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Post by Kage2020 on Aug 6, 2004 1:59:29 GMT -5
The problem with being busy and dropping in every now and again is that you sometimes miss something... People are going to have to forgive that every now and again and have patience... <hint hint> I would agree up to a point Terra should be the only imperial world with a population of "C". Terra is still going to be subject to realistic constraints... And science dependes on the numbers, so change the numbers you change the science. Verisimilitude is a useful word to bandy around at this point. The 'feeling of truth' when you take into account all the variables and assumptions. It might not be hard science, but it's consistent. their is no way fusion reactors could deliver enough power to operate warp drives so ...cynical gets... <grin> And is the sun shining where you pulled that out of? Have you, perhaps, created a power system better than a fusion power plant? And, indeed, made a 'jump' to a parallel dimension? Hmmn... Verisimilitude. At present a fusion power plant (for me) is not capable of generating enough power to make the transition (requiring, amusingly enough, the power output of Phillip's hive for a second IIRC ), but the joys of capacitors is that you don't need to...
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Post by Dazo on Aug 6, 2004 2:10:37 GMT -5
lol oooh handbags are a swingin lol mmm I know you know their are better power sources out their, you just don't want to mention them for some reason. We have matter/anti matter reactors, quantum sigularity reactors, cold fusion reactors and of course Zpoint energy true all of which are theoretical and we have no :Devidence that this kind of tech would work but i believe you have a saying about that don't you hahaha IIRC
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Post by Kage2020 on Aug 6, 2004 2:19:47 GMT -5
<grin> I know all about those potential alternatives. Now put them into the 40k universe and you move into the realms of non-canonicity... (But glad that you took the other stuff with a pinch of salt as intended... )
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Post by ErnestBorgnine on Aug 6, 2004 6:40:14 GMT -5
Dazo, you can have all the fancy heat exchange materials you like but they dont' make air a better conductor of heat. Your limiting factor in convection is the specific heat and ambient temp of what you're dumping the heat into. [actual thermodynamicists would be welcome to pipe in here].
In practice, remember that I ran those numbers with extremely unrealistic numbers for the volume per person. If you had a more realistic number of sphereical/cubical living modules, the volume per module could be high enough to make heat dissipation realistic. Further, you could add additional purpose built spheres whose only function is to be giant 500m dia. radiators. My point is, even with unrealistic numbers we needed 23, 987 spheres, each of them half a kilometer across, to pack in a trillion people.
If you start to use realistic numbers for how much space a hiver needs (including an allowance for their support machinery and for their work area), the numbers get truly monstrous.
To use a real world (but still comically low given 40k manufacturing techniques) example, take a Seawolf class nuclear sub. It carries 134 persons and has a displacement of 7925 metric tons. Since sea water has a density of on average about 1027 kg/m^3, that gives a volume displacement of 7716 m^3, so dividing that by the crew figure we get 57.5m^3 per person. So, a (barely) believable minimum figure for the required volume of a trillion person hive would be 5.75x10E13 m^3. This is equivalent to a 47.9km diameter sphere, or to a mere 878,535 of the suggested 500m diameter spheres.
And that was with a figure on the very low side of what's possible for require volume per person.
Now, to be fair, if you use that many spheres heat dissipation is a bit less of a problem, what with the increased surface area, and besides, you might as well throw in a few tens of thousands of radiator spheres, the numbers are already so ridiculous it doesn't really matter.
We can play around with ideas for what a power plant or an enviro plant looks like in M41, but people aren't getting any smaller and BFG shows us the Imperium doesn't go in for automation when they can just use a few hundred workers instead of wasting the blessed Omnissiah's boons.
CELS' comment; I may be way off here, but... it does appear to me that Philip is talking about a trillion people spread across an entire world while ErnestBorgnine is attacking the idea of a trillion people in a single hive.
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Post by Dazo on Aug 6, 2004 6:52:47 GMT -5
Okay above is what phil wrote, does that alter the calculations you made, the spheres he and you are refereing to are i believe bio sphere's not the actual living quarters
thats bigger than my bloody house which is big enough for a family of 4
Edit: I think phillips idea was that it was a very big hive that spread out over much of the available land mass of the planet rather than necromundan termite mound structures
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Post by ErnestBorgnine on Aug 6, 2004 7:10:16 GMT -5
But your house isn't self-contained or sealed against the outside atmosphere. You need to account for the environmental systems to provide air to your house; a pro-rata portion of the water plant to provide water and sewer to your house; a pro-rata portion of the electrical plant providing power to your house; a pro-rata portion of EVERYTHING required to keep you alive, in fact, and includes your working area (unless you work from home, but except for artisans and shopowners, common hivers wouldn't). That's why I used a nuclear submarine for comparison - it was either that or the ISS. For comparison's sake, the number you gave (quote source? don't recognize it offhand) shows 120 stories and a square kilometer of area, which gives a total square footage of 120 square kilometers of area per kilomter-square footprint. So, with 75,000 people, you're packing them in with about 1,666 m^2 per person. By the way, with a 9ft average storey height, that works out to 15,000 cubic meters per person - a LOT bigger than your house. Of course, you're going to need to cover 13.8 million square kilometers of ground to get a trillion population at that density, which is slightly larger than Antartica. I'll grant CELS' point - if I've misinterpreted the intent from being a single hive to a total world population of a trillion, sorry. You still need a hell of a lot of biodomes, though.
