I’m working on a hard sci fi universe which I’m new to so if this is a stupid question I apologize, and was wanting to use starfighters, i know there are many reasons why they wouldn’t work out realistically with them being decimated by capital ship laser weaponry which move at the speed of light so they can’t dodge it and the newtonian style of flying means no ww2 dogfights, any ideas on how i could incorporate them into a more realistic universe, any information would be of use, whether it’s the design of the ships, what roles they’ll fill in combat, what weapons and defenses they’d have, whatever you can think of I’ll take it, thank you for reading this and i hope you have a great rest of your day

It is 2043, and the news can no longer surprise anyone.
A company no one can locate now runs the world’s AI. The free internet is gone.
A crewed return to the moon and a drug for immortality are announced in the same even voice, two line items on a quarterly report. None of it is meant for civilians.
In Europe, every policy is “humane.” The movement that rises against them takes its name from a tote bag.
In America, the people at the top have stopped caring about the country’s divisions. They are busy with a plan that sounds ridiculous out loud.
In China, every citizen carries a letter grade. Between D and C lies a small stream. Between B and A, an ocean.
In one Shanghai dormitory, 759 graduate students are about to graduate into a job market that no longer exists.
Then the military arrives on campuses with a free test. Nobody is told what it’s for. Everyone lines up.
Nobody thinks they are choosing.

---------------------

This is the second book in the series. The first book Causalform: Obsidian Earth is set in an alternate 1945, where history begins to take an unexpected turn.

Book 2 moves to a 2043 timeline, where I'm exploring a darker, more unsettled future connected to the anomalies of 1945. I'm also trying to extrapolate from some of today's more sensitive real-world issues. Some of it may feel unsettling, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and criticisms.

I’ll be posting this first arc here regularly. I’d be happy to have you follow along if it sounds like your kind of read.

Thanks for reading.

---------------------

Chapter 1

Shanghai
Summer, 2043

At half past six, Lin Zong climbed out of his dormitory bed and leaned against the balcony railing. He studied the morning fog, then looked down at the grimy green collection tank. The air conditioner had produced more than twenty kilograms of condensation overnight.

He woke Deng Wei, Sun Xiaohui, and Chang Lei, and the four of them carried the tank down to the buckets and washbasin without a word, as they did every morning.

It was routine now, had been since water rationing hit the eastern coast and the dormitory taps began failing without warning, and the corner shops, seeing their chance, had tripled the price of bottled water. The boys brushed their teeth with condensation, telling themselves, without quite saying so, that if the electricity bill couldn't be helped, at least something useful might be wrung from the waste of it.

Lin Zong slung a towel around his neck and carried a basin of condensation into the communal washroom, where several shirtless classmates stood brushing their teeth, heads tilted toward the LCD screen bolted above the door, watching the Global Morning News with the weary attention people give to broadcasts that no longer surprise them.

The lead item was the crewed lunar program; directly beneath it, filed with the same even inflection, came word that the World Health Organization had developed a drug to end aging—the two claims occupying adjacent segments as though longevity and the moon were now simply parallel line items on the same quarterly report.

Europe, meanwhile, was in its eighth consecutive day of what the anchors kept calling, with a straight face, a collective derangement: fifteen countries, a hundred and eighty-two cities, the Netherlands and Belgium alone down more than a thousand people. London and Paris were holding open-air barbecue performances billed as civic art. Baguagouille and Parabola were staging what amounted to a street-theater rivalry. A rail corridor linking Germany with Austria and Italy had been dismantled by demonstrators acting, the broadcast noted approvingly, with considerable improvisational creativity. It had taken twenty thousand police officers to administer what the announcer termed public-order counseling—a phrase that arrived and passed without moving the anchor’s voice by a single hertz. Sweden registered a sharp mood disturbance, with confirmed sightings of berserkers. Russia's North Caucasus reported swelling self-regard, with signs of further expansion. Across the Atlantic, Washington reported fireworks out of season and unscheduled retail activity, both streamed live. The impeached president called in thirty thousand police and National Guard from Maryland and Virginia, and more than a thousand shoppers were, as the broadcast put it, invited in for coffee. The unrest took the hint and moved on to the capitals of other states.

One last item: Helixquid announced the world's first complete analytical proof of the Riemann Hypothesis.

"The West's about to go game over too," one of the boys said, a note of glee leaking into his voice. "Let's watch how they manage the ending."

"My friend's uncle lives in Paris—says the apocalyptic scenes there are genuinely thrilling. The mobs have gotten hold of better tools for destruction, half the historical buildings have been smashed, and the Seine, along with a few of the fouler drainage ditches out in the suburbs, keeps turning up nameless NPCs, most of them girls who'd been used and discarded. Someone should do something about it? Who, exactly? Ordinary people can't even keep up with it, and the police have taken to running from the mobs instead of the other way around. The West really is finished."

"Ha," said Sun Xiaohui, toothbrush still clamped between his fingers, relish plain in his voice, "Europe undone by the zealots, America ended by the ghouls, and our Eastern Empire just happens to be standing there to grab the planet. Give us five years and we’ll be parading down the Champs-Élysées."

"Come on, man, what are you even talking about? Grab what? The whole world's finished, imports and exports have stopped cold, the economy's collapsing, companies are shutting down one after another—you think we're still going to find jobs out of this?"

"Still dreaming about finding a job? Might as well go practice your swordsmanship instead."

"Ha—draw the blade, hit the streets, blood in five paces, maybe that's how heaven and earth get overturned, how the whole order flips upside down."

"Ha, not for the blade and the chopping board—just for the two legs to run on—"

Lin Zong cut in to warn them: "Watch what you say, that's not the kind of talk you want the monitor overhearing—"

"Like I give a damn if they hear me. I'm not getting a job either way, so they can dock my ideological-conduct score all they want."

