#Isaac Arthur

[kramerblogrealgood]

this did pretty well on twitter so I wanted to bring it over

[clara-the-cat]

Unironically there are a lot of ways that you could build flat planets and other absurd structures, it would take an enormous amount of resources and technology, but it could entirely be done

i think we shouod terraform earth to make it completely flat because itd be fun

[astramthetaprime]

can you talk in depth about the relative merits and drawbacks of various means of theoretical starship propulsion (i saw it on the tags and found it really interesting)

Hey, I'm not ghosting on answering, I'll be able to bang out a longform reply tonight! So much I want to say! In the meantime, may I reccommend Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur? Isaac is a veritable goldmine of science education for topics of great use for writing science fiction. Plus he's just a genuinely great guy. And he was made president of the National Space Society.

So much to talk about! Tonight!

UPDATE:

OKAY, here we go!

The choice of starship propulsion really depends ultimately on where one intends to go -- i.e., how far away, the nature of the intended destination, how quickly you want to get there, how much tonnage you're taking with you and if you have living beings onboard. For example, say it's early days and you're wanting to take a colony expedition of a thousand people to settle on Ceres, one of the largest asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Let's say you've built a ship that's roughly 200,000 tons, the mass of 2 of our current-day American aircraft carriers -- given how far it's intended to go, actually quite small. Due to the physics of typical conventional rocket-style engines, you'd be using the vast majority of your tonnage capacity to carry fuel -- not supplies, passengers and colony equipment, just fuel. And that's just fuel for the outbound trip, not for slowing down and going into orbit at Ceres. This isn't wasteful, mind you, nor particularly inefficient. It's simply the way the physics works and the energy capacity of using liquid fuels like liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Granted you can make it a better deal by wiser choices of routes making use of gravity assists such as were used for the Voyager Grand Tour mission. But! There are better ways.

If you want to go for a more cost-efficient way and you have the manufacturing resources, likely the smartest way to go is by making a large quantity of aluminum foil -- no, I'm not joking! You make a GIANT quantity of aluminum foil -- hundreds or even thousands of square kilometers. You arrange it in vast arrays attached to your ship and use the reflective surfaces to surf on the light from the Sun. This works particularly well so close in to the Sun as the light is more concentrated, and there is no fuel involved at all except maybe a minor quantity that you use for steering the ship. You can get the aluminum from mining on the Moon, and once you've arrived at Ceres you can just recycle it to use elsewhere. VERY efficient, and with skillful use of gravity assists you could actually get up to very respectable speeds if you wanted to go further off into the outer planets. But once you got past Jupiter it isn't the best way to fly, really, as the sunlight isn't as concentrated so it takes longer to speed up to a good clip. You can also intersperse some solar panels in with the mirrors to supply yourself with electrical power, so you don't even need fuel for that.

But say you want to take those thousand colonists to Triton out at Neptune, or to the Kuiper Belt, or further. Sure, you can use mirrors and gravity assist to get out that far, but it's going to take quite a lot of time -- years, several at the very least. It could mean decades traveling time. And what if you want to go even further, to leave the solar system altogether? That might take hundreds of years at the speeds you can manage with mirrors. You won't slow down, once you speed up you've got that speed til you do something to slow yourself down. Do you have cryosleep capabilities for your colonists? If you don't, your colonists will need to have children during the flight, maybe several generations of kids. So either you manage to find faster propulsion or you develop cryosleep and life extension capabilities. (Yes, you can also send your people as virtual people, which changes the entire equation -- for the moment I'm concentrating on living people.) So let's say you manage by some miracle to figure out nuclear fusion. That can give you very respectable accelerations, in the neighborhood of a third to half of lightspeed. Alpha Centauri, for example, is 4.25 lightyears away. So with fusion propulsion you could get up to .30C, a third of the speed of light. A lightyear would take 9 years, more or less. So maybe 20 years to get to Alpha Centuari. It still takes your "we made it" message 4 years and 3 months to get back to Earth. But 20 years ain't bad, really, cosmically speaking. Slowing down once you get there is a bit of a trick, but there are ways -- you can make yourself the aforementioned aluminum mirrors during the flight and use them along with a gravity assist from Centauri itself, or construct a Bussard ramjet engine to gather loose hydrogen on the way insystem to slow down.

