Rocket Man

do you mean more power than one on it's own? im thinking no. it will be greater, but im not sure to what extent, the force applied by a magnet follows the inverse square law. the force drops off fairly quickly with distance. it will be like having a longer magnet, the force applied by the distant particles will be a lot less than the force applied by the the closer ones. the distant particles will really only serve to align more of the closer particles, boosting the force. the force acually applied by the distant particles will be quite small. with powerful such as those, there really arent many more particles to align. i think you will have more effect sticking them together side by side, n-n, s-s you'll probably need a two-part-epoxy along with a hefty set of clamps. that will double the force.

AFAIK, liquid water cannot exist in a vacuum. the pressure of water in contact will be determined by the temperature, lower temperature means less pressure untill the water will boil. the water in contact will experience a pressure equal to the atmospheric pressure minus the head of water, this will be just lower than a total vacuum, just enough for the water to be liquid at the current temperature. water at low pressure is quite an interesting topic, liquid water is unstable at low pressures, but solid and gas occupy more volume so the water will collapse into a lower energy state as determined by the pressure. (it will basically sublimate at low pressures) really interesting is that you can pull a wire through ice and have the water freeze above it where it is at a lower pressure, you can melt ice without heating it, i've seen it done.

at the beakers water level, the pressusre in the test tube will be 1atm, it will be less at the top but not much less, a 10cm head of water doesnt have much pressure associated. to get a total vacuum at the top of the tube, you'll need roughly 10m of water. (in which case you'll probably drop the boiling point so the top will be filled with water vapour) the pressure at the water level of the beaker will still be 1atm though, no matter how deep or high the tube extends, the mass of water is held up by the pressure against the surface of the beaker water. if it was anything else it wouldnt be in equilibrium. the force holding it up comes from the mass of air above the beaker, 10m of water countering roughly 100km of air gives some indication of relative densities (after you count the pressure-height gradient of the atmosphere)

i see what your getting at with the irreplacable singularity idea, it would make the whole thing sound more believable. perhaps the facotry could be used for the initiation of a singularity using vast amounts of energy and heavy machinery and smaller systems manipulate it remotley to keep it stable after initiation, like the singularity goes some way to keeping itself stable after it moves past a critical energy level. try putting a factory in low solar orbit to get the energy, even have them harness energy over long periods of time, years, decades, you might even have the solar arrays eclipse the sun. The factory ties a knot in space using large powerful machinery, and has low energy containment feilds to keep it stable once initiated, when a ship collects it, control of the singularity goes to the ship. they could even have the reactor removed from the ship temporarily, and the new singularity is initiated within using precise coordinates as to the reactor core. they should be fairly delicate items where containment is only possible under very strict energy levels, too much compression energy cant be maintained while too little brings it to the point where it gives up and ceases to exist (rather violently) then you could have a system where the factories give control of the new singularity over to the ships transmitters and have the singularity controlled remotely. that way, it would require vast production capabilities to make one, a little energy to maintain it and no way of getting one back unless it's made at huge expense. i like the limited life span idea, you can say that care can make it last longer, but energy is always lost through unknown causes in ways that it cant be replenished easily (repair and maintenence where is was made? trade an old one for a new one and have the old one repaired with a far lower but still substantial energy budget) i dont know of any science to make the singulatities with, i dont know string theory.