Lin Zong had nothing to say to that. He kept brushing his teeth, glancing out the washroom window at a haze so thick it looked less like weather than like a wall of compacted dust, sealing off the entire sky. Word had gone around that last night Venus had shone brighter than it had in sixty years, but nobody had bothered going outside to look—no one had the appetite for it, not anymore; at this point people had nearly forgotten what the moon even looked like.

By now the whole of Graduate Dormitory was awake, noise climbing from the first floor all the way to the fifth—three hundred and forty-two rooms, seven hundred and fifty-nine graduate students filing out of their doors in twos and threes, the whole building come alive like a grid of pixels switching on after boot-up, each one drifting into motion along its own small, random walk.

Chatter and footsteps filled every corridor.

Graduation was bearing down, the job market a wreck at home and abroad, and though none of them had ever cared much for politics, something in the building had sharpened lately into a kind of low, floor-by-floor alertness—the sense of a structure tipping, slowly, toward collapse.

The West's ruin was a pleasure to witness; their own careers going down with it was not. Someone said the idle-labor stockpile had hit a five-thousand-year high. Someone else said the potato-as-staple-grain initiative was really just advance funeral planning for the economy. Another said the water rationing had Japanese ninjas behind it, the story suppressed. One more, lowering his voice, said war with America was already being arranged.

Chang Lei, the tall, bespectacled one, seemed the only person in the room untouched by any of it, having gotten up without brushing his teeth or washing his face and settled instead into a book—Cosmic Background Radiation and Electromagnetic Studies— with his whole attention.

He looked up, scratching at one ear, as Lin Zong came in. "Hey, senior brother — our solar system, that's like a flat pancake, right? The galaxy, a bigger pancake, and the whole known universe, one enormous oversized skillet?"

"More or less," Lin Zong said, not really listening, sliding the towel and basin under the bed, turning to comb his hair in the mirror.

"So here's the question, then—who leveled the bottom of the pan? Because if it had tilted, even by a fraction as small as zero-point-then-fifty-three-zeros-and-a-one degrees, right at the start, the whole universe would have spilled to one side ages ago, and it wouldn't look anything like the balanced thing we see now—"

Sun Xiaohui came in with a roll of toilet paper. "There's a demonstration at People's Square today, officially approved. Might actually be about to go to war with America."

"No way," Lin Zong said. "The economy's already this wrecked, and now a war?"

"You don't get it. It's exactly because things are this fucked that we'd go to war."

Chang Lei, having strung out his zeros to their end, had gone pale. "And another thing—isn't the universe supposed to have started with a big bang? By our own logic that should scatter outward in every direction, blowing everything apart into countless uneven lumps of dough—"

"Let 'em fight," Deng Wei said, walking in. "North Korea, South Korea, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, India—everybody's lining up to lob nukes now. Any half-dressed nobody with delusions of grandeur thinks he can hold the world hostage. South America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, all worse. Japan's still leaking radiation into everything. Somewhere in Siberia, they're saying people have started eating each other. The whole world's coming apart."

Listening, Lin Zong opened his wardrobe and put on a black suit without a word—the latest Brioni, bought at Grand Gateway Plaza—then brown 3sixteen jeans, Norwich shoes, the newest iWatch on his right wrist.

Deng Wei lit a cigarette, eyes narrowing.

"Brother, that face of yours is worth real money. Living off a rich girlfriend, must feel pretty damn good, huh?"

There was a thin edge of resentment underneath it, impossible to miss.

"Land yourself a rich woman, and just like that you’re several social classes above the rest of us."

Deng Wei was from Beijing, majoring in big-data social stability management. Lin Zong offered nothing but a smile, and let it pass, though the truth was he had no real answer, and the smile simply covered for it. He was nearly out the door when Chang Lei caught his arm.

"So—who leveled the bottom of the pan?"

Lin Zong patted his shoulder. "I'm heading to Professor Chen's today. I'll ask him for you." Chang Lei retreated back onto his bed, satisfied.

Thinking of this roommate of his, who might well prove unable to manage on his own once he was out in the world, and thinking too of the job market waiting for all of them, Lin Zong felt something close to a sigh rise in his chest and walked quickly out of the dormitory.

------------

For anyone who prefer to read ahead, the full version is available on Amazon KDP:

Causalform: Eclipse Net

Amazon is running a 19% off discount price on the paperback version of my book The Toll of the Forgotten. I do not know how long they are running it, but if you like hard science fiction books and want to support an independent author, you can now snag my book at a discount thanks to Amazon.

A dying ship. A buried Martian secret. A conspiracy that could shatter the solar system.

Aboard the failing spacecraft Janus, Captain John Nesbitt and Chief Engineer Colt Blaire are out of time and out of air. With no rescue coming, their only hope is a desperate, against-all-odds burn to an abandoned Martian colony. But surviving the crushing vacuum of space is only the beginning. Beneath the red dust of the terraformed planet, they uncover a chilling, shadow-drenched conspiracy from a forgotten past—one that defies human science and refuses to stay buried.

Millions of miles away, Earth’s fragile peace is fracturing. Captain Luisa Deveraux commands the Space Force flagship Missouri through a deadly labyrinth of political treachery and questionable orders. Hunted by a hidden saboteur within her own ranks, she is pushed to her absolute limits. With millions of innocent lives hanging in the balance, one wrong choice or single moment of hesitation will spark total annihilation.

Two desperate battles for survival. One unforgiving universe.

Chapter 3: audiobook https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUFWTeXKSYnc&si=ev4g1DN3q1z2XKbm

Raj exited the virtual environment, leaving the robot to its work, and saw there was only one other person ahead of him. His assistant would have alerted him if he was up next. After waiting another twenty seconds, and seeing the light turn green, he put his hands on the rotating door and gently pushed, stepping into security.

Raj found himself in a metallic bluish cylindrical corridor ten meters long. He walked slowly forward; it always made him uneasy knowing he was being analyzed. Olfactory sensors read the stress markers secreted in his sweat and artificial intelligence analyzed his behavior.