But let's say your colony expedition is poor as church mice, you're operating on a shoestring budget, and a fancy fusion engine is simply beyond your means. If you're lucky enough to be a bit later in the future, the solar system may already have space stations equipped with laser pushing capabilities. These are lasers used to propel ships that have the aforementioned mirror arrays -- light is light whether it comes from a laser lens or the Sun. If time is not a factor you could even use microwaves for propulsion in the same manner, just with a metal wire mesh instead of the aluminum foil mirrors. The main drawback of this system, whether lasers or microwaves, is that to attain and maintain sufficient speeds you would need to site pushing stations all along your route. These don't necessarily have to be manned, they could be entirely automated. If they were fusion powered this would not be a significant problem, they run on hydrogen and/or deuterium which you could either supply from further up the line or source locally from any random passing comet. But there is the problem of politics. Sure, your system of pushing stations is a wonder that can enable the freedom of millions to the endless frontier of the stars -- until some idiots decide to start a war. Your ships depend entirely on those pushing stations for transit. So it's cheap and great so long as everybody gets along. How long is peace going to last though? We can't even get along on our one little planet right now, what chance will we have in a few hundred years when we're trying to conduct diplomacy across lightyears? Odds are long and no one is taking that sucker's bet.

There are also some oddball systems that have the flavor of "hold my beer" pranks. The most famous is the Orion drive, a system that was actually studied by real life scientists who should have known better -- namely the Yoda of the Space Age, Professor Freeman Dyson. The Orion drive was postulated for a truly gigantic ship that would be propelled by actual nuclear bombs -- hundreds of them. The ship spit each bomb out the back and exploded them against a thick metal plate that would take the impact of the explosion to propel the ship forward. Yes it worked -- they did studies with small models, and all the physics checked out, it would work. It would give some respectable acceleration, especially for the size of ship they'd designed. Would it be cheap? No, absolutely not. Would it be safe? No, absolutely not, the original design was for a ship that would launch from Earth itself, it was ludicrous in the extreme. Would it get us to Saturn? Yes! Would anyone still be alive on the ship when it did so? Probably not, but hey, the ship got to Saturn!

Science ... is not always sensible.

For further evidence, I draw your attention to the aforementioned Bussard ramjet engine. When it was designed it was intended as an interstellar propulsion that would take in free hydrogen on its flight and use it as propellant. It was later discovered that while it would not in fact work for its intended purpose, it made an excellent means of deceleration. Yes, they'd proposed an engine that in essence worked better going backwards.

Thank you for your kind attention!

[codeandcanvas]

On the topic of music, some years ago, I was listening to Isaac Arthur’s various podcast episodes about science fiction and besides enjoying them, I also noticed certain pieces of music he used in his videos which just sounded right for cosmic exploration, and the awe you feel when looking up.

The music he used in those episodes was by the musician Frank Dorittke, also known as F.D. Project, and the particular album Isaac Arthur used a lot at the time (and I enjoyed, later, listening to it myself after signing up on the website offering it) is called Mare Tranquilitatis, and you can find it here.

As a bonus for the shephards and gardeners among my mutuals, Arthur is talking about how he feels about Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis here, a hypothesis which played not a small role in my bachelor’s thesis in graphic design about signaletics for life on Mars, thanks to my mentor, Professor Ken Lanig, who you can listen to giving two book recommendations in German here.

Still enjoying what I now realize is my sabbatical, and in the mood for being real: my life is connected to itself.

[arcadiaberger]

Nomadic Miners On The Moon

Isaac, if you're tired of "Whalers on the Moon", maybe you'd rather get "Moon Miners" by Diana Gallagher Wu stuck in your head: 

 Lunar twilight, dying day 

Shadows linger on as sunlight slowly fades 

Darkness deepens as night is drawn 

And it's so very long until another dawn 

 A lunar miner stirs in her converted canister 

Rubs her eyes and glances at the time 

Another day, another shift - Tons of rock to dig and lift - 

Moving 'dozers through the shallow lunar mines 

Four AM or noon, makes no difference on the moon, 

Clocks are just for keeping schedules defined 

The rugged miners claim A man can go insane 

Seven days of darkness and seven more to go 

And midnight madness mars the beauty of the stars 

One night is forever, Luna turns so very slow 

Then a hundred pairs of eyes Are drawn to the skies 

Scanning the horizon, anticipating Earthrise 

 Eighteen months a tour, lunar miners must endure 

Many hardships, the work is never done 

A hundred hands, no more, Mine a million tons of ore 

Every year, to tame the power of the sun 

But somehow, they survive, Their spirit kept alive 

With hope of the future and a dream of Island One 

 Lunar sunrise, darkness wanes 

Cold and gray, dawn crawls across the plain 

Blinding glare glistens on the crater rim 

And it's so very long until the sun goes down again 

And it's so very long until the sun goes down again 

So very long . . . Until the sun goes down 

 Several different versions of it, most of them recorded by Wu herself, can be found on YouTube.

