Space Construction

[Lord Anubis]

Just spitballing ideas for alternate universe settings.

I've been pondering the idea of space habitats and other constructs. A simple Torus shaped station has the capacity to hold a fair sized population. Now with most sci-fi setting we assume the existence of some form of artificial gravity which could ease concerns over long duration habitation in space.

Taking Mass Effect for example.

A common metal rich asteroid would probably have orders of magnitude more material than is needed to fuel the industry to build a space station. Would it make sense for deep space industrial ships to have onboard manufacturing and refining capability. Enough to possibly bootstrap your way up to heavier construction. This would allow the quick, relatively speaking, construction with a simple infusion of minor resources to get access to a ship.

Expanding upon the example, if a bunch of Quarians managed to acquire a resource ship they could find an unclaimed asteroid and build themselves a habitat. This would allow orders of magnitude more flexibility for their situation in space. A secure construction facility, expanded agriculture, medical facilities and a population expansion. Assuming of course the Council didn't just blow it up or steal it. But assuming for the sake of the argument would it be feasible for such deep space resource exploitation ships to exist.

Deep space construction. Star systems with habitable or even terraformable planets would be the diamonds in the rough naturally. The most common systems would probably be worthless in the sense that they're full of gas giants or worlds that cannot be terraformed in any meaningful capacity to sustain a population. These would be the systems where it'd be more economical to strip mine them for usable materials. Now since a single standard asteroid belt would contain multiple quintillions of materials would it make sense for large scale stations to be built that could sustain a population over long periods.

I'm thinking for stations with a couple medium sized drydocks for basic ship repair/construction as needed. Living space with 'outside' areas like small parks and things to combat the claustrophobia that comes with space living. Helium-3 refinery to fuel the ships and industry. Storage facilities for all the normal stuff. I'm thinking along the size of a Lucrehulk sized station only without the stupid opening in the front for the droid bays. Make it a full Torus, add in two or three more bridge ways to the center sphere to solidify it and that would probably make a great station in my mind.

Also, would a space station built by an independent group belong to them or would it still be considered under their governments jurisdiction. Say an independent group, approximating Cerberus, built a self sustaining space station complex in an out of the way solar system would they have independence or would they have to turn it over to their government to run. I guess I'm picturing like someone building a version of my augmented Lucrehulk (from star wars) or something and just sticking it in orbit of a gas giant where it mines asteroids and harvests He3 to sell to passing ships or other mining groups to buy stuff it can't manufacture.

[Elheru Aran]

About your last paragraph, it comes down to enforcement. If the government has no way to tell XYZ Space Corp what to do with their space station, XYZ Space Corp really has no reason other than ethics to abide by what the government wants.

As for strip mining star systems... even for Star Wars scale universes, that's a pretty major undertaking. I'd say we'd be talking about multi-system-wide corporations or government alliances in order to have enough money to even do that. Stripping single planets at a time is a more likely undertaking, or moons.

[Jub]

As for strip mining star systems... even for Star Wars scale universes, that's a pretty major undertaking. I'd say we'd be talking about multi-system-wide corporations or government alliances in order to have enough money to even do that. Stripping single planets at a time is a more likely undertaking, or moons.

Star Wars and Trek are vastly underexploited universes. A far smaller scale society could have made a major dent when it comes to strip mining and colonizing the galaxy to an extent Lucas and Roddenberry couldn't have dreamed of.

First, any such effort will have a long travel time (unless the whole society moves from one system to the next along with their drone fleet). Second, any such effort will be automated to a degree we can hardly conceive of. Third, such an operation will increase in speed exponentially as it progresses.

The hypothetical strip mining company would send a fleet of drones and an automated refining and manufactiring ship in to mine the easy targets. These resources would go towards creating the next wave of mining and manufacturing infrastructure. As this cycle continues specialist drones are built to start extracting needed resources from harder to mine sources. Eventually the system is left barren and the last step is to build mirrors around the star, recycle any unneeded ships, and then use the star as your engine to move to the next system (Google Starlifting) you intended to consume.

[SpottedKitty]

Star Wars and Trek are vastly underexploited universes. A far smaller scale society could have made a major dent when it comes to strip mining and colonizing the galaxy to an extent Lucas and Roddenberry couldn't have dreamed of.