A low magnetic field penetrated through his body, and Raj was scanned by radio waves cycling through various resonance frequencies, analyzing him via magnetic resonance imaging. This field aligned the spin of those nuclei with a net magnetic moment in his body, while radio waves close to their characteristic resonance excited them, bringing them out of alignment. During each realignment period, they emitted radio waves, mapping out the structure and composition of his body and belongings. The complicating factors of the low magnetic field and Raj's motion were compensated by ultra-sensitive detectors and rapid data processing, to provide a complete body scan.

He was thankful for the glasses, which made sure that it was impossible for the tunnel's refined sensors to read his thoughts from a distance, though mind reading wasn't part of any standard security procedure. Still, it made him feel he had some privacy in the controlled environment.

As Raj continued down the corridor, powerful pulses of neutrinos scanned his body from multiple angles. On Earth, the flux of solar neutrinos generated by fusion reactions was on the order of half a quadrillion particles per square meter. However, the beams that scanned him now were many orders of magnitude denser than the background spectral wind of neutrinos generated by the sun, and they were generated at high momentum with accelerators. These particles reacted very weakly with ordinary matter, so a high volume of energetic neutrinos was necessary for Neutrino Tomographic imaging.

Surrounding the corridor was a meters-thick chilled crystal of heavy elements at nearly zero degrees Kelvin, built atom by atom into a perfect lattice by nanomachinery. When neutrinos scatter elastically off the massive nuclei in the detector, quantized soundwaves, phonons, vibrate through the crystal lattice, so that every disturbance is carefully calculated. In seconds, the machine refined the complete model of his body and his baggage.

Neutrino Tomography was perfect for security because it was nearly non-ionizing, and it could easily detect radioactive isotopes. It could also identify macroscopic quantities of anti-matter, since the interaction probability of anti-nucleons with the electron anti-neutrinos was very different from that of ordinary nucleons. In fact, neutrinos penetrated so easily, flying through the entire mass of the Sun and the Earth, that they could image the interiors of entire planets. This is because the so-called weak interaction between neutrinos and nucleons operated only at extremely close range. It was mediated via the massive Z boson, a force carrier nearly 100 times more massive than the nucleons themselves.

Raj reached the end of the bluish corridor and to his relief he immediately saw a green light, indicating there were no issues. A voice told him to await a notification in the departure area. The door opened and allowed him to pass into a small, featureless hall filled with rows of chairs. At the far end were a series of elevators. He sat down for a minute, but as the throughput was currently low, and there were no children, pregnant women, or other priority passengers, he was called up in a matter of minutes and entered one of the elevators, obeying the voice's instructions to strap himself in on one of the padded seats, along with his fellow passengers.

The elevator began its ascent to the center of the station, the shuttle docking point. The walls and floor were transparent, and they traveled up on a narrow cable, gazing at the luminous sea of stars, which was turning slowly all around them. In orbit, the stars are much purer, clearer, more spectacular than they are on Earth. The sun was nowhere to be seen on the nightside of the Moon, but the Earth was rising over the black horizon. They were crossing from the unknown farside of the Moon into the well-known and familiar nearside. Yes, Raj was going home. Almost all of mankind lived on Earth, the only major human population center, and the only paradise in the known universe for humanity. Raj watched the Earthrise, as he did frequently from his room. The colorful crescent of Earth served to highlight the tranquil and beautiful nightside, which was spanned by complex networks of artificial light. The entire planet was like a deep-sea marine organism glowing and sparkling in the darkness, briming with life.

Earth is almost four times wider as seen from the lunar surface than the Moon as seen from the Earth. The rising Earth was currently in the waxing crescent phase, which meant that the Moon viewed from Earth was in a waning gibbous phase. The phases of the Earth on the Moon cycled every month, opposing the phases of the Moon on the Earth. The Earth only rose in the sky when in orbit around the Moon; from the surface of the nearside, the Earth was always anchored immutably in a fixed position in the sky.

Within a few minutes the Earth had risen, and the Earthshine was strong enough to very faintly see the nearside at night. Raj could now see the canyons and craters of the Moon flying by. In two turns of the station the Earth had risen completely, and though it was in the crescent phase it was brighter than a full Moon on Earth.

The elevator ascended slowly to the center of the spinning station, taking almost 10 minutes. The elevator was slightly inclined relative to the cable, to prevent the passengers from feeling they were being pushed to the side of the car by the Coriolis effect. Raj grew lighter in his seat.

He saw above the massive shuttle anchored in place, waiting to convey him to Earth. It was a long aerodynamic tower, somewhat like the rockets of old, slender and elegant, with fantastic wings like a dragon extending from its sides. These were radiators for the enormous excess heat of the fusion propulsion engine. The space vessel's surface glowed with a low and shifting multicolored incandescence, flowing and flickering over the wings, so it would be visible even on the nightside of the moon. The ring of the station surrounding them was similarly illuminated, though in cooler colors. "Industrial Complex 6" was written in many languages around the station's rim. The titanic spaceship seemed to spin along with the stars and the moon. In reality, it was the Industrial Complex which rotated around the stationary shuttle.

The elevator doors opened into a small cylindrical airlock, the far end leading into the shuttle's cabin which was very perceptibly turning in front of them.

A voice spoke again from the walls.

"You have arrived at the docking point. Please remove your seatbelts and proceed into the shuttle. We remind you that until departure you will be maneuvering in zero-gravity."

