Soil Processors

Description

Soil processors are terraforming tools used to make regolith or alien soil amenable to agriculture.  Usually built into a mobile platform, such as a large truck, and paired with earth moving equipment, soil processors go from site to site, producing usable soil.  Some soil processors are stationary production plants, but these are the exceptions to the rule.

The first stage of the soil processor consists of a rock crusher that breaks stones into small enough pieces for the process to continue.  The second stage of soil processing sends the soil through a tumbler with microbial cultures added.  This stage takes the edges off of sharp-edged fragments, aerates the soil, and starts the growth of beneficial microbes.  After the tumbler, the soil spends a certain amount of time fermenting in a bioreactor, where it is stirred together with engineered algae, fungi and other living agents, such as worms and insects.  After the bioreactor is done, the soil goes through one more aeration stage before being returned to the ground.  

The whole process can take between a week and several months depending on what kind of soil is being processed, and for what use.

Soil processing operations on Shoji circa GSC 215

Impact Ships

Description

Impact ships are designed to collect and launch asteroids or comets to impact with a planet.  Generally this is accomplished by landing thruster-drones on the object in order to dock it to a powerful railgun attached to the ship.

The technology was developed to terraform a planet by adding mass and desired chemicals (such as water and oxygen) to its environment.  This can boost a planet's gravity, improve its atmosphere, and even create oceans.

Unfortunately, the more cruel leaders and commanders also learned to use impact ships to rain destruction on whole planets.  The democratic societies of the galaxy see this later use of the technology as a crime, while the more despotic and Machiavellian see it as a means to an end.

During Era-2, the Holy Empire of Man included a large number of impact ships in its "Purification Fleet".

Heat Mills

Description

Heat Mills are used to warm the air and/or water of a planet.  Generally, if a planet's greenhouse effect is at the desired level, but the climate is still too cold for some other reason (usually Albedo or orbital eccentricity), heat mills are used to warm the environment.

A heat mill is generally constructed in the form of a tower covered in radiator vanes.  In the center of the tower are the heaters .  If a planet's greenhouse effect is too low, fuel-burning heaters may be used to increase it, otherwise the heaters are usually electrical.  The heater heats the radiator vanes, which in turn heat the air and/or water around the heat mill.  

Working in a heat mill is hot, heavy, repetitive and dangerous.  The height of a typical heat mill makes falling a real danger.  Long hours spent adjusting huge radiator vanes, and tending to the heaters make it one of the galaxy's least desirable jobs.

The planet Scharlaff is home to some of the most infamous heat-mills in the galaxy. As the planet gradually drifts away from it’s sun, more of these mills need to be constructed cheaply. So, as a cost-saving measure, the Empire of 1,000,000 Suns staffs them with convicts.

Gravity Satellites

Description

After the discovery of gravitonium in Era-1, gravity manipulation became possible, and one of the main applications was to modify the gravitational fields of planets, to make them more amenable to human life.  

Gravity Satellites are a massive investment for a planet, because of the large amount of gravitonium needed.  Gravitonium is both rare and dangerous to obtain, since it is most often found in the vicinity of black holes and neutron stars, making it quite expensive.

Since a Gravity Satellite exerts a cone of influence between its self and the surface of the planet it orbits, it takes a number of them to fully adjust a planet's environment.  Most planets that have gravity satellites, only have a few in geostationary orbits creating a band of adjusted gravity around the equator.  Many planets with partial systems have the problem of inconsistent coverage, where the surface gravity varies throughout the day.  Few planets are wealthy enough to have full and consistent coverage.  

Atmospheric Conditioners

Description

Atmospheric Conditioners generally take the form of large buildings, the size of skyscrapers covered in large ventilation ports.  The ports serve to draw in the planet's atmosphere, and to expel the newly conditioned atmosphere.

Inside the conditioner ducts lead the incoming air first to a bioreactor that uses genetically engineered algae and other microorganisms to remove unwanted substances and to add oxygen, and other gasses if needed.  If the planet's greenhouse effect is too low to sustain a habitable climate, the air then goes to a chamber where the appropriate gasses are added, often by burning certain fuels.  The heat produced by this process is re-captured to provide power.  If the planet's climate is too cold, the conditioner may also include a Heat Mill to warm the outgoing air.  If the air is too dry or too humid, an atmospheric conditioner also includes humidifying/dehumidifying equipment.

The number of atmospheric conditioners installed on a planet depends on the volume of the atmosphere, as well as how much the air needs to be altered.  Planets with higher populations also tend to need more conditioning.  

Atmospheric Conditioning technology also has its abuses.  The corporate state of Cosmid used this technology on several planets to test new drugs on unsuspecting populations.  The Holy Empire of Man also used atmospheric conditioners to drug entire planets. 

