I really appreciate the look at what people might be doing on an asteroid station/colony/ship. It's not 4 or 5 engineers being serious on a NASA mission, it's millions living in an area for generations. They'll have traditions, jokes, games, (hopefully small) conflicts. They'll form a new civilization. Maybe one as different from ours as ours is from human civilization a couple hundred years ago
There will be no conflicts, think of the security checks and IQ tests needed to get aboard a vessel that is not in the safety of our atmosphere. No one is getting on to be a labrourer. And there will be no addicts or anger management problems. You are right, it will be a different society, and there should be no need to even have a pistol on board. As long as ego's are kept in place it could be a successful one. But we will never know. It's a one way trip. And that is another point, is Earth really willing to spent trillions to send a rock with a few people on a one way trip to alpha centauri. I posted this idea yesterday on a "Should we" do something way beyond our capabilities video so I had a night to think about it, the only way I can see everyone getting on board with that kind of project and sustaining enthusiasm for a decade or more is to put the Asteroid in orbit around the Moon so everyone can see it every night as the work is done. But even those things are impossible right now. But a asteroid is the cheapest way I think, and safest. 🍁 (I'm also thinking double leg amputees' a primary candidates for Missions inside the solar system, lets see if they make a video about that in 24 hours). Basically they don't need as much of anything, room, food, oxygen, water...
@@streamofconsciousness5826 as long as there are two people, there will be conflict. Not necessarily war but unless we're all super engineered post humans by then, disagreements will happen and sometimes those can escalate.
Got a wide smile on my face when Isaac launching into his storytelling. 😊 Can never have enough of them. Another informative and uplifting episode as always Isaac.
My favourite videos of yours are the ones with a longer storytelling segment, like this one or the one with the culture running away from the def-not-the-wh40k galaxy.
I'd love for Isaac to return to the theme of thicc space ships, like the asteroid ships in this episode. Seems to me like the inevitable collisions at relativistic speeds and interstellar radiation require much thicker ships than are depicted in sci Fi.
Sleek and long would be better for a smaller cross section for collision, with a large portion of the nose being solid for radiation shielding/debris sheilding and angled for ricochets and radiation deflection.
if it's got a rocky metallic core it might be useful as a hull; if it's just one of these clouds of gravel you're better off harvesting the material for refinement
@@petevenuti7355 Fraiser Cain had this astroid-melter guy on last month. ruclips.net/video/Z-hH3-z56cg/видео.html Put asteroid in carbon fiber net, spin it till it fills out the net in a ring shape... focus big mirrors on the ring to melt it as it spins.
I loved the extrapolation/storytelling you did in the second half of the video! As others have said, it gives me hope that the future will turn out well after all
Due to risk of being pummeled with small meteors and space debris, i always felt like encasing yourself in an asteroid is the only way for a space colony to exist. It would also shield from cosmic radiation
Coring an asteroid (because you said "encasing") is a very difficult prospect. First of all, they're not like a mountain, where Joe Miner can go pickaxe his way through, then using square set beams, they can support massive amounts of weight, so that requires heavy duty equipment able to core through various layers of various things from ice to metal to plain rock. Whilst in space. Back on earth, passing through various layers of varied density is what kills most drills. Experienced machinery operators are chosen based on their ability to know when to either torque or speed through something, imagine doing that in space where... you'd need something like a TBM to work, a TBM that's both the machine we already have + the ability to grasp itself, but also that won't suffer from being in space where there's both metal welding between bare metals, there's no fluids to be used, and lack of gravity makes things highly complicated vis-a-vis dust that essentially floats about and ether parts of the machine or makes it impossible to work properly. And that's even if you pressurize the asteroid (after digging the first space to enclose the machine). And even assuming you've managed to do all of the above (which is... complicated, an engineering challenge on the orders of magnitude greater than most people get here on earth) then you have to contend with the nature of planetary bodies of the haphazard variety. IE: like i said above, the structure is varied. You may have ice here, loose dust caught there, some metal here, etc. I mean, there's a reason why these things break apart when they're close to the Sun apart from the fact that they melt. Asteroids as ships is a complicated affair that's not worth the effort. You're better off chewing these things bit by bit (spoon to eat the elephant) and make something out of them after you've chopped them apart using methods that don't care much about dust, lack of lubrication etc.
@@aserta Since it's encasing, you can think of it more like just covering your ship in asteroid rubble. Space dirt basically! (sorta...kinda...) Basically instead of trying to protect yourself from bullets with a steel plate, you use a substantially thicker but cheaper sandbag.
I recently was seeing somewhere (might have been on the antov petrov youtube channel) about a idea of using a thin spherical graphene shell around a standard asteroid and then spinning the asteroid so fast it busts apart and reduced to fine rubble and starts to fly apart, to be caught in the graphene net and ground down... the idea would supposedly allow for maximized hollow spherical interior room and the outside would be almost completely spherical, it would serve as equal and natural radiation shielding in all directions. It would allow easy access to pretty much 100% of the material of the asteroid. It would no longer look like a normal natural asteroid though. You can then either build inside it on the interior wall side, or take easily from the broken pieces of the interior wall and build an object inside it, while the unused remains can still serve as a temporary shielding. This would mean you do not need to drill to hollow it out and grab the materials as you encounter them, but they would all be available from the created shell.
