If you use reaction mass, waste disposal is never a problem

Quote from: David Johansen;1001551If you use reaction mass, waste disposal is never a problem

Oh go blow it out your... hey... wait a minute...

-clash

Understanding the technology base of the setting is important, of course.  With any food replication (CHON) you have to consider energy and time costs. Is it feasible to 'print' ten tons of food every day? How many machines do you need. I'm not saying it wouldn't be done, but it just moves the logistic's question over a step. Now instead of wondering where they're stashing 70 tons of food, maybe you're wondering where they're stashing 70 tons of Food Printers.

Of course then you've got less issue with reserve supplies and resupply and all that, but now you've also got more mechanical and maintenance issues.  When the number four Food Printer goes down in mid-trip because the flux capacitor blew... well, now we're back to looking for new Cabin Boys...

Food replication, food printers, hydroponics... specifics aside, it's just different ways of turning poo and water back into food by adding energy back in in specific ways. We can take a stab at how effectively that will work in the future, but it's wild geusstimation. My own prediction is that if we ever do cart ourselves out of this solar system, it'll be by perfecting cryosleep, or modifying ourselves to be able to eat very simple-to-make carbon sources (biodiesel, effectively).

On some ships you could have the air scrubbers set up to capture farts out of the air to use as rocket fuel.

Some of the suggestions on this thread are more valuble than others.  

I'm not a fan of Nano tech.  Its an advanced form of Handwavium and I don't like Handwavium in my sci-fi or fantasy.

Eh. Its a form of Post-Scarcity technology, not much different than matter-energy conversion.  Its not the WAY you get to Post-Scarcity, its what you do when you get there that makes it viable as a form of literature or, for our purposes, game-able.

I've seen Post-Scarcity done playable... the idea is that resources aren't an issue, so you focus on the things that are issues (people shooting you in the face, say...). Command Core comes to mind.

Then you've got Eclipse Phase, which posits an early Post-Scarcity society, but then builds a normal economic system while claiming said system is totes dead y'all in favor of a revived primitive favor bartering system (yeah, so advanced) and utterly ignoring, or forcibly wrecking, the premise that 'resources' aren't, you know, scarce.  Which is probably the worst way to handle it.

Normally the technologies for PS settings are put in place, but the implications are ignored in favor of more traditional logistics and economics, which is far less idiotic than making a PS setting and then forcing it to not play PS.

None of which, it is true, has any bearing on Spacey Ship Logistics, as any good PS technology renders most logistic concerns moot, such as the aforementioned CHON molecular printing (which does not have to involve nanites, but functionally provides the same benefits...)



SCOP, at least, has the advantage of not being hyper-tech. Its basically vegemite. Lots and lots of vegemite. Vegemite for DAYS. WEEKS! YEARS!





Which is probably why we haven't actually invented it. Humanitarian reasons.

Its not the post scarcity part I don't like its the fact that Nanites can do any thing.  So you end up with the same solution for every problem, when take to the extream.  Hole in your ship, nanite self repair.
You've beeen shot? Or have cancer Nanites.  
Nothing to eat, Nanites.
Need a suit of armour? Nanites.
Not sure what to wear?  The dress is Nanites and it shifts and changes color and transparency depending on mood.

I don't like nano tech.

Double post.

Quote from: Headless;1002733Its not the post scarcity part I don't like its the fact that Nanites can do any thing.  So you end up with the same solution for every problem, when take to the extream.  Hole in your ship, nanite self repair.
You've beeen shot? Or have cancer Nanites.  
Nothing to eat, Nanites.
Need a suit of armour? Nanites.
Not sure what to wear?  The dress is Nanites and it shifts and changes color and transparency depending on mood.

I don't like nano tech.

Not to attack you since you are one of the coolest posters here but really, nanotech has the potential to become the microchip of the 21st century. Look at how the 20tn century became the microchip century. When I was born there were zero microchips. Now there are more microchips than people.  

Microchips are in everything today. Hell now companies are putting microchips in people. Sure it's voluntary, as in "Do you voluntarily accept a microchip in your hand or do you voluntarilary accept a pink slip in your hand?"

With credit cards, watches, cell phones, etc how many microchips does a western citizen have on him today? Hell, my keychain flashlight has a microchip in it!


As I count, with my smartphone and it's sim card plus microhd card I have 3 microchips in it, 2 cards with microchips, a USB card in my wallet, a flashlight wit a microchip in it.... I have 7 microchips on me on a typical day.

In my house I'm surrounded by them.

So maybe nanotech will become as ubiquitous on the coming century. There are issues it can't solve. It can't produce atoms from nothing. Highly radioactive materials might destroy it. If it needs a eutectic environment to work it is limited by that.

Sure.  Nano tech.  And genetic engineering separately and together will be a big hairy deal in the coming fortyear (fortdecade? Double decade?  20 years.)

The past 20 years everything has been raised and rebuilt in the image of the micro chip.  The motto of the 20th century should be "better living through chemistry."

New techs change the way we live, and it should be the job of science fiction to imagine the technology and work through some of the things that happen because of it.  I like that I love that.  "A young girls illistrated primer" Diamond age, is great at thinking about Nano tech.  Windup girl is pretty good at working through some genetic modification stuff, Earth by David Brin has a pretty cool part about how hard it is to engineer something out of Nanites.  Illium by Dan Simmons and There will be Dragons by John Ringo start with similar conculsions about what post scarcity will do to human culture.  

However, normally Nano tech is Handwavium.  Which I hate.

Quote from: Schwartzwald;1002786Not to attack you since you are one of the coolest posters here but really, nanotech has the potential to become the microchip of the 21st century. Look at how the 20tn century became the microchip century. When I was born there were zero microchips. Now there are more microchips than people.  

.....

You do know the idea of nanites as mini-robots as in most pop sci-fi is complete and utter BS.   You may not also realize that nanites already exist, and have for a billion years.  They are called viruses.  At the nanometer scale mechanical concepts such as cutting and placing don't apply.  It's all chemistry (if you could do it simply but heat, lasers, etc. you are talking amazing energy densities, so amazing you should be exploring the consequences of that.) and there are some serious limits to it, read carbon chemistry as most all others are very limited in the structures that can be formed.

Self repairing materials, by the way, don't require nanites.   I'd say that will come more out of nano-structured phases where the thermodynamically favored state is the "repaired" state that is also kinetically driven by damage.

The deal with nanotech that the initial concept was basically a magic grey goo capable of building or altering anything through the coordinated actions of thousands of nanobots. Since then some of the parameters of what actually works have started to become clearer. The conservative straight line projection is that computer controlled devices will allow use to manipulate matter at a fine scale. Not as nanobots swarms but rather boxes or containers with apparatuses that do the job. Either all at once or series of specialized boxes that operate together in stages.

For example a food fab may not be able to give you all types of frosted baked cake but it may be able to specific kinds that are tasty and good to east. There are microwave muffins that are a powder. When open and add water they look like sludge. But a minute later is a passable baked muffin.

Now it is not handwavium to think that after generations of development with this stuff that a series of steps will be found to make the stuff from CHON plus supplemental minerals. That there will be a library of different food easily made with fabrication technology.

Quote from: estar;1002861There are microwave muffins that are a powder. When open and add water they look like sludge. But a minute later is a passable baked muffin.

This is an example of the main drawback of this site. I find things that pique my curiosity and I end up spending money....

Quote from: jeff37923;1002862This is an example of the main drawback of this site. I find things that pique my curiosity and I end up spending money....

To look at them or actually eat them?