Worldbuilding Kernels
David Tate
worldbuilding advice: "Start with the food, and work out from there."
OK, that's tongue-in-cheek, but it got me to thinking about the various
possible 'kernels' for worldbuilding, and the different sorts of works
they generate. Off the top of my head, I came up with the following.
1. Start with the languages/linguistics. That seems to have been the
kernel for Tolkien, Kagan's _Hellspark_, Delany's _Babel-17_, Watson's
_The Embedding_, and a few others.
2. Start with the physics. Hal Clement, we're looking at you.
3. Start with the biology. _The Mote in God's Eye_, _Blood Music_,
"The Moral Virologist", even "Seventy-Two Letters" probably qualifies
here.
4. Start with the social structure. Much of Le Guin would fit here,
Lee and Miller, nearly every utopia/dystopia, even _Dune_ to some
extent.
5. Start with the Mysterious Artifact. _2001_, _The Chronoliths_,
_Ringworld_, _Doorways in the Sand_, _Rogue Moon_...
6. Start with the Moment Everything Changed. _Spin_, _Lucifer's
Hammer_, pretty much all AH.
Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
David Tate
No 33 Secretary
news:1164650785.7...@n67g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
Bujold seems to start with the characters, and what horrible things
will happen to them, and shoehorn everything else in around that.
--
"What is the first law?"
"To Protect."
"And the second?"
"Ourselves."
Terry Austin
Wayne Throop
:: In a recent email interview, Steven Brust gave the following
:: worldbuilding advice: "Start with the food, and work out from there."
:: OK, that's tongue-in-cheek, but it got me to thinking about the
:: various possible 'kernels' for worldbuilding,
:: the kernel for Tolkien, Kagan's _Hellspark_, Delany's _Babel-17_,
:: Watson's _The Embedding_, and a few others.
:: 2. Start with the physics. Hal Clement, we're looking at you.
:: 3. Start with the biology. _The Mote in God's Eye_, _Blood Music_,
:: "The Moral Virologist", even "Seventy-Two Letters" probably qualifies
:: here.
:: 4. Start with the social structure. Much of Le Guin would fit here,
:: Lee and Miller, nearly every utopia/dystopia, even _Dune_ to some
:: extent.
:: 5. Start with the Mysterious Artifact. _2001_, _The Chronoliths_,
:: _Ringworld_, _Doorways in the Sand_, _Rogue Moon_...
:: 6. Start with the Moment Everything Changed. _Spin_, _Lucifer's
:: Hammer_, pretty much all AH.
:: Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
: No 33 Secretary <terry.nota...@gmail.com>
: Bujold seems to start with the characters, and what horrible things
: will happen to them, and shoehorn everything else in around that.
Those are all bottom up. Or inside out. Some seem to be top-down.
Or outside in. Though perhaps top-down doesn't count as a "kernel"?
Maybe they are "scaffolds"?
Anyways, if that isn't a constraint of the examples you want to look at,
then "start with a scenario and fill in detail". Possibly even "start with a
historical scenario and create an analogue". Eg, "The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress", or the Foundation series. Or... well OK, the Honorverse maybe.
I mean, I don't think Heinlein started with throwing rocks, or AI.
Nor Asimov with an encyclopedia. Nor Weber with Warshawski sails.
Those all seem like details added in quite a bit later (even if some
of the ideas were laying around waiting to be incorporated).
And then you have Zelazny: start with immortal superhuman protagonists,
decide on which religion/mythology they are going to mimic, add liberal
doses of angst. Or Vinge: start with the Singularity, edge away from it
as small a distance as you can manage, and weave a story. Ah well.
I suppose those are more strategies than kernels, or scaffolds.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Ken from Chicago
"Wayne Throop" <thr...@sheol.org> wrote in message
news:11646...@sheol.org...
Start with broad history outline / timeline and fill in the details, ala
Star Wars Extended Universe.
> I mean, I don't think Heinlein started with throwing rocks, or AI.
> Nor Asimov with an encyclopedia. Nor Weber with Warshawski sails.
> Those all seem like details added in quite a bit later (even if some
> of the ideas were laying around waiting to be incorporated).
>
> And then you have Zelazny: start with immortal superhuman protagonists,
> decide on which religion/mythology they are going to mimic, add liberal
> doses of angst. Or Vinge: start with the Singularity, edge away from it
> as small a distance as you can manage, and weave a story. Ah well.
> I suppose those are more strategies than kernels, or scaffolds.
>
>
> Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
-- Ken from Chicago
David Tate
>
> Those are all bottom up. Or inside out. Some seem to be top-down.
> Or outside in.
Yeah, one of those. :-)
> Though perhaps top-down doesn't count as a "kernel"?
Right. I wasn't intending an exhaustive taxonomy of how to build a
world; just noting that some works seem to be clear cases of a focused
seed (kernel, crystallization site, whatever) growing a story around
it. Some of those are because the seed is the plot (e.g. _Babel-17_ or
_The Languages of Pao_), and some are more unexpected (e.g. _The Lord
of the Rings_).
> Maybe they are "scaffolds"?
I would consider that a different beast, but that's just me.
> I mean, I don't think Heinlein started with throwing rocks, or AI.
Agreed.
David Tate
Elf M. Sternberg
> Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
Economics. Although with fantasy novels that frequently does
reduce to "start with the food," I've often tossed a book on the
simple grounds that the writer's grasp of economic reality is so
flawed it makes an unreconstructed Marxist look like John Maynard
Keynes.
Elf
Anthony Nance
Is it covered by #5 above if we say "Start with the MacGuffin"?
Say, The Maltese Falcon, for lack of a sf example off the top
of my head (unless Tolkien's One Ring counts as a MacGuffin).
Is it covered by #6 above if we say "Start with <a particular innovation>"?
(Say, Bester's jaunting.)
Tony
Dorothy J Heydt
>
>I mean, I don't think Heinlein started with throwing rocks, or AI.
>Nor Asimov with an encyclopedia.
Asimov, IIRC, started with himself, riding on a bus (subway?) on
his way to a meeting with Campbell, thinking "I've got to have a
new story idea to talk with him about." His eye wandered to the
ads posted above the passengers' heads opposite him, to a picture
of a Roman soldier. From there he went Rome > Gibbon's _Decline
and Fall_ > Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire.
At some point, presumably, the analogy of Fall of Rome > Christian
monks preserving the last remnants of Roman culture > monastic
scholars writing encyclopedia-like compendia of Everything There
Was to Know (which they did, e.g. the _Etymologiae_ of Isidore of
Seville)) led to Fall of the Galactic Empire > somebody preserving
the last remnants of Galactic culture > somebody writing the
Encyclopedia Galactica.
And really, it would be interesting to speculate what would have
happened if Asimov's father had been sufficiently imaginative not
to insist on his son being a doctor, and when that didn't work
out, to settle reluctantly for his being a chemist; allowed to
choose his own subject, Asimov would probably have chosen history.
And, probably, written a couple of hundred fewer books.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Nancy Lebovitz
>worldbuilding advice: "Start with the food, and work out from there."
>
>OK, that's tongue-in-cheek, but it got me to thinking about the various
>possible 'kernels' for worldbuilding, and the different sorts of works
>they generate. Off the top of my head, I came up with the following.
>
>1. Start with the languages/linguistics. That seems to have been the
>kernel for Tolkien, Kagan's _Hellspark_, Delany's _Babel-17_, Watson's
>_The Embedding_, and a few others.
>
>2. Start with the physics. Hal Clement, we're looking at you.
Physics and chemistry.
>
>3. Start with the biology. _The Mote in God's Eye_, _Blood Music_,
>"The Moral Virologist", even "Seventy-Two Letters" probably qualifies
>here.
>
>4. Start with the social structure. Much of Le Guin would fit here,
>Lee and Miller, nearly every utopia/dystopia, even _Dune_ to some
>extent.
>
>5. Start with the Mysterious Artifact. _2001_, _The Chronoliths_,
>_Ringworld_, _Doorways in the Sand_, _Rogue Moon_...
>
>6. Start with the Moment Everything Changed. _Spin_, _Lucifer's
>Hammer_, pretty much all AH.
>
>Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
Start with a vision. That's how C.S. Lewis wrote his fiction: Narnia
started with the lamppost in a snowy field. When he stopped getting
visions, he stopped writing fiction.
IIRC, Heinlein started with hearing his characters' voices, or possibly
found it easy to write once the voices started.
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
http://nancylebov.livejournal.com
My two favorite colors are "Oooooh" and "SHINY!".
Howard Brazee
<e...@drizzle.com> wrote:
>> Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
>
> Economics. Although with fantasy novels that frequently does
>reduce to "start with the food," I've often tossed a book on the
>simple grounds that the writer's grasp of economic reality is so
>flawed it makes an unreconstructed Marxist look like John Maynard
>Keynes.
There are variations to this - for instance military supply lines.
Raghar
ADnD 3.5 edition monster manual. Ecology. These monsters need some
space (and some societies are able to interleave without nailing
severally each other) and food.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
What about "Start with the magic spell"? Is that the same?
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
The second issue of Helix is at http://www.helixsf.com
A new Ethshar novel is being serialized at http://www.ethshar.com/thevondishambassador1.html
David Johnston
>In a recent email interview, Steven Brust gave the following
>worldbuilding advice: "Start with the food, and work out from there."
>
>OK, that's tongue-in-cheek, but it got me to thinking about the various
>possible 'kernels' for worldbuilding, and the different sorts of works
>they generate. Off the top of my head, I came up with the following.
>
>1. Start with the languages/linguistics. That seems to have been the
>kernel for Tolkien, Kagan's _Hellspark_, Delany's _Babel-17_, Watson's
>_The Embedding_, and a few others.
>
>2. Start with the physics. Hal Clement, we're looking at you.
Iceworld started with the chemistry.
David Tate
> >>
> >>Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
> >
> >Is it covered by #5 above if we say "Start with the MacGuffin"?
> >Say, The Maltese Falcon, for lack of a sf example off the top
> >of my head (unless Tolkien's One Ring counts as a MacGuffin).
