Prototype

[Leiana]

-waves arms wildly in an excited fashion- YAYyYyYyYy!!!!!!!

[The_Mather1]

Oh, and for the record, if you plan on doing puzzles, you'll be needing this, because the only puzzle's I've got the ingenuity to make are anagrams, electronics and cryptograms, and I wouldn't want cryptograms on even my worst enemy.

[Earth]

Okay, so that means 2o clock EST, approximately. ... Hell I didn;t need to consult the chart for that. Also, okay Mather.

[Leiana]

But I suck with anagrams and cryptograms....

 

Electronics I can do.

[Alg]

and I wouldn't want cryptograms on even my worst enemy.

Aw :cry:

[Earth]

anagrams I'm okay with, Electronics I hope I can do with asic physics course stuff, and Cryptograms. Mrrr..

[archimage_a]

and I wouldn't want cryptograms on even my worst enemy.

Aw :cry:

Gotta agree. Cryptograms are considerably easier than Anagrams about 90% of the time, for 90% of the people.

 

When you are solving a cryptogram you are, essentially, always making progress because you are eliminating letters and progressing down the phrase so as to be reasonably sure that you will, eventually, solve the thing. (This is provided you have a key of useful letters as a starting point.)

 

When you are solving an anagram you are constantly going down blind alleys because you are just randomly reassembling words, getting excited because you made the word 'Cat' after 20 minutes of :wall: and then the realisation that 'Cat' probably isn't relevant...though you can't actually discount it because the clues are so tremendously vague.

 

For comparison:

Z G Q - I B S X U - W T U - I S E Q - W D - R B W C C B W S U C

Clue:

E = M

B = R

Verses:

 

Easter From Sraddha Codon Slog G

Clue:

Pomp and Tavern

 

 

Same phrase, but where as the general structure of the first one is known, and unscrambled, the structure of the second is entirely unknown. As such, even without clues, the Crypotogram represents the easier of the two because you can make an educated guess, as opposed to a blind guess.

 

The main difference between Cryptograms and Anagrams is that CG gets easier the longer it is and harder the shorter it is. Anagrams start easy when they are short, and become more impossible the longer they get.

 

 

 

But yeah, cryptograms plox.

Electronics, I am ok with...Just that our history precludes me from being enthused about them. Also the capacity for 'Archi is intelligent, he can solve this Riesenburg Equation'/'Archi needs to suffer' is much increased with Electronics.

[The_Mather1]

Session's on, /join Prototype.

[archimage_a]

Right then...The ArchiTech Miner:

 

[hide]

[/hide]

 

 

The design for this miner is, overwhelmingly, simple.

It takes the common, every day, Plasma Drill, bolts several hundred of them together, attaches them to a vast Tubes, attaches that tube to a central station, and that station is attached to 15 other vast tubes and thus several dozen thousand Plasma Drills, and, meanwhile attaches that station to a number of supporting girders, which are attached to an immense worm(In engineering terms, basically a screw) which is progressing down a giant supporting column, in a thread that is hollowed out by Plasma Drills mounted on the central station.

 

What could be simpler?

 

 

So:

 

White are Hollow Tubes, which are connected to the Station (Red) where a Vaccum sucks the mined rock into the central area and it then transported to the surface (in a hitherto unexplained manner...I assume more tubes, but yeah).

 

The Red is the station, which is suspended by the Girders (Green) from the Worm (blue). The station slowly rotates as the worm progresses down the thread, driven by a number of rollers, which, in turn, rotates the Hollow tubes (White). This slow turning, along with the downward motion of gravity and a semi-sophisticated computer system, causes a thread to but cut down the central pillar. In addition to the thread being cut, the central pillar will be reinforced by whatever means are possible and neccessary.

In addition this, several dozen Coandă Effect generators will be positioned on the Station for activation in an emergency. Primarily to take the strain off the central pillar and/or to 'land' the Miner should the Central Pillar collapse.