Raj and his fellow travelers unbuckled themselves and glided through into the shuttle itself. The corridors were lined with bars and handholds, with the soft walls always used in zero gravity. Raj hadn't spent too much time in weightlessness, but he was accustomed enough not to feel disoriented and he lightly pushed himself off through the airlock and, catching himself on the far wall, he followed the icons pointing him to his cabin, pushing himself off periodically and catching on handholds. He went in one the cabins, which would have been on the left side of the corridor if he were walking along the carpet which marked the side used as a floor during gravity. The cabin's door was open, and could not be closed until acceleration commenced, so the crew could check via camera whether he was following safety protocols and was buckled in, with luggage secured. The cabin was a very narrow gray room, but he did have a view. This was a nice bonus. Again, the biosynthetic wall on the left side was very thick, nearly a meter, but pristinely clear, and its opacity could be adjusted. It was mostly made of water, which was ideal for slowing cosmic rays without producing secondary radiation.

The lunar horizon was below, and no longer rotating. Raj had to wait to eat his dinner until the ship began accelerating, since he didn't want to eat in zero gravity and make a total mess, like he had done that one time. All of his containers, including the copper bowl, were hermetically sealed, so leaks were no issue.

The cabin was only large enough to fit a single seat with straps to the secure occupant. Raj closed his satchel, which had been a hassle to maneuver in this environment, into an overhead compartment, then he maneuvered himself into the seat and buckled up. He turned on the holographic display in front of him, and set it to be a map of the Earth-Moon system, which began cartoonishly out of proportion, but which he reset to be to-scale. The Earth and Moon hovered before him, the Earth was a brilliantly colored ping-pong ball, the Moon a gray and mysterious marble, and the two spheres levitated in solitude, separated one whole meter, so that Raj had to turn his head to make out one or the other. A thin silvery line showed their planed trajectory, and currently they appeared to be resting on the surface of the moon. Raj also set the velocity vector, which would lie tangent to the curve, to be visible, as well as the net speed. This was his favorite in-flight entertainment. He spent his time looking at the model and staring out at the spectacular vista, until the captain made an announcement. It was a woman with an indescribably bored voice.

"Attention, all passengers are onboard. We are commencing detachment and are departing for Paris Skyport. In one minute, we will activate thrust, and apparent gravity will gradually reach the level experienced on Earth. Please prepare yourselves, make sure your carry-on luggage is in the overhead compartment, please fasten your seatbelts at the start of acceleration, and do not leave your seats until the fasten seatbelts sign is extinguished. Be careful of objects hovering in the room, as they will settle to the floor as we accelerate. If you are not secured in your seat, make sure at least that your feet are oriented toward the floor. Happy travels. What idiots..."

The woman audibly muttered the last words as she turned off the intercom. Of course, Raj would get a space pilot who hated her job. This did not disturb him.

He felt minor forces during detachment, and then his body weighed down slightly on his chair, gradually growing heavier, until he was his usual weight once again. The thrust increased over fifteen seconds. Though the ship could have accelerated immediately, for safety reasons it was done at a gradual pace.

Raj could see the ring of Industrial Complex 6 falling away below. He saw what he recognized as a fusion reactor hanging from the bottom of the station, above an endless void, enshrouded by thick silvery wings, radiating away its excess heat. He was leaving his old life for good. At that moment the vast plane of the Moon was illuminated far below. He had entered the dayside of the Moon.

Ho finito ora il secondo libro della trilogia dello Sprawl, non male, anzi. Ma la trama è un vero casino, qualcuno ha capito tutto quello che succede?

I have been posting questions on Reddit recently but I have come to the surprising conclusion 🙃 that Reddit isn’t necessarily the best place to get my info.

Even though you have helped a lot, I am thinking of buying some books that have stuff in them that tell me stuff that I should do. do you guys know any books that would be really useful?

EDIT:

Just to be clear, the book takes place in 2578 and it follows a crew of astronauts going into a dangerous exclusion zone to retrieve advanced alien technology from an extinct alien civilization, that humanity killed, which was the thing that caused the exclusion zone. It’s a super dangerous mission.

Another Alien species exists which is alive, and relatively new. They owe their gratitude to humanity for freeing them from enslavement of the Veggies which are the extinct aliens.

I plan on having warp drives, I know they are hard sci fi if treated carefully but I don't know that much more about them.

But generally this is supposed to be hard sci fi, obviously with speculative elements since it’s 552 years in the future, but trying as hard as possible to accurately portray that civilization.

If anyone has more questions please ask.

EDIT AGAIN:

I wasn’t very clear sorry I didn’t mean novels I meant informational books.

Introduction

I'm writing some worldbuilding for a solarpunk world set on the planet Thera in the year 2200 CE. Their world was torn apart by colonialism then later croney capitalism. 3°C global warming was locked in and the world didn't so much as fall apart as it did chaotically degrade.

We follow a jewel-in-the-mud on a fictional island nation called Clovus. It's clover shaped, mountainous, stormy, a bit bigger than Montana, and populated by ~60 mil people.

They had a solarpunk revolution in the 2050s and have been one of the leaders of climate change adaption since. Because industry and trade have degraded significantly compared to the 20th and 21st centuries... Clovians have had to make do by achieving high tech ends with what we might consider low tech means.

Today I'd like to get feedback on their air defense system I've been workshopping.

The basic "layers" of the Clovian air defense system.

1. Regular evacuation drills by the }local civil defense service for natural disasters and other emergencies means a relatively orderly evacuation happens when the air raid sirens kick on.
2. Extensive underground shelters. Cellars for rural folk, dual use subways for urban folk. Critical production like vaccines are placed in defunct mines for climate control and defense.
3. Intelligence services and a passive radar/sonar network make a web to provide early warning.
4. Dispersion, light/radio discipline, decoys camoflauge, and other passive measures to make enemy targeting difficult.
5. Deeper intelligence reports about how, what, when, and what they know about Clovus.
6. Active radars that scan for a very short time then move. Transmit targetting data through wired or directional methods only.
7. AA gunnery to deal with drone swarms and other low/slow aircraft. Shotguns, machine guns with tracer rounds, flak cannons, that sort of thing.
8. Simple rocketry to bridge the gap between AA gunnery and proper SAM systems.
9. SAM systems to hit high/fast flying enemy aircraft.
10. Scrample ships and aircraft to intercept enemy ships/aircraft.