Fantastic video! I never knew this type of ship idea was even a thing! Also, gotta say, this is one of the first sponsored videos that I actually checked out the sponsor for. I was pleasantly surprised. I found my new news aggregator.
I absolutely adore and covet the beautiful storytelling at the end of many SFIA episodes. This episode's depiction of rock-dwelling explorers in a hotrodded asteroid has been the highlight of my week.
One problem I have not seen addressed is how to prevent a high power laser beam from vaporizing the light sail it is meant to push. We are talking _vast_ amounts of power, and even a very small percentage of that power being absorbed by the sail instead of being reflected would destroy it.
That's the easy part, just tell the beam emitters your sail specs and they'll make sure they don't reach that W/m squared taking your distance into account, they can just modulate the power from their end, but honestly most of the time they'll run at full power because the distances are vast
@@dabs4270 exactly, you bring a huge sail and they can just focus the beam before your craft, you get the diffused beam as it diverges if you want the full power but lack the material to take it all with a smaller sail
In Final Fantasy V, they use meteors to travel between planets. I always thought it was kinda for story effect -- since it wasn't obviously a spaceship, it didn't make you immediately think of another planet. I'm kinda surprised it's actually a possibility.
This is a Sibley I've thought a lot about since reading Rin's Star. Concerning habitation, I picture 8 km wide rings inside the asteroid. I think a rotating habitat has to be that wide so the spin doesn't have adverse effects on the life inside. Then they could be configured to spin "against" each other to provide stability. Having that vast amount of resources on hand will allow the miners, colonists, and spacepeople the opportunity to progress. I agree with your progression of mining, to city, to independent colony. The asteroid also provides miles of collision protection.
What the fuck? I was just wondering if such a concept were achievable, and now here's the video covering the very topic! The cosmos works in mysterious ways.
New recomendation for watching SFIA. Grab a drink, a snack, and a notebook to take notes of every good idea for plot points and scenarios for sci fi novels. If you're reading this, thank you for all the ideas Isaac.
I have always thought I'd want to man an Aldrin Cycler, an empty O'neil cylinder spinning for gravity and full of gases mined in space, Powered lighting+ a small forrested section->Returning regularly to arrive with lumber and air. Once we can make genetically engineered wooden computers/trees we can go full "Tenchi Muyo!" Remember that a tree is essentially a water straw, so we are not far from making logic gates from it. (Just the silly future I hope for).
Oumuamua was probably an alien spacecraft that chose not to stop at Earth. They were like "should we stop here honey?" And Papa alien was like. "Noooo way. Very bad neighborhood, in fact I am going to speed up a little."
Oumuamua probably is the most famous one in the Sol system. To ourselves, black knight is lower-earth orbit spacecraft which from Anunaki period about millions of years ago.
Self running generators would be a great clean energy asset. And I mean multiple self running generators on each ship or craft. In case one or two don't work for some reason. We already have the tech. Just use it correctly.
With genetic engineering we could bring dinosaurs back, then perhaps fast forward to what they may have evolved into. Then include them on trips to new stars!
Advanced recycling on long term voyages would be all kinds of important. The less you have to stop for materials or send out collection drones the better! Also the engine speed thing might get a tad interesting in the near future, what with NASA's recently proposed hybrid nuclear electric & thermal engine design.
You just laid out the set design for a hell of a sci fi TV drama. A true space (soap) opera that could run a thousand seasons before they even reach the destination.
Crazy Idea for you: Have you seen the Nasa video of 2004 BL86? The 2015 Earth-crosser's Goldstone radar image looks like a pretty smooth spinning sphere. It even "has its own moon" that might be a shuttle. Is it worth investigating?
It’s one thing I love in the series Stargate. In the 3rd series with FTL capable ships that can gather supplies to build the first modal Stargate a doorway opening a wormhole from one to another on another planet. Hundreds of these ships were made and sent off in every direction. After a century or 2 letting the ships have seeded a handful of planets in some galaxies the mother ship Destiny is launch to travel for 50 million years. Man I pray humanity is capable one day to work towards a massive goal like that
Problems include: latch onto with what? Materials only have so much strength before they snap. Also: Your anchor is likely to come apart under any significant stress, since you're dealing with asteroids/comets. You can't really strengthen the things; you're not sticking around, and anybody trying has to slow down to do so. If you're sending someone ahead with greater deceleration than you, why not just install a launching laser? Can your ship take the strain? This is a very different sort of stress than that imparted by your engines. Will your tethers hit something important when your anchor goes careening at an unexpected velocity when it comes apart? Also: 'begins slowing?' If you're at a significant fraction of lightspeed, so is your tether, and we're talking about nuclear collisions when your tether hits your proposed anchor. Which doesn't even begin to worry about hitting the dust in the Oort Cloud at relativistic velocities. Pretty sure the best you can do is a gravity slingshot, where you bleed off momentum to a passing gravity source... but that works best with deeper gravity wells.
@@boobah5643 you send in little robots the use a tiny amount of fuel to decelerate to the ort objects maybe they can shoot some kind of particle beams or tiny pallets of rock at the main fleet
Using asteroid as spacecraft make much sense like using iceberg as ships on the sea, simply put aren't made from the right type of material, and making a hull from titanium high quality alloy would be less than 1% of the price of fusion fuel for a interstellar travel.