 

The Green is Girders...They are pretty self explaintory.

 

The Blue is the word and thread. Representing the major supporting mechanism for the whole operation, in conjection with the Coandă Effect generators and several suspention beams supporting the Worm, from the surface. Aside from that the tail end of the worm contains a number of Plasma Drills, with the primary aim of which is to remove the now useless parts of the pillar to remove the unneccessary weight from the central pillar and thus help prevent a collapse.

 

Brown evidently represents rock.

 

Construction of the Miner/s should first consist of building a Central Pillar, then the Miner.

 

The speed of the miner can be varied slowly, but it should be noted that the immense weight of the miner should not be left to weigh on any one part of the Pillar for too long. The Gravity of the planet may only be 0.376g, but this is a collossal undertaking.

 

The end of operation presents three possibilites. The first is abandonment. The second is the use of external sources of thrust to lift the Miner clear. The last is the use of internal thrust, mainly supplied by the Coandă Effect generators.

All three options have their benefits and their limitations.

 

 

 

 

If you want a more technically minded (Aka weights and other considerations) analysis then I will require the density of the martian rock, the weight/method of operation of the Plasma Drills...thats probably it really...It just requires alot of effort on my part, which I don't really want to do if you are gonna end the game/let me have this.

 

The device is scalable in the extreme...With the upper limit being the tolerance of rock.

It can be constructed as a half meter long, half meter/meter wide miner on a peice of rope...Or constructed at a Kilometer long, by Kilometer wide and freestanding.

[The_Mather1]

Dozens of thousands of plasma drills - 0.5*0.5 meter wide... sure... -.-

[archimage_a]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3cdEIsXFJ4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU1RZIuBm74&feature=related

 

"What is this? A Plasma Drill for Ants!"

 

Clearly you would have less plasma drills on the smaller version... The operative word is 'SCALE'

[Earth]

Good lord. More arguments.

[The_Mather1]

For reference, a plasma drill is about as big as a jackhammer, take that into consideration when you revise the idea.

[archimage_a]

Please post Jackhammer for comparison (Not trolling, Jackhammers come in a varity of sizes, from man operated to truck mounted monstronsity).

[The_Mather1]

[archimage_a]

Looks like you went outside and asked the nearest guy with a jackhammer ro strike a pose.

 

Anywho. Density of Martian Rock?

 

I will then work on the monster project.

[The_Mather1]

Actually that was the only good image that I could find.

 

Anyways, it's hard to give you a number since there is no unit used to measure rocks.

I can tell you that it is made mostly up of basalt though.

[archimage_a]

Righto.

[hide]

Right then, the first step is the Coandă Effect support craft.

 

The craft will be based, largely on the Avrocar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avrocar#Specifications_.28VZ-9-AV.29

 

However the three Contiental J69-T-9 Jets have been replaced with the same

 

engine as featured in the F-88. (Which are taken to be a varient on the Pratt

 

and Whitney F135 for power specifications)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_J69-T-

 

9#Specifications_.28Marbor.C3.A9_IIC.29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_F135#Specifications_.28F135-

 

PW-100.29

Similarly the air supply will be the same as the F-88 (works in space), given

 

the thinner atomsphere present on Mars.

 

The gravity of Mars is 0.376 g.

 

This should increase the weight of the craft by 234% (From 3,000 lb to 7029

 

lb, or 2642.9 lb (Mars)). It should similarly increase the amount of avalible

 

thrust from 8.7 kN to 573 kN. This should have an overall effect to increase

 

the MAX support weight (after deductions for the weight of the craft) to

 

approximately 128,816 lb.

 

A saftey figure of 80,000 lb (36,287 Kilograms) will be used to provide

 

some degree of redundancy.