>
> What about "Start with the magic spell"? Is that the same?
I think those are worth calling out separately, if not separately from
each other. "How would things be different if ___ existed" is a pretty
standard kernel, either in SF (jaunting, functional ESP/TP, cheap
interstellar travel, a watch that stops time) or in fantasy (a
particular kind of spell, obvious active divine intervention, etc.).
I can't think of many examples driven by a specific magic spell as
kernel. Lawrence, your _Touched By the Gods_ would count, I think.
_Hart's Hope_, maybe. Anthony's _A Spell for Chameleon_, Bastard save
us all. "The Bottle Imp", with the spell being the resale restriction?
Hmm.
David Tate
David Johnston
wrote:
>I mean, I don't think Heinlein started with throwing rocks, or AI.
>Nor Asimov with an encyclopedia. Nor Weber with Warshawski sails.
Weber and Asimov both started with models from history. But Heinlein
may very well have started with the idea of a lunar catapult and then
come up with a reason for someone to use it against Earth. I don't
think it's the same thing, though.
Justin Alexander
David Tate wrote:
> 3. Start with the biology. _The Mote in God's Eye_, _Blood Music_,
> "The Moral Virologist", even "Seventy-Two Letters" probably qualifies
> here.
>
> 4. Start with the social structure. Much of Le Guin would fit here,
> Lee and Miller, nearly every utopia/dystopia, even _Dune_ to some
> extent.
Based on what I've read, I'd say that DUNE actually started with the
biology.
> Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
Start with the map. A lot of fantasy worlds start that way, but it's
also a technique I used in designing the Human Concordat:
http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=2040
--
Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net
Wayne Throop
: I wasn't intending an exhaustive taxonomy of how to build a world;
: just noting that some works seem to be clear cases of a focused seed
: (kernel, crystallization site, whatever) growing a story around it.
OK. Would "start with the economics" fit into your "start with
the social structure"? Yeah, since I'm thinking L.Neil Smith
and libertopia, I suppose so. Of course, LNS is also arguably
"moment everything changed" althist, but that part of it seems
secondary.
Possibly you could capture Zelazny's strategy as a kernel in,
"start with the mythological archetypes". Maybe. Possibly.
Does the Niven "puzzle or widget du jour" style in the Known Space
stories count as "start with the physics"? Or maybe since they
most all involve unobtanium it's sort of a hybrid of "physics" and
"mysterious object" (where the object might well be home-grown,
though Ringworld probably qualifies there, and illustrates a
hybrid of M.O. and physics... and unobtanium).
I suppose that leaves "start with the characters",
and/or "start with the tragic event" style Terry Austin mentioned.
One might suppose that's "moment everything changed", but tragedy seems
worth a category of its own, especially since it can crystalize around
an event towards the end of the story, while the examples of spin and
althist it's at the start, or even before the beginning.
Wayne Throop
: I can't think of many examples driven by a specific magic spell as
: kernel. Lawrence, your _Touched By the Gods_ would count, I think.
How about, "With a Single Spell"? Or "The Spell of the Black Dagger".
"Ithanalin's Restoration". Or even "The Misenchanted Sword" or "Night
of Madness". All work out the consequences of a single magic event, and
four of them are specifically spells.
Or... hm... ah. Worldbuilding rather than storybuilding. Hrm.
Well then. Nevermind.
Heh. How about "Lord of the Rings"? Consider it built around
the spell that completed the One Ring. Yeah, OK, not really.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>> >>
>> >>Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
>> >
>> >Is it covered by #5 above if we say "Start with the MacGuffin"?
>> >Say, The Maltese Falcon, for lack of a sf example off the top
>> >of my head (unless Tolkien's One Ring counts as a MacGuffin).
>>
>> What about "Start with the magic spell"? Is that the same?
>
>I think those are worth calling out separately, if not separately from
>each other. "How would things be different if ___ existed" is a pretty
>standard kernel, either in SF (jaunting, functional ESP/TP, cheap
>interstellar travel, a watch that stops time) or in fantasy (a
>particular kind of spell, obvious active divine intervention, etc.).
>
>I can't think of many examples driven by a specific magic spell as
>kernel. Lawrence, your _Touched By the Gods_ would count, I think.
Well, no, actually. It started with a combination of "What if the
chosen hero didn't want to be chosen?" and the idea of the long fight
from the river to the city. The magic came later.
But _The Misenchanted Sword_ started with the spell on the sword.
Wayne Throop
: But _The Misenchanted Sword_ started with the spell on the sword.
To what extent was that part of worldbuilding?
That is, how much of the working-out of Ethshar derives from that?
I have the impression that Ethshar far predates it, and had lots
of "flesh on its bones" before that.
Michael S. Schiffer
>: Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net>
>: But _The Misenchanted Sword_ started with the spell on the sword.
> To what extent was that part of worldbuilding?
> That is, how much of the working-out of Ethshar derives from that?
> I have the impression that Ethshar far predates it, and had lots
> of "flesh on its bones" before that.
Without knowing whether it's true or not, I second that impression.
The part of the story set right after the war ends, in particular,
felt a lot like it was showing the origins for various places and
other elements (the Three Ethshars, the Hundred Foot Field, the Small
Kingdoms, etc.) that already existed in some sense, whether or not
there were any published stories that had featured them.
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<msch...@condor.depaul.edu> wrote:
Well, yeah...
Okay, you've got me. The world was largely built before I came up
with Wirikidor.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
Start with the magic system (Brandon Sanderson)
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - - - email: gae...@aol.com
http://kgbooklog.livejournal.com/
"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
-- James Nicoll
Carl Dershem
news:ngnmm2h9n2tu0kl03...@news.rcn.com:
> On 27 Nov 2006 13:33:13 -0800, "David Tate" <dt...@ida.org> wrote:
>
>>Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >>Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
>>> >
>>> >Is it covered by #5 above if we say "Start with the MacGuffin"?
>>> >Say, The Maltese Falcon, for lack of a sf example off the top
>>> >of my head (unless Tolkien's One Ring counts as a MacGuffin).
>>>
>>> What about "Start with the magic spell"? Is that the same?
>>
>>I think those are worth calling out separately, if not separately from
>>each other. "How would things be different if ___ existed" is a pretty
>>standard kernel, either in SF (jaunting, functional ESP/TP, cheap
>>interstellar travel, a watch that stops time) or in fantasy (a
>>particular kind of spell, obvious active divine intervention, etc.).
>>
>>I can't think of many examples driven by a specific magic spell as
>>kernel. Lawrence, your _Touched By the Gods_ would count, I think.
>
> Well, no, actually. It started with a combination of "What if the
> chosen hero didn't want to be chosen?" and the idea of the long fight
> from the river to the city. The magic came later.
>
> But _The Misenchanted Sword_ started with the spell on the sword.
I've written short stories based on specific spells, or between
combinations of spells. Alas, they've only sold locally, if at all, but
that was where I got the seed for the story.
cd
--
The difference between immorality and immortality is "T". I like Earl
Grey.
Daniel Damouth
> In a recent email interview, Steven Brust gave the following
> worldbuilding advice: "Start with the food, and work out from
> there."
>
> OK, that's tongue-in-cheek,
How so? Here's the worldbuilding checklist I made for myself this
year:
How do they get food and water?
What do they wear, and how do they make their clothes and shoes?
How do they make fire?
What are their superstitions, religious beliefs, myths, legends, and
philosophies?
What is their government/economy? Who decides what the group will
do, and who decides what each person will do? How is the moral code
encouraged/enforced? How does the government punish lawbreakers?
What are their sex/mating/marriage practices? What forces determine
who mates with whom?
What are the major divisions in the society? Race, sex, age,
religion, profession, sexual orientation, hair color, height,
popularity, geographical location, intelligence, influence,
affluence, fighting ability, heredity?
What do they use for shelter? How do they contruct it?
How do they deal with seasonal effects like extreme cold or heat and
fluxuations in the food supply?
-Dan Damouth
David Tate
> "David Tate" <dt...@ida.org> wrote in
> news:1164650785.7...@n67g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
>
> > In a recent email interview, Steven Brust gave the following
> > worldbuilding advice: "Start with the food, and work out from
> > there."
> >
> > OK, that's tongue-in-cheek,
>
> How so?
In that Brust didn't mean "how do they supply themselves with potable
water and consumable calories", but rather "how do they season and
serve their dishes, and what rituals accompany the eating thereof".
Which is a perfectly good place to start, but not adequate to determine
much of how the world will turn out.
As you yourself note when you go on to say:
> Here's the worldbuilding checklist I made for myself this year:
> What do they wear, and how do they make their clothes and shoes?
> How do they make fire?
> What are their superstitions, religious beliefs, myths, legends, and
> philosophies?
> What is their government/economy? Who decides what the group will
> do, and who decides what each person will do? How is the moral code
> encouraged/enforced? How does the government punish lawbreakers?
...etc. At which point the question of whether they braise kethna in a
paste of roasted leeks, or instead crottle their greeps, is reduced to
a footnote. Though, again, there's nothing wrong with *starting*
there.
David Tate
lclough
> In a recent email interview, Steven Brust gave the following
> worldbuilding advice: "Start with the food, and work out from there."
>
> OK, that's tongue-in-cheek, but it got me to thinking about the various
> possible 'kernels' for worldbuilding, and the different sorts of works
> they generate. Off the top of my head, I came up with the following.
>
> 1. Start with the languages/linguistics. That seems to have been the
> kernel for Tolkien, Kagan's _Hellspark_, Delany's _Babel-17_, Watson's
> _The Embedding_, and a few others.
>
>
Don't forget GIDGET, by Frederick Kohner. Later a TV show and
movies. Kohner wrote the novel because his daughter, a surfer
chick, came home and spoke surfer dialect to him. He knew
immediately he could write a novel about it, and he did.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Recent short fiction:
FUTURE WASHINGTON (WSFA Press, October '05)
http://www.futurewashington.com
FIRST HEROES (TOR, May '04)
http://members.aol.com/wenamun/firstheroes.html
John Dierdorf
wrote:
To quote part of aa common poster in scientists' offices:
Chemistry IS Physics.
