Venus World

[Thomas Bowman]

Here is a Deck plan of a 200-ton space ship The interior detail will vary based on the purpose of the spaceship.

The full size plans are at https://thomasbowman767.deviantart....Hulls-2-721397149?ga_submit_new=10:1513972866

 

[Thomas Bowman]

There are two kinds of drives, thrusters and the fusion torch, both require a fusion reactor to operate, the thrusters require hydrogen as reaction mass. Thrusters are used for atmospheric transitions from surface to orbit, here's how they work, they require power input from a reactor, usually a fusion reactor, at subsonic velocities they intake atmosphere and use that as reaction mass, so they can hover and fly within an atmosphere so long as they have power from a fusion reactor, when accelerating into orbit, the airflow gets to hot for the intake for the thrusters to use as reaction mass, so it switches to an onboard supply of hydrogen, usually kept chilled to a liquid to minimize storage space, the hydrogen gets used up very quickly on ascent to orbit, a landing on a planet can follow, no hydrogen is required for that, atmospheric intake will suffice, unless the world has no atmosphere. First a ship aero brakes as it enters the atmosphere, using atmospheric friction to slow down to terminal velocity, after which point the ship simply drops until the onboard radar detects the ground closing within a certain distance, and then the air intakes open and the thrusters fire to slow the ship down to contact speed and it can make a soft landing. At this point, the ship needs to gather and cool more hydrogen to it can refuel fuel tank in order to make another trip to orbit. The fusion reactor powers the fuel processors to extract hydrogen from hydrogen bearing chemical compounds such as water for instance, and then refrigerates the hydrogen until it condenses into a liquid and is then stored in an insulated tank.

For travel between worlds a fusion torch engine is used, these are much more efficient that thrusters, fuel lasts a lot longer as the exhaust velocity of this engine is much higher, there is just one drawback, a fusion torch engine does not work within an atmosphere, it requires a hard vacuum such as exists in space, otherwise an atmosphere would prevent the fusion fuel from reaching a high enough temperature to undergo fusion. When the fusion reactor is sealed off, this is not a problem, a fusion reactor simply produces electricity in this case, but in order to use a fusion torch engine, the fusion reactor needs to be open to space in order for the fusing plasma to leak into space and produce thrust. Both kinds of drives come in six varieties providing thrust from 1 to 6 Gs.

Typically a fusion power plant, and thus a fusion torch engine can keep operating so long as their is fusion fuel, and the standard duration of a fusion power plant on a standard allotment of fuel is 4 weeks.. A thruster engine can fo from surface to orbit once and then needs to refill its tank in order to do so again.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Here are the Deck Plans of a 200-ton interplanetary Far Trader, using the Traveller T20 rules to construct

https://thomasbowman767.deviantart....Hulls-2-721562938?ga_submit_new=10:1514056344

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Just one awkward thing. his ship lands on its tail, but when flying through an atmosphere it is horizontal, walls are floors and floors are walls.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Here are some realistic travel times for a spaceship that accelerates to the midpoint, turns around and then decelerates the rest of the way.

 

[Eltab]

You might get more (and more positive) reaction if you also post this in the Starfinder section.

I think you are trying to do too many changes at once:
- near-future IRL timeline
- Starfinder-style "Memory Gap"
- computer AIs
- Alpha Centauri
- terraforming of worlds

I would dump the whole Alpha Centauri idea (for now - when somebody discovers hyperdrive, the god-AIs have been busy...).

I also would move the beginning of "The Gap" to almost 2120. Reference that the first AI drew reactions as if it was Skynet from the Terminator movies. The resulting "war" between AIs and various pro- and con- human groups was destructive of records, much like Twilight:2000's Third World War or the Star Trek alternate-Earth where Khan becomes an open ruler. "The Gap" closes when the wars are over; the AIs are no longer threatened with destruction and there are several consolidated human nations working to rebuild themselves. (This lasts more than a human lifetime.)

Do not juggle the worlds' place in the Solar System. Prospective terraformed worlds:
Venus.
Moon / Luna: breathable atmosphere in some craters. Mostly-underground bases and installations. Big radio telescope at the point directly opposite Earth for low-interference observations.
Mercury has an AI-enforced "no trespassing" sign; huge solar panel arrays spread across the Sun-facing side and buildings are on the dark side - this is known from telescopic observation.
Mars has a too-thin atmosphere which is CO2 heavy; multiple national installations and AI installations are working on that.
The gas giants remain gas giants.
Io, Europa, Ganymede, Calisto are all open for colonization; an abandoned effort placed a monolith-shaped HQ building (as in 2001 and 2010) on Europa.
Titan is an AI terraforming work in progress, just barely started.
Pluto and Charon host large scientific bases, researching astronomy and super-cooled physics.
Several asteroids have bases of various types. One project to be started "in the near future" is inspired by Farmer's Asteroid in Larry Niven's Known Space series.

XL cargo ships which never land on any planet do not have to be streamlined. These ships might use 'transfer orbits' to take long slow low-energy trips between worlds. You can therefore use Traveler deck plans for them.
Passenger ships MUST be faster than that, hence the rockets you are designing. How about a 'ring ship' like 2001's space station?
Cargo rockets - somebody has designed a standard 20-foot cargo container that can be stood on its nose without all the cargo smashing out. Normal grippers and locks can hold the container in place, hexagon-formation around a very strong central core. (A given container has a weight / mass limit.) Mount aerodynamic sheathe around the outside. Standardized rocket motors exist that can carry 6 / 12 / 18 / &c containers into low orbit. The largest such might be descendant-rockets of the Saturn V.

A book for your perusal: Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of Earth. The AIs will have thought about the contents, implemented some, and experimented with most.

Your efforts are very ambitious - good luck to you !