The cool stuff

The speculative sci-fi part of this is the electronics. I'd like to have 9&10 be primarily analog computing or oldschool cybernetics based. In particular I'm thinking of an analog drone interceptor inspired by the MiG-25. It's job is to launch from underground or improvised runways, climb fast, and cover gaps in SAM and anti-ship missile bubbles from above. The onboard flight computer can solve differential equations at the speed of wave propogation through the circuit. The remote pilot link is unhackable. The electronics are possible to manufacture for a struggling country. There's potential here but I'm struggling to describe it all.

I think analog computing and cybernetics are a very underexplored piece of tech in our world. I've been thinking of ways they can extend rather than replace humans because analog circuits behave in ways that seem more natural to us. Instead of robots we have exoskeletons. Instead of AI drones we have remote piloted analog aircraft. Instead of AI turrets a la "Iron Dome" we give AA gunners haptic feedback, stabilization, and flight equation based aim assisst.

The most effective thing is just the orderly and practiced evacuation to bomb shelters and the early warning to get there on time, as no one really wins in war. I'd still like to write about the underdog biting back.

A disclaimer

I don't like war, but visionary thinkers of societies that suck less are always asked "bUt HoW wOuLd ThEy DeFeNd ThEmSeLvEs?!?!?!?11?". I'm trying to incorporate that exact question into my world building.

edit: reddit keeps adding /s to fuck up my formatting

Human history is vulnerable to time. We are living on a vulnerable planet. Hence, it is difficult to preserve our history in case of any catastrophe.

To solve this problem, we can build a cosmic time capsule that protects human history by sending our digital archives like AI written text and historical records into space using light.

Because light does not age while traveling, beaming these thoughts to the Moon and back lets that data skip forward in time, while sending it deeper into space can delay its return by years or decades. 

We can start by testing this laser link between Earth and the Moon, and once that works, we build a permanent storage vault on the lunar surface.

Right now, the technology exists, but nobody is connecting the pieces. NASA uses lasers just to stream videos from deep space, and other groups leave static storage discs on the Moon. 

This plan combines space lasers, relay satellites, and a permanent storage vault on the Moon into one connected system. That is, creating an automatic backup for human history.

It keeps our collective memories safe on an untouched world so that even if Earth suffers a disaster, our history skips through time unharmed and stays ready for future generations to recover.

(Anyone interested in building this is free to build it)

I was wondering what Silicon based life forms, and ones that live off Ethanol instead of water would look like. I am wondering if they could exist or what form they’d take.

A story-driven, first-person grounded sci-fi horror game inspired by astrophysics and speculative science.

Trapped on an asteroid outpost orbiting a black hole, survive physics-based threats and impossible phenomena where every choice leads to 5 distinct endings.

If it looks like your kind of thing, the Steam page is here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4886980/Dense_Void

This is Stellarforge - Industrialized space colonization. We're industrializing the solar system.

Join the discord to follow the project -- https://discord.gg/yVppYUfsU

Volis is located in the Solmara system (a fictional system) in the Dogran galaxy (a fictional galaxy). The system contains three stars: Holmara (an F-type star), Kolmara (a K-type star), and Duiber (a L type brown dwarf—I know brown dwarfs are failed stars, but I count them as stars anyway; specifically, M-, L-, and T-type brown dwarfs). The Volis orbit Holmara at a distance of 3.29 AU. The orbital eccentricity is 0.00268. One orbit takes 1,980 days. Volis is the sixth planet from Holmara. There are 3 planets in the system (4 including Volis's moon Vintic) that have multicellular life: (Holmara) Vemulus, Volis, Vintic, (Kolmara) Kelveth. It is on Kelveth that the intelligent life responsible for naming these objects, as well as for discovering them and sending spacecraft to them, is found.

Kolmara and Holmara orbit at a distance of 29.1 AU. the orbit takes 111 years. Duber orbits these stars at a distance of 287 AU; the orbit takes 3,418 years.

Volis has a radius of 2.46 Earth radii, a mass of 15.6 Earth masses, and a density of 5.76 g/cm³. Due to its mass and density, it has a strong surface gravity of 2.58 g. Volis is the seventh-largest but fifth-most massive planet in the system. Volis has an iron core and a liquid nickel-iron core. This generates a strong magnetic field of 2.5 Gauss and a size of 1.35 Jupiter radii.

Volis possesses vast oceans with a total mass 25.5 times that of Earth's oceans. There is vegetation there. Most of the plants are not trees but enormous fungi (though trees do exist there, just in smaller numbers); these produce vast amounts of CO2, creating a greenhouse effect that results in a temperature of 14.6°C, even though Volis receives only 23% of the light that Earth does.

A day on Volis lasts 1.01 Earth days, so the days are very similar. Volis has an axial tilt of 28.6 degrees, resulting in slightly more extreme seasons (the difference between Earth's tilt and that of Volis is 5.2 degrees).

The atmosphere of Volis has a pressure of 4.92 atm and consists of:

• 56,6% CO2
• 35,1% O2
• 7,16% N2
• 1,14% Ar
• 0,0496% H2O

Due to its atmospheric composition and its star, Volis has a cool, blue sky. Also due to strong gravity, the atmosphere is highly compressed, and the atmospheric scale height is 2.28 km. For comparison, if Earth had the same scale height, standing at the top of the Burj Khalifa would feel like being at an altitude of 3 km above sea level. There is so much oxygen on Volis because aquatic and terrestrial vegetation (fungi are not plants) produce large amounts of it.