The entire saying is:
Biology is really Chemistry,
Chemistry is really Physics,
Physics is really Math,
and Math is really Philosophy.
Dan Goodman
> In that Brust didn't mean "how do they supply themselves with potable
> water and consumable calories", but rather "how do they season and
> serve their dishes, and what rituals accompany the eating thereof".
> Which is a perfectly good place to start, but not adequate to
> determine much of how the world will turn out.
Right. All you can determine about their culture from that starting
point is what beliefs they have about food ("meat is the only essential
food; vegetables, which have no protein, don't really contribute
anything nutritional" -- a "scientific" belief at one time in the US),
what religious taboos they have, and what fast-days; and a few other
details like the rest of their religious beliefs and how their
religions are structured... And all you can find out about their
technology is how they use it to prepare food, and what can be deduced
from that (offhand, I'd say that from microwave ovens one could deduce
a fair amount about current American technology).
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Political http://www.dailykos.com/user/dsgood
Derek Lyons
>And really, it would be interesting to speculate what would have
>happened if Asimov's father had been sufficiently imaginative not
>to insist on his son being a doctor, and when that didn't work
>out, to settle reluctantly for his being a chemist; allowed to
>choose his own subject, Asimov would probably have chosen history.
>And, probably, written a couple of hundred fewer books.
He would probably, as a historian, have written just as many books -
but they'd be different ones.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Derek Lyons
>David Tate wrote:
>
>> In that Brust didn't mean "how do they supply themselves with potable
>> water and consumable calories", but rather "how do they season and
>> serve their dishes, and what rituals accompany the eating thereof".
>> Which is a perfectly good place to start, but not adequate to
>> determine much of how the world will turn out.
>
>Right. All you can determine about their culture from that starting
>point is what beliefs they have about food ("meat is the only essential
>food; vegetables, which have no protein, don't really contribute
>anything nutritional" -- a "scientific" belief at one time in the US),
>what religious taboos they have, and what fast-days; and a few other
>details like the rest of their religious beliefs and how their
>religions are structured... And all you can find out about their
>technology is how they use it to prepare food, and what can be deduced
>from that (offhand, I'd say that from microwave ovens one could deduce
>a fair amount about current American technology).
Which is precisely why the study of food is finally (slowly) becoming
a recognized academic discipline - it crosses and connects so many
things.
Nancy Lebovitz
Derek Lyons <fair...@gmail.com> wrote:
>djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>>And really, it would be interesting to speculate what would have
>>happened if Asimov's father had been sufficiently imaginative not
>>to insist on his son being a doctor, and when that didn't work
>>out, to settle reluctantly for his being a chemist; allowed to
>>choose his own subject, Asimov would probably have chosen history.
>>And, probably, written a couple of hundred fewer books.
>
>He would probably, as a historian, have written just as many books -
>but they'd be different ones.
IIRC, one of Asimov's last essays for F&SF mentioned that he would
have liked to have written historical fiction but never found the
time for it.
Howard Brazee
Sure, we need to examine the infrastructure of the world we create. We
don't want to turn off readers who say "that doesn't make sense" when
the economics or physics is wrong.
But the most important thing a story needs as background is to invite
the reader into the room - not so much onto the planet. Invite him
to the table and see real people doing real stuff such as enjoying a
particular dish.
Now the world is real and we are starting off believing the story is
real.
Speaking of food - if I had a restaurant, and could hire the best
dessert chef, the best entree chef, and the best bread chef - my best
value might be in getting the best bread. I want my customers to
come in, smell the fresh bread, and decide right there that this is a
good restaurant. Now I have to mess up to change his mind.
Like bread in a restaurant, these kinds of background details are
cheap. They make the reader comfortable, and prepare them to enjoy
the experience to come. They can set the mood.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>Well, no, actually. It started with a combination of "What if the
>chosen hero didn't want to be chosen?" and the idea of the long fight
>from the river to the city. The magic came later.
>
>But _The Misenchanted Sword_ started with the spell on the sword.
I'm curious - how did _Denner's Wreck_ start?
Petri Kokko
> Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
Start with the economics. Or even if you don't start with
it at least do it _somewhere_ along the path.
Everytime I read about spaceships hauling bulk food for
consumption I have a big urge to use the damn book for
target practice.
I don't care if the world has fantastic elements or
impossible gadgets as long as the author understands the
consequences and works them into the story. Religion and
customs can be weird but the economy in the world has to
be internally consistent and make some sense.
If everyone including the poor farmboy has an antigravity
device then the author must understand that the damn
things are then necessarily dirt cheap and will be used
accordingly by all rationally thinking beings.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Petri...@junkmail.here
Derek Lyons
>David Tate:
>> Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
>
>Start with the economics. Or even if you don't start with
>it at least do it _somewhere_ along the path.
>
>Everytime I read about spaceships hauling bulk food for
>consumption I have a big urge to use the damn book for
>target practice.
Why? We commonly ship bulk food around the globe today.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
From the notion of high-tech visitors being demigods on a low-tech
colony. This owed something to _Lord of Light_, of course.
The Rev. Dr. Lt. Chaos Israel
Howard Brazee wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:54:43 -0800, "Elf M. Sternberg"
> <e...@drizzle.com> wrote:
>
> >> Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
> >
> >reduce to "start with the food," I've often tossed a book on the
> >simple grounds that the writer's grasp of economic reality is so
> >flawed it makes an unreconstructed Marxist look like John Maynard
> >Keynes.
>
> There are variations to this - for instance military supply lines.
"Supply Units? How quaint. We have replicators now."
--
C.
James Nicoll
and effort moving the products around.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Keith Morrison
fingers and typed:
>"Petri Kokko" <petri...@kotiportti.fi> wrote:
>
>>David Tate:
>>> Other kernels? Better examples of these kernels?
>>
>>Start with the economics. Or even if you don't start with
>>it at least do it _somewhere_ along the path.
>>
>>Everytime I read about spaceships hauling bulk food for
>>consumption I have a big urge to use the damn book for
>>target practice.
>
>Why? We commonly ship bulk food around the globe today.
For some cases it makes sense, say to a colony with a few thousand people
just starting off, or to industrial asteroids or orbitals and such that
don't do food production.
But if you're hauling to a planet, the amount of energy required to haul
bulk food around (not to mention the tech to do it) could be more
efficiently adapted to them growing it themselves. Luxury foodstuffs would
likely still be moved around but staples? Not really.
On Earth right now we take advantage of the fact that shipping by water,
the most common way to ship bulk food, is a really cheap way of moving it.
If all the food, including the staples like wheat or rice, had to be flown,
the corresponding rise in prices would likely see some serious investment
in producing it locally.
--
Keith
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>>I'm curious - how did _Denner's Wreck_ start?
>
>From the notion of high-tech visitors being demigods on a low-tech
>colony. This owed something to _Lord of Light_, of course.
But done quite a bid differently - more realistically, if less
poetically. It is an interesting theme which Zelazny kept returning
to, which I would expect to be explored more often.
You also explored immortality from a different angle - especially with
both good guys and bad guys hiding away for a few centuries from the
universe.
Raghar
Raghar wrote:
> David Tate wrote:
> > worldbuilding advice: "Start with the food, and work out from there."
> >
> > OK, that's tongue-in-cheek, but it got me to thinking about the various
> > possible 'kernels' for worldbuilding, and the different sorts of works
> > they generate. Off the top of my head, I came up with the following.
> >
Surprisingly recent ezine about RPG has a small article about world
building.
Basically it's similar to the software engineering. Two main approaches
are top down, and bottom up. (While every EXPERIENCED software engineer
would say these are identical if you have whole project in the mind.
The top down approach would result in more consistent worlds.)
Howard Brazee
<chaos_...@antisocial.com> wrote:
>> There are variations to this - for instance military supply lines.
>
>"Supply Units? How quaint. We have replicators now."
Interesting idea - anybody know of a novel where replicators were part
of the war strategy or tactics?
There are Wil McCarthy's flawed replicators - how about some that
really work?
Howard Brazee
<kei...@idontwantnosteenkingspam.qiniq.com> wrote:
>But if you're hauling to a planet, the amount of energy required to haul
>bulk food around (not to mention the tech to do it) could be more
>efficiently adapted to them growing it themselves. Luxury foodstuffs would
>likely still be moved around but staples? Not really.
Not necessarily. It is hard to predict costs with such an
environment. In our society today, labor has gotten tremendously
more expensive relative to goods. If that trend continues, food
factories and transportation could be much cheaper than producing
locally without those factories.
>On Earth right now we take advantage of the fact that shipping by water,
>the most common way to ship bulk food, is a really cheap way of moving it.
>If all the food, including the staples like wheat or rice, had to be flown,
>the corresponding rise in prices would likely see some serious investment
>in producing it locally.
Some people say European dominance is the result of having so much
coastline - water transport has always been cheapest. But even
though the mid-west of the U.S. was opened by canal building, it is no
longer our dominant form of transportation. Costs and benefits
change - and will continue to do so.
Wayne Throop
: We use wet nanotech right now and yet we spend a lot of time
: and effort moving the products around.
That's an interesting point. But precise, tailored control of said
nanotech is quite poor as yet. Once there are small(ish) self-contained
self-managing robotic hydroponic units, would it change? Think of
crossing a roomba with a victory garden. If everybody could have a
modestly-sized little "pantry tank" to whip up suff on relatively short
notice? A canned robotic gardner to take all the sweat and lack of
economies of scale out of the "victory garden"? I suspect technology
for tank-grown meats would be required, as people would just as soon not
know that actual *animals* were being *bred* und *slaughtered* right in
their own kitchen, but I wonder if gengineered yeast, plankton, or krill
or the such might allow postprocessing for the majority of cases.
After all, the Crabby Patty is made of plankton, and it's the
most delicious food in all of Bikini Bottoms.