i wouldnt expect you to limit yourself to modern tech, my suggestions for fusion were for the gravity compression system. i'd still be wary, the forces required to compress matter to that volume are likely to kill within about a kilometre. unless you are in free fall towards it. if one singularity fails, there will be a substantial decompression, even if it's only a sixth of the overall force, if one fails it'll sound like a small bomb going off around the reactor, that might even disrupt the other singularities despite fail-safes. (this could turn out to be quite an interesting plot device) arent the singularities controlled remotely? knots tied in space time by an external device? simply fade out one of the transmitters to repair the faulty section of the reactor, you wont need to eject anything from a high compression fusion reaction nor would it be a sudden decompression at all. come to think of it, transmit a singularity into open space and feed it large amounts of compressed matter, you will then have something of a weapon, you could drive it close to the hull of a ship, turn the feild off suddenly and let the explosion do the rest. i wouldnt expect the singularities to have mass or any other characteristic of matter, so you could potentially make them as powerful as you like, you can say that feilds over a certain strength take too much power / are unreliable / are inefficient, to add a touch of realism. carbon fibre armour, do you mean carbon nano tubes? a fine weave of long carbon nano tubes(difficult to manufacture with current tech) set in a layer of passive, motion dampening rubber(about to hit the market) would stop most types of bullets while being as light as a wetsuit. it is also highly resistant to tearing, and any shock is absorbed all over the body. (a high velocity bullet would feel like a baseball bat, it'll hurt, maybe break ribs, but it wont penetrate/kill.) duterium gas with an electric spark is fusion on a small scale, it's proven and repeated technology, unfortunately it's too small to ever break even. fusion requires two isotopes to strike each other with enough force to over come repulsive nuclear forces, i dont think there will ever be such a thing as cold fusion (except with the singularities)

i like your fusion ideas, but i should warn you, trying to effecticely put a berillium reactor in a small craft, it may not fit. modern attempts at fusion use duterium or tritium plasma under huge temperatures and pressures, these reactors are the size of very large multi-story ware houses, it may work if you use a high rigidity sphere centered firmly around the singularity, all you'll need to do is release gas at it, it will fall under gravity and crush on each other down to the nucleus. unfortunately, the particles with larger nuclei will take the lower positions due to density, you'll need a way of tapping the fused atoms off the reactor. also, a gravitational mass with the force of a small star is not something i would want close by. especially if the singularities are margially unstable. (explosive decompression comparible to a small nova may be likely) you might like to run in-system craft on solar wind and solar elecrticity. nasa has plans to build a satellite to run on the momentum of charged particles, it uses an artificial magneto shpere about 50km effective radius to deflect charged particles and essentially act as a solar sail. old style satelite power was a non-critical lump of plutonium with a thermopile cell between it and space. the warm block of plutonium created electricity via heat transfer in thermocouples to radiation energy into space. these have a working power of about 4 watts, just enough to run the circuits. grunge tech in my mind sounds like what we would have trying to get to space with modern technology. ion rockets are pretty effective if given enough power, 1gm for solar power in lunar orbit. imagine what you could do with nuclear power. (fusion and fission inclusive) just a suggestion, you can make different types of fusion using larger or smaller spheres, higher or lower compression rates. none of this complex variations ect, just replace the inner sphere. higher compression for larger nuclei, lower compression for smaller nuclei. you can also fuse two different types of atom, you can fuse your nitrogen with another duterium to make oxygen. admittedly, you will get a substantially higher concentration of byproduct helium, you can talk about different conditions favouring different product ratios. note, fusion above iron is energy negative.

get ready to throw your compasses out in the next few thousand years, the poles are getting ready for a reversal, last measurement i heard of was that magnetic north was somewhere in the sahara and is drifting lazily all over the place magnetite in mountains keeps fairly accurate records of it's polarity from when it was last molten, there's been several reversals in geological history. as for coiled conductors, the direction the coils are in is all important.

that makes sense, without space, there would be no where to move to, motion without time implies v=1/0 which is impossible (under the comfortable assumption that C is the upper limit).

try replacing the helium with hydrogen to accomodate for the extra mass (hindenburg went up because of aluminium paint and static electricity, sealed mylar should be safe enough) look around for the types of cameras they mount on estes model rockets, it's not a live feed, but you can still get a decent film. 1 cubic metre of hydrogen(or is it in litres?) will lift 0.7kilos.

you will only really devolp back problems related to the curvature if you dont have any load whatsoever. children born on mars would grow a lot taller because height is regulated by load and stability. they would however collapse from a weak back under 1g (they'd probably also die from circulation problems due to increased demand for blood pressure)

im not sure about two inches, but two centimetres is common between morning and evening under 1g. the vertebrae compress a little during the day. 5cm might be attanable if the curvature went out, as happened to an american astronaut a few months back, his return flight had to be specialised because his back couldnt handle gravity, it took a lot of physio to get him walking again.

