OpenTTD mod: far into the future...

[SirXavius]

Sorry, i was away, and never got a chance to get on-line...

I thought i was clear in how roadways are changed by the time this mod takes place (3065 AD) -- guess not. The roads are now municipally-controlled magnetic paths, which move all vehicles at a constant rate (this reduces fuel independence and accidents). Underneath each vehicle (we'll call them trakcars), are two metallic plates whose polarity can be changed "electronically". The roads are made of magnetic panels (like metal sidewalks) that change their magnetism and, in effect, move these trakcars in the direction of their polarity. Kineto-nuclear power plants (one of the mod's industries) provide the electromagnetic power required to produce polarity changes along the roadway panels. Their are no tires, no need for aerodynamics, and since these are industrial transp lines, no need to design individualistic vehicles. They're all box-like, and for the purposes of our mod, do nothing but transport cargo and passengers. These magnetic "traks" are similar to raillines, but are cheaper and offer more maneuverability in a smaller space. Their stations are smaller, as the docking bays are actually underground.

Tidus, i like your truck depiction, but let's clarify the actual vehicle components. All trakcars are controlled by an industrial computer; yes, they are driverless, but the navigation mechanism is not on the vehicle. The only navigation done is by computer at the plant who is transporting the cargo. Steering is done (such as changing paths) by altering the polarity of the road panel. Antennae are not necessary, and really, neither is any sort of lighting (except perhaps the same lighting as aircraft at night, that let you know which direction the vehicle is facing and moving). The only external feature is the linkbox on the front and back of each trakcar; this is a magnetic plate which connects to other trakcars, to form a sort of train or double-semitrailer combo. But you are definitely on the right track with your artwork.
And for anyone else helping with the artwork, the cars that act as public buses will be a little more human-friendly, with rounded tops, windows (that are lit when passengers are on board), and maybe a little more color (and perhaps some ad space). We will also need trucks that are open (for magma, ferrite, and other goods that don't need to be sealed during transport. The track vehicles need to be more square and less rectangular, and two plates underneath where the vehicle hovers over the trak should be visible from the sides (like tires made of horizontal panels).

[Telekoman]

Depends how technologically advanced you want the civilisation to be.

Such an advanced civilization wouldnt use nuclear reactors on trucks because of the risk of meltdown.. even consider an accident driving.. the consecuences would be terrible..

Think of ionic power... plasma energy... it is clean and much more powerful than nuclear reacctions.. i like the idea of hydrogen power supplies as it is clean and really useful...

And if you want to strech it even more think of antimatter and antienergy.. something is now being researched and develops a great deal of power...

My 2 cents

[ddream]

To produce energy from hydrogen you must use oxygen, then you get water and for example electric energy. This is so far from sun that it would be impossible to have natural high temperature magma, but when you have easily available hydrogen and oxygen you can produce large number of energy, which can be used to melting metals. Other problem is that when you prduce hydrogen you use more energy, then you would produce. And from where will be oxygen got?

[Telekoman]

Well indeed that is what i meant!!!

Oxigen is indeed tricky but many many compunds have oxigen within them.. for example sand is a form of silicates (silicium oxide) you can get oxigen for energy and use silicium for tech or as a raw material.. and most rocks in deep space have forms of metals combined as oxides or hydroxides.. there you can get the main raw materials...

The first ignition of the energy needed could be by a simple deuterium reactor.. you can get easier energy from that as it is much more unstable than the hydrogen molecule.. even tritium could do the job...

[Brianetta]

Such an advanced civilization wouldnt use nuclear reactors on trucks because of the risk of meltdown.. even consider an accident driving.. the consecuences would be terrible..

Exactly how great a risk is the meltdown of a 5cm sphere of Uranium Dioxide? The answer is, not much. Loss of the vehicle, and that's if you rig it just so.

Think of ionic power... plasma energy... it is clean and much more powerful than nuclear reacctions.. i like the idea of hydrogen power supplies as it is clean and really useful...

Ionic power? Never heard of it. Are you thinking of ion thrusters, as trialled on NASA's Deep Space 1? If so, that thing's powered electrically. Same goes for plasma - it's not an energy source. I think the others covered hydrogen - unless you want to go the heavy hydrogen route, with clean fusion.

And if you want to strech it even more think of antimatter and antienergy.. something is now being researched and develops a great deal of power...

Antimatter! And you thought the risk of nuclear meltdown was unacceptable. If your magenetic containment goes down, 1cc of antimatter will flatten your city.

[Telekoman]

Well a 5 cm sphere does 2.646 kjoules of energy.. fair it isnt that much... but still think of the contamination of a ship with 100 times that quantity of uranium.


And for any kind of energy supply you need a souce first.. heat coal.. get sun rays (from the combination of hydrogen to for helium...) and so on.. a future civilization must have thought of that..

and yes.. antimatter is dangerous.. now.. if you think of Dan Browns novel, it is pretty accurate but it is being developed so spect better security measures to control that vast power... And it is the power of the future counting hydrogen reactors...