( Well, actually, that was just a rumor/hoax Mr Crabs perpetrated to
scare off his competitor at the Chum Bucket. Onaccounta the owner
of the Chum Bucket *is* a plankton, you see. But I digress. )
Petri Kokko
>>But if you're hauling to a planet, the amount of energy required to haul
>>bulk food around (not to mention the tech to do it) could be more
>>efficiently adapted to them growing it themselves. Luxury foodstuffs
>>would
>>likely still be moved around but staples? Not really.
>
> Not necessarily. It is hard to predict costs with such an
> environment. In our society today, labor has gotten tremendously
> more expensive relative to goods. If that trend continues, food
Granted that it's "not necessarily so" but that's really not
the issue I'm having trouble with. Or not exactly.
The problem is that either shipping common bulk food for
consumption (as opposed to say shipping seed grain, initial
colonization needs, or other special circumstances) over
interstellar ranges makes economical sense or it doesn't.
The price difference between the source and target planets
must be at least enough to cover the shipping costs, labor
costs, transport equipment replacement, capital costs, and
offer a reasonable profit margin depending on how risky the
shipping is and how long it takes to fly from here to there.
If the bulk food costs lots at the target planet then it either
isn't "common bulk food" (luxuries are fine) or there are
special circumstances. This means that if it's common bulk
food and there are no special circumstances then it has to be
cheap at the target because it has to compete with the local
production. Even the most hostile planet/spacestation can grow
food in greenhouses. If the shipper wants customers he can't
charge more than the local farmer.
The immediate consequence is that either interstellar space
travel is very cheap and takes very little time, or that your
spaceships are monstrously gigantic.
And that's the problem.
Spaceships that are cheaper and more common than cars and
everyone owning one or several breaks the illusion. Granted, it
indeed _could_ be that space travel is cheap but then it has
to show in the story e.g. everyone and his dog has a ship.
But, to me at least, that just sounds so silly I won't read the
book in the first place. :-)
Same goes for ships bigger than planets so you can ship
the trillions of tons of grain needed to make a profit from the
run. Yeah, it _could_ be so, but it sounds silly.
Introducing a plot point is fine. The author can use his
imagination to come up with all kinds of things and that's
fine. I just require that he works out the consequences and
sticks with them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Petri...@junkmail.here
Michael S. Schiffer
news:ekk95n$mf2$1...@nyytiset.pp.htv.fi:
>...
> If the bulk food costs lots at the target planet then it either
> isn't "common bulk food" (luxuries are fine) or there are
> special circumstances. This means that if it's common bulk
> food and there are no special circumstances then it has to be
> cheap at the target because it has to compete with the local
> production. Even the most hostile planet/spacestation can grow
> food in greenhouses. If the shipper wants customers he can't
> charge more than the local farmer.
> The immediate consequence is that either interstellar space
> travel is very cheap and takes very little time, or that your
> spaceships are monstrously gigantic.
> And that's the problem.
> Spaceships that are cheaper and more common than cars and
> everyone owning one or several breaks the illusion. Granted, it
> indeed _could_ be that space travel is cheap but then it has
> to show in the story e.g. everyone and his dog has a ship.
> But, to me at least, that just sounds so silly I won't read the
> book in the first place. :-)
>...
Surely only shipping via large freighters has to be comparatively
cheap-- with large being compared to historical freighters (or at
most modern containers ships) rather than to planets. We do
intercontinental shipping of bulk goods now, but that doesn't mean
everyone has their own boat or plane capable of flitting over to
China for the weekend. It still requires cheap ftl by any
reasonable standard of cheap, but not *that* cheap, and shipping
times depend on how good your storage technology is. Assume
something that's as big a leap over refrigeration as refrigeration
was over drying or smoking-- say, Niven-style time retardant/stasis
fields (sure, that's based on imaginary science, but so are most
forms of FTL)-- and you've got that much more time to ship your
farm-fresh produce. (Though I still don't entirely believe in
Cherryh's STL freighters-- if the shipment takes too long in human
terms, its net present value is too close to zero to bother with.)
That still requires either figuring out what else your civilization
is doing with that much cheap energy or an explanation as to why
moving the goods doesn't require cheap energy. (Even if your FTL
gadget is free, unless it does surface-to-surface teleportation it
takes a lot of energy to move into orbit, and it's hard to design
something like that that can't be used to turn a crank or heat a
boiler or something.)
Mike
William George Ferguson
>Howard Brazee:
>>>But if you're hauling to a planet, the amount of energy required to haul
>>>bulk food around (not to mention the tech to do it) could be more
>>>efficiently adapted to them growing it themselves. Luxury foodstuffs
>>>would
>>>likely still be moved around but staples? Not really.
Where will they grow it? On a planet with a population of 4.5 trillion,
where more living space is constantly being sought, would you want to use
up valuable living space growing crops that you can buy from the farm
planet over there which has a population of a few million and massive space
available for growing food?
If you are a (relatively) sparsely populated farm planet, making money by
exporting gigatons of food to more densely populated planets, will you want
to take up space, and maybe foul up valuable food growing land with
byproducts of industry, when you can buy the large tech items you need from
that highly industrialized planet over there which wants to buy foodstuffs
from you anyway?
>The immediate consequence is that either interstellar space
>travel is very cheap and takes very little time, or that your
>spaceships are monstrously gigantic.
>
>And that's the problem.
>
>Spaceships that are cheaper and more common than cars and
>everyone owning one or several breaks the illusion. Granted, it
>indeed _could_ be that space travel is cheap but then it has
>to show in the story e.g. everyone and his dog has a ship.
>But, to me at least, that just sounds so silly I won't read the
>book in the first place. :-)
Imagine a world where trains are cheaper and more common than horses, where
everyone can own their own small train and travel wherever they want
without even needing tracks. I would assume from your statement that if
you were living in 1860 you would consider this idea so silly that you
wouldn't bother to read about it.
>Same goes for ships bigger than planets so you can ship
>the trillions of tons of grain needed to make a profit from the
>run. Yeah, it _could_ be so, but it sounds silly.
>
>Introducing a plot point is fine. The author can use his
>imagination to come up with all kinds of things and that's
>fine. I just require that he works out the consequences and
>sticks with them.
Generally when sf stories have freighters carrying bulk shipments of
foodstuffs between planets, the shipments are going from a low population
agrarian planet to a very high population highly industrialized planet.
Even in our lifetime we see this pattern occurring in the US, where 'local'
farms have been subsumed by urbanization and bulk crops come from a
combination of large industrialized farming corporations and from imports
(the fact that the US has a burgeoning beef industry doesn't stop the bulk
importation of beef, the demand is higher than the supply).
There are farms in around Greater Los Angeles. They can't even begin to
produce enough food to support the population of Los Angeles by themselves.
Los Angeles imports bulk foodstuffs from the California Central Valleys,
from out of state, and from out of country. Surely it would be cheaper for
Los Angeles to put the money into growing its own beef, instead of
importing it from Argentina and Australia?
--
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
(Bene Gesserit)
David Tate
>
> Generally when sf stories have freighters carrying bulk shipments of
> foodstuffs between planets, the shipments are going from a low population
> agrarian planet to a very high population highly industrialized planet.
Or, conversely, from an agrarian or mixed-use planet to a specialized
colony (mining outpost, crystal farm, whatever) where growing food
isn't what the locals do, because it's so lucrative to put all of their
labor into mining/whatever that they can afford to import food and
still come out ahead.
Very small populations aren't efficient at agriculture, either.
David Tate
James Nicoll
William George Ferguson <wmgf...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>"Petri Kokko" <petri...@kotiportti.fi> wrote:
>
>>Howard Brazee:
>>>>But if you're hauling to a planet, the amount of energy required to haul
>>>>bulk food around (not to mention the tech to do it) could be more
>>>>efficiently adapted to them growing it themselves. Luxury foodstuffs
>>>>would
>>>>likely still be moved around but staples? Not really.
>
>Where will they grow it? On a planet with a population of 4.5 trillion,
>where more living space is constantly being sought, would you want to use
>up valuable living space growing crops that you can buy from the farm
>planet over there which has a population of a few million and massive space
>available for growing food?
>
lossy way of turning sunlight into chemicals that humans can use as
agriculture, we could feed that many people on 1/400th of the sunlight
that hits the Earth.
Derek Lyons
>The problem is that either shipping common bulk food for
>consumption (as opposed to say shipping seed grain, initial
>colonization needs, or other special circumstances) over
>interstellar ranges makes economical sense or it doesn't.
But you reject it out of hand based, on your own words, a complete
misunderstanding of the economics.
>The immediate consequence is that either interstellar space
>travel is very cheap and takes very little time, or that your
>spaceships are monstrously gigantic.
>
>And that's the problem.
One of your own invention. Shipping bulk goods does mean cheap - but
it _does not_ mean fast. Fast(er) is desirable in a highly
competitive market - but it is by no means a prerequisite.
>Spaceships that are cheaper and more common than cars and
>everyone owning one or several breaks the illusion. Granted, it
>indeed _could_ be that space travel is cheap but then it has
>to show in the story e.g. everyone and his dog has a ship.
>But, to me at least, that just sounds so silly I won't read the
>book in the first place. :-)
Again - a problem of your own invention. Spaceships need not be
cheaper and more common than cars to make space travel cheap. (See
both airline and maritime transport today for concrete examples.)
>Same goes for ships bigger than planets so you can ship
>the trillions of tons of grain needed to make a profit from the
>run. Yeah, it _could_ be so, but it sounds silly.
Another assumption on your part - one unsupported by any facts.
>Introducing a plot point is fine. The author can use his
>imagination to come up with all kinds of things and that's
>fine. I just require that he works out the consequences and
>sticks with them.
When you don't understand the consequences yourself....
Derek Lyons
>For some cases it makes sense, say to a colony with a few thousand people
>just starting off, or to industrial asteroids or orbitals and such that
>don't do food production.