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Atmospheric conditioners in the Black Iron Desert on Bonnard's End

Spatial Compression Radio

Description

Spatial compression radio uses negative energy technology to transmit radio signals through hyperspace.  In addition to a frequency setting, Spatial Compression radios have a compression setting, and can only fully receive signals sent at the same compression level (partial reception is possible if the receiver's compression ratio resonates with the signal's).  The greater the compression, the longer the antenna has to be.  Maximum compression levels for radio keep pace with the maximum compression levels for star-ships.  Since radio waves travel at the speed of light, they take full advantage of the compression, and a radio with a compression ratio of 100:1 can transmit a signal to a distance of 100Ly in one year.

So widely used was spatial-compression radio that regular radio came to be known as S.O.L. (speed of light) radio.  This designation also fit with the traditional meaning of the abbreviation SOL, as in, "You don't even have enough money to buy the most basic Spatial Compression radio set?  I guess you're just S.O.L."

Spatial Compression Device

Description

Commonly known as hyperdrives, spatial compression devices compress space, allowing for faster than light travel but don't actually move the ship.  The ship's engines propel it through hyperspace, so ships with more powerful engines also traverse hyperspace faster.  A spatial compression device alters the geometry of space through the use of Negative Energy technology to create an Alcubierre field.  Space is made of discrete units, and the spatial compression device allows some fraction of these to be skipped over while traveling. The fraction of space skipped over while traveling FTL  is known as the compression ratio.  The higher the compression ratio, the farther into hyperspace the ship travels, and the higher the speed it can attain.

A spatial compression device has a maximum range proportional to the amount of negative energy stored in its anticapacitors.  Since the ship is traveling quite fast, any impact is dangerous, and star-ships have to be well armored and/or carry heavy deflector shields. Most ships also mount an array of point-defense weapons as a means of removing obstacles ahead.  

The Empire of 1,000,000 Suns had this technology for a long time, but didn’t achieve compression ratios much over 1,000:1 until after contact with the Planetary League.  

The Planetary League didn’t have this tech until Era-1 was in full swing, owing to early contacts with the Convergence, particularly the first Convergence War.  In a short time after developing the technology, scientists in the Planetary League designed a spatial compression hyperdrive with a compression ratio of 10,000:1, giving a clear speed advantage to anyone using that design.  Development of spatial compression technology continued apace, and at the end of Era-1, the fastest ships had compression ratios on the order of 100,000:1.  As the technology continued to improve ships kept getting faster, and by the end of Era-2, the fastest ships had compression ratios around 10,000,000:1.  Speeds kept increasing through Era-3, as well. 

Vital Components

Spatial compression requires the generation of negative energy.  Most early models of hyperdrive used Casimir-plates to achieve this.  Later models more often used squeezed light, and a few high end models even used the Hawking Radiation of a small black hole.

A spatial compression device requires an anticapacitor to operate.  The anticapacitor is used to store negative energy to generate the Alcubierre field.  Over time, as the drive operates, the anticapacitors discharge, and when they are empty the Alcubierre field collapses and the ship returns to normal space. A ship can also exit hyperspace at any point along its journey by directly discharging the anticapacitors.

A large coil of negaconductive wire (many types of normal wire have negaconductive properties, but the best negaconductors are rare and made of exotic matter) is needed to generate the Alcubierre field.

Note on Compression Ratios

A spatial compression ratio of 100:1 means that a ship could travel 100Ly in one year, if it could accelerate to the speed of light without compression (which doesn't work because of relativity).  In practice, most ships travel at about 1/10c without compression, so a typical ship with 100:1 compression would travel 10Ly per year.

Cosmic drift

When traveling through hyperspace, a ship is partially detached from the space-time continuum where it originated, and when it returns to ordinary space, it doesn't return to exactly the universe it originated from.  This phenomenon is known as cosmic drift, and over repeated voyages, a traveler might wind up in a universe quite different from their original one.  Cosmic drift rarely affects a traveler or ship directly, anything directly tied to the traveling entities tends to be the same in the destination universe as it is at the point of departure.  Cosmic drift usually only affects details of reality beyond the light cone of the ship's departure into hyperspace, although under extreme circumstances such as a hyperspace storm, this is not always the case. On rare occasions, a traveler will exit hyperspace into a universe vastly different from their origin point.

Cosmic drift detectors are devices tied via quantum entanglement to a particular space-time continuum, and can measure how far they have drifted from their originating spacetime. Most spacecraft with spatial compression technology have such a detector, and handheld units are carried by many travelers.

Hypercapacitors

Description

Hypercapacitors are electrical storage devices with enormously high capacity by modern standards.  Hypercapacitors were invented late in Era-0 on Earth.  

Hypercapacitors are typically made from graphene, and other, similar materials, using nano-construction techniques.

Hypercapacitors power most of the day-to-day applications of technology in the galaxy.  Jetpacks, hovercars, robots, and rayguns all use hypercapacitors as their main power sources.