I’ve always been in love with the idea of asteroid spaceships, but DART shattered my expectations because most asteroids are gravel piles if not boulder piles - then you would only need to mortar, else weld, all the boulders together. You’d be flying through space in a stone house. Better make sure it’s weatherstripped ;)
A thought, take an asteroid and start it in one of the cycler orbits between two points. It is the truckstop/bus location that was mentioned, but while it is moving, you mine the hell out of it. You could drop supplies off when you are near one of your establishments and use it to build up your 'ship'. It would take a lot of time, but soon you may start running out asteroid to mine. SO you now have a fairly large ship, or lots of little ones, that you just seed into other other asteroids and repeat.
Much of this I've already considered before. Including the asteroid Ganymede. Yet, considered slow rotating elongated asteroids instead. That way they could more easily be divided up to make more individual asteroid ships.
Happy Arthur's day, I made a comment a few months ago on a community post and I asked if it would be possible to meet the dwarf planet haumea into one huge Interstellar Ark
We recently read Ursula K. Le Guin's novella Lost Paradises about the perils of a generation ship. It was meant to be allegorical and a bit preachy / rooted in the time it was written, but I found it to have merit in general in exploring the way life could be on a generation ship (or asteroid), and what could very well happen over a period of generations, rather than indicting one group or another. Don't want to spoil it, just wondering if anyone has read it or listened to it.
With the new concept of ''bagging'' asteroids to keep them from flying apart when turning them into spacesteads, [giant rotating space stations] turning asteroids into starships seems not much more complicated than creating spacestead habitats out of them. After all, starships are such habitats, especially since the lengths of interstellar journeys requires crewed spaceships to be flying cities essentially.
lol...if flying hotel and tourism ships are suggested to build this , century, we need more motherships as flexible settlements across the Sol system when we are traveling between the earth and the other extroplanets.
I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but the image on the right side of your thumbnail looks like a giant space tire on a giant space rim and that made me chuckle. Wonderful vid, as always
If you combine the use of fusion reactors and self running generators, you'd be set for travel and emergencies. You'd have plenty of energy for many things, including an energy shield.😎
They arrive at the destination to find that no one is interested in staying put in one star system having lived their whole lives in the void. Which just sounds more pleasant than the passengers turned into cannibalistic space mutants
I got a little question on where my thinking mistake is. The Aldrin Cycler… does it really save any fuel? To dock with the cycler, you need to bring your mass to the same orbital speed, than the cycler is on. So you need the fuel to accelerate and to slow down at your target destination and should be able to make the trip on its own for the same fuel. It doesn‘t give you the shielding, comfort and so on, but for freight, it shouldn‘t make a difference. Am I making a mistake in my reasoning or is fuel not the relevant point with those cyclers? And since I leave a comment on the same day, than your publishing date, I use the chance to thank you so much for your videos. They all have a wonderful length and deliver in your own wonderful niche every time. That is amazing!!! Greetz from Germany, Chris
There was a scientist talking with John Michael Godier recently who came up with a concept that used energy in the solar and galactic wind to accelerate up to significant portions of light speed. I'd imagine that you could scale this up and make it very easy to quickly push a asteroid or massive lump of slag up to some useful fraction of light speed with a rotating habitat behind it or in a recession on the back end, you only really need shielding in front if you're so fast that the penumbra of the stuff you're shielding from is nowhere near your fragile things. It'd be a cheap, fast to get going, dumb, and effective shield against the biggest problems for near light speed ships; dust and radiation. You can use small scout ships or powerful radar to find big things like asteroids and planets far enough ahead to avoid, but there won't be many. If that propulsion mechanism does work then we could have the ability to send out colony ships maybe a century after we get established in the moon, though sourcing supplies from the asteroid belt and the Oort cloud would probably help cheapen that.
it is amazing to contemplate humanity spreading out in so many directions, at so many distances, to ultimately become new species. definitely completely different cultures, first, then, eventually, different species.
I've always thought an asteroid would make an ideal spacecraft to use as an Aldrin Cycler between the Earth and Mars. If you get one big enough it could be developed into a luxury cruise ship with excellent natural radiation shielding. As a cycler it would require only minor course adjustments to stay in the enlongated orbit between the two planets and would be a delightful way to facilitate the Earth diaspora to Mars.
Here is an excellent idea for an episode if a mula mula was one of these big asteroids and now it has been condensed down how big would the asteroid have been to make a mula mula the size that it is which is about 1,200 feet by 120 ft a ten-to-one ratio I don't know if you see this comment or not but I hope you do and take it into consideration to make a episode about this based on the episode that you are doing now
Quick question for everyone. I always thought that it took the square of the acceleration fuel to stop. However, Isaac says it takes three times the acceleration fuel to stop. Please can someone give me clarification on this? Is it dependent on the energy density of the fuel? The higher the density the less fuel it takes. Thanks for another great video.
What Isaac is talking about is that you have to fuel up before you start, so you have to carry all the deceleration fuel while you are accelerating; for the purposes of the rocket equation, the deceleration fuel is part of the payload. Because you've burned off the acceleration fuel by the time you need to decelerate, your ship is much, much lighter (depending on how much velocity you added in the first place) and so you need less fuel to make the same delta-v as at the beginning. If you have a setup where you can refuel after acceleration, or not need to carry propellant at all, things change.