>
>But if you're hauling to a planet, the amount of energy required to haul
>bulk food around (not to mention the tech to do it) could be more
>efficiently adapted to them growing it themselves. Luxury foodstuffs would
>likely still be moved around but staples? Not really.
The hard reality is that you are going to be hauling bulk _something_
to a colony for quite a while. It takes a metric buttload of industry
to support a farm economy at anything over (say) a medieval level of
productivity and multiple metric buttloads to support anything
resembling even early 20th century productivity. Haul food, or haul
metal ingots, bulk chemicals, and machine tools - it's pretty much a
binary choice.
Which has always been one of my pet peeves - most SF _badly_
underestimates the amount of Stuff and People required to support Our
Heroes and their high tech lifestyle out in the Colonies.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> William George Ferguson wrote:
> >
> > Generally when sf stories have freighters carrying bulk shipments of
> > foodstuffs between planets, the shipments are going from a low population
> > agrarian planet to a very high population highly industrialized planet.
>
> Or, conversely, from an agrarian or mixed-use planet to a specialized
> colony (mining outpost, crystal farm, whatever) where growing food
> isn't what the locals do, because it's so lucrative to put all of their
> labor into mining/whatever that they can afford to import food and
> still come out ahead.
I still fail to see how spaceships and a spaceport could use less
space and energy than a hydroponics farm.
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - - - email: gae...@aol.com
http://kgbooklog.livejournal.com/
"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
-- James Nicoll
David Tate
> David Tate wrote:
> >
> > Or, conversely, from an agrarian or mixed-use planet to a specialized
> > colony (mining outpost, crystal farm, whatever) where growing food
> > isn't what the locals do, because it's so lucrative to put all of their
> > labor into mining/whatever that they can afford to import food and
> > still come out ahead.
>
> I still fail to see how spaceships and a spaceport could use less
> space and energy than a hydroponics farm.
That's the wrong question. Do you also fail to see why mining camps in
the California gold rush bought food transported from elsewhere instead
of growing their own?
David Tate
Dorothy J Heydt
And sent their laundry to Honolulu to be washed....
ObSF: The Rolling Stones
"Honolulu? But that's out in the Pacific, out by China
somewhere."
"It was in Hawaii last time I looked."
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
William George Ferguson
<kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>David Tate wrote:
>>
>> William George Ferguson wrote:
>> >
>> > Generally when sf stories have freighters carrying bulk shipments of
>> > foodstuffs between planets, the shipments are going from a low population
>> > agrarian planet to a very high population highly industrialized planet.
>>
>> Or, conversely, from an agrarian or mixed-use planet to a specialized
>> colony (mining outpost, crystal farm, whatever) where growing food
>> isn't what the locals do, because it's so lucrative to put all of their
>> labor into mining/whatever that they can afford to import food and
>> still come out ahead.
>
>I still fail to see how spaceships and a spaceport could use less
>space and energy than a hydroponics farm.
The spaceship isn't using the space that you want to use for that cutting
edge frammistat development center. One of the pieces in equations where
it makes economic sense to import basic foodstuffs is that you have better
economic uses for the places where you would otherwise be growing said
foodstuffs.
Dan Goodman
> "Petri Kokko" <petri...@kotiportti.fi> wrote:
>
> > Howard Brazee:
> > > > But if you're hauling to a planet, the amount of energy
> > > > required to haul bulk food around (not to mention the tech to
> > > > do it) could be more efficiently adapted to them growing it
> > > > themselves. Luxury foodstuffs would
> > > > likely still be moved around but staples? Not really.
>
> Where will they grow it?
Google on "urban agriculture". With hydroponics, indoor fish farms,
etc., quite a bit can be rown.
On a planet with a population of 4.5
> trillion, where more living space is constantly being sought, would
> you want to use up valuable living space growing crops that you can
> buy from the farm planet over there which has a population of a few
> million and massive space available for growing food?
It depends on relative costs. Let's say each tomato costs as much to
import as trans-Pacific roundtrip airfare costs per person now. Unless
you're the owner of an expensive-because-it's-expensive restaurant,
would you pay it? Could you pay it?
> If you are a (relatively) sparsely populated farm planet, making
> money by exporting gigatons of food to more densely populated
> planets, will you want to take up space, and maybe foul up valuable
> food growing land with byproducts of industry, when you can buy the
> large tech items you need from that highly industrialized planet over
> there which wants to buy foodstuffs from you anyway?
Again -- depends on the cost.
Or are you saying that there's _no_ transportation cost high enough to
make importing unprofitable? Or, alternatively, that interstellar
freight cannot possibly cost that much?
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Political http://www.dailykos.com/user/dsgood
Dan Goodman
Because most of the miners were extremely bad at business, is part of
the reason.
Taki Kogoma
<wmgf...@newsguy.com> allegedly declared to rec.arts.sf.written...
[...]
>>>>But if you're hauling to a planet, the amount of energy required to haul
>>>>bulk food around (not to mention the tech to do it) could be more
>>>>efficiently adapted to them growing it themselves. Luxury foodstuffs
>>>>would
>>>>likely still be moved around but staples? Not really.
>
>Where will they grow it? On a planet with a population of 4.5 trillion,
>where more living space is constantly being sought, would you want to use
>up valuable living space growing crops that you can buy from the farm
>planet over there which has a population of a few million and massive space
>available for growing food?
>
>If you are a (relatively) sparsely populated farm planet, making money by
>exporting gigatons of food to more densely populated planets, will you want
>to take up space, and maybe foul up valuable food growing land with
>byproducts of industry, when you can buy the large tech items you need from
>that highly industrialized planet over there which wants to buy foodstuffs
>from you anyway?
I find myself wondering about the net mass transportation imbalance
of heavy agriculture planets exporting gigatons of bulk foodstuffs; it
was a joke in H2G2 about the resort planet ensuring that tourists mass
the same when they leave as when they arrived (thus necessitating
receipts for every toilet visit).
I suppose that the return trips for the bulk freighters will involve
cargos of water, carbon, and fertilizers to keep things relatively
even.
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk (Known to some as Taki Kogoma) quirk @ swcp.com
Just an article detector on the Information Supercollider.
Howard Brazee
<petri...@kotiportti.fi> wrote:
>Spaceships that are cheaper and more common than cars and
>everyone owning one or several breaks the illusion. Granted, it
>indeed _could_ be that space travel is cheap but then it has
>to show in the story e.g. everyone and his dog has a ship.
>But, to me at least, that just sounds so silly I won't read the
>book in the first place. :-)
The economics of freight ships is kind of interesting. It costs a
*lot* to build a freight ship - but hardly anything to use one.
Because of competition, they run at close to cost, making it slow to
pay back their original cost.
But there are all sorts of stuff shipped across the world cheaply.
It's hard to picture how rockets can have the same kind of durability
and low running costs. But if they do, the same kind of economic
results could be seen.
Howard Brazee
>There are farms in around Greater Los Angeles. They can't even begin to
>produce enough food to support the population of Los Angeles by themselves.
>Los Angeles imports bulk foodstuffs from the California Central Valleys,
>from out of state, and from out of country. Surely it would be cheaper for
>Los Angeles to put the money into growing its own beef, instead of
>importing it from Argentina and Australia?
It's amazing what a city, even as crowded as San Francisco or
Manhattan can grow - if that was a priority.
Wayne Throop
: The economics of freight ships is kind of interesting. It costs a
: *lot* to build a freight ship - but hardly anything to use one.
: Because of competition, they run at close to cost, making it slow to
: pay back their original cost.
:
: But there are all sorts of stuff shipped across the world cheaply.
:
: It's hard to picture how rockets can have the same kind of durability
: and low running costs. But if they do, the same kind of economic
: results could be seen.
Hard to scale to interstellar, but for interplanetary, wouldn't
synchronous orbital tethers and catapults and the such make it work?
I'm thinking tMiaHM here. The capital investment was in the catapult;
the grain barges were simple and cheap. Of course, Prof made the point
that earth could have fed itself, and sending grain via lunar catapult
was economic nonsense, but still, you've got the large capital investment
but (relatively) small operating costs, and a long operating lifetime.
It's not a rocket of course. And there was lots of handwaving going on.
But that general idea doesn't seem completely and entirely ruled out, does it?
Hm. What specific works had/have/have-had *staple* foodstuffs shipped
interstellar distances? Asimov's "Foundation", right? Weren't
Trantor's farm planets at interstellar distances, or wasn't that clear?
But modern ones? I dunno...
Wayne Throop
:: to produce enough food to support the population of Los Angeles by
:: themselves. Los Angeles imports bulk foodstuffs from the California
:: Central Valleys, from out of state, and from out of country. Surely
:: it would be cheaper for Los Angeles to put the money into growing its
:: own beef, instead of importing it from Argentina and Australia?
Suppose it took several times the mass of the food in petrofuel (or an
equivalent amount of energy packaged some other way) to get the food to
Los Angeles from the Central Valley? Say, each of the trucks had to
start off pulling a large trailer of fuel, and had a much smaller cargo
compartment (or even if the fuel was compact, it cost as much as a large
trailer full of fuel)? Do you think maybe folks in Los Angeles might
start growing things closer?
Dan Goodman
> Hm. What specific works had/have/have-had staple foodstuffs shipped
> interstellar distances? Asimov's "Foundation", right? Weren't
> Trantor's farm planets at interstellar distances, or wasn't that
> clear? But modern ones? I dunno...
H. Beam Piper, "Ministry of Disturbance."
Joseph Nebus
>Hm. What specific works had/have/have-had *staple* foodstuffs shipped
>interstellar distances? Asimov's "Foundation", right? Weren't
>Trantor's farm planets at interstellar distances, or wasn't that clear?
>But modern ones? I dunno...
Twenty worlds, it's said, were bringing Trantor food at its
height, and that would be hard to fit in as anything but interstellar.
(And those worlds -- one of them renamed ``Neotrantor'' -- are sort of
a silly shadow of the Galactic Empire surviving the sack of the planet
itself.)
