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[Nafensoriel]

/snip and railguns don't spall/vaporize. Everyone in that compartment should have been flash fried/exploded by a wave of metal shards and plasma...)

Also the fact that there are no in ship options to take the vaporous metal out of the air supply rendering any impact that penetrates the hull leaving the atmosphere permanently toxic without a purge. Vaporous nickle... not friendly.

As to FTL.. we know negative mass is possible. That pretty much opens the door to FTL options but we aren't past the stick banging portion of science yet.

Nuclear explosion in space are actually more powerful for their area of effect. The area of effect is just much smaller when not assisted by overpressure.
In space they are effectively a gamma ray laser that usually happens to be shaped like a sphere(you can shape space explosions too). This effect in space has absolutely nothing to slow it down or mitigate it.


Honestly the most realistic thing in space colonization is going to be the constant battle against bacteria exploiting everything as food. Alien bacteria or human bacteria.. it doesn't matter. Once the little buggers get into an environment in sufficient volume they'll figure out how to survive and once that happens all bets are off.  Disembarkation at planets will be the most dangerous aspect of space travel due to the risk of contamination imho.

[Igncom1]

Them contaminating us, or us contaminating them? It would be a sad sight to see if we accidentally kill any aliens we find with our microbiology. 

Might be better at that point to live in orbital colonies to avoid killing the alien gardens we actually do end up finding.

[TheLaughingDead]

Them contaminating us, or us contaminating them? It would be a sad sight to see if we accidentally kill any aliens we find with our microbiology. 

Might be better at that point to live in orbital colonies to avoid killing the alien gardens we actually do end up finding.

If I've learned anything from real life, it is that a wealthy elite will pay exorbitant amounts of money or what-have-you so that they can go into the garden and poach a one-of-a-kind animal from the garden, before the bacteria finishes off the rest
Off that really depressing note though, this is a really interesting thread! All of this stuff sounds indistinguishable from technobabble, which makes it that much more fascinating to me that it is possible (if people of this thread are to be believed). Where the heck does an up-and-comer go to read or learn about this stuff? (Or alternatively, what years of student debt do I need to rack up to obtain a foothold in such fascinating conversation?)

[Thaago]

A decent place to start is atomic rockets and their misconceptions page. Its not always completely accurate and sometimes relies on somewhat dubious calculations, but it puts a good faith effort into it.

[Igncom1]

For a layman like me, it's basically all true.

[Nafensoriel]

Them contaminating us, or us contaminating them? It would be a sad sight to see if we accidentally kill any aliens we find with our microbiology. 

Might be better at that point to live in orbital colonies to avoid killing the alien gardens we actually do end up finding.

Both. At the same time.

Bacteria and any analog by design and nature do not care what they are "in" beyond a very specific set of guidelines that define if they can survive or not.

IE if you have a bacteria that lives in something 50% or greater H20 and consumes an organic carbon(carbohydrates etc) then it wont notice an appreciable difference between the alien lake and your eyeball fluid. In fact to the alien(either way) bacteria the new host environment might actually be superior due to lack of predation and other risks.

A friend of mine more suited to this type of science once equated it this way to me:
Two alien ecosystems colliding is like taking all the bacteria from two entirely different biomes and putting them into a Petri dish together for that worlds most insane battle royal.
They might not care and chill.
They might wage nuclear war.
They might just pass the joint and trade DNA or whatever is on the menu that day.
Or anything in between.

/edit forgot something.
Living in orbit doesnt 100% ensure no contamination. Technic species are, by nature, epic trash producers. Something will eventually drop into that gravity well with a little bugger attached.