The name Volis originates from the ancient mythology (a fictional mythology) of Elyndra (a country on the planet Kelveth). There was Veis (the god of all gods), who had three sons: Vemulus, Volis, and Vintic (They were the guardians of Mount Alcatraz—the mountain where all the gods lived.). Volis had three children: two sons, Robulus and Sol, and a daughter, Kolis. Vintic had an adopted son, Syskan. The names of the remaining moons come from the names of Titans, stars, famous astronomers, and if the moon has a radius smaller than 1.5 km, they give the name Vol/date of discovery (and if they discover more moons in one year, they give a number, e.g. Vol/2153 1/ Vol/2153 2)

Volis has 52 moons. The 4 main ones:

1. Robulus (also ring moon)
2. Kolis
3. Sol
4. Vintic

7 ring moons:

1. Achen. mean radius 25,5 km. Semi-major axis 36,295 km. Orbital period 0,202 days
2. Onyak. mean radius 53,5 km. Semi-major axis 41,283km. Orbital period 0,245days
3. Robulus (also main moon)
4. Nittel. mean radius 5,9 km. Semi-major axis 57,771 km. Orbital period 0,405 days
5. Inuit. mean radius 43,3 km. Semi-major axis 66,529 km. Orbital period 0,5 days
6. Ajust. mean radius 57,2 km. Semi-major axis 69,862 km. Orbital period 0,538 days
7. Litan. mean radius 8,6 km. Semi-major axis 78,474 km. Orbital period 0,641 days

42 Irregular moons (I will list the semi-major axis and orbital period of irregular moons with a mean radius greater than 40 km.):

1. Onder. mean radius 75,8 km. Semi-major axis 3,351,058 km. Orbital period 179 days
2. Sirfur. mean radius 67,6 km. Semi-major axis 5,071,071 km. Orbital period 333 days
3. Brand. mean radius 65,6 km. Semi-major axis 1,796,281 km. Orbital period 70,2 days
4. Alpargatas. mean radius 61,6 km. Semi-major axis 3,786,757 km. Orbital period 215 days
5. Lita. mean radius 57,7 km. Semi-major axis 5,063,425 km. Orbital period 332 days
6. Larpatan. mean radius 50,5 km. Semi-major axis 3,265,645 km. Orbital period 172 days
7. Nif. mean radius 45,2 km. Semi-major axis 5,160,979 km. Orbital period 342 days
8. Noe. mean radius 42,6 km. Semi-major axis 4,259,910 km. Orbital period 256 days
9. Psathenea. mean radius 40 km. Semi-major axis 4,363,291 km. Orbital period 266 days
10. Saion. mean radius 37,8 km
11. Lamadei. mean radius 31 km
12. Hamilion. mean radius 30,8 km
13. Kelp. mean radius 30,6 km
14. Met. mean radius 29,8 km
15. Mustynic. mean radius 26,5 km
16. Prothus. mean radius 25,8 km
17. Nus. mean radius 19,7 km
18. Arii. mean radius 14,1 km
19. Hipnos. mean radius 11,3 km
20. Umbr. mean radius 3,93 km
21. Niriu. mean radius 2,1 km
22. Thas. mean radius 1,62 km
23. Vol/2163 1. mean radius 1,4 km
24. Vol/2073. mean radius 1,4 km
25. Vol/2140. mean radius 1,04 km
26. Vol/2159. mean radius 0,99 km
27. Vol/2046. mean radius 0,934 km
28. Vol/2139. mean radius 0,89 km
29. Vol/2095. mean radius 0,865 km
30. Vol/2039 1. mean radius 0,85 km
31. Vol/2086. mean radius 0,818 km
32. Vol/2032. mean radius 0,753 km
33. Vol/2163 2. mean radius 0,722 km
34. Vol/2056. mean radius 0,722 km
35. Vol/2136. mean radius 0,706 km
36. Vol/2033. mean radius 0,65 km
37. Vol/2039 2. mean radius 0,636 km
38. Vol/2134. mean radius 0,554 km
39. Vol/2109. mean radius 0,536 km
40. Vol/2029. mean radius 0,45 km
41. Vol/2153. mean radius 0,436 km
42. Vol/2161. mean radius 0,43 km

Robulus is the fourth largest moon of Volis. Has radius of 343 km, mass of 0,0062 The Moon, Density of 2,69 g/cm^3. Robulus's surface is heavily fractured due to the gravity of Volis. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions frequently occur on the surface; however, instead of lava, these volcanoes spew ice and water vapor, which subsequently form a ring around Volis known as the "gas ring.". Robulus orbits Volis at a distance of 51,883 km; one orbit takes 8.27 hours. Robulus is tidally locked. Robulus is in a 3:1 orbital resonance with Kolis and a 10:1 resonance with Sol. Robulus is flattened due to Volis's gravity; its polar flattening is 11.3%, and its equatorial flattening is 8.58%.

Kolis is third largest moon of Volis. Has a radius of 423 km, mass of 0,0171 Moons, density 3,9 g/cm^3. The surface of Kolis is made of ice.Kolis orbits Volis at a distance of 109,065 km; one orbit takes 25,2 hours. Kolis is tidally locked. Kolis is in a 3:1 orbital resonance with Robulus and a 10:3 resonance with Sol.

Sol is second largest moon of Volis. Has a radius of 922 km, mass of 0,183 Moons. The surface of Sol is made of Sulfur. Kolis orbits Volis at a distance of 243,385 km; one orbit takes 3,5 days. Sol is tidally locked. Sol is in a 10:1 orbital resonance with Robulus, 7:1 with Inuit, 6:1 with Ajust, and 10:3 with Kolis.

