The stars.... they're all gone. They vanished twenty years ago. We look up into the night sky, and all we see is Luna, our moon. This year, we launched the first of many exploration vessels. We need to find out what happened.

So yeah, the basic idea is that an exploration vessel that holds two people, which is meant to sustain them for hundreds of years (cryogenic sleep), is shot off towards Alpha Centari. At least, where it was. So the two people on board are the researcher/science officer (me) and the pilot/engineer (you). I would prefer if you played a female, but it's cool if you play a male.

I've put some basic stuff down for the pilot. Before we go too much further can we do some world building first? The picture of the Serenity in the OOC made me think that this would be a lot further in the future.

Are we still using liquid fuel rockets and convetional launch systems? You make it sound like we're in a Discovery-like shuttle from Nasa.

We are using liquid fuel boosters, at least on the escape, because any other thing just isn't really feasible. In space, however, we use Ion reactor engines, and a nuclear fusion generator.

Isn't ion propulsion extremely inefficient for a manned vessel? Since this is closer to present day I was going to suggest a VASIMR style engine since that would work better with a cold-fusion reactor to generate power.

Ah, alright. Sounds good, because I don't know much about Ion propulsion's efficiency, aside from how it works. And VASIMR is, essentially, a plasma engine, is it not? So yeah, we could be using it.

Oh, and sorry for not replying earlier. My feed was dominated by one thread that gets replies every few minutes.

I don't mind. Also, we have anti-gravity technology but we still use liquid fuel rocket engines? lol

The engineer in my head keeps nagging at me sorry. I was just thinking, if we have the tech to replicate gravitational forces and fusion reactors couldn't we implement that into a launch system? The thing about Ion Propulsion is that it has high specific impulse but extremely low thrust so we would be sitting in cryogenic sleep for years before we got anywhere significant XD.

Yup VASIMR engines ionize hydrogen or sometimes helium and push it through a magnetic field that confines it into a jet creating thrust. It has generates plenty of thrust and retains a decent specific impulse which translates to more DeltaV than we will ever need and since both fuel sources are extremely abundant in space we would die of old age before we ran out of fuel.

I don't know. I try my best not to be nitpicky but I do like to keep in the realm of plausibility because it means I can use my own knowledge as a reference so I don't have to make up entire theoretical systems on the fly.

Yeah, I'm not an engineer, but I do love Sci-Fi, and I try to be as realistic as possible in my stories. But wouldn't the launch system, if it was related to gravity control, be pretty slow? And even if it had the ability to negate or lessen gravity, wouldn't temporary, recyclable solid/liquid fuel be more efficient? The best thing to do would be to launch it from a fabrication platform in space, but they didn't have time to build that, and this is the first launch. Time is of the essence, y'know?

Fair enough I guess. I'll get to posting in a bit. I've got to start cooking for when my husband gets home.

Alright, sounds good!

Boyo...

Girlie...

...still waiting.

I eagerly await your return!

@MidoriSooooooo sorry for my long wait time. I wanted to get everything right, and well, you know how it is.

I don't mind the wait, I'm just glad you didn't deliberately disappear without warning.

@Midori So I'm thinking that for the Davis Project, it's kinda when a bunch of expendable drones worked to clear the upper and mid-orbits of the spacejunk.

@AthinarSorry it took me a while to respond to this one. I got caught up outlining the plot for You Are Dead.

@Midori No, no, no, it's fine. My delay was MUCH worse.