Would be nice to use some of the tech in the newer linear accelerators to accelerate the fuel to 99% of light speed. BUT the energy requirements are high. Maybe a laser powered ship. Sort of a hybrid laser driven ship. But I guess in that case the mass trade off might be just too much. Need to couple them with a worm hole to the big bang like a conjoiner drive :p
Fission fuel like u-235 has almost no radiation emission. It’s an alpha emitter, and thus only presents a hazard if you eat it. Spent fuel emits a fair amount of radiation , but given the overall radiation environment in deep space, even that is closer to radiation shield in behavior than radiation hazard. I would not use it as the inner layer of shielding. But it would be better than nothing for the outer layer. 7:38
You might use a asteroid cycler as a resupply base for a fleet growing food and harvesting materials from the asteroid belt what cycle through those one cycle close to Sun on the asteroid belt you could probably turn an asteroid Scyther into a forward resupply base with a little work or turn 1 into basically the interstellar equivalent of a camping ground
Interesting that you chose an asteroid. I would think a Dwarf Planet would be a much more stable and significantly better option especially if you consider the possibility of placing a couple asteroids of different materials in orbit around it. Of course a Dwarf Planet would be significantly heavier, but it would allow for significantly more fuel storage without the need of tethering thus the asteroids turned satellites could be mined solely for materials needed to build the colony. Also the Dwarf Planet could be placed in orbit around the Destination Planet turning it into a satellite for the Destination Planet.
Your description of an interstellar asteroid ship reminds me of and sounds loosely inspired by the void cities from Hyperion. I imagine all those layers of graphene shielding could even one day hold in a thin but survivable atmosphere around the rock.
A survivable atmosphere would have to be fairly thick, unless compressed under a solid roof as the minimum pressure for humans to be able to breathe is thought to be 475 millibars, or just under half sea level pressure.
I would love to see episode on ram-scoop drive, like described in some of Larry Nivens books. Is it feasible, how much radiation would it create, how fast could it be,etc...
They worked out the math in the 80s and 90s, and it turns out a Bussard ram scoop would actually be a brake; you'd slow more from the hydrogen impacting the scoop than you'd accelerate from the fusion drive.
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ok counter question... what about using spaceships as asteroids???
With gpt-3 no one will ever be lonely.
It was great working with you Isaac! Thanks again.
@@Bibibosh whats gpt 3? is it like mal0 ?
@@shardinhand1243 I think that would fall into orbital bombardment... which we have an episode on :)
Even after all these years your videos still give me a sense of hope for the future.
For real though I don't know where I would be if I hadn't run across them
Same
@@KageKatze I agree to it shows the man possibilities
Even with the repetitive climate alarmism?
I really appreciate the look at what people might be doing on an asteroid station/colony/ship. It's not 4 or 5 engineers being serious on a NASA mission, it's millions living in an area for generations. They'll have traditions, jokes, games, (hopefully small) conflicts. They'll form a new civilization. Maybe one as different from ours as ours is from human civilization a couple hundred years ago
There will be no conflicts, think of the security checks and IQ tests needed to get aboard a vessel that is not in the safety of our atmosphere. No one is getting on to be a labrourer. And there will be no addicts or anger management problems. You are right, it will be a different society, and there should be no need to even have a pistol on board. As long as ego's are kept in place it could be a successful one. But we will never know. It's a one way trip.
And that is another point, is Earth really willing to spent trillions to send a rock with a few people on a one way trip to alpha centauri. I posted this idea yesterday on a "Should we" do something way beyond our capabilities video so I had a night to think about it, the only way I can see everyone getting on board with that kind of project and sustaining enthusiasm for a decade or more is to put the Asteroid in orbit around the Moon so everyone can see it every night as the work is done.
But even those things are impossible right now. But a asteroid is the cheapest way I think, and safest. 🍁
(I'm also thinking double leg amputees' a primary candidates for Missions inside the solar system, lets see if they make a video about that in 24 hours). Basically they don't need as much of anything, room, food, oxygen, water...
@@streamofconsciousness5826 as long as there are two people, there will be conflict. Not necessarily war but unless we're all super engineered post humans by then, disagreements will happen and sometimes those can escalate.
Heck, anywhere you have isolated populations for a long enough period of time, new cultures will emerge!
@@Extra.Medium Though you would only get full scale war if your governing organization has a monopoly on the legal use of force.
It sounds like a great way to raise kids. And I just knew they would be leaving.
"I think it be ironic if they were made of Iron" Words of wisdom from Caboose.
But what’s in your pants?
Evil…
Yeah, IRON-ic!
@@djdaddy8080 a loon
"Ah think it'd be ironic if our guns shot healing salve that cured all wounds!"
Got a wide smile on my face when Isaac launching into his storytelling. 😊 Can never have enough of them.
Another informative and uplifting episode as always Isaac.
Yes, Isaac, please publish a book!
My favourite videos of yours are the ones with a longer storytelling segment, like this one or the one with the culture running away from the def-not-the-wh40k galaxy.
The Ship moves!
I'd love for Isaac to return to the theme of thicc space ships, like the asteroid ships in this episode.
Seems to me like the inevitable collisions at relativistic speeds and interstellar radiation require much thicker ships than are depicted in sci Fi.
Sleek and long would be better for a smaller cross section for collision, with a large portion of the nose being solid for radiation shielding/debris sheilding and angled for ricochets and radiation deflection.