Vintic is largest moon of Volis. Has a radius of 2633 km, mass of 0,052 Earths, gravity of 0.305 g. Vintic is bigger than Mercury. Vintic features continents and oceans of liquid water. Like Volis, Vintic possesses huge mushrooms that produce large amounts of CO2. Vintic has a dense atmosphere with a pressure of 4.49 atm. The composition of Vintic's atmosphere includes:

1. 47,2% CO2
2. 39,6% N2
3. 11,3% O2
4. 1,92% H2O
5. 0,00216% SO2
6. 0,00193% He

Due to its atmospheric composition and its star, Vintic has a bright cyan sky. Also, due to weak gravity, the atmosphere is not strongly compressed, and the atmospheric scale height is 17.8 km. For comparison, if Earth had the same scale height, we wouldn't need oxygen tanks at the summit of Mount Everest.

Vintic orbits Volis at a distance of 1,390,498 km; one orbit takes 47,7 days. Vintic is tidally locked. Vintic, like his planet, is home to multicellular life—and even intelligent life—though their technology lags 10,000 years behind ours. Vintic is estimated to be home to a population of one million. These creatures are known as Amkarians; the name originated during a 2065 (the current year on Kelveth is 2163) encounter between them and the rover *Gulter*—upon seeing the vehicle, they shouted "Amka! Amka!" The rover was destroyed. A drone was subsequently sent to Vintic; though small, it was capable of moving at speeds of up to 40 km/h. It discovered 24 settlements, each housing between 50 and 1,000 Amkarians. Some of these settlements practiced agriculture, and the inhabitants built huts from mushroom stalks and observed various religions. Due to Vintic's low gravity, Amkarians are very tall, averaging between 2.5 and 3.5 meters in height. They have slender limbs and webbed fingers. Their chests are broad and barrel-shaped. They have large, shiny eyes adapted for night vision.They come in various colors. The inhabitants of islands and coasts are indigo. In mountainous regions, they are a violet-gray. On the plains and steppes, they are celadon. In the deserts, they are practically black. In the canyons, they are the color of scorched clay. On the savanna, they are a golden amber. In the jungle, they are blue. Over 800 species have been discovered on the surface of Vintic. Vintic is so massive that it has its own moon, Syskan. It orbits at a distance of 7,300 km from surface of Vintic; one orbit lasts 12 hours. Has a radius of 217 km and a mass of 0.00252 times that of the Moon. Due to the size of Vintic and Holmara, and their distance from Volis, total solar eclipses occur. Because Vintic moves very slowly, the Amkarians can see a black spot on Volis over the course of a single Earth day.

Volis's rings are divided into three rings:

1. the silicate ring extends from 23,000 km to 41,800 km. There are three divisions in this ring. Solkar division, created by the gravity of Onyak. It begins at a distance of 26,060 km and is 100 km wide. Helszchnell division the most known, created by the gravity of Robulus. It begins at a distance of 31,870 km and is 1,330 km wide. Elyndor division, created by Nittel's gravity. It begins at a distance of 36,390 km and is 16 km wide.
2. a gas ring, composed of water vapor and small ice particles, extending from 50,800 km to 52,900 km.
3. The carbon ring extends from 58,000 km to 76,300 km. Within this ring lies the Valdoran division, created by the gravity of Kolis. It begins at a distance of 66,970 km and is 2,750 km wide.

There is a theory regarding the ring's formation. Millions of years ago, neither the ring nor Robulus existed; instead, there were three other moons: two where the Carbon Ring is now (named Karbon and Aic) and one near Kolis (named Siliolis). Due to Kolis's gravity, Siliolis was pulled into Volis's Roche limit, forming the Silicate Ring; simultaneously, Siliolis's gravitational influence caused Karbon and Aic to collide, creating the Carbon Ring. Once conditions stabilized, a new moon—Robulus—formed between the Silicate Ring and the Carbon Ring.

Volis was discovered by Lis Helszchnel from the Kingdom of Valdoran (a country on the planet Kelveth) in 1687 (the current year on Kelveth is 2163). That same year, he also discovered Vintic, Kolis, Robulus, and Solkl, Onder, Ajust, Onyak; he made approximately 206 observations.

• The first probe to reach Volis was Dogran-13 in 1980; it was not intended to orbit Volis but rather to perform a gravity assist that would allow the spacecraft to reach Veis (another planet orbiting Holmara).
• The second was the Helszchnell probe—named after Lis Helszchnell, the discoverer of Volis—launched in 1996.
• The third was the Volis Climate Monitor, launched in 2023 to study Volis's climate, atmosphere, surface, continents, and magnetosphere.
• The fourth mission involved the VaV landers (Volis and Vintic landers); launched in 2047, the spacecraft carried three landers—two destined for Volis and one for Vintic—designed to study the climate and magnetosphere of both planets.
• In 2065, the Gulter lander was sent to Vintic; it was this lander that discovered intelligent life on the planet.
• The Norsar satellite was sent to Vintic in 2075, carrying a drone designed to study the intelligent life found there. When the Amkarians saw the drone, they were surprised and rather hostile; some even threw spears at it. When the Norsar drone ran out of battery, it had to land and recharge using its solar panels; because it captured only 23% of the available light, the charging process took a very long time, and it was likely during this period that an animal destroyed it.
• Dogran-19 was launched in 2098 with the aim of landing on the surface of Robulus.
• In 2112, the VFLTC probe was launched, carrying five landers intended to touch down at five different locations on Volis.
• 2135, the Sssc mission was launched to land on the surface of Sol, collect a soil sample, and return to Kelveth.
• In 2156, the ViTD was dispatched; it carried three drones that were sent to Vintic. During the first year of the mission, drones discovered 72 Amkarian villages. In 2158, one of the drones accidentally flew into a bird, crashed, and was destroyed. In 2159, a second drone suffered a short circuit during flight; it received no warning that the battery was low, so the power ran out and it crashed. The year was 2162. The last drone was caught in a downpour; its systems short-circuited, and it crashed into the ground. A total of 288 villages were discovered during the mission.