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Post by Dazo on Aug 6, 2004 7:20:37 GMT -5
Sorry that is what phillip wrote and those are the numbers he was working from to get size/population and food.
I assume that that is not all living space as you would need walls and walkways and stuff like that
Mmm yep that sounds about right, this not so much a high rise hive as your urban sprawl hive
haha yeah kage didn't like that either
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Post by ErnestBorgnine on Aug 6, 2004 12:46:38 GMT -5
Questions about hive building logic (apologies to Philip, some of these come from core inconsistencies with the basic Hive concept)
1. Why is the central stack highest? Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot easier to build the next array in concentric circles along the ground than to suspend them in midair?
Possible reasons: for some reason, stabilizing/building on the ground of this planet is actually more complicated than building on top of the existing structures.
Possible problem with that answer: what in god's name must the support footings and interconnections for those bottom-most hives be made out of to support all those spheres above them? [of course, this is one of the objections to hives being possible at all - countergrav to the rescue?] And why/how do you build hives on the planet at all if it's unstable for some reason?
2. Why continue using the spheres after the colony has been well established?
Wouldn't it be a LOT simpler to build a tower? Stick a biosphere in the center of it, boom. A tower's going to be a lot more efficient to house a great mass of people. I can see the sprawl and gradual use of spheres happening if it occurs over a long period and growth was comparatively low, but Imperial governors control population of their worlds.
If I'm the hive design and construction crew looking to expand a burgeoning interlocked-sphere-city, I'm going to be tempted to simply enclose the existing structure and recapture all the wasted space between the existing spheres. You'd end up with something like a jello dessert, little berry bits of living spheres and biospheres floating in a solid jellylike mass of hive.
3. Why do you want a population of a trillion people on a planet? What are they there for?
A trillion people is about 150 times the current population of Earth - what do that many people do on one planet? The idea of the population being a strategic reserve is interesting, but it's also 1 trillion mouths to feed, clothe and keep suppressed. It's a trillion potential psykers to be checked, a trillion potential cultists and heretics. It is, to be blunt, a huge potential problem.
4. On a related note, the concept of "outside" needs to be carefully considered at this scale.
When we're talking about individual hives being twenty or thirty kilometers long (and a total surface coverage the size of Antarctica), how could their core industry be mining? Smelting, maybe, but mining is tricky. You can build the initial colony over a rich vein of ore, but by the time the colony gets to be twenty miles long, the ore should be played out or the miners be so far along the vein that they're actually a long distance from the edge of the hive. Rather than grow the hive and the industries that make the hive worthwhile in opposite directions, you'd expect it to be more like the Old West - ghost towns, as the whole settlement moved on to the next mine site. In other words, the proto-hive would crawl across the continent, tracking mining resources, rather than grow outwards. You'd expect a series of colonies, not a hive. Now, if there were a particularly tricky resource at the original colony site, this might not be the case (water is the obvious one), but not if hive blocks are completely self-sufficient and contained. Disconnect them and move them.
Now, in theory you could mine directly down under the hive, but this presents some obvious problems for the hive's structural supports, unless you're floating the whole bloody thing with countergrav. Actually, that's a completely lovely image - floating interconnected spheres - but it sounds more like archao- or xeno- tech than imperial construction.
I would think you'd only get a true hive on a mining world where the machinery is too expensive/complicated to move with the mines - smelting and processing, refineries, the space port. However, this would strongly imply that a large part or the greater part of the world's population shouldn't be in the hive but instead living/working at the mine sites themselves and on the transportation infrastructure bringing the resources to the processing facility.
If you're in manufacturing, a hive makes a whole lot more sense - you want your works near your spaceports, and your workers near your works. Since you can seal the living quarters against the outside, the fact the pollution from the works can eat through flesh in a heartbeat isn't an issue so there's no need to maintain separation.
Actually, Phillip has a nice idea about the biospheres of sludge - you could theoretically have an agrihive of some sort using yeast/bacteria/hydroponics, though I wonder if the techniques are efficient enough to produce a comparative advantage justifying the hive expense.