Sidonia in Sidonia no Kishi is practically this ship not all sci-fi is star trek or from USA
if it's got a rocky metallic core it might be useful as a hull; if it's just one of these clouds of gravel you're better off harvesting the material for refinement
Can fill it up with expanding foam and Caulk lol
@@hherpdderp ...there is a real plan to melt them and spin them into rings... that's kinda like spray foam. Except with lava.
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 how does that work? I mean is it different than my plan?
@@petevenuti7355 Fraiser Cain had this astroid-melter guy on last month. ruclips.net/video/Z-hH3-z56cg/видео.html
Put asteroid in carbon fiber net, spin it till it fills out the net in a ring shape... focus big mirrors on the ring to melt it as it spins.
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 ok, yes, the net idea, the bag-o-rocks...
I mentioned my idea in the comments there as well as elsewhere here...
You painted such a detailed picture of what life on an asteroid ship could be like. I really like that story-telling aspect of your episodes!
I loved the extrapolation/storytelling you did in the second half of the video! As others have said, it gives me hope that the future will turn out well after all
Due to risk of being pummeled with small meteors and space debris, i always felt like encasing yourself in an asteroid is the only way for a space colony to exist. It would also shield from cosmic radiation
Asteroids seem inherently safer than a thin metal skin.
Coring an asteroid (because you said "encasing") is a very difficult prospect. First of all, they're not like a mountain, where Joe Miner can go pickaxe his way through, then using square set beams, they can support massive amounts of weight, so that requires heavy duty equipment able to core through various layers of various things from ice to metal to plain rock. Whilst in space.
Back on earth, passing through various layers of varied density is what kills most drills. Experienced machinery operators are chosen based on their ability to know when to either torque or speed through something, imagine doing that in space where... you'd need something like a TBM to work, a TBM that's both the machine we already have + the ability to grasp itself, but also that won't suffer from being in space where there's both metal welding between bare metals, there's no fluids to be used, and lack of gravity makes things highly complicated vis-a-vis dust that essentially floats about and ether parts of the machine or makes it impossible to work properly.
And that's even if you pressurize the asteroid (after digging the first space to enclose the machine). And even assuming you've managed to do all of the above (which is... complicated, an engineering challenge on the orders of magnitude greater than most people get here on earth) then you have to contend with the nature of planetary bodies of the haphazard variety. IE: like i said above, the structure is varied. You may have ice here, loose dust caught there, some metal here, etc.
I mean, there's a reason why these things break apart when they're close to the Sun apart from the fact that they melt.
Asteroids as ships is a complicated affair that's not worth the effort.
You're better off chewing these things bit by bit (spoon to eat the elephant) and make something out of them after you've chopped them apart using methods that don't care much about dust, lack of lubrication etc.
@@wolfvale7863 especially since armor piercing bullets seem to be the norm of space meteors hitting stuff
@@aserta my impression is that a lot of these asteroids are more gravel than solid iron
@@aserta Since it's encasing, you can think of it more like just covering your ship in asteroid rubble. Space dirt basically! (sorta...kinda...)
Basically instead of trying to protect yourself from bullets with a steel plate, you use a substantially thicker but cheaper sandbag.
I really enjoyed the artwork Ken York put together of the Asteroid Space Ship. Kudos to him for the excellent visual.
I recently was seeing somewhere (might have been on the antov petrov youtube channel) about a idea of using a thin spherical graphene shell around a standard asteroid and then spinning the asteroid so fast it busts apart and reduced to fine rubble and starts to fly apart, to be caught in the graphene net and ground down... the idea would supposedly allow for maximized hollow spherical interior room and the outside would be almost completely spherical, it would serve as equal and natural radiation shielding in all directions. It would allow easy access to pretty much 100% of the material of the asteroid. It would no longer look like a normal natural asteroid though. You can then either build inside it on the interior wall side, or take easily from the broken pieces of the interior wall and build an object inside it, while the unused remains can still serve as a temporary shielding. This would mean you do not need to drill to hollow it out and grab the materials as you encounter them, but they would all be available from the created shell.
Issac? Will there be drinks and snacks served on these Asteroid Spaceships?
Good question.
And at what time is the karaoke bar open?
@@Moon_Metty between 7 and 9pm, asteroid time!
All but the smallest asteroid spaceships are like an entire city so there will be restaurants and grocery stores selling drinks and snacks.
@@littlebubby1 as long as there are no Starbucks.
@@BigZebraCom I'll open up a coffee shop and call it Moondollars. 😁
Love what you do Isaac, thank you!
Fantastic video! I never knew this type of ship idea was even a thing!
Also, gotta say, this is one of the first sponsored videos that I actually checked out the sponsor for. I was pleasantly surprised. I found my new news aggregator.
I absolutely adore and covet the beautiful storytelling at the end of many SFIA episodes. This episode's depiction of rock-dwelling explorers in a hotrodded asteroid has been the highlight of my week.
You had me at asteroid spaceships. 💜
Tower of Angels, fortress-monastery home of the Dark Angels, first Legion of the Imperium of Mankind.