 

 

Next we will define the weight of the Plasma Drill as 90 lbs, based on

 

the weight of a Jackhammer.

http://www.asbweb.org/conferences/2011/pdf/377.pdf

 

We will then make the assumption that a Plasma Drill covers 30

 

Centimeters. and has a conversation rate of 2 kilograms per second.

 

 

We shall make further assertion that each drill will be mounted on a servo,

 

covering 1 meter each, and we shall assume that this has a weight of 30 lbs.

 

We shall take Iron Oxide as our baseline figure for converting rock:

It has a density of 5.242 grams per cubic centimeter, and thus the plasma

 

drill should process about 0.3815 Cubic Meters per second.

Calcium Carbonate has a desity of 2.711 grams per cubic centimeter, and thus

 

the plasma drill should process about 0.7377 Cubic Meters per second.

Uranium has a desity of 19.1 grams per cubic centimeter, and thus the plasma

 

drill should process about 0.1047 cubic meters per second.

 

Thusly, we shall assume that the rate of decent must be less than 0.1

 

meters per second.

 

In addition to this each of the arms will be mounted on 30 degree anglar

 

mount. The angle's midpoint shall be 120 degrees, allow for work

 

between 135 and 105 degree. Or 45 from the horizontal axis.

 

We shall state that radius of the structure is 50 meters.

As such each arm should be approximately 70 meters long, as they are

 

curved.

Thus, assuming the angular mount is fully engaged, the arms should sit at

 

35.35 meters lower than the mount.

(Given that the curved length is not relevant in this calculation)

 

 

we shall further state that the arms are mostly hollow. They have a height

 

and width of equal dimention, and this is 5 meters.

The walls of the arms are 0.5 meters in width and height.

Thusly the amount of material consists of 70 cubic meters, per arm.

 

 

Assuming this, we shall [/b]state that the arms are made from Maraging Steel

 

[/b]. This has a yield tensile strength of 100,000 to 350,000 PSI. We

 

shall assume 200,000 PSI for the purposes of safety. The actual tensile

 

strength is between 230,000 and 360,000 PSI.

This equates to 1,379,000,308 Pascals, or 1,379 MPa.

Effectively capable of supporting 14,0570,877 Kilograms.

The density of this Metal is 8.1 grams per cubic centimeter.

 

As such each arm (Excluding the plasma drills, servos and electronics)

 

weighs:

405,000,000 grams, or 405,000 Kilograms(Earth).

This is 152,280 Kilograms(Mars).

 

To cover 70 meters there needs to be 70 servos and 70 Plasma Drills. Each of

 

these combined weighs 120 lb or 54.54 Kilograms(Earth). 20.5 Kilograms(Mars).

Thus their combined weight is 1,435 Kilograms. (Mars)

We shall make assumption that 40 Kilograms is sufficent for the power cabling

 

and such, per arm.

Thus each arm weighs 153,755 Kilograms(Mars).

 

There are 16 arms, and thus the combined weight is 2,460,080 Kilograms(Mars)

 

(6,542,766 Kilogram(Earth))

 

The central station has a diameter of 40 Meters.

 

These arms are connected, as previously mentioned, to the Angular Mount. The

 

Mount, and supports, each have to be capable of lifting, and supporting,

 

153,755 Kilograms, even when at rest.

The most obvious solution is using the arms to support each other.

 

However, this will be done in a somewhat complicated way.

Arm 1 will be connected to Arm 2 and Arm 15. Arm 2 to Arm 1 and Arm 3, and so

 

on.

To achieve this 16 spars, with a large wheel, will be hung inside the station, equidistant from

 

the two input points.(See Diagram)

Then, each arm will have a thickness of 30 centimeters suspention cable (Of Maraging Steel), connected to the end.

 

This provides 19,503,000 Newtons, or 1,988,073.2 Kilograms of support.

The suspension cable is 97 meters in length, when fully extended. (As, at the shorter distance, the cable is supported elsewhere.)

It weighs 2,222,408.6 Grams(Earth), thus 5,910.7 Kilograms(Mars).