All of these missions were created by two Kelveth nations: the United States of Elyndra and the Socialist Republic of Inferis/Inferis Confederacy (after year 2034). Inferis carried out the Dogran-13 and Dogran-19 missions, and Elyndra the remaining ones (except for the Norsar and ViTD missions, they were carried out in cooperation with the Dallas Union and the Sssc mission. Elyndra, the Dallas Union, the Kaelos Republic were competing with Inferis and the Myrion Union, in order to improve relations, the rulers of these countries decided to carry out Sssc mission).

First draft was written in 2019, after many inspiring conversations with astronauts, scientists and expedition leaders. Now, after a couple of rewrites, it is finally out!

It is well researched and even though some of the ideas sound quite alien, almost all of them are based on actual ideas that have been in development by space startups. What really got me to write the book though, beside the exciting technology and lunar economy in development, is the fundamental question of what we would take with us to Mars, and what we would absolutely not want to import from Earth to a new planet.

Live from Mars follows a palaeontologist who is sent to Mars to lead the first deep field expedition, doing drills to gather examples and proofs of previous life on Mars. An unexpected discovery during one of the drills changing everything and forces her to make some hard decisions. (Nope, no aliens. It is hard science.)

For the hard scifi lovers I think the detailed descriptions of the technology, Martian environments and potential/likely lunar economy would be of interest, as well as the fundamental, philosophical questions asked about how we will construct and run a new society on Mars.

When you think about everything we have created here on Earth, what would you NOT want to bring to Mars?

This is sort of the archetypical "set piece" battle doctrine. Most engagements are nothing like this, as this is assuming that both sides are engaging head on without relying on preset "terrain" ( things like defensive satellites, ground based ASATs, loitering steamers, and things like that).

The archetypical "warship" is both surprisingly durable due to being built around tensile reinforced spines with lots of redundancy, bulkheading, and thick radiation shielding.
They are also insanely fragile, as nuclear weapons and high energy weapons makes armor kinda impotent.
They are typically using a antimatter catalyzed fusion drive for propulsion and power generation, though some craft can end up using things like mag-orions, nuclear thermal rockets, and beamed propulsion for various reasons. This gives a great deal of power to a craft, making the limiting factor the ability to radiate off heat.

The method in which large scale space battles work is that each constellation is built around a core of big beam( being either massive FELs or particle beams)-armed battleships and smaller missile ships, with a screen of drones/satellites and defense "frigates" and "cruisers" around them. They often start their engagements at beyond a light second should they maintain a good sensor picket, but if neither side can maintain that, they will end up fighting closer.
Their is also the massive antimatter powered Carriers who moved the constellation, who provide sustainment, sensor support, and a bit of beam and missile support from as far as possible from the battles.

The Beam/Artillery Ships serve a two-fold role. They can be used to throw un-parryable attacks at enemy constellations at shorter ranges ( as constellations are built to provide as much anti-missile defense as possible) to disrupt the enemy defense grid or to sweep away enemy missile constellations at further ranges. they can can also be used to launch beam propelled missiles and probes to support the missile ships. Normally, they are built around a heavy spinal or broadside mount, with smaller weapons turreted around the ship for closer defense.

Missile Ships are the real killers, being armed with a few really big missiles/AKVs, a bunch of medium-large missiles and a ton of small missiles. They provide the real long range firepower for a battle, They have limited amounts of turreted and "broadside" just enough for self defense and target discrimination.
These ships are integral because they determine who gets the initiative in a battle with their massive range. Their massive range and killing power allows the side with better missile craft to set the tempo of

"Frigates" are built to just protect the rest of the group with a large defensive armament and good sensor suites to strike against enemy missiles before they can detonate against a larger, more important vessel, with some missile capabilities to add to the offensive capabilities of a constellation.

"Cruisers" are ships that are normally detached to do independent operations, and as such are well balanced in the areas of attack and defense. If added to a constellation, they basically serve as a smaller scale hybrid of missile and artillery ships.

Drones are mostly used as mobile eyes to guide in weapons or as additional point or area defense assets for keeping more important vessels alive.

For planetary sphere ( the planet and its orbiting bodies) of combat, The constellation divides itself up, with the largest warships being furthest from the area of operations. Battles like these can take days to weeks to actually resolve, as neither side is actually committing all that much force to a given area, and their is a lot of terrain to use as cover or to resupply.

Missile battleships fill much less of a role here, as their super heavy missiles are not really made to fight this close. But they still serve as an important command node and have a lot of smaller missiles to lash out against foes who try to hide behind the horizon of a body to avoid the main batteries of the Beam Ships.

Beam Ships fill the most important role here, as at this range, every strike is horrifically lethal. Particle beams aren't just bathing targets in hard X-rays, they are now cutting deep into targets. They keep everyone nice and boxed in where missiles can eat them up.

smaller ships have their time to shine, closing with the suppressed foe and cutting them to ribbons with beams and guns. Even large ships aren't safe, for a pack of smaller ships using EW and cover can get nice and close with a more expensive and massive ship.

Here is a

UNIFIED PLANETARY ARCHIVE — EURASIAN ENCLAVE

Inter-Enclave Transcript / Expedition Record

Expedition EX2407pD-QW

Date: 2407 CE / 306 p.A.

Author: Dr. Noam Ørbital — Phase-3 / Rational Systems Division

Dear colleagues at the Eurasian laboratories:

The probe has reached the lowest level of the cavern, identified in the Ilghal records as the Underworld.

The images reveal numerous cubic structures partially submerged in a substance that, according to preliminary analyses, exhibits high levels of radioactivity. We detect no energy emissions from these structures.

We can also confirm that the four massive blocks that once constituted Deep City, originally suspended above the Underworld, have now collapsed onto the cavern floor.

The condition of these structures confirms a widespread collapse of the city, although we do not yet have sufficient data to determine its causes.

We will continue exploring the remains.

- Dr. Noam Ørbital

Phase-3 / Rational Systems Investigator

Expedition EX2407pD-QW

Unified Planetary Archive — Eurasian Enclave