One problem I have not seen addressed is how to prevent a high power laser beam from vaporizing the light sail it is meant to push. We are talking _vast_ amounts of power, and even a very small percentage of that power being absorbed by the sail instead of being reflected would destroy it.
you would spread the power over a huge area, this is why you need kilometer long sails
That's the easy part, just tell the beam emitters your sail specs and they'll make sure they don't reach that W/m squared taking your distance into account, they can just modulate the power from their end, but honestly most of the time they'll run at full power because the distances are vast
@@dabs4270 exactly, you bring a huge sail and they can just focus the beam before your craft, you get the diffused beam as it diverges if you want the full power but lack the material to take it all with a smaller sail
Been so looking forward to this episode and topic … thanks! Noticeable change with your speech, happy for you 🙏
In Final Fantasy V, they use meteors to travel between planets.
I always thought it was kinda for story effect -- since it wasn't obviously a spaceship, it didn't make you immediately think of another planet.
I'm kinda surprised it's actually a possibility.
Your storytelling segments are always so good I wish you'd make them into a book.
Everytime I see an upload from you, the day gets a little better
This is a Sibley I've thought a lot about since reading Rin's Star. Concerning habitation, I picture 8 km wide rings inside the asteroid. I think a rotating habitat has to be that wide so the spin doesn't have adverse effects on the life inside. Then they could be configured to spin "against" each other to provide stability. Having that vast amount of resources on hand will allow the miners, colonists, and spacepeople the opportunity to progress. I agree with your progression of mining, to city, to independent colony. The asteroid also provides miles of collision protection.
What the fuck? I was just wondering if such a concept were achievable, and now here's the video covering the very topic!
The cosmos works in mysterious ways.
Great episode, let's dig and go.
OK it might be a little more complicated than that.
Reminds me of the anime/manga Knights of Sidonia! Might watch that again at some point heh.
New recomendation for watching SFIA. Grab a drink, a snack, and a notebook to take notes of every good idea for plot points and scenarios for sci fi novels.
If you're reading this, thank you for all the ideas Isaac.
I see content from Isaac Arthur, i press instantly "thumbs up"
Thouroughly enjoying your videos for a while now - please keep them coming!
I have always thought I'd want to man an Aldrin Cycler,
an empty O'neil cylinder spinning for gravity and full of gases mined in space,
Powered lighting+ a small forrested section->Returning regularly to arrive with lumber and air.
Once we can make genetically engineered wooden computers/trees we can go full "Tenchi Muyo!"
Remember that a tree is essentially a water straw, so we are not far from making logic gates from it. (Just the silly future I hope for).
The visualization of the really long asteroid-ship reminded me of the Spaceballs' spaceship.
Oumuamua was probably an alien spacecraft that chose not to stop at Earth.
They were like "should we stop here honey?" And Papa alien was like. "Noooo way.
Very bad neighborhood, in fact I am going to speed up a little."
as Clark Griswold once said: "kids, windows up"
Probably surveying. Going to make a bypass or something.
I blame a televangelist with a big transmitter and a hankering for Galactic currency.
Oumuamua probably is the most famous one in the Sol system.
To ourselves, black knight is lower-earth orbit spacecraft which from Anunaki period about millions of years ago.
I'd shave down my Asteroid to a perfect circle and build a Stripclub inside. I'll call it "The Ball Buster"
For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky!
Ah, this was such a lovely classic Isaac! Loved the episode 👏💚
Self running generators would be a great clean energy asset. And I mean multiple self running generators on each ship or craft. In case one or two don't work for some reason. We already have the tech. Just use it correctly.
I’ve only watched the intro but now I’m hoping Isaac is going to talk about space faring dinosaurs
Now I'm wishing I did, though we did play with that a bit in the Silurian Hypothesis episode.
With genetic engineering we could bring dinosaurs back, then perhaps fast forward to what they may have evolved into. Then include them on trips to new stars!
That's what happened to them. They didn't get wiped out by an asteroid. They left on one. Neighborhood was getting over run by mammals.
Advanced recycling on long term voyages would be all kinds of important. The less you have to stop for materials or send out collection drones the better! Also the engine speed thing might get a tad interesting in the near future, what with NASA's recently proposed hybrid nuclear electric & thermal engine design.
You just laid out the set design for a hell of a sci fi TV drama. A true space (soap) opera that could run a thousand seasons before they even reach the destination.
The book “2312” speculates on this topic quite specifically.
Crazy Idea for you: Have you seen the Nasa video of 2004 BL86? The 2015 Earth-crosser's Goldstone radar image looks like a pretty smooth spinning sphere. It even "has its own moon" that might be a shuttle. Is it worth investigating?
It’s one thing I love in the series Stargate. In the 3rd series with FTL capable ships that can gather supplies to build the first modal Stargate a doorway opening a wormhole from one to another on another planet. Hundreds of these ships were made and sent off in every direction. After a century or 2 letting the ships have seeded a handful of planets in some galaxies the mother ship Destiny is launch to travel for 50 million years. Man I pray humanity is capable one day to work towards a massive goal like that
Space has to become way of life for all this. Still very interesting.
Could you use smaller objects in the target star system’s Oort Cloud equivalent as “anchors” to latch onto to begin slowing?
i like this idea interstellar spiderman
Problems include: latch onto with what? Materials only have so much strength before they snap. Also: Your anchor is likely to come apart under any significant stress, since you're dealing with asteroids/comets. You can't really strengthen the things; you're not sticking around, and anybody trying has to slow down to do so. If you're sending someone ahead with greater deceleration than you, why not just install a launching laser?
Can your ship take the strain? This is a very different sort of stress than that imparted by your engines.
