits a positron, as I recall.
Thinking about it, it would be interesting if you could get a bunch of protons to absorb electrons, then have half of them emit electrons while the other half emit positrons. Thus you get annihilation without bothering about storing the antimatter...which has always been the tricky part.
The problem with that idea is that I like to have things that go BOOM!
Survivor, I like your bomb....mind if I used it sometime? 
LDS
That doesn't make sense unless there is a new term of equivalent meaning but more recent derivation. What are we supposed to say when we mean matter composed of anti-particles?
Anyone else who was there able to clarify this?
quote:
A proton has a baryon number of 1; an antiproton has a baryon number of -1. Changing a proton to an antiproton violates conservation of baryon number. Electrons and positrons have a similar conserved property called electron number. The reason protons can emit positrons is that at the same time they emit a neutrino, and neutrinos also have electron number."As for conservation of charge, imagine a really simple process that gets a proton to emit a positron and absorb an electron. You would end up with a positron and an antiproton."
This process would yield a positron (and 2 neutrinos), but it would not yield an antiproton. A proton is made of 2 up quarks and 1 down. A neutron is made of 1 up quark and 2 downs. When a proton emits a positron (and a neutrino) you get a neutron. But when the neutron absorbs an electron (which would require a lot of energy, and emit another neutrino), you'd get some particle made of 3 down quarks, whereas an antiproton is made of the antiquarks of a proton. The triple down quark particle is sufficiently unstable that it is called a resonance, and it decays quickly into a neutron and some sort of meson, by creating an up quark and an anti up quark.
It's particle physics, for crying out loud. None of it is simple. Some people think we should resort to tacking on extra fundamental forces to explain this stuff. Let's not divert ourselves into a discussion of such things here.
The point is that we do turn protons into anti-protons, even though the current process is very crude. Bosons are plentiful little beasties. CP violation is a tiny little thing. There is no theoretical barrier to a more efficient method of creating (and collecting, our current collection methods are terrible too) quantities of anti-particles.
For myself, I doubt the machinery to do this will be small enough to reasonably fit on a spaceship (and I like things that can go BOOM!), so I make anti-matter at space stations and store it...like a form of high energy fuel, eh?
Simple, simple. No, it isn't simple for the boys doing the math, but it is simple enough to write.
Anyway, I'm still wondering what we call this fuel if "antimatter" is no longer the current term.
My suggestion: NegaMatter(TM)
FWIW, my Phobos story mentioned antimatter using the obscure technical term "antimatter." But that story involved a method of propulsion that was so much cooler than antimatter drives that the mention of antimatter didn't matter. (I guess you could say it anti-mattered?)
Radio Frequency (RF) Trap for Confinement of Ion Plasmas in Antimatter Propulsion Systems Using Rotating Wall Electric Fields
See the schedule at http://ehw.jpl.nasa.gov/events/nasaeh04/
So I would definitely say that "antimatter" is still a current term in the field.
No, really, I would like some clarification here. What did the man actually suggest as an alternative to using the term "antimatter"?
I do feel a certain responsibility to clarify the whole antimatter thing, though. It's not that he suggested a new term -- he just said don't put antimatter in your stories. I suppose if for some reason you were writing about something that involved antimatter, he'd have no qualms about using it. I think was he implied was simply write stories that don't use it. (Because it makes them feel old)
Note: I am VERY well aware that antimatter IS still the term used in the field. I'm a physics grad student (read: a career in poverty) and would never dare make such a claim.
My take on it is this: that was just his advice. Use antimatter drives all you want. Startrek fanboys will flock to you in droves. That just isn't the sort of thing I want in my stories.
LDS
quote:
Also, can anyone else shed any more light on what was actually said?
He said - Don't use antimatter. Just don't. Antimatter has been used as a magic fuel source since the 60's. Using it makes your story seem dated.
He also said - Nothing I say is written in stone. Go ahead and violate the rules if you are willing to pay the price.
My interpretation - If you have a really good reason to use antimatter, use it. But the story had better be related to antimatter (read - hard sci-fi). If you don't know what antimatter is, or are unwilling to explain it in detail, no one is going to get the impression your story is good sci-fi. They will believe you are relying on old cliches from Star Trek.
If you're not going to bother explaining your cool super engines anyway, why not use a concept no one's ever heard of. For instance: a Klastion drive that runs on tri-polar pletanite.
[This message has been edited by SteeleGregory (edited June 23, 2004).]
But generally when I hear antimatter, i think of Star Trek, and I thikn of cliches. In fact, I thought of it when the word was first mention in John Brown's book, but he went into a detailed (but not oeverly complicated) explanation that convinced me that he both knew what he was talking about and that it was essential to the plot.
They also use the unstable nature of antimatter as a plot device from time to time. They call it a "core breach", the idea being that the antimatter fuel escapes and utterly destroys the ship. Obviously this is a situation that must be narrowly averted with only seconds to spare. Or even after the fact, making use of time travel.
Basically this advice is like "don't have programs running 'on the Net' rather than on multiple computers connected by the Net."
Don't use anti-matter if you have no idea what it is and what it can do.
In my universe, only special military ships (and certain even more special research vessels) actually use much antimatter (because it makes things go BOOM!), but the subject does come up from time to time.
Anyone remember the time that Picard succumbed to some kind of temporal field induced psychosis and actually used his finger to draw a on an expanding cloud of antimatter? It was one of those "go back in time to prevent core explosion" episodes. They did explain that he'd gone crazy, but it didn't do anything bad to his finger (probably because earlier in the episode they'd already done a bit where he tries reaching for something caught in an accellerated time field and hurt his hand that way--can't hurt your hand twice in the same episode, you know).