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Wow! Like you, I have a fascination with SciFi, and I'm actually writing a SciFi novel!

It's great to see others so inspired with the genre.

And certainly everything that's been happening lately in rocket science and astronomy certainly seems more and more like we are increasingly living in a SciFi story!

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But yes, I was just curious: is this going to be your first short story?

Do you happen to have any favorite authors in the SciFi genre (and outside of it)?

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ALSO...

in terms of your questions above, I was noticing that many of them seem to overlap with ideas explored in this amazing youtube channel by Isaac Arthur.

I think all aspiring SciFi writers will gain a lot of insights into the possibilities (mostly according to known laws of physics) about the future.

So that channel has helped me a lot in shaping out some of my own SciFi ideas.

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ALSO... just to address one of your questions above... (since you asked!)...

For the price per KG to LEO, that's a pretty intense specific and intricate detail to put into a short story.

Of course, for your story to work well, you don't actually need to have any highly intricate facts/figures measured out that specifically.

A lot of great SciFi stories and novels don't.

BUT... then again, a lot of great SciFi stories and novels do!

I am thinking of Andy Weir's amazing SciFi novel "The Martian", and he certainly put a lot of mathematical and intensely intricate figures like that in his novel, and he made it work well!

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But keep in mind...

If you do decide to put highly specific and intricate figures in your story, and see if that works... then you're going to increase the research levels of your workload, and ideally, it would be nice if you could talk with someone who knows a lot about it, here in subreddits like this one.

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NOTE: one solution for you in terms of dealing with an intricately accurate SciFi story, is to simply write a lot of the story first...

Then after that, you do your research.

(And then you do a lot of rewriting of your story!)

So for example, for the KG to LEO, you just pick a semi-educated number yourself (without researching it initially), and then when the story's done you can really pin it down more accurately.

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I mention that because sometimes even great authors admit they can get carried away with too much research at the beginning... neglecting the story/characters/plot development, which of course are the most important elements of the story!

But then again... some authors say they become greatly inspired when immersing themselves into research... and the research actually suggests story and character ideas...

So I guess it's a balance, and also knowing what is your own best way of working...

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NEXT...

I noticed based upon all your questions, that's quite a vast world/universe you are building there!

And that's a great thing! It means you're greatly inspired by this story you want to tell, and so that's a good sign that your story is going to be a good one.

BUT... for a short story, that might be a lot of subplots and locations. Maybe too many?

If all of those locations figure as key scenes in your story, intricately described (I mean you've got Moon bases, Mars bases, and space stations going on here!) then that's certainly a lot of topics to cover in a short story.

To me, it seems that your world building is approaching the level of an actual SciFi novel, rather than just a short story.

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So one way to handle this... might be for you to write a novel instead!

(NOTE: if you want to make a living as a writer ultimately, then you'll have to do it with full length novels, rather than short stories anyways. Novels are where the money is! There are some exceptions to that rule... but not many.)

But ya, in your novel, you could develop a lead character, that has adventures or journeys from Earth, to the moon, to Mars, and beyond.

Of course your character will need to be driven by something... a desire to find something... or to avert a disaster, or whatever...

Initially your main character might not even consciously know he or she is being driven to achieve something, and avert something... but gradually comes to realize it... or maybe your character knows right from the beginning and is one a determined quest and mission...

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NOTE: Just because I'm of the opinion that you might have too much territory to cover in a short story, and you may want to consider an actual novel instead...

doesn't mean I'm right!

There are indeed some short stories that have a huge scope of the Universe as the background landscape, and a character races through a vast universe... or through a vast time-scape...

and it's achieved all in one compact nice short story!

So... ultimately... don't listen to me if you disagree with any of my tips!

(I'm just throwing tips and ideas at you because you asked!)

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EDIT: FINALLY...

I would highly HIGHLY recommend this book to you, since you seem very serious about writing this story of yours:

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Plot and Structure (by James Scott Bell).

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NOTE: as a writer, you don't have to agree with everything he says. (In fact you shouldn't!)

BUT, if you read this book, then it will give you a strong edge, to be able to push a "good story" or "good novel" into becoming "a GREAT story" or "GREAT novel"!

Reading this book, could be the edge you need to become a best selling author!

It will give you great insights into the psychology of your readers, and w
hat compels them to become obsessed by your story, making them not want to stop reading... and keep turning those pages late into the night!

Hi u/makealldigital, some good questions.

> are the ppl here more friendly and good to those around them? and what % of them are?

Community cohesion and mutual support will be emphasised on Mars. One neighbour might maintain the air scrubbers another manages food production, plenty of reasons to keep on the right side of people. You could almost think of it as a wartime spirit, except they are fighting the environment. Mars Moto: "We're in this together". If I had to prognosticate the prevalence of this amity attitude, I'd say somewhere around 90%.