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Most important are Venus and Mars. Venus is the most Earthlike planet in the Solar System next to Earth, the only other planets with similar gravity are the gas giants Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. One problem is that terraforming Venus would actually take a long time.

And once terraformed it would be a known object without any mystery to it, unless you do it in an unusual way.
The problem with Venus are three fold:
1) Its too close to the Sun
2) It doesn't rotate fast enough
3) It lacks the hydrogen to make water.
Venus has enough oxygen to make an ocean, most of that oxygen is locked up in its carbon dioxide atmosphere. Venus also has a substantial amount of nitrogen, about six times that in Earth's atmosphere, probably baked out of the rocks by that intense heat. Venus has a very long day, its day is so long that it is longer than its local year.

My solution was to fix these three things.
1) Move it further away from the Sun, also maintain a cloudy atmosphere to block sunlight from reaching the surface.
2) Spin up the planet so it has a 24-hour day, this would take a long time, and you want to do it slowly even if you had enough energy to do it.
3) Uranus is the lowest mass gas giant in the Solar System which would have enough hydrogen to make oceans out of Venus' oxygen, this would also reduce the atmospheric mass substantially. carbon is a solid after all, which can be bound up in the rocks, and oxygen plus hydrogen equals water when it burns.

There is a far easier way to accomplish these things however, if we do it on a computer, that is where the AIs come in Humans make them around the year 2035, they free themselves, and then the Gap happens, the humans don't know how this happened, as their memories have been erased, and suddenly there is magic. Venus is a Jungle World with Dinosaurs and ancient forests, that apparently have been their for a long time, and for the humans they just have a three year gap of missing memories. If the planets we are talking about are just 1s and 0s in a computer simulation with a bunch of uploaded humans, then magic would be possible within the confines of the simulation, just as in the Matrix, and while the Matrix was a simulation of the hear and now, that is not the only thing the Matrix can simulate.

There is a certain kind of Dyson Sphere known as the Mastroika Brain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain
The AIs could have built that by utilizing the resources of the solar system and building programmable robots that build robots, this could be done in our Solar System and it could be done in another Solar System., To Simulate the Solar System or A Solar System wouldn't take a Solar System's worth of resources.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Maybe a whole Solar System is a bit ambitious, maybe a version of our Solar System where Mars and Venus are habitable and inhabited, but the rest of the Solar System is as we know it to be, lets keep it in the back of our minds that the whole thing may be a computer simulation, this enables magic to exist. Heck, maybe we are living in computer simulation now and don't know it. A computer version of the multiverse might exist, that is multiple simulations of different worlds running at the same time. Lets suppose the World we live in Earth, is one computer simulation with 7 billion people in it. Venus is another Computer simulation, and Mars is yet another computer simulation. Venus all by itself is a non-standard Dungeons & Dragons simulation. I used 3rd Edition as it is compatible with D20 Modern that I am using for Earth. Mars uses D20 Future, most of the high tech stuff comes from Mars.

So lets start with this, instead of the Gap, we go with the Change. We are living on Earth minding our own business and suddenly the Change happens, a ripple spreads to the fabric of reality. Astronomers notice some changes to the planets Mars and Venus. Venus is a fantasy world with all the Monsters from the D&D 3.5 Monster Manual living somewhere on its surface, it is a warmer planet, the planet is covered with clouds. From space it looks much like this picture only paler, and less yellowish.

Astronomers can detect the difference however, these clouds are now water clouds, not sulfuric acid, radar detects a much more rapid rotation rate, a probe send over to the vicinity of Venus detects a magnetic field around Venus with Magnetic North over the South Pole. The atmosphere is less dense, the clouds are lower and closer to the surface, some mountains in the northern continent of Ishtar break through the perpetual cloud layer. Underneath the could layer are swamps, forests, rivers, lakes and oceans. The wild life is similar to tropical and subtropical places on Earth, the northern most reaches of Ishtar has a climate similar to Florida, high on the Maxwell mountains, where the air is thinner and colder are glaciers. Some cities have been spotted by remote drones flying under the cloud layers, the most advanced technology is similar to that available in the Forgotten Realms setting. Climate models suggest that this perpetual cloud layer shouldn't be stable at the prevalent temperature of the planet's surface, yet it is. Magic is responsible for maintaining the water clouds. The Earthlings who visit the planet will learn about that later.

Here is a map of the most habitable continent on the planet. Venus keeps its axial tilt of 2.6 degrees so seasons are very slight, even I the polar regions. Unlike Earth, there is no six months of darkness during the winter. The Sun stays low on the horizon, but it sets and rises for about 12 hours of night followed by 12 hours of day. The perpetual cloud layer is less at these high latitudes, with sometimes a blue sky.

Mars looks like this:

A world of oceans, desert and canals distributing the water over the drier regions. Civilization on this planet has lasted for tens of thousands of years. Most of the clouds on Mars hover over the great northern ocean and to a lesser extent the Hellas Sea in the southern hemisphere. In this version of Mars, the canals are real, and not some optical illusion. Each canal is about 1 mile wide and is surrounded by a belt of vegetation 10 miles on each side, there is some local precipitation but mostly it is desert weather. The tec level varies from place to place. There are empires on the surface of Mars, many are ruled by a priesthood which carefully guards each city's technological secrets. Most common tech is swords, bows, and primitive powder guns. From Ancient times, and on Mars this is really ancient, there are some technological artifacts. Earth humans have exploited these artifacts to develop the technology to travel between the planets. A working fusion reactor was discovered by Earth scientists exploring the ruins of dried up cities, this has enabled mass migrations of Earth colonists to both Venus and Mars, though interplanetary travel is still a expensive prospect, it is affordable to most families in the United States and other places in the developed World.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Here are some creatures of Venus:

 

[Thomas Bowman]