 

This cabling will then be connected to a large, enclosed, wheel, inside the wall of the Station, 10 meters above the angular mount pivot.

 

Inside the station, the cable is bonded, and then split into three seperate cables. Two of 5 centimeter thickness, and one of 20 centimeter thickness.

 

A Scissor Jack is suspended by the two thinner cables. The thicker cable is bonded to one side of the jack.

On the other side of the jack another 20 centimeter thick cable runs out, and has the two thinner cables recombine with it. The combined cable runs around assigned spar wheel, and then all connects to jack as described above, in reverse. (Ie as three seperate cables)

 

The Screw measures 10 meters in length, with two electric motors mounted to turn the screw. The frame's four sides are 5.7 meters in length, allowing for 4 meters worth of expansion/contraction, per side, for 8 meters total, or 16 when both screws are in use. This, however, is more than should be regularly needed.

 

Assuming the two jacks are set at 4, and the two arms are set at 120 degrees from vertical, then, contracting one jack, while expanding the other, should raise one, while lowering the other. Similarly contracting both simultanously should raise both, and expanding both should lower both.

 

The cable for 1 arm is, as stated above, 97 meters long. Of which 77 meters will be outside of the station when the arm is fully lowered and 73 when fully raised (within normal parameters).

The other 20 meters is internal, and includes half the length of the inter-screw cable.

 

The jacks consist of: (All weights in Martian)

1 Screw-10 Meters tall, 1 Meter Radius. Weight of 95,719 Kilograms.

4 Frame peices- 5.7 meters tall, 2 meters wide, 0.5 meters deep. Weight of 17,360 Kilograms each (69,440 total)

Total: 165,159 Kilograms

 

There are 2 Jacks, so the interal weight is 330,318.

In addition to the weight of the two arms and the cabling this brings the total, thus far, to 649,649.4 Kilograms, per pair and 5,197,195.2 for everything.

 

The station also contains a life supported zone for up to seven people to live reasonably comfortably. This is conservatively estimated at 100,000 Kilograms.

 

 

----

 

Finally, there exists 12 support beams of 20 meters, by 5 meters by 5 meters, weighing:

1,522,800 kilograms(m) each. 18,273,600 Total.

 

They are connected to a spiral of length 439 meters, and height 28 meters.

The pillar is 35 Meters wide, and the number of turns is 4. The spacing between the turns is 2 meters and the spiral has diameter of 5 meters.

This represents the largest involvement of raw materials:

105,051,445,714,285,614,216 Kilograms.

 

Given these last two VAST numbers, an alternate plan is therefore proposed.

 

----

 

Using the support craft at the base of the station to create a Coandă Effect field, the entire structure could be hover capable.

The main issue with this plan is the fuel and air requirements...however, if 112 meters of material are being excavated per second, then it is reasonable to assume that the fuel costs could be offset.

 

The Miner, weighs in at 5,297,195.2 Kilograms.

Each Support Craft generates 36,287 Kilograms of lift.

Ergo

146 support craft would be required.

The Support craft is approximately 10 meters wide (adjusted for seating 3 much more powerful powerplants), thus requiring an area of 1,460 meters to be operational.

 

However. If the craft is now self supporting it does not need the complex jack system, it can be simply supported by 5 Support craft. Four of these can be positioned at the end of each of the arms, in cloverleaf pattern (That is, one central one, and then one forward, and one to either side). Taking up only 30 meters of space.

 

It is important to note that the total number of Support Craft required is

69, (for the arms alone)

The number of support craft that can be deployed from the arms is 64.

thus only 5 more need to be placed.

 

However, this does not provide much safety margin, nor does it provide for the life supported area. Which would require another 3 to be placed.

 

Thus 8 are required.

 

The amount of space under the station is 1,256 square meters, which allows for up to 120 such generators to be placed.