Nothing is risk free except of sun energy so for science and development sake we must undertake risks IMHO

[SirXavius]

I'd really appreciate it if you guys would take your discussion of physics to some other thread. This thread is devoted to contributions to this mod, and this discussion, while i'm sure interesting, is unnecessary and frankly irrelevant. The energy issues are not in the top ten concerns for this mod, especially since i've already decided how to "solve" those issues. Read previous posts in this thread on how these concerns, and future technologies that allow us to create vast amounts of energy for our EM technologies in transportation and industrial production, are addressed.

And as far as i'm concerned, the most stable and most feasible form of energy production in the future of deep space exploration is nuclear fission (or is it fusion?). For the storyline of this mod, "kinetonuclear" fission becomes the primary form of energy production after the Grand Unified Theory is finally applied to other technological breakthrus in fluid elemental dynamics (the manipulation of elements in fluid form at their liquid-state temperatures), superatomic construction (the creation of materials based on complex atomic combinations that optimize gravitational and other mass-related forces), and other future sciences. Isn't science fiction great?

Now, concerning the problems of low-gravity, low-atmosphere, low-sunlight environments, those concerns don't NEED to be addressed, except concerning the creation of various factors and properties of this mod, to determine feasibility (if we wish this to be an issue). This mod should be feasible, but not necessarily realistic. Thus, we have planetary carbonization (as opposed to terraforming), pseudogravity (based on an extreme version of current MRI technology), and cybernauts (nonatmospheric robots with complex programming but no real AI).

[Brianetta]

Fair enough, SirXavius, although the future technologies you list aren't interesting because they're not explained (I like some science in my science fiction).

Telekoman: I've never read any Dan Brown. Which of his many books has antimatter in?

[Telekoman]

True.. we got pretty offtopic this time

And as far as i'm concerned, the most stable and most feasible form of energy production in the future of deep space exploration is nuclear fission (or is it fusion?). For the storyline of this mod, "kinetonuclear" fission becomes the primary form of energy production after the Grand Unified Theory is finally applied to other technological breakthrus in fluid elemental dynamics (the manipulation of elements in fluid form at their liquid-state temperatures), superatomic construction (the creation of materials based on complex atomic combinations that optimize gravitational and other mass-related forces), and other future sciences. Isn't science fiction great?

And i like those ideas.. one more thing:

1º Fusion is when atoms merge together eg: stars energy.
2º Fission is the break of atoms to form other elements and release energy eg: uranium reactor.

As said i love those ideas for the mod so go on!!

Brianetta: The book is Angels and Demons.. Really popular.. the sequel to that book is the well known: The Da Vinci Code

[ddream]

This mod drew my attention, because it had some great ideas, futuristic and maybe possible. I think it should as realistic as possible, but including things for example like cold fusion. Nitrogen for me could be in nitrogen dioxide, which with H2 could produce water and nitrogen, methane or water or hydrogen would be used in fussion plants ( available later) and in the beginning ther would be nuclear plants and uranium ore would be mined. I think colony should develop close to challange spinoff and secondary industries sgould be limited in how much resources they use.

[SirXavius]

1º Fusion is when atoms merge together eg: stars energy.
2º Fission is the break of atoms to form other elements and release energy eg: uranium reactor.

Thanks for reminding me -- i've forgotten a few things since i learned my physics a long time ago. So i stand my original idea: an advanced form of nuclear fission is the source of our mod's energy production...

Perhaps i should clarify how i want to construct the plot behind our mod here: reasonable theories on how the world would look in the fourth millenium are always worth exploring, but at the same time, we don't want to bog ourselves down with too much backstory. Too much invention actually may hinder us in creativity. The object here is for a good game with a reasonable chance of future realism, as opposed to science fiction that might make a good game. It is the reason why i would include technologies we could never imagine now, to help us in the gameplay of our mod, and not ideas of fantasy that have no factual basis of reality (such as e.t. aliens). While aliens might make for a great game of fantasy, it does not help us add realism to an already fun idea of a game. It seems like (at least to me) that games whose only constrictions are that they are based in realism, are challenging in their own right. If i want to lessen the challenge but escape from the cold realities of this world, i'll go for a game based in fantasy.

But i definitely don't want to use this thread to discuss philosophy, only ideas on how to implement plans for this mod. Then if we get our own forum index, we can discuss these other things with their own threads...

Now, ddream, i do have the construction of our basic industries for this mod on one of the pages of this thread. Some of the things you brought up have a place here, but i did not want to make all of our industries "basic" in the sense of mining or producing fundamental products. Since Hydrogen will be the fuel of the future for deep-space exploration (because of its abundance in star systems), and oxygen is necessary for human life, and water is necessary for human colonization, those things will fetch a price worthy of their own place in the mod. I see petroleum products becoming too expensive in the next millenium to continue with normal everyday use (because Earth is the only place you will ever find oil), and water will become so rare that it is only used for human consumption (while other fluids like liquid methane and ammonia are used for cooling and cleaning). Thus oil production is nonexistent, and water, if produced, fetches a good price.