#YouTube  #Isaac Arthur  #Moon Miners  #Diana Gallagher Wu

[khiatons]

Discovered a YouTube Channel to Help My Scifi Worldbuilding

I discovered Isaac Arthur's #YouTube Channel to Help My #Scifi #Worldbuilding #booktok #fyp https://www.youtube.com/@isaacarthurSFIA

Isaac Arthur has become an important part of my self education program. I want to build my science literacy. Not only is he highly informative, I like his enthusiasm. He finds positive and exciting aspects of advanced science topics. He’s good for a primer of things, good for a scifi writer to know about science and technology. Plus, he refers to other resources you can use to do further research…

[georgelthomas]

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Documentary I Liked

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Documentary I Liked #WritingCommunity #WriterCommunity #BloggingCommunity #BloggerCommunity #WednesdayWeeklyBloggingChallenge #Challenge #Wednesday #Documentary #TrixieMattel #IsaacArthur #BBC #Mars #Pompeii

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Wednesday, and time for another post in the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge hosted by Long and Short Reviews. If you’d like to participate in the challenge, you can find the list of topics for 2023 here. If you’re interested in reading other people’s responses to this week’s topic, you can do so here. A Documentary I Liked For this week’s post,…

[pyersiki]

Jack and uncle Arthur fishing mission ^_^ one of my fav moments in the game

[drizzledrawings]

Lonesome cowboy

[lazypapers]

I have this headcanon that because both Abigail and John were first time parents, Arthur stepped up and showed them the basics. Abigail would be impressed and question if he had experience with babies. Arthur would then fall quiet and probably change the subject. John would see how well Arthur is with his baby that he feels even more pressure and doubt about being a dad (also with the nagging possibility that he may not be the actual father of Jack).

[hackedhearts]

Gonna tell my kids this was the love of my life but he didn't come back for me cuz he died in a war so I had to marry their idiot father

[marvels-universe]

@giftober 2024 + @mcuchallenge prompt Day 1: Broken.

Moon Knight 1x02

[hihomeghere]

Dreams | Arthur Morgan/Reader

Word Count : 1.1k Summary : Arthur starts having dreams of starting a family with you Warnings/tags : Cursing, fluff, mention of infidelity, just Arthur being a sweet guy <3

He knows he shouldn’t feel like this. Shouldn’t be having these thoughts, because all they are just dreams. They’re never going to become a reality. Not when they’re constantly on the move, running from place to place. He sees the way it affects Jack, poor kid, not knowing what the hell is going on. And his daddy doesn’t exactly help him understand. 

He can’t even say he would be a better father, he wasn’t before. 

Hell you two ain’t even married yet, and he’s not that much of a fool. Not anymore. His regret for not marrying Eliza weighs heavily on him most days, even if he didn’t love her in that way. Now you on the other hand, he loves you more than anything. More than this stupid gang, more than life itself. He would happily lay down his life if he knew you would be happy, safe. 

When these thoughts enter his head, he can’t say. His days sort of blend together, making it hard to pinpoint. Although seeing you interact with Jack doesn’t help. 

You are so sweet, so motherly, hell you even mother the younger folks in the gang. Soft touches, kind words, but internally strong. You have all the qualities he finds attractive in a woman. Somehow you fell for him just as hard as he fell for you. 

But he ain’t a fool, he knows this ain’t the right time or place. So instead he writes down all these dreams in his journal, his safe place. The place where he can say anything without being judged. He dreams of little girls, he didn’t know how to interact with Isaac. Too afraid of being his own father. Girls seem less daunting, and a little you would be perfect. He already has one angel, what’s one more?

He comes up with the name while north of Brandywine Drop. The bright purple flowers caught his eye just off the trail.

Violet.

Violet Beatrice Morgan.

His heart sings, scribbling the name down in the margins of his journal. He finds himself writing VM in his journal, smiling foolishly to himself. It’s beautiful, his precious flower. 

