The Science and History of Avarice Dynasty
I knew when I first started writing a science fiction story that I didn’t want it to be ‘hard sci-fi.’ Hard sci-fi, in a simplified nutshell, refers to stories that are so laden down with scientific formulae and math that one would need a doctorate in physics to understand. The stories revolve around the science, usually in such a way that the science is more of a character than any of the people. Those kinds of books are popular and I have nothing against them at all, I just knew that’s not what I wanted. I may have aced math and science in school but I find research incredibly boring. I didn’t want to have to spend months checking and re-checking my facts to make sure they were correct.
In short, the ‘science’ of Avarice Dynasty isn’t really science. It is based on real science and could quite possibly happen. It would probably require all of the three thousand years between now and when the story is set to get these radical ideas to work. To be perfectly frank I like my stories to be fun even when they are set in a dystopian universe and what could be more fun than personal spaceships just a little bit bigger than sedans? But the rational, logical side of my brain (the part that’s always at war with the creative side) demanded that there be some explanation for these miracles.
One of the most significant events of Avarice Dynasty’s history is where my search for science really needed to start. Some quick facts: the story is set about three thousand years from now on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy from Earth. It is important for both the history and science of the story that we know how mankind got all the way over to the Frontier Worlds, as I have named them.
A scientist by the name of James Isaac Newton launched a fleet of six vessels to escape the tyranny of the Barons. I’ll get to the Barons in my next Argot, but suffice to say that they are evil and James wants to get himself and a nice small chunk of humanity away from them. He launches the Journeymen vessels and off they go on their journey! And this is the part where science comes in. Feel free to let your eyes glaze over for the next few paragraphs if you hate numbers and things; I nearly did.
The problem with space transport of any true length of time is storage of fuel, water, air and food. You can launch a bunch of people into space for fairly cheap but then you have to keep them alive once they’re up there. A gallon of water weighs eight pounds, people eat an average of 4.7 pounds of food a day, and the space shuttle requires 1,100,000 pounds of fuel solid just to get it to orbit. A year’s supply of water for one person at a gallon a day is just over 2,900 pounds and equivalent supply of food is just over 1,700 pounds. The shuttle itself is designed to ditch the containers that carry most of the fuel but they are also not designed to haul as much weight as our imaginary space-traveling-for-a-long-time vessel. If each Journeymen vessel carried 1,500 people (which they did) then we’re looking at 4,350,000 pounds of water and 2,550,000 pounds of food just for one year. That doesn’t even include the amount of breathable atmosphere that would need to be stored and I don’t even want to know how much that would weigh. And we keep coming back to those being the numbers just for one year. Even if the vessels traveled at the speed of light they would need 3.24 more years to reach our closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri. Traveling at the more scientifically-feasible rate of half the speed of light (which is still way beyond our current capabilities) means that each Journeymen vessel would require 36,888,000 pounds of water and 21,624,000 pounds of food just for starters. Again, that doesn’t include water for washing nor does it include any potential births or sicknesses in which people might need extra food or water.
That’s 18,444 tons and 10,812 tons of water and food respectively for each vessel. According to some sources, the heaviest spacecraft and its rockets only weigh 1,500 tons. And, yet again, that doesn’t include the weight of the fuel it would take to get those craft off the ground. The quickest and easiest way for me to get around (some of) that immense problem was actually with James Isaac Newton’s invention: the Memphis Stardrive. One of the many benefits of the Memphis is that its powerful mechanism produces drinkable water and breathable atmosphere as a byproduct. That is at least based on scientific fact because a hydrogen engine would conceivably generate H20 as vapor byproduct. That’s as far as I got into researching how an engine would produce water or breathable air. The rest is Future Science™! With an engine that produces water and air the need for storing those reduces rather quickly. Add in the sci-fi staple of oxygen scrubbers and waste-product filters and you have a pretty-easy-while-still-semi-based-on-fact system of eliminating the water and oxygen storage problems. Food, well that’s different. I’ll get to that later.
However, such an incredibly complicated engine as the Memphis would require an immense power source, which comes back to the question of fuel and its weight as well. And that is where the Barons and their Kanjer Machine come in, which will be the subject of a future blog.