Will your tethers hit something important when your anchor goes careening at an unexpected velocity when it comes apart?
Also: 'begins slowing?' If you're at a significant fraction of lightspeed, so is your tether, and we're talking about nuclear collisions when your tether hits your proposed anchor. Which doesn't even begin to worry about hitting the dust in the Oort Cloud at relativistic velocities.
Pretty sure the best you can do is a gravity slingshot, where you bleed off momentum to a passing gravity source... but that works best with deeper gravity wells.
@@boobah5643 you send in little robots the use a tiny amount of fuel to decelerate to the ort objects maybe they can shoot some kind of particle beams or tiny pallets of rock at the main fleet
Orks: Those are some nice Roks.
Using asteroid as spacecraft make much sense like using iceberg as ships on the sea, simply put aren't made from the right type of material, and making a hull from titanium high quality alloy would be less than 1% of the price of fusion fuel for a interstellar travel.
“I loik the ideahs of dis humie.” -Gazkull
I’ve always been in love with the idea of asteroid spaceships, but DART shattered my expectations because most asteroids are gravel piles if not boulder piles - then you would only need to mortar, else weld, all the boulders together. You’d be flying through space in a stone house. Better make sure it’s weatherstripped ;)
A thought, take an asteroid and start it in one of the cycler orbits between two points. It is the truckstop/bus location that was mentioned, but while it is moving, you mine the hell out of it. You could drop supplies off when you are near one of your establishments and use it to build up your 'ship'. It would take a lot of time, but soon you may start running out asteroid to mine. SO you now have a fairly large ship, or lots of little ones, that you just seed into other other asteroids and repeat.
I wonder how much rail road, and naval terminology would blend together in a society managing such a ship.
The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson tells me it will be a lot.
Much of this I've already considered before. Including the asteroid Ganymede. Yet, considered slow rotating elongated asteroids instead. That way they could more easily be divided up to make more individual asteroid ships.
Happy Arthur's day, I made a comment a few months ago on a community post and I asked if it would be possible to meet the dwarf planet haumea into one huge Interstellar Ark
Perhaps someone has already done it. ʻOumuamua
I'm patiently waiting for the episode on Warp travel, Navigators and the Astronomicon.
We recently read Ursula K. Le Guin's novella Lost Paradises about the perils of a generation ship. It was meant to be allegorical and a bit preachy / rooted in the time it was written, but I found it to have merit in general in exploring the way life could be on a generation ship (or asteroid), and what could very well happen over a period of generations, rather than indicting one group or another. Don't want to spoil it, just wondering if anyone has read it or listened to it.
Alastair Reynolds had this as a subplot of Chasm City, and Kim Stanley Robinson has said similar in Aurora
I want to visit this future.
With the new concept of ''bagging'' asteroids to keep them from flying apart when turning them into spacesteads, [giant rotating space stations] turning asteroids into starships seems not much more complicated than creating spacestead habitats out of them. After all, starships are such habitats, especially since the lengths of interstellar journeys requires crewed spaceships to be flying cities essentially.
Turning an asteroid into a flying hotel would be awesome. From orbiting planet earth to touring the solar system.
lol...if flying hotel and tourism ships are suggested to build this , century, we need more motherships as flexible settlements across the Sol system when we are traveling between the earth and the other extroplanets.
NOTIFICATION GANG!!!!
Great video as always
This will be a good one I can't wait
Dang, I feel so warmly inclined toward the inhabitants of 1036 Ganymed all of a sudden . . . .
I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but the image on the right side of your thumbnail looks like a giant space tire on a giant space rim and that made me chuckle.
Wonderful vid, as always
Best series on RUclips!!!
If you combine the use of fusion reactors and self running generators, you'd be set for travel and emergencies. You'd have plenty of energy for many things, including an energy shield.😎
As usual, your subjects are fascinating!
They arrive at the destination to find that no one is interested in staying put in one star system having lived their whole lives in the void. Which just sounds more pleasant than the passengers turned into cannibalistic space mutants
I got a little question on where my thinking mistake is. The Aldrin Cycler… does it really save any fuel? To dock with the cycler, you need to bring your mass to the same orbital speed, than the cycler is on. So you need the fuel to accelerate and to slow down at your target destination and should be able to make the trip on its own for the same fuel. It doesn‘t give you the shielding, comfort and so on, but for freight, it shouldn‘t make a difference. Am I making a mistake in my reasoning or is fuel not the relevant point with those cyclers?
And since I leave a comment on the same day, than your publishing date, I use the chance to thank you so much for your videos. They all have a wonderful length and deliver in your own wonderful niche every time. That is amazing!!!
Greetz from Germany, Chris
They had such a thing in Star Trek: TOS.
The world is hollow and I have touched the sky.
Gotta ask @Isaac Arthur have you read the Deathworld series by chance? and if so what do you like about it?
There was a scientist talking with John Michael Godier recently who came up with a concept that used energy in the solar and galactic wind to accelerate up to significant portions of light speed. I'd imagine that you could scale this up and make it very easy to quickly push a asteroid or massive lump of slag up to some useful fraction of light speed with a rotating habitat behind it or in a recession on the back end, you only really need shielding in front if you're so fast that the penumbra of the stuff you're shielding from is nowhere near your fragile things. It'd be a cheap, fast to get going, dumb, and effective shield against the biggest problems for near light speed ships; dust and radiation. You can use small scout ships or powerful radar to find big things like asteroids and planets far enough ahead to avoid, but there won't be many. If that propulsion mechanism does work then we could have the ability to send out colony ships maybe a century after we get established in the moon, though sourcing supplies from the asteroid belt and the Oort cloud would probably help cheapen that.