It’s not like you meant to snoop. You were looking for Arthur, since he was nowhere to be found. You entered his tent, which in reality wasn’t much of a tent at all, finding his journal open. You walked over to it, looking over the worn page. There were the normal doodles he drew, along with his flowing hand writing. But one thing stood out to you, a pair of initials circled by hearts. VM.

You furrowed your brows, you couldn’t think of anyone you knew with the initials VM. Those definitely weren’t your initials either. 

With your curiosity peaked you flipped through a couple more pages. VM was written everywhere, along with those damn little hearts. 

You felt that little green monster grow inside you the further you looked into his journal. Biting your cheek so hard you could taste blood. It did nothing to quench the fire inside of you. 

“Darlin?” Arthur called walking into the so-called tent. You dropped the journal back onto the table, turning to face him. “There you are.” He grinned walking towards you.

“Here I am.” You said forcing a smile.

“Hosea said you were looking for me.” He said softly, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, "Anything you need?”

“Must have forgot.” You said with a noncommittal shrug, “I ought to get back to work.” You nod walking past him. Arthur furrowed his brow at your attitude. Did he say something to offend you?

Then his eyes fall onto his open journal. His stomach drops at the sight. Jesus, you saw. You saw all of it. You were probably thinking the worst, seeing the initial surrounded by hearts. How was he gonna fix this?

You stomped off to the edge of camp, trying to wrack your brain as to who this VM could be. And why was Arthur drawing hearts beside the initials? Maybe you had this all wrong, Arthur would never do anything to hurt you. He was a good man, a man you could trust. Wasn't he?

“Y/n!” He called trailing behind you, a crestfallen expression on his face. You stopped at the tree lining, biting your lip as you turned to face him. “I can explain.”

“I’m sure you can.” You scoffed, crossing your arms over your chest.

“I-“ He sighed looking down, pinching the bridge of his nose as he let out a low curse. 

“Who is she?” You asked clenching your jaw. He furrowed his brows looking up at you.

“What?” He asked, his hands settling on his hips.

“VM, the girl you keep drawing hearts around. Who is she?” You were blunt, something he loved so much. Always telling it like it is, never leaving him to guess your feelings. A small smile spread on his face, which only made you more mad. “Seriously, you think this is funny?” You hissed, taking a step towards him. Arthur only had one choice, to tell you the truth. 

“Violet.” He said softly, reaching for you. “Violet Morgan.” You let him wrap his hand around your forearm, pulling you close to his chest.

“Who is Violet Morgan?” You asked, swallowing thickly. He sighed, looking off to the side, wetting his lips.

“She’s uh-“ He shook his head, a nervous smile on his lips. “She’s not exactly real, not yet at least.” He said. 

You shook your head, brows knitted together, “Not real? The hell you mean, not real?”

“I-“ He rubbed the back of his neck looking down, “It’s uh- shit.”

“Spit it out Morgan.” You huff throwing your arms up. 

“I thought of a name,” He explained, “A name for a girl if we- if we have one some day.” He said with a shrug, his cheeks flushed, almost as though he had been in a scuffle. 

Oh.

If we have one some day. 

“Oh Arthur.” You said softly, a smile spreading across your face. Feeling suddenly very foolish for doubting your man. “That's so sweet.” You took a step forward, tilting his face up to look at you. 

“Yeah?” He asked, looping his fingers in his gun belt. 

“Yeah.” You repeated, nodding. “Jesus you had me scared you were gonna tell me you found someone else.” You chuckled, shaking your head.

“Never. There ain’t no one else in this goddamn world that could replace you.” He said his hand reached up to cup your face. “You’re uh- you’re it for me darlin.” His bright blue eyes peered into yours, love and affection pouring out in his expression. 

“When we have our girl.” You said brushing away a stray strand of honey brown hair, “Violet will be a perfect name.” He grinned, wrapping a hand around your waist.

“Guess it’s settled then.” He said as he leaned down to press his lips against yours.

[tauforged]

an updated spin on an absolute classic

[warframestuff]

New syndicate the Hex!

Arthur (Excalibur) Aoi (Mag) Lettie (Trinity) Eleanor (Nyx) Amir (Volt) Quincy (Cyte-09)

[arcadiaberger]

Dormant Alien Empires

#YouTube  #Isaac Arthur  #Aliens