> are the regulations for the public good or against the welfare of the ppl in the society?

Regulations will definitely be for the public good. They face so many challenges, anything which hazards individual or group health such as smoking would be akin to terrorism. Given the conditions health will be a pressing issue on Mars, so some personal freedoms might take a hit.

> do the ppl value science & engineering more than other places, and thus are more well-educated in the sciences?

Absolutely, probably ace engineers will comprise the largest proportion of society. Building and maintaining Mars infrastructure will demand a lot of talented people, designers, roboticists, developers etc, generally anyone with depth and breadth of technical experience. Less than 50% will be Scientists and explorers, then a few highly capable clinicians.

> do the ppl care about innovation, and are startup-focused than other places?

Not so much care as demand innovation. When the equipment supplied by Earth starts to fail due to unforeseen difficulties they will have to get really creative to solve existential issues. Likely this will become enshrined as part of Mars culture.

> what separates the ppl here from other places?

Generally Mars colonists will be more self reliant, amicable, supportive and optimistic due to greater influence over affairs. Mars colony will essentially be self governed as soon as it's established, if there's an issue they won't wait for a committee on Earth to resolve it (given coms lag to Earth and their non-involvement/direct experience with issues at hand).

Hope that's some help and logical, I provide more detail in my book.

Not directly related to SpaceX, but pretty exciting news, it could really open up the solar system (thus makes Mars colonization easier, so not totally unrelated to SpaceX ;-) ). This drive is similar in effect to EMDrive, but is much less controversial and has much better theoretical foundation, it's also less well-known. To see a layman's explanation of this drive, see: https://boingboing.net/2014/11/24/the-quest-for-a-reactionless-s.html, there's also a book: Making Starships and Stargates: The Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes

NIAC is NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, it's a program to provide small amount of funding for TRL 1 breakthrough technologies, this is the best part of NASA IMHO, really what NASA should be doing.

Suggested ways to help:

• Tweet @AmazonStudios, @PrimeVideo, and @JeffBezos ^([I know]) about the show using the hashtag #SaveTheExpanse.
  
  
• Take part in the Tweetstorm at 19:30UTC (12:30PM Pacific) - use #CantStopTheExpanse while a plane flies over Amazon Studios trailing a "#SaveTheExpanse" banner.
  
• Sign the Change.org petition - nearly 65,000 signatures strong as of writing! ^([Brooklyn99 was saved with 60,000 - keep pushing!]).
  
• Submit a content request to Amazon.
  
• Pre-order Season 3 on Blu-Ray, binge-watch on Prime Video, or buy the books to show Amazon in the only terms they understand how much interest there is in this franchise.
  
• Tell the production company, Alcon, why the show matters to you.

I thank you very much for saying so.

I know I posted this yesterday, so most people who were going to see this thread already have, but I have this design for sale on a couple different T-Shirts:

Skinny T

Regular T

And I promise the design is in much higher fidelity than the JPEG that I posted here, so it looks pretty darn good all blown up on a shirt.

I didn't think it was kosher to put links to that kind of thing here, so I was content with just showing the pic. But I saw a thread today with a link to a RedBubble account.¯\ (ツ)/¯

I think rover is the wrong term here.

Autonomous Mars tractor would be more accurate description of what I'm thinking of.

Only needs to do a few jobs really well, can be "over built" by space standards spending mass fraction instead of design time. And it only needs to last 2 years until a mechanic comes to replace it's consumables like seals and any fluids, burnt out computers, whatever.

Otherwise it's just a box with wheels with standard tractor attachments. No fancy body or seats at all. Shovel on the front and a drill on the back. Future missions could bring more attachments, trailers for it to tractor, ect.

A KISS farmers tool made space worthy, not a NASA rover made farm worthy, minimum number of moving parts necessary. Possibly even remove the suspension entirely and make it a skid loader. Very few things are more simple to design and build than an electric skid loader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid-steer_loader

Two foot think solid rubber tires are going to take a LONG time to degrade even on Mars. BFS means you can bring those stupid heavy tires. They are worth the effort since you can use them for years if not decades.

https://www.amazon.com/Summit-Proof-steer-Tires-Bobcat/dp/B00DU4VFVG

Though might want to work with NASA's rubber experts to make sure out-gassing isn't a problem or some other edge case issues. Point still stands if you aren't trying to cut corners on mass you can KISS your way out of most the problems that have plagued rovers in the past.

I often recommend "Mistakes were made, but not by me". It's a wonderful discussion of cognitive dissonance and how and why this could easily be true.