As such a final redesign is in order:

 

Each arm will be supported by 6 Support craft. 1 at the tip, with another beyond the end of the arm, another 2 next to that, and two more behind them.

These, alone, should provide sufficent support for the while Miner.

However, an additional 30 are placed under the main station.

 

This is to allow for 126, total support craft, with a combined thrust of 4,572,162 Kilograms.

 

As such, in addition to the 2,460,080 Kilograms taken up by the arms and Plasma Drills, up to 1,000,000 Kilograms can, thus, be used for a colony settlement(though 40 meters may want to be revised upwards =P), leaving over 1,000,000 Spare Spare Kilograms of Thrust, in case of damage.

 

[/hide]

 

Long story short...We are building floating cities, instead of Reaper Miners.

 

Slightly longer story:

After going through the general plan I found it was MOSTLY workable, but there was a problem with the actual amount of material required to build the spiral thing that was gonna hold it up (WAY too much).

Anyway, I revised the plan to get rid of that, and alot of other stuff became unneccessary too.

So basically...

There are 16 arms, with 70 Plasma Drills on each. I have kinda assumed that it could process 2 Kilograms of Material (Roughly 0.7 Cubic Meters of Iron, for reference) per second.

There are over 120 Coandă Effect Support Crafts (About 10 meters each...check the opening for details) keeping the whole thing airborne.

And then there is a vast open space in the middle of all that (and one million Kilograms of spare thrust (AFTER safety considerations) that could be used for a city/of sorts.

Alternatively some sort of giant floating fortress.

 

At any rate. The thing can land without too much hassle (It only flies a few feet off the ground so forward momentum is the major worry for a crash).

 

So yeah...Please let me know how long it will take to build our first colony. (I envisage it more or less flying around the surface of Mars building permenant colonies)

[The_Mather1]

I'm not gonna go through the hassle of proofreading your math, since the only obvious flaw in your plan is the fact that the F-88s use ion thrusters (since carrying air for a jet engine into space is like bringing water up there so you can use a boat motor) and the easy fix for it is just to simply use any other jet engine instead.

 

Though I feel obligated to say, creating a monster structure like that just to mine... that would be sort of like... well building a flying city to get resources you need to build a small colony, because that's what it is.

Isn't the purpose of automated miners to make it so that you don't have to do the mining by hand? Because this would just make it so that you would have to mine many times as much as if you skipped the entire automation part and mined the resources for the colony by hand.

 

 

And yeah, for time... 3,500,000kg of materials, at a roll of 100, that's 700 minutes of labor needed just to mine the resources to afford it.

Then there's the processing of said resources which would take 700 minutes (and I'm being extremely generous here, by giving the fabricator a 5 tonnes per minute rate of processing).

Then there's the assembly, which in all fairness should have a difficulty of at least 200, meaning you would have to reach level 50 in assembly in order to be capable of doing it with a roll of 100, which would take at least one minute per 50 kg.

So yeah, 71,400 minutes, or 1.65 months of man labour, minimum.

 

 

 

 

EDIT: Oh yeah, probably should have mentioned this outside the session too, but you level up at 20 exp. And since you start at (an invisible) lvl 1, if you've got more in a skill you're lvl 2 now and can add what exp's left over to your progress towards the next level.

[archimage_a]

Building any colony is gonna take over a month of build time, so I am not overly concerned there...This is proof of concept more than the next stage in the plan.

 

Also now that I have some solid numbers to work with we can scale it down.

 

Ok then, very simple plan which also processes the atomsphere.

We get 25 Plasma Drills, in square formation. Assuming they are half a meter wide (nominally) that is 2.5 meters. If they are 1 meter wide then it is 5 meters.

We then stick a 5 meter box on top of that. One one side there is an intake fan, and on the top there is a generator. Inside the box there is a laser/series of lasers.