to get the lensing to work, you wouldnt need to tear the fusion generators out, simply place the attractor for the drive in the right spot, and fire at the image you see through the feild, theres some research going into ground-to-orbit lazers that use this principle, as the lazer travels, it gets distorted by irregularities in air pressure, however, if you use a "rubber mirror" to pre-distort the lazer, you can have the atmosphere refocus it on the way. have the singularity of another craft positioned where ever, locate the image of the target as seen by optic equipment using the same lense as the lazer, this image will be pre-bent and put out of focus by the feild. use the lense on the weapon to put the target back into focus and fire the lazer through it, the lense on the weapon will defocus the lazer in such a way that the gravitational feild will refocus it. the only problem is, the enemy can see you through the same gravitational feild and shoot you through it. depending on what limitations you put on the singularities, you could have them shut down or move immediately after the lazer fires to discourage return fire. using the gravitaional lenses, you can also place phantom images here and there. projectile and particle weapons will get throughly confused, matter gets deflected differently to light. (make sure you can shut the gravity lense off, you can still demolish a craft in a phantom image if you fire a lazer.) berillium fusion... nice idea, it's not as energetic as duterium or tritium, but spare oxygen can be useful. i think it might be a little superfluous though, theres going to be enough oxygen in the carbon dioxide and waste water. everything can be recycled, sugars burn into carbondioxide and water carbon dioxide can be split into oxygen for life support, and carbon for food growth, (fungus?), and the water can be used for hydroponics (the same fungus?) fungus is probably the optimum food source for long-haul flights, simple genomes arent very suceptible to radiation, a wide range of possible climates and metabolic rates, and it will split almost all of the waste products crew members can generate. photosynthesis for oxygen and food. it's the closest you can get to a closed system with low tech.

painting targets, this is fairly old tech. troops on the ground have EM signature rifles, they essentially paint a target on the side of a building and wait for a sea-launched missile to spot it and home in. if the scout ships give a position and velocity for a target via triangulation and send the data to the one with the guns, you can be pretty sure of a hit if you use the right maths. targets out of scan range, childs play. modern artillery get relative positions radioed in, the operators do some math, and launch a shell. it's fairly common to never see the target, the explosion or even hear the shell go off, the only report is a radio call "target destroyed". i like the idea of the hinge maneuver, it needs a bit of work though. light doesnt particularly like being bent, it tends to go out of focus and doesnt respond well to gravity. if you had enough of a feild to bend light around a useful angle, you would probably have a red sticky mess for a pilot. it would however make sense to use a relay system, the main ship with the big generators fires a lazer to another, smaller, more agile craft to power a weapon. it would also be possible to tune the wavelength so it can be picked up easier, safer and more efficiently. you could gt it to work with gravity, you already have a projected singularity, project it near the path of the weapon, unfortunately, you'd need angstrom precision and a way of re-focussing the beam. for particle weapons, the gravity system would work, you can also use the kinetic energy of the smaller craft to slingshot/accelerate the particles further.

after a little research, it turns out that if gravitons exist they are likely to have spin. im not sure, but the higgs particle and the graviton may well be the same thing in which case, a graviton emmiter cannot exist, the gravitons remain where they are and apply a force from there. i have heard a theory where gravitons are described as though they are emmitted from any mass in all directions and cause an attractive force on the move. so the focussed graviton thing could work aimed down the nose of the station. i did realise you made most of the post up but i was asking for a reference to where you got the majority of real stuff. for a novel, it would do nicely, just dont draw much attention to the physics behind it until it's proven. a cheap, effective fusion reaction that can be made in the kitchen: (assuming you have access to lots of deuterium) bottle full of deuterium gas at room temerature and pressure, two electrodes forming any sized spark gap, fired using the voltage from a peizo electric crystal and a hammer. the particles in the plasma in the gap gets hot enough to fuse on collision (having the electrons stripped off the nucleus helps too). this has been proven and produces fast neutrons and helium gas. the only problem is trying to get it to break even energy wise; mecahnical energy is wasted, heat is dissapated too quickly, and the fast neutrons aren't terribly energetic. look up the tokamac, its the system scientists are currently trying to adapt to a mass fusion reacion. wikipedia has a lot on the topic of fusion and tokamacs and also some links to other devices. if you're looking for alternative fuels, anything up to iron/nickel will fuse releasing energy, any thing above will only be energy+ in fisson.