On the other hand, hyperspace travel was at that time tens of
thousands of years old; I'd be surprised if it were extremely expensive
after that many generations of people with good motive to reduce the
cost had at it.
However, the claim about Trantor needing twenty worlds for its
food was made in the sort of vein of ``every day New York City consumes
enough eggs to tile the streets of Des Moines'' that may well have been
partly hype or legend. The only time we see Trantor's statistical
mightiness from a guy who's lived there for decades is in ``Prelude to
Foundation,'' where Chetter Hummin claims that it's mostly luxury foods
brought in, and that if you want to make the story really good you say
the ships bringing food in to Trantor return to the agricultural worlds
filled with Trantor's wastes, to be used as fertilizer.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Derek Lyons
Frankly, who cares? I'm getting quite annoyed at the folks who reject
food shipments out of hand or create extreme scenario's where it is
unlikely.
Derek Lyons
>On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:39:01 +0200, "Petri Kokko"
><petri...@kotiportti.fi> wrote:
>
>>Spaceships that are cheaper and more common than cars and
>>everyone owning one or several breaks the illusion. Granted, it
>>indeed _could_ be that space travel is cheap but then it has
>>to show in the story e.g. everyone and his dog has a ship.
>>But, to me at least, that just sounds so silly I won't read the
>>book in the first place. :-)
>
>The economics of freight ships is kind of interesting. It costs a
>*lot* to build a freight ship - but hardly anything to use one.
Making it even more interesting is the great length of time the costs
can be amortized over.
>It's hard to picture how rockets can have the same kind of durability
>and low running costs.
When rockets have even .00000000001% of the design generations and
running experience behind them that freighters do - that will be a
sensible statement. Right now, when the ratio is more like
1xgoogol^googol:1, it's utter nonsense.
Wayne Throop
: Frankly, who cares?
Apparently, you do.
: I'm getting quite annoyed at the folks who reject food shipments out
: of hand or create extreme scenario's where it is unlikely.
See? You seem quite upset. But remain calm; I don't reject it out of
hand, and I haven't seen anybody else do so either. And who needs to
"create" a scenario where it's unlikely? The upthread topic is
shipments of staple foods between planets, and it *actually* *is*
extremely energy-intensive to do it. It's cheaper, energywise, to build
hydroponics[1] and pay for artificial light then an to ship offworld.
So if you have enough energy to loft the food off one planet and
land it on another, you have enough energy to build and operate
hydroponics[1]. Even if energy is very cheap, you'll still spend less
energy, and hence less money, to build hydroponics[1] locally, unless
conditions are very exotic indeed.
So what's the point? The point is, observing that we ship between
contenients all the time doesn't demonstrate the plausiblity of
shipping between planets, because the energy requirements of shipment
exceed even the most inconvenient local agriculture. Enough that it
will cost significantly more money. And things that cost significantly
more money don't tend to become staples.
If you have an exotic method where interplanetary travel is energy-cheap
for some reason, like maybe orbital towers with counterweights, and
elaborate tether and/or catapult systems[2] and the such, then fine.
In short, space travel isn't analogous to ocean travel, because
space is proportionately much, much larger[3], and because gravity sucks.
[1] and, of course, housing for rabbits, chickens, goats,
and quite possibly even cattle.
[2] the example already mentioned elsethread being the lunar
catapult in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", which
people pick nits with, but doesn't seem to get rejected
"out of hand"
[3] insert HHGttG routine here, and add "it takes so much energy,
I mean you might think it takes energy to run your microwave,
but that's not a thimble of water to the ocean of energy it
takes to get around between planets.
Wayne Throop
:: and low running costs.
: fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons)
: When rockets have even .00000000001% of the design generations and
: running experience behind them that freighters do - that will be a
: sensible statement.
The minimum amount of energy it takes to loft a payload to space
is fixed, and doesn't change no matter how many design generations
have occured. Your operating costs can't get lower than that.
Local hydroponics will always underbid it in terms of operating costs.
David Given
[...]
> Interesting idea - anybody know of a novel where replicators were part
> of the war strategy or tactics?
Well, not quite on those lines, but one of the recurring themes of Iain Banks'
Culture is that of decentralisation and distribution --- any ship embodies the
Culture and has the ability to rebuild it from scratch. Even individual drones
can bootstrap themselves up into a starship, given enough time and effort
(although drones don't carry around the vast datastores that Minds do).
--
╭─┈David Given┈──McQ─╮ "People who think they know everything really
│┈ d...@cowlark.com┈┈┈┈│ annoy those of us who know we don't." --- Bjarne
│┈(d...@tao-group.com)┈│ Stroustrup
╰─┈www.cowlark.com┈──╯
David Given
[...]
> I find myself wondering about the net mass transportation imbalance
> of heavy agriculture planets exporting gigatons of bulk foodstuffs; it
> was a joke in H2G2 about the resort planet ensuring that tourists mass
> the same when they leave as when they arrived (thus necessitating
> receipts for every toilet visit).
Hence the reason why Pernese dragons are so environmentally unfriendly --- all
that biomass leaving the ecosystem whenever one dies. They crap _between_,
too, which just makes it worse.
Down with dragons! Bring back Thread!
netcat
says...
> Taki Kogoma wrote:
> [...]
> > I find myself wondering about the net mass transportation imbalance
> > of heavy agriculture planets exporting gigatons of bulk foodstuffs; it
> > was a joke in H2G2 about the resort planet ensuring that tourists mass
> > the same when they leave as when they arrived (thus necessitating
> > receipts for every toilet visit).
>
> Hence the reason why Pernese dragons are so environmentally unfriendly --- all
> that biomass leaving the ecosystem whenever one dies. They crap _between_,
> too, which just makes it worse.
So between's full of frozen dragon crap?
rgds,
netcat
Dan Tappan
You are making the, possibly unwarranted, assumption that things can
_stay_ _between_. It's just as likely that the mechanism is that
something lost _between_ comes out somewhere expected, or maybe comes
out dispersed. Which leads to visions of somewhere there being rains of
dragon bodies and crap; though not necessarily on Pern itself. Or maybe
it's time displaced and someone in the future of Pern is in for a surprise.
James Nicoll
>:: It's hard to picture how rockets can have the same kind of durability
>:: and low running costs.
>
>: fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons)
>: When rockets have even .00000000001% of the design generations and
>: running experience behind them that freighters do - that will be a
>: sensible statement.
>
>The minimum amount of energy it takes to loft a payload to space
>is fixed, and doesn't change no matter how many design generations
>have occured.
Well, with orbital towers and counterweight cargoes, you can
get hoisting stuff up pretty close to zero (as long as you ship the
same amount of mass down).
Punting stuff around the solar system can be done for
surprisingly little energy, although possibly not within the
planning horizon of a company.
Taki Kogoma
<d...@REMOVEthisPHRASEbluetoad.org> allegedly declared to rec.arts.sf.written...
>netcat wrote:
>> In article <aEAbh.162$d14...@newsfe4-win.ntli.net>, d...@cowlark.com
>> says...
>>>Taki Kogoma wrote:
>>>[...]
>>>>I find myself wondering about the net mass transportation imbalance
>>>>of heavy agriculture planets exporting gigatons of bulk foodstuffs; it
>>>>was a joke in H2G2 about the resort planet ensuring that tourists mass
>>>>the same when they leave as when they arrived (thus necessitating
>>>>receipts for every toilet visit).
>>>
>>>that biomass leaving the ecosystem whenever one dies. They crap _between_,
>>>too, which just makes it worse.
>>
>> So between's full of frozen dragon crap?
>
>You are making the, possibly unwarranted, assumption that things can
>_stay_ _between_. It's just as likely that the mechanism is that
>something lost _between_ comes out somewhere expected, or maybe comes
>out dispersed. Which leads to visions of somewhere there being rains of
>dragon bodies and crap; though not necessarily on Pern itself. Or maybe
>it's time displaced and someone in the future of Pern is in for a surprise.
My personal pet theory on this is that material deposited *between*
eventually emerges out in Rukbat's Oort cloud.
Gym "I have not decided whether or not aforeentioned biomass is part of
the extended Thread ecosystem..." Quirk
Wayne Throop
:::: durability and low running costs.
::: When rockets have even .00000000001% of the design generations and
::: running experience behind them that freighters do - that will be a
::: sensible statement.
:: The minimum amount of energy it takes to loft a payload to space is
:: fixed, and doesn't change no matter how many design generations have
:: occured.
: jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
: Well, with orbital towers and counterweight cargoes, you can get
: hoisting stuff up pretty close to zero (as long as you ship the same
: amount of mass down).
Right. A point I noted elsethread. This subthread specifically
mentions "rockets". How rockets can take advantage of counterweights
and other such strategies is somewhat unclear.
And of course, counterweights don't mean you don't pay the energy;
they just mean you're getting the potential energy into your cargo
by siphoning it out of the counterweight.
Though I suppose.... hm, if you are on the *receiving* end of items
shipped down orbital towers, and only the *sender* bothers with
counterweights, your operation will show an energy surplus on the
receiving end. So you not only get food, but you can sell
electricity back onto the grid (or somesuch).
So... How long before food for a trillion people doubles the mass
of the earth? Which is actually a good thing, since that means you get
even *more* energy out of incoming shipments. Everybody wins!
James Nicoll
>:::: It's hard to picture how rockets can have the same kind of
>:::: durability and low running costs.
>
>::: When rockets have even .00000000001% of the design generations and
>::: running experience behind them that freighters do - that will be a
>::: sensible statement.
>
>:: The minimum amount of energy it takes to loft a payload to space is
>:: fixed, and doesn't change no matter how many design generations have
>:: occured.
>
>: jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
>: Well, with orbital towers and counterweight cargoes, you can get
>: hoisting stuff up pretty close to zero (as long as you ship the same
>: amount of mass down).
>
>Right. A point I noted elsethread. This subthread specifically
>mentions "rockets". How rockets can take advantage of counterweights
>and other such strategies is somewhat unclear.
Sorry about that.