Air(mostly CO2) is then sucked in. The laser processes the air into mostly Oxygen (and some Carbon)

http://www.brighton.ac.uk/research/environment/casestudy3.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO_yAyqCHFg&feature=player_embedded

 

All of which comes to less than 10,000 Kilograms. (Yes?)

25*90 =2,250

1021 kg

384 kg (m)

So the realistic weight of the thing is gonna be marginal...Lets say that the rest of the weight is cargo bays?

 

We then add 4 Support craft on a suspention frame, 2 on each side (At 7,000 kg of materials each). This generates a nominal amount of lift of 120,000 Kilograms (Large redundant safety...also for carrying cargo)

 

So...28,000-30,000 kilograms of material.

 

The thing then flies along the surface of Mars scaring the surface of Mars and producing materials for processing.

 

We go mining, collect enough resources to build one of those. Then it flies out (probably piloted by us) collects some ore. Comes back, goes through the Fabricator slowly, we build another flying miner, ect, ect, ect.

 

Meanwhile we begin building our CO2 destroying Lasers, and begin storing up a supply of Oxygen.

At the same time we create a Bosch cell, kept at the constantly high temperature of 730 Degrees C, and with an Iron Catalyst.

We produce Hydrogen and feed it into the Cell. At the same time we filter the Carbon Dioxide in the air, and add that to the cell. Thus we produce Carbon and Water.

We then use the supply of Oxygen, combined with a certain amount of CO2, Carbon, Nitrogen and Water, to grow a number of plants.

Medical will need to work on Martian Variants of traditional Earth Plants (Unless they have already been provided).

 

Finally we need to produce a buffer gas (Like Nitrogen on Earth).

For this Argon will be used, since Mars is Nitrogen poor and (relatively speaking) Argon rich.

However neither gas is abundant, so we will be using K₃₉ (Regular Potassium) under bombardment of Neutrons, thus producing Ar₃₉ and Ar₄₀. Ar₃₉ is unstable, and in the concentrations discussed would be dangerous, thusly only Ar₄₀ will be deployed.

Alternatively we set the fabricator to Nitrogen and just pump that out.

 

If neither option is acceptable we have a final alternative. We use Fusion to generate Helium from readily available Hydrogen. The downside to this is that it will increase the pitch of people's voice...As well as increasing the speed of sound by a factor of 3 inside the colony.

One of the benefits of this is, however, that we can fly at 2,174 miles per hour before having to deal with the effects of flying faster than sound.

 

Then, once we have our manufactory and fleet of support miners built, we build the ArchiTech Colony Miner and we begin bringing colonists in.

Having fufilled the Carbon, Oxygen, Water, Food(Through plants) and Material needs the only real, remaining, requirement is to produce Nitrogen/Argon/Helium in sufficent quantities to prevent the humans from dying.

[Earth]

Sounds like a plan to me.

[Leiana]

Hmmm... I won't be able to do anything super useful until maybe after we start getting colonists.... Not sure what to do...

[archimage_a]

Ok, been thinking, got a mission for you Lei.

 

Its not overly complex.

We basically need someone to run a series of experimental flights, using high power electro-magnets (preferably on some string or something so they don't rip the water out of your face) to try to avoid the Solar Wind (Particles give off by the Sun that will fry the water out of your face), which is currently raining down on Mars.

 

So...Get one of our fighter craft, fabricate a 1T electro-magnet (SWITCHED OFF), about 20 meters cubed, then load it onto the ship.

You then fly into orbit, throw the electro-magnet out of the back of the craft (in such a way as it remains in orbit) then we track it, then, finally, when it is optimally positioned, we activate it and see if any appreciable drop in the solar wind from our test site.

 

The test site will be in the southern hemisphere on the opposite side of the planet...for safety.

 

 

 

We also need someone to fly back to Earth and collect some cats...but that is a less pressing concern.

[Alg]

We also need someone to fly back to Earth and collect some cats...but that is a less pressing concern.

:-s

[Earth]

Why do we need the cats, oh great and insane ruler?