i would really like a reference for this, i've never heard of anyone actually detecting gravitrons. this would probably be a suitable (if only half-beliveable) substitute for rotation. otherwise, do what douglas adams does and leave it to the imagination of the reader, give them a nudge in any old direction and let them draw their own conclusions.

the main problem i saw in the idea was that he intended to have these atoms plasma hot and at a lower than excited state... at the same time.... i wouldnt have such a big problem with below ground on it's own, but the aparatus he detailed was ludicrously flawed; massive temperatures and unexcited atoms. you cant have a hot atom without it getting excited. (unless the below-ground-state was utterly stable, in which case we would have detected it by now)

there are a few arguments going around as to whether the effect of gravity travels instantly or at C the problem is, no one can "create" gravity in substantial enough quantities to measure the speed of it's transmission experimentally. also, are tachyons likely to be real? apparantly they have a lower speed limit of C and possibly no upper limit.

the counter weight and tether suggestion i posted could potentially have the whole system rotating at 1 rotation every 10 seconds. 100m from center, around 30m/s, theres almost earth gravity. at 100m out, you wouldnt feel much wrong unless you knew about it. also, the slow rotation would make the scene even more eerie. it would also be fairly simple to have a rotating docking system at the center which you could winch some form of elevator down the tether to the habitat module. docking a platform experiencing gravity can be a real pain and a waste of fuel.

this one might help, http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21290 such fun can be had with super-saturated solutions of almost anything, the joys of high pressure.

dont rush love, it can get nasty. i agree with 1veedo, however, i wouldnt say it so strongly, there are plenty of fish in the sea, but there are also a lot of conflicting personality types. it's rare to find someone you'd spend your life with. then again, theres plenty more you would, who you will never get the chance to meet no matter how many people you go out with. the dream girl thing doesnt happen to everyone, but it does happpen. you just need to recognise it when it comes your way. people change, someone you despised in school might turn out to be your match.

try the higgs particle. apparantly it inhabits atoms and gives rise to gravity. what if the station had some sort of energy --> higgs particle converter (much like CERNs antiproton decellerator) to increase the number of higgs particles in the floor. (now that would feel weird; your feet would feel more gravity than your head. inverse square law, theoretically infinite force at 0 distance assuming no intervention from the uncertainty pricniple.) the higgs particle has never been detected, but a lot of money has gone into it in very large particle accelerators. it is supposed to be the key to mass in some theories.

your idea for the propulsion mechanism works; trick space-time into tying a knot infront of the ship to attract the ships mass to a false gravity source. i was thinking that you had some containment device sitting firmly out front. as for the plasma sheilds, im not convinced, the solar wind doesnt strip layers off the magnetoshpere, it doesnt have layers. it's a gradient of intensity. the magneto sphere just sits there deflecting charged particles. an aroura is where it fails and the particles hit the highest of the atmosphere. if the plasma is there, you can use it as protection against fast particles and beam weapons, you dont need a sacrificial sheild. it wont stay as plasma very long either, it will loose heat very quickly via radiation. it'll simply be charged gas. simply strip the atoms of a few electrons, use the gravity from the singularity to attract them to the ship and a like charge on the ship's hull. the gravity will effect a greater area than the electrostatic force on the hull and essentially hold the plasma in a loose, empty sphere around the ship. also, if you had like an electron pump, (vandergraaf generator), have the opposing charge deeper in the ship to enhance the effect and hold a denser sheild. (the sheild will behave like a gas but repel between particles so it's going to be fairly diffuse.) this can be a massive sheild because in space, there arent many restrictions on size resistance to projectile weaponry... a projectile weapon would cut right through it. you can however detect turbulance patterns easily and react accordingly. light scattered in the sheild will show the wake of a missile/projectile quite well, it will also show whether it's powered or not. (even cloaked projectiles/craft will show up on radar)

touching magnets, i would expect either equal or double force. remember the inverse square law force = distance^-2 any distance will drop the force quite a bit. if you look at distance though, it's not just the force from the surface of the magnet, it's the force from any of the aligned particles up the magnet so the inverse square law is blurred on the edges.