>And of course, counterweights don't mean you don't pay the energy;
>they just mean you're getting the potential energy into your cargo
>by siphoning it out of the counterweight.
>
>Though I suppose.... hm, if you are on the *receiving* end of items
>shipped down orbital towers, and only the *sender* bothers with
>counterweights, your operation will show an energy surplus on the
>receiving end. So you not only get food, but you can sell
>electricity back onto the grid (or somesuch).
>
>So... How long before food for a trillion people doubles the mass
>of the earth? Which is actually a good thing, since that means you get
>even *more* energy out of incoming shipments. Everybody wins!
Call it 3 kg per person per day of food and it works out to
a bit over five billion years.
Derek Lyons
>: fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons)
>: Frankly, who cares?
>
>Apparently, you do.
>
>: I'm getting quite annoyed at the folks who reject food shipments out
>: of hand or create extreme scenario's where it is unlikely.
>
>See? You seem quite upset. But remain calm; I don't reject it out of
>hand, and I haven't seen anybody else do so either.
The frankly - you haven't been reading the thread. Or even your own
posts - including the one I replied to that posited a scenario so far
out as to constitute rejection out of hand.
>And who needs to "create" a scenario where it's unlikely? The upthread
>topic is shipments of staple foods between planets, and it *actually* *is*
>extremely energy-intensive to do it. It's cheaper, energywise, to build
>hydroponics[1] and pay for artificial light then an to ship offworld.
An utterly unsupported assumption. Worse yet, and *ignorant* one
because it makes the mistaken assumption that 'energy' is the always
the dominant consideration.
<snip handwaving castles built on further handwaving assumptions of
the same nature.>
Derek Lyons
>:: It's hard to picture how rockets can have the same kind of durability
>:: and low running costs.
>
>: fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons)
>: When rockets have even .00000000001% of the design generations and
>: running experience behind them that freighters do - that will be a
>: sensible statement.
>
>The minimum amount of energy it takes to loft a payload to space
>is fixed, and doesn't change no matter how many design generations
>have occured. Your operating costs can't get lower than that.
Given the the cost of the 'energy' involved is essentially nil *even
now*... (You could quadruple the costs of the fuel for the Shuttle -
and they'd *still* be lost in the noise.)
It's obvious that operating costs *can* get cheaper - because the bulk
of the operating costs (currently) are in labor, both during
manufacturing and during operations. (To date, nobody has made any
serious effort to make a rocket cheap or durable.)
>Local hydroponics will always underbid it in terms of operating costs.
Sure - when you cast your argument in terms of some fairy castle term
like 'energy' and ignore all other concerns. However, as discussed
upthread, when you translate the question into real world terms and
examine real world motivations and economics - it's not quite so clear
as your out of hand rejection.
Wayne Throop
:: Though I suppose.... hm, if you are on the *receiving* end of items
:: shipped down orbital towers, and only the *sender* bothers with
:: counterweights, your operation will show an energy surplus on the
:: receiving end. So you not only get food, but you can sell
:: electricity back onto the grid (or somesuch).
::
:: So... How long before food for a trillion people doubles the mass of
:: the earth? Which is actually a good thing, since that means you get
:: even *more* energy out of incoming shipments. Everybody wins!
: jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
: Call it 3 kg per person per day of food and it works out to
: a bit over five billion years.
People do not realize how precarious our gravitation is. I knew water
ran downhill, but didn't dream how terribly soon it will reach bottom.
I take it back, not everybody wins! We can't afford to to it; it's
gravitational pollution I tells ya. We'd be leaving it for the
hundred-millionth generation of our descendants to deal with, and they
will curse our names. Well. If they remember us, maybe they would.
Walter Bushell
wrote:
It's not that large, if you use a beanstalk, which would be close to the
ideal case. In fact above geostationary height you can get extra energy
from the Earth's rotation.
--
Divided we stand!
Walter Bushell
nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:
> Twenty worlds, it's said, were bringing Trantor food at its
> height, and that would be hard to fit in as anything but interstellar.
> (And those worlds -- one of them renamed ``Neotrantor'' -- are sort of
> a silly shadow of the Galactic Empire surviving the sack of the planet
> itself.)
And Trantor sends a grain shipment out to the Foundation, that is from
the center of the Galaxy to the edge. Getting out of the black hole I
would think would be enough of a problem, although if you have FTL a not
insurmoutable one.
--
Divided we stand!
James Nicoll
Derek Lyons <fair...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Given the the cost of the 'energy' involved is essentially nil *even
>now*... (You could quadruple the costs of the fuel for the Shuttle -
>and they'd *still* be lost in the noise.)
>
As I recall (and google seems to verify), if you use kerosene
and O2, the cost to put one kg in LEO is about $3.00. As long as you
are patient, it shouldn't cost too much more for the fuel to put a
payload anywhere in the Solar System (what you need to charge will be
be higher, of course).
Wayne Throop
: fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons)
: The frankly - you haven't been reading the thread.
Or possibly I don't mean the same thing you do by "out of hand".
Or possibly I just disagree with your interpretation of what was said.
:: It's cheaper, energywise, to build hydroponics[1] and pay for
:: artificial light then an to ship offworld.
: An utterly unsupported assumption.
Really? I compare perfectly efficient food production (ie, you need as
much energy as there is calories in the food) with perfectly efficient
lofting to escape velocity and get the former is less than the latter.
Doubly so if you count the energy put into the food at its source, but
even if we neglect that for some reason. Perhaps I miscalculated.
Perhaps you can show how to do the calculation correctly. If you want
to discount extreme gengineering or whatever is needed to approach
perfection in food production, then you really ought to also discount
extreme megaengineering to get to orbit for the cost of energy alone.
Obviously, you can get a scenario where one is far more efficient than
the other as suggested above. Or where the one form of energy is far
cheaper than the other, in monetary terms. Say, you get the potential
energy by the discovery of cavorite, or something else not easily
converted to electricity without substantial infrastructure investments.
But it's not the way to bet, and it's not the way to get a plausible
finger-to-the-wind dead-reckoning first cut at a fictional setting.
Of course, you can have your society nevertheless do bulk food
shipments. Heinlein did, and nobody faults him for it. Or, not much,
and not usually on this issue. It's more the "staple food shipments in
little tramp interstellar ships" that folks have complained about, naict.
Wayne Throop
: Sure - when you cast your argument in terms of some fairy castle term
: like 'energy' and ignore all other concerns.
You mean, as opposed to casting the argument in terms of some fairy
castle world resulting from some large but unspecified number
of generations of rocket designers?
Wayne Throop
: As I recall (and google seems to verify), if you use kerosene
: and O2, the cost to put one kg in LEO is about $3.00. As long as you
: are patient, it shouldn't cost too much more for the fuel to put a
: payload anywhere in the Solar System (what you need to charge will be
: be higher, of course).
Hm. What method is that? And what cost in kerosene and O2 to operate
hydroponics long enough to produce a kg of food? (and should the cost
of the O2 be left out, or not?) (And I realize I'm overlooking a
bazillion other issues...).
Anyways, assume shipping tech offplanet and grow tech on planet evolve
naturally from current conditions. Does it really seem likely shipping
from offplanet would ever outcompete production of staple foodstuffs on
the planet where they are consumed? Sure, one can imagine situations
where shipping gets way cheaper way faster, but are very many of those
reachable incrementally from anything vaguely like here/now?
I think we should contact Mythbusters...
Dan Tappan
>
>
> You are making the, possibly unwarranted, assumption that things can
> _stay_ _between_. It's just as likely that the mechanism is that
> something lost _between_ comes out somewhere expected, or maybe comes
... somewhere _un_expected ...
James Nicoll
>: As I recall (and google seems to verify), if you use kerosene
>: and O2, the cost to put one kg in LEO is about $3.00. As long as you
>: are patient, it shouldn't cost too much more for the fuel to put a
>: payload anywhere in the Solar System (what you need to charge will be
>: be higher, of course).
>
>Hm. What method is that?
That's the cost of the fuel at current prices. The other umpty
thousand dollars per kilogram comes from the fact that current practice
uses a support team of about one highly educated engineer per two
kilograms of space craft.
> And what cost in kerosene and O2 to operate
>hydroponics long enough to produce a kg of food? (and should the cost
>of the O2 be left out, or not?) (And I realize I'm overlooking a
>bazillion other issues...).
Liquid O2, if you're making it on Earth, is pretty much free,
Pennies per kilogram, as I recall. NASA pays a bit extra for theirs
because they don't use enough to make it worth producing onsite but
on the grand scale of things, it's free.
_Hydrogen_, now, it's expensive and a pain in the ass to work
with. How I hate hydrogen and its tarty "but my ISP is so high" ways.
(Xenon, which John Schilling's devices use, is much much worse
but I don't cost-containment is goal one for those guys)
>Anyways, assume shipping tech offplanet and grow tech on planet evolve
>naturally from current conditions. Does it really seem likely shipping
>from offplanet would ever outcompete production of staple foodstuffs on
>the planet where they are consumed? Sure, one can imagine situations
>where shipping gets way cheaper way faster, but are very many of those
>reachable incrementally from anything vaguely like here/now?
>
Ask me in about five centuries: the big raodblock now is that
while the physics doesn't seem to rule out cheap rockets, nobody is really
working on them.
David Tate
> : fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons)
> : Sure - when you cast your argument in terms of some fairy castle term
> : like 'energy' and ignore all other concerns.
>
> You mean, as opposed to casting the argument in terms of some fairy
> castle world resulting from some large but unspecified number
> of generations of rocket designers?
I suspect he means as opposed to looking at what really drives local
economies, before declaring a broad class of hypothetical ones to be
preposterous on "energy efficiency" grounds. Which, even if it wasn't
*your* claim, is what kicked off this subthread.
There are countless examples from history in which a less
energy-efficient approach to food provision was not only used, but
widely used and stable over long periods of time. That's because
nobody (not even Adam Smith's ghostly hand) is globally optimizing
these systems -- it's ordinary schmoes (and Megaschmoe Industries,
Inc.) making the locally-optimal decisions to maximize their own
utility, given their own limited resources, skills, and objectives.