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Post by Philip on Aug 7, 2004 0:42:33 GMT -5
Hi ErnestBorgnine Thanks for your input. Your maths is good and your arguments valid: That's why my STCS:CS design is very different to what you are arguing against. From reading the post, I get the impression that you think I'm proposing housing 2.2 trillion in one block? I'm not, the hive is 60 stories high and covers the entire land mass. Your later posts and 'counter' arguments actually start to support my later revisions. I gave figures for the population in the other thread: each human has living space of a modern day flat, and the hydroponics modules are separate. As I said to Kage2020, 'you ask questions and I redesign it'. Kaga2020 had covered a lot of points you made, as from his input the design has been refined. The current hive it no more complex than a 60 story modern day block of flats, with living space of comparable volume. The Only difference it that these block are build joined together with no windows: hardly high technology. I think it would be pretty easy to vent the heat of a 60 story block of flats, a modern day air conditioned building with sealed windows can manage it, I sure with and extra 18,000 years of development humans shouldn't have a problem preforming a similar feat. As for hydroponics, drug dealers can manage that now. All your points have been covered by previous posts, if you see anything Kage2020 has missed please bring it to my attention so I can incorporate your ideas Added1. Why is the central stack highest? Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot easier to build the next array in concentric circles along the ground than to suspend them in midair? Alpha STCS:CS are like pyramids (tetrahedrons) Beta STCS:CS are millions of blocks of flats joined together covering all land mass. The Alphas are like islands in a sea of Betas. No matter which design is used, new building is added in layers. The Hive is one big building site. 2. Why continue using the spheres after the colony has been well established? To live. Even an agricultural world couldn't out produce Invictonburg. An agricultural world doesn't have enough land area to support 2.2 trillion. Also, Invictonburg has a 'insidious' atmosphere. 3. Why do you want a population of a trillion people on a planet? What are they there for? Most work in maintaining the Clan Blocks: basically farming and system control and maintenance. Should keep them busy, as this type of work has kept humans busy for thousands of years. 4.On a related note, the concept of "outside" needs to be carefully considered at this scale. Mining out side the hive serves to purposes, extracting ore, and preparing the ground for more hive. Actually, Phillip has a nice idea about the biospheres of sludge - you could theoretically have an agrihive of some sort using yeast/bacteria/hydroponics, though I wonder if the techniques are efficient enough to produce a comparative advantage justifying the hive expense. No longer sludge, as it is to thin and inefficient needed more 'volume', now genetically engineered water plants.
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Post by Philip on Aug 7, 2004 1:09:24 GMT -5
Sorry for the double post, it didn't fit!As an example:A spherical structure with d~500m sounds a bit inefficient. Assuming no wall thickness, if you pack in people perfectly, assuming an area per person of 1m diameter and 2m in height (they're not going to move much in this sample hive), that's a volume per person of 1.57m^3 per person. Your 500m dia. sphere has total area of 65,449,846 m3, so you could theoretically cram in 41,687,600 bodies in there if you stacked them in perfectly and didn't need floors. Or air, since we're didn't leave room for any. Of course, since we didn't put in floors, the ones on the bottom have 41 million x ~150 pounds of people on top of them, so they're not going to be breathing anyhow, but I digress. To digress further, without built in countergrav, I'm not sure what the heck you're going to build the support structures out of to support the weight of a trillion people, but again, I'm digressing.... Quotes cut due to 10,000 character limit Quoting myself from the other thread
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Post by Philip on Aug 7, 2004 1:34:11 GMT -5
Kage2020: Please put ErnestBorgnine's posts in the Hive thread along with my replies. Thanks. PS: and remove this little post
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Post by Dazo on Aug 7, 2004 1:39:17 GMT -5
its my understanding that terra has more than 30% coverage, the actual surface of terra has been buried under the hive, true its not all living space but it still would make for a frighteningly high population. But they seem to be coping
Thats what i said
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Post by Philip on Aug 7, 2004 2:01:22 GMT -5
its my understanding that terra has more than 30% coverage, the actual surface of terra has been buried under the hive, true its not all living space but it still would make for a frighteningly high population. But they seem to be coping I was just using current modern day Earth as an example. I know. The air-conditioning can be handled by modern day systems at 60 stories, even 120 stories no problems. Canary Wharf has two huge jet engines for air-conditioning. At 240 stories it may be a bit of a stretch but we are talking sci-fi, and I'm sure engine tech would advance.
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Post by Philip on Aug 7, 2004 2:02:36 GMT -5
You do realise that you can delete your own posts don't you and modify them if you want Yes, It was a heads up for Kage2020 to remove it after moving the other posts.
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Post by Dazo on Aug 7, 2004 2:09:49 GMT -5
Yep sorry i misunderstood what you had wrote Of course the atmosphere of Invictonburg is nasty so you would need atmopheric processors as well, it would'nt be a case of a direct exchange with the outside atmosphere which is what they do today, and they would need to be rather large i'm thinking
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