<nod> Isn't this pretty much what the Cardassians intended (and almost succeeded in) doing in the backstory to ST:DS9? Minus the colonising, maybe, IIRC all they wanted to grab was the local resources.

[Sky Captain]

A single star system similar to our own has resources to support trillions of people. Asteroid belt alone contains multiple orders of magnitude more metals than our civilization has mined in its entire lifetime. Gas giants, their moons and Kuiper belt has all the light elements needed. If we take into account rocky planets then available resources increase even more. In space energy is plentiful from sunlight, if you have reliable fusion reactors then even farthest reaches of Oort cloud become habitable. Metals and most of other stuff can be recycled. Only resources that a well developed space civilization would use once are fusion fuel and reaction mass for ship engines.

Unless your civilization builds fleet of Death stars to take over the Galaxy then resources of single star system should last for millions of years.

[Jub]

Yes and no. Building a Dyson Shell around your star will use a fairly large chunk, as will building the vessels to take some fraction of your, potentially exploding, population to the next star. Plus, once you're in space it pays to be greedy.

I would want humanity to take and gather up every useful bit of matter from this galaxy, and any others we can reach, and stockpile it for when no new stars are being formed. With that, humanity could live until near the end of time itself. If we can then power what remains off of black holes we could go for double that and truly live until the last black holes evaporate. Why limit ourselves to millions of years when we could have as close to eternity as we can currently imagine getting?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Building a Dyson sphere (assuming you're referring to the solid shell kind, as seen in ST, rather than the more plausible swarm of satellites/colonies) would actually take something like one or two solar masses worth of building material. That's not something you can get from just one system.

[Elheru Aran]

Using stars as *engines*... well I thought I'd seen everything. That would be something else.

[Jub]

Building a Dyson sphere (assuming you're referring to the solid shell kind, as seen in ST, rather than the more plausible swarm of satellites/colonies) would actually take something like one or two solar masses worth of building material. That's not something you can get from just one system.

Nah, who build a solid sphere around a star when the mass and strength requirements are so absurdly high? I was just typing tired and typed shell where I meant to type swarm.

[Simon_Jester]

Taking Mass Effect for example.

A common metal rich asteroid would probably have orders of magnitude more material than is needed to fuel the industry to build a space station. Would it make sense for deep space industrial ships to have onboard manufacturing and refining capability. Enough to possibly bootstrap your way up to heavier construction. This would allow the quick, relatively speaking, construction with a simple infusion of minor resources to get access to a ship.

The problem is that the asteroid is a fixed installation, very massive and difficult to move around. Since the quarians don't have much of a navy beyond the armament on the Migrant Fleet itself, the asteroid habitat would be vulnerable to raids by pirates, and would make it difficult for the quarians to "clear out" of a star system they were operating in if the Citadel races roll up with a fleet to 'politely ask' them to move.

The reason the quarians haven't got space station habitats isn't because they're too dumb to know how to build them out of raw materials, it's because they:

1) Have no lawfully owned fixed territory in which to construct such a station, and
2) Lack the military might to carve out territory in the Terminus systems, and
3) Have many people who distrust or actively hate them, and who would raid or assault them if they found a concentrated, fixed location full of quarian resources and weak defenses. They have to stay on the move to survive.

Also, would a space station built by an independent group belong to them or would it still be considered under their governments jurisdiction. Say an independent group, approximating Cerberus, built a self sustaining space station complex in an out of the way solar system would they have independence or would they have to turn it over to their government to run.

Mass Effect Citadel law seems to treat governance as a species-by-species thing; if you are a turian you are under Hierarchy jurisdiction, if you are a salarian you are under the jurisdiction of the salarian government, and so on. So whichever species operates the station 'owns' it, or has a right to assert ownership if it can enforce it.

The exceptions are out in the Terminus systems, where multispecies polities or pseudo-polities are more common precisely because Citadel law runs thin out there, and corporations or independent groups have more freedom of action. And out there we HAVE seen stations at least sort of comparable to this, such as Omega acting as a major trading hub and spaceport.