And sometimes that includes objectively dumb reasons like "Dammit Jim,
I'm a ___, not a @#$%ing farmer." Or not so dumb reasons like "I'd
love to grow my own food, but I have to buy it from the Company Store
or they'll void my contract and dump me on Epsilon Hellhole 7". Or "we
get our food from TransGalactic; we'd prefer to grow our own, but it's
a package deal and we can't get by without the pharmaceuticals and
embryos, and they're the best deal we could find". Etc.
David Tate
David Johnston
It is of course problematic to ship bulk cargo over interstellar
distances if you actually have to invest the energy required to move
all that stuff all that distance in a short enough that you will see
any return on your investment in the next few generations. But then,
any form of interstellar commerce, or indeed colonisation for any
reason short of "This solar system is no longer livable" becomes
problematic if you have no way to cheat reality and take a low
energy/short time shortcut between stars. That's why most
interstellar science fiction wisely provides just such a technology.
Raghar
>
> It's not that large, if you use a beanstalk, which would be close to the
> ideal case. In fact above geostationary height you can get extra energy
> from the Earth's rotation.
Don't forget to add cost of repairs and support personnel. And don't
forget you'd need to pay for that extra energy in tensile strength.
Wayne Throop
:: I suspect he means as opposed to looking at what really drives local
:: economies, before declaring a broad class of hypothetical ones to be
:: preposterous on "energy efficiency" grounds. Which, even if it
:: wasn't *your* claim, is what kicked off this subthread.
Well OK, yes, there are a few huge assumptions that go into making it a
rigorous general rule. And it's not as if I'm blind to the fact that
there's energy, and then there's energy; after all, I was arguing
elsewhere that nuclear pulse propulsion, despite being wildly
inefficient, needn't be immediately dismissable on those grounds alone.
But within some broad constraints, things like energy and infrastructure
expenditures are vaguely comparable, and energy and infrastructure for
spaceborne cargo tends (I emphasize, TENDS) to to be more expensive than
energy and infrastructure for local agriculture.
It doesn't "prove, with geometric logic" as Queeg might say, that
Space Food Is Always Implausible. But it seems to me a reasonable
case for its implausibility, especially in some contexts it occurs in.
Like, shipping beef in Firefly, maybe.
: David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
: It is of course problematic to ship bulk cargo over interstellar
: distances if you actually have to invest the energy required to move
: all that stuff all that distance in a short enough that you will see
: any return on your investment in the next few generations. But then,
: any form of interstellar commerce, or indeed colonisation for any
: reason short of "This solar system is no longer livable" becomes
: problematic if you have no way to cheat reality and take a low
: energy/short time shortcut between stars. That's why most
: interstellar science fiction wisely provides just such a technology.
Very true. Yet there's no WAY starships a-la Cherryh, Moon, and even Weber,
make sense in terms of technological extrapolation, or physics, or in
terms of energy budget. But then... I hope nobody is arguing they are
plausible, either.
Wayne Throop
:: the cost to put one kg in LEO is about $3.00.
:: Hm. What method is that?
: jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
: That's the cost of the fuel at current prices.
I meant, "is that for a kerosene/LOX rocket of current designs",
since I wasn't sure about that.
:: Sure, one can imagine situations where shipping gets way cheaper way
:: faster, but are very many of those reachable incrementally from
:: anything vaguely like here/now?
: Ask me in about five centuries: the big raodblock now is that while
: the physics doesn't seem to rule out cheap rockets, nobody is really
: working on them.
OK, I've entered it in my PDA.
David Johnston
wrote:
>: David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
>: It is of course problematic to ship bulk cargo over interstellar
>: distances if you actually have to invest the energy required to move
>: all that stuff all that distance in a short enough that you will see
>: any return on your investment in the next few generations. But then,
>: any form of interstellar commerce, or indeed colonisation for any
>: reason short of "This solar system is no longer livable" becomes
>: problematic if you have no way to cheat reality and take a low
>: energy/short time shortcut between stars. That's why most
>: interstellar science fiction wisely provides just such a technology.
>
>Very true. Yet there's no WAY starships a-la Cherryh, Moon, and even Weber,
>make sense in terms of technological extrapolation, or physics, or in
>terms of energy budget. But then... I hope nobody is arguing they are
>plausible, either.
Ah but plausibility shifts based on your initial postulates. Really,
interstellar travel on a shorter timescale than millenia isn't
plausible based on anything we know. But once you allow the one
impossible thing, there's nothing implausible about shipping bulk food
over interstellar distances. If you don't, then the the question
doesn't arise because nobody will ever make it from one star to
another.
I've suggested before that one of the reasons why science fiction is
in a decline is that we grow too aware of the impossibilities and
impracticalities. As the cool stuff like interstellar exploration,
contact with aliens, and space warfare become discredited, fewer
authors write about it and we're left with increasing tedious options
like crawling into a hallucinogenic hole of virtual reality or
self-mutilation in the name of specious self-improvement.
John Schilling
>:: It's hard to picture how rockets can have the same kind of durability
>:: and low running costs.
>
>: fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons)
>: When rockets have even .00000000001% of the design generations and
>: running experience behind them that freighters do - that will be a
>: sensible statement.
>
>The minimum amount of energy it takes to loft a payload to space
>is fixed, and doesn't change no matter how many design generations
>have occured.
The minimum ammount of energy it takes to loft a kilogram of payload
to space, is less than ten kilowatt-hours. That's LEO space, so call
it twenty kilowatt-hours to Heinleinian "anywhere".
>Your operating costs can't get lower than that.
The cost of twenty kilowatt-hours of energy, in the form of electric
power at present wholesale prices, is less than one dollar.
>Local hydroponics will always underbid it in terms of operating costs.
Where can I buy hydroponically-grown food for less than a dollar per
kilogram?
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
John Schilling
>:: There are farms in around Greater Los Angeles. They can't even begin
>:: to produce enough food to support the population of Los Angeles by
>:: themselves. Los Angeles imports bulk foodstuffs from the California
>:: Central Valleys, from out of state, and from out of country. Surely
>:: it would be cheaper for Los Angeles to put the money into growing its
>:: own beef, instead of importing it from Argentina and Australia?
>Suppose it took several times the mass of the food in petrofuel (or an
>equivalent amount of energy packaged some other way) to get the food to
>Los Angeles from the Central Valley? Say, each of the trucks had to
>start off pulling a large trailer of fuel, and had a much smaller cargo
>compartment (or even if the fuel was compact, it cost as much as a large
>trailer full of fuel)? Do you think maybe folks in Los Angeles might
>start growing things closer?
Or, perhaps, find some third place where a suitable fuel more or less
flows out of any hole you poke in the ground and is thus even cheaper
than grain, and arrange a triangle trade? Porn from Los Angeles to
Arabia, oil from Arabia to Argentina, and beef from Argentina to Los
Angeles, for example?
And, actually, Los Angeles *is* one of those places where a suitable
fuel more or less flows out of any hole you poke in the ground. But
thousands of viable oil wells are capped off and buried, and tens of
thousands never drilled in the first place, because the land is more
valuable when applied to other uses.
Greater Los Angeles could in fact be self-sufficient in food and fuel,
at present levels of consumption. It choses not to be, because, well,
comparative advantage rocks and autarky sucks.
Heck, Greater Los Angeles even imports *water*, and that ought to freak
people out way more than some SFnal Trantoroid planet importing food.
Wayne Throop
: Ah but plausibility shifts based on your initial postulates. Really,
: interstellar travel on a shorter timescale than millenia isn't
: plausible based on anything we know. But once you allow the one
: impossible thing, there's nothing implausible about shipping bulk food
: over interstellar distances.
Nay, I don't belive in "once you've added any assumption,
any other one goes".
Wayne Throop
: Where can I buy hydroponically-grown food for less than a dollar per
: kilogram?
Maybe the same place you can buy a launch for the cost of the
potential energy?
David Given
[...]
> My personal pet theory on this is that material deposited *between*
> eventually emerges out in Rukbat's Oort cloud.
Hey --- maybe the Red Star and Thread is simply some vastly overengineered
sewage treatment plant...
--
╭─┈David Given┈──McQ─╮ "People who think they know everything really
│┈ d...@cowlark.com┈┈┈┈│ annoy those of us who know we don't." --- Bjarne
│┈(d...@tao-group.com)┈│ Stroustrup
╰─┈www.cowlark.com┈──╯
Monte Davis
>>: As I recall (and google seems to verify), if you use kerosene
>>: and O2, the cost to put one kg in LEO is about $3.00...
>That's the cost of the fuel at current prices. The other umpty
>thousand dollars per kilogram comes from the fact that current practice
>uses a support team of about one highly educated engineer per two
>kilograms of space craft.
You're conceding more than you need to here. The evergreen "you can
fly a kg 12,000 km using the same amount of energy it would take to
put it in LEO" chemical is true but almost irrelevant to the cost of
the latter.
1) Energy is not the same as power: expending that energy in ~10
minutes of high acceleration with precise control is radically
different from expending it in a few minutes of low acceleration and
12 hours of cruise. (There's ample *energy* in a D-cell battery to do
tevatron-level interactions -- all that other $tuff in a tevatron is
about *applying* it.)
2) Carrying your oxidizer along is radically different from obtaining
it from ambient air -- and so far, nobody knows how to magic away drag
and heating enough to do a lot more of the acceleration in atmosphere
3) The "standing army" problem you cite above is an epiphenomenon of
pitifully few design iterations and pitifully low flight rates --
a.k.a. "experience" in the broad sense. At a few hundred tons per
year to orbit, there's negligible learning curve and economies of
scale for expendables, and negligible incentive to get over the R&D
"hump" for cost-effective reusables. Absent lots of design experience,
you get the engineer-intensive "current practice" in design and
testing; absent lots of flight experience, you get it in operations.
Monte Davis
http://montedavis.livejournal.com