Always enjoy your videos before sleep.
Issac is my sleepy time meditation medicine
it is amazing to contemplate humanity spreading out in so many directions, at so many distances, to ultimately become new species. definitely completely different cultures, first, then, eventually, different species.
The orks in Warhammer 40K use asteroids to travel. They call them hulks. It’s great.
"For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky."
Got lost on a 5 minute tangent googling that. Thank you it was worth it.
Your voice sounds so different than seven years ago! Literally unrecognizable! It sounds like an octave lower now.
I've always thought an asteroid would make an ideal spacecraft to use as an Aldrin Cycler between the Earth and Mars. If you get one big enough it could be developed into a luxury cruise ship with excellent natural radiation shielding. As a cycler it would require only minor course adjustments to stay in the enlongated orbit between the two planets and would be a delightful way to facilitate the Earth diaspora to Mars.
Ive never though about using an astroid as a ship but I been wondering for a few years about using them a space stations.
Here is an excellent idea for an episode if a mula mula was one of these big asteroids and now it has been condensed down how big would the asteroid have been to make a mula mula the size that it is which is about 1,200 feet by 120 ft a ten-to-one ratio I don't know if you see this comment or not but I hope you do and take it into consideration to make a episode about this based on the episode that you are doing now
Sensors, telemetry, and packet radio for burst transmissions like a time capsule and satellite for any passing by.
Quick question for everyone. I always thought that it took the square of the acceleration fuel to stop. However, Isaac says it takes three times the acceleration fuel to stop. Please can someone give me clarification on this? Is it dependent on the energy density of the fuel? The higher the density the less fuel it takes. Thanks for another great video.
What Isaac is talking about is that you have to fuel up before you start, so you have to carry all the deceleration fuel while you are accelerating; for the purposes of the rocket equation, the deceleration fuel is part of the payload. Because you've burned off the acceleration fuel by the time you need to decelerate, your ship is much, much lighter (depending on how much velocity you added in the first place) and so you need less fuel to make the same delta-v as at the beginning.
If you have a setup where you can refuel after acceleration, or not need to carry propellant at all, things change.
Would be nice to use some of the tech in the newer linear accelerators to accelerate the fuel to 99% of light speed. BUT the energy requirements are high. Maybe a laser powered ship. Sort of a hybrid laser driven ship. But I guess in that case the mass trade off might be just too much.
Need to couple them with a worm hole to the big bang like a conjoiner drive :p
Fission fuel like u-235 has almost no radiation emission. It’s an alpha emitter, and thus only presents a hazard if you eat it. Spent fuel emits a fair amount of radiation , but given the overall radiation environment in deep space, even that is closer to radiation shield in behavior than radiation hazard. I would not use it as the inner layer of shielding. But it would be better than nothing for the outer layer. 7:38
Good job Isaac!
This reminded me of an article written by Isaac Asimov called “Spome” a contraction of two words space and home.
I can already hear Orks boarding Hummie built Rokks
You might use a asteroid cycler as a resupply base for a fleet growing food and harvesting materials from the asteroid belt what cycle through those one cycle close to Sun on the asteroid belt you could probably turn an asteroid Scyther into a forward resupply base with a little work or turn 1 into basically the interstellar equivalent of a camping ground
Oh, I guess it's WAAAAGH! time.
Da boss says ta push da Big Red Button!
Use gravity assists to knock an asteroid or comet towards a star and just use it for slow sailing.
Interesting that you chose an asteroid. I would think a Dwarf Planet would be a much more stable and significantly better option especially if you consider the possibility of placing a couple asteroids of different materials in orbit around it. Of course a Dwarf Planet would be significantly heavier, but it would allow for significantly more fuel storage without the need of tethering thus the asteroids turned satellites could be mined solely for materials needed to build the colony. Also the Dwarf Planet could be placed in orbit around the Destination Planet turning it into a satellite for the Destination Planet.
Your description of an interstellar asteroid ship reminds me of and sounds loosely inspired by the void cities from Hyperion. I imagine all those layers of graphene shielding could even one day hold in a thin but survivable atmosphere around the rock.
A survivable atmosphere would have to be fairly thick, unless compressed under a solid roof as the minimum pressure for humans to be able to breathe is thought to be 475 millibars, or just under half sea level pressure.
Reminds me of the the more realistic sifi books I read. Where humans use asteroids as generation ships or space ships carved out of asteroids.
Robert Reed - Marrow
Good book that explores this
Maybe We could use a Comet or Asteroid, passing by to Pull a Craft, through space, to a predetermined destination.
Future episode: did the Dinosaurs wipe themselves out by crashing an Aldrin Cycler Asteroid into the Earth?
I would love to see episode on ram-scoop drive, like described in some of Larry Nivens books.
Is it feasible, how much radiation would it create, how fast could it be,etc...
They worked out the math in the 80s and 90s, and it turns out a Bussard ram scoop would actually be a brake; you'd slow more from the hydrogen impacting the scoop than you'd accelerate from the fusion drive.
Wow best episode.