> Development history of any particular rocket, covering every choice made from conception to completion, could literally be a whole book. Something I've seriously considered doing eventually, since to my knowledge nobody has ever compiled the complete development history and rationale of any modern rocket (or most historical ones) in a single place

T.A. Heppenheimer wrote two books on the Space Shuttle that might meet your criteria.

The first, 'The Space Shuttle Decision', covers the period 1965 -1972, and goes into great detail on why the STS system ended up as it did (the rationale). It is also handily available on-line:

https://space.nss.org/the-space-shuttle-decision-by-t-a-heppenheimer/

The second, 'Development of the Space Shuttle', covers the period from 1972 to the first flight in 1981, during which the Shuttle design produced in the first book was built. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1588340090/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4

Both are well worth a read if you're interested in the Shuttle.

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Your question leads to another: I wonder whether SpaceX have an active historian(s), to grab data and hardware that might be of interest in the future? I somehow doubt it, and that's a shame given their potential to change worlds.

Thanks for the input!

So something like this guy? Price is certainly right!

https://www.amazon.com/NooElec-NESDR-Mini-Compatible-Packages/dp/B009U7WZCA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538540479&sr=8-1&keywords=nooelec+rtlsdr+dongle

I have a laptop PC I could bring.

You might need academic access for this article, but it's also in Space Travel and Culture: highly recommended for anyone interested in sociological aspects of "Space".

>The aims of space archaeology are to illuminate the interaction of technology and human behaviour with a view to understanding a particular technical assemblage on and off Earth, and to promote the inclusion of heritage planning in future space missions such as orbital debris removal and planetary exploration, both of which may cause damage to culturally significant sites and spacecraft.

Not your question, but in one book I read, the Japanese used a base on the dark side of the moon to launch anti-satellite projectiles. I guess it might be more accurate to say anti-space-station, because the target was a very large manned station.

For asteroid defense, your concept would make sense, but just like my fictional reference, the projectile would need small rockets and telemetry (for course correction). You can't just fire a gun and hit something. If you had an advanced "maglev" system, that could be viable, but I picture early space guns as something that would crush any functional equipment in the projectile.

No progress in manned spaceflight? I get it, the shuttle was a waste of money and time...BUT... it helped build the ISS. Plus, shuttle flights turned NASA's focus back onto human and medical research. We had some work done during the Apollo Program but really STS did A LOT of human research. Also you missed skylab, MIR, and ASTP.

Edit: also I recommend David Baker's "History of Manned Spaceflight". It's a bit hard to find as its not super well known and its from the 80s so there is some out of date information but not much. The book is pretty much the penultimate spaceflight history book (for the US but there is a little bit of Soviet space. It was hard to gain access cause a lot of information about the Russian program was still secret, even after Apollo Soyuz.) Its a massive book. A literal goldmine. https://www.amazon.com/History-Manned-Space-Flight/dp/051754377X

I have some in a three ring binder in sleeves like this. They fall out easily, though, so you have to be careful.

A lot was studied for Shuttle (Developing an Icon dedicates a long chapter to it), but AFAIK transpiration cooling wasn't seriously considered.

Lockheed even warned NASA about the problems of ceramic heat tiles, but they couldn't come up with any better proposal quickly enough (read: over a 15 years period), and in the end there was no ready, usable alternative.

To my understanding, transpiration cooling shares some of same (dis-)advantages as regular epoxy heat shields: You get a hot expanding gas zone of varying thickness from the evaporating coolant liquid/epoxy, which is great – unless you're sitting in an airplane that needs the lift of its wings to maintain its course and attitude, and not flip over and crash.

BFS/ITS doesn't care, since it's not a space plane and doesn't need any lift, but for the manned space projects of the time it would've been useless – X-15, X-20, HL series, X-23, X-24, and all the other projects that culminated in Shuttle needed to be planes to fit Air Force requirements, and for Mercury/Gemini/Apollo it offered no improvement over epoxy shields.

This clipping is from the 2013 book called "Mars Direct: Space Exploration, the Red Planet, and the Human Future". I found it worth a read, especially as a follow-up to "The case for Mars".

I just use Scotch indoor mounting tape and attach them straight to a wall. Works very well on most of my patches, although a few stubborn ones from my SpaceX patch collection keep falling off every few weeks or months. If they keep falling, just add more tape to cover a greater percentage of the backing surface area. Other non-SpaceX patches don't seem to fall off as easily, it's something about the iron-on backing material SpaceX uses which doesn't like adhering well to the tape.

Thanks! I am reading "Ignition!" by John D. Clark, but am not too far into it. I will look for him. https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2

Mars Direct and these calculations both seem to agree that 80 - 85% of the mass of the Mars return vehicle will be propellant, assuming a direct entry into Earth's atmosphere.