I have put a lot of thought in the evolution of human technology based on the exponential rate of our knowledge (and the application of it) for the far future. I don't see a world like Star Trek, but rather a world more like Bladerunner or Max Headroom. But for this mod i have streamlined many of my ideas and constructed a probable world where a Transportation Tycoon might flourish, given new variables that were not accounted for in OpenTTD (such as towns that spawn themselves, and new technologies in cargo-moving based on nonEarth environments). Now all that needs to be done is the graphics and the soft-coding .

[Telekoman]

You can have a look at Alfa Centaurii to get some ideas of technologies and source powers and raw materials..

[ddream]

(...) and water will become so rare that it is only used for human consumption (while other fluids like liquid methane and ammonia are used for cooling and cleaning). Thus oil production is nonexistent, and water, if produced, fetches a good price.

I know this is your mod, but I have some ideas,to make it in my opinion better. I think water is far more accesible from space then oxygen, I wouldn't be suprised if oxygen would be produced from water. Water is comon with CO2 and NH3 in "Ice Giants" (Uranus , Neptune)

Water can be also recycled in colonies, just like on current spaceships.

Hydrogen as a fuel can be used in both ways, by firing it with oxygen or other oxidate (I don't know if I use nomenclature correctly) or by fussion of deuterium or trytium. This first way is useful as a fuel of the future because hydrogen is easy to transport and produce, but it require electric energy. Or there can be methanol as a fuel (It can be syntesised from H2 and CO in easy way, according to http://www.plutoportal.net/ CO is comon on Pluto).

My other idea is that the graphic should be made 32 bpp and coding should wait for projects like new GUI etc. Maybe it would be easier to make OTTD itself modable and then use mods like addons, not to develop something like new game.

Sorry if my suggestions are annoing, but I think this project is great, and I would like to contribute to it .

[DaleStan]

I wouldn't be suprised if oxygen would be produced from water.

It can, but you really don't want to do that. Water is at the bottom of a pretty deep energy well, meaning it takes a lot of energy to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen.

CO2 scrubbers are a better choice, and natural CO2 scrubbers are probably preferable to artificial ones. Especially since the former often provide food too.

[ddream]

But natural CO2 scrubers use solar energy which is harder to get on Pluto then electric enrgy. H2O is a lot easier to seperate, becouse you make simple electrolise. There will be to much energy spared to heat colonies then to make oxygen.

[Brianetta]

But natural CO2 scrubers use solar energy which is harder to get on Pluto then electric enrgy. H2O is a lot easier to seperate, becouse you make simple electrolise. There will be to much energy spared to heat colonies then to make oxygen.

The point made ("at the bottom of a pretty deep energy well") was that it takes more energy to electrolise water than you realise. Think of the energy released when hydrogen is burned with oxygen - at least this much energy is required to separate that exact same amount of water into is hydrogen and oxygen constituents, before you even begin to take into account the losses caused by inefficiency, leakage and the rest of general entropy.

Unfortunately, Pluto is simply a low energy location. Most molecules are close to the rest state, and there's little radiation from the sun. The only real benefit is the proximity of the Kuiper belt, which contains a lot of water ice (handy for us water-based life forms) and has a high chance of many heavier elements lying about waiting to be mined - if you spend long enough hunting through such a large area for them. Pluto/Charon (and also 2003 UB313) makes the ideal location for a sustained (re)search base.

[DaleStan]

There's another problem with electrolyzing water for your oxygen:
You still have to do something with the CO2.

It appears that most scrubbers simply absorb the CO2, but natural and KO2-based scrubbers will actually produce oxygen in the process, and as long as you apply water to the former but not the later, things stay relatively well behaved.

[ddream]

Only efficent source of energy to be used in so cold (about 35 K) and without any source of oxidate is fussion or fission. dG of water is -228.57 kJ/mol (298 K) which means to make 1m^3 of oxygen you will use 2.83 kWh which cost in Poland 0.1 $. The major problem is to heat everything on Pluto, also Iron and steel would be very non-persistent in so low temperature.

To Dalestan: using natural scrubers to get rid of CO2 isn't the best idea on Pluto. You must heat, light and water them and total oxygen balance would'nt be so good. You according amount of oxygen to how much carbon will be build into a plant. And what will you do to get rid of plant? If you eat them, then you use more oxygen then they absorbed. The only way is to treat them as garbage, but I still think this method is less efficent then H2O elctrolysis

[DaleStan]

1) How long will that oyxgen last?
2) How does that compare to the energy expenditure (or release) of generating the same quantity of O2 from 4KO2+2CO2 => 3O2 + 2K2CO3? and
3) 35 K != 298 K. How do those energy expenditures change at vastly lower temperatures?

[ddream]

2. first you must get KO2, by for example firing metalic K in oxygen, from 4 O2 used in KO2 you get 3. superb. They will have to use it .

3. In 35 K it can't be done, because water can't be liquid in this temp. If you get some enviroment for example 100 K and 1 kPa equations can be done, but it would be a little different from experimental data. Calculation result is - 231.51 kJ/mol