Denubis' posted comments

  1. On "So We're *Not* Being Hired by Some Débutante, Right?":

    posted 7 months ago

    and my comment was clipped. There are the people who treat it as if it was gold, and then there are the people who use the “gold.”

    There are loansharks, the “mints”, the “governments” (read: warlords), and there may be a bank or two. The banks however have mostly merged with the “mints” and aren’t doing all that much business on earth, due to lack of stability. In space, the banks own almost all of the spacecraft.

  2. On "So We're *Not* Being Hired by Some Débutante, Right?":

    posted 7 months ago

    Whitehat, that’s the interesting part. With the fall of Earth’s governments, the few chip manufacturers remaining are effectively minting gold for whomever controls them.

    There’s a large demand because the chips actually have a use and can be damaged in the normal course of events.

    There aren’t really any financial institutions per se. There are small-scale “moneylenders” (read: loansharks) who operate as they always have…

    In short, the desire for use is high, production is low,

  3. On Will Work For Air:

    posted 7 months ago

    Excellent.

  4. On "So We're *Not* Being Hired by Some Débutante, Right?":

    posted 7 months ago

    As precious metals flowed in from the asteroids, the main rare commodity became extremely difficult to produce technology. 10 Grams of chips, some historians claim, would be worth around $5000 in Turn-of-the-century North American dollars. Hope is likly getting 5 to 10 times that much, due to the skill, reputation, risk, and steadiness-under-fire required by Fusion Bottle Watch Captains.

  5. On "So We're *Not* Being Hired by Some Débutante, Right?":

    posted 7 months ago

    show, the 26 hour clock was adopted for a variety of reasons. Traditions inherited from early asteroid miners, decoupled biorhythms, and sociocultural differentiation being the most notable.

    With the breakdown of traditional nationstates on Earth, “Gritsuckers” from that “Greasy mudball” searched for an alternate gold standard. ...

  6. On "So We're *Not* Being Hired by Some Débutante, Right?":

    posted 7 months ago

    While the Vid show featuring the trials and tribulations of assistants to wealthy débutantes traveling the solar system was incredibly popular, real spacers disdained it for its incredible lack of accuracy.

    Most ships tend to operate on 26 hour clocks, with a shift being on duty for approximately 6 hours of every “day” The 26 hour clock, occurred naturally in the early days of asteroid mining as the Miners biorhythms decoupled from a natural diurnal cycle. As studies in the Journal of Space Biology…

  7. On Tastes Terrible, But It Gets The Job Done:

    posted 7 months ago

    ::laughs:: Nice. What should Hope find them? Some kind of ore hauler to the asteroids? Repair shuttle to one of the moons?

  8. On Launch Warning:

    posted 7 months ago

    THX, I can fork the story to a less-hard sci-fi route. I’ve had a bad day, so I can’t interpret your tone very well.

  9. On The Stamp of Doom:

    posted 7 months ago

    Thanks. When one toys with the absurd, there’s no reason to not just fully embrace it. Half-arsed absurdity is merely silly. The alliteration somehow makes it even more absurd.

  10. On Spinning Despair:

    posted 7 months ago

    Fun with dialog time. The way I see it, if their goal is to open a bar on Mars, it would be entirely too easy for them to simply get to Mars from Earth. The most probable route for them to get to Mars now is to hop a ride out to the Asteroid belt, stooge around a while, and make it on an ore shipment to Mars. Plenty of complications await. (Or, I can fork the story and we can focus on the trials and tribulations of a bar on Mars.)

  11. On Beware Asteroid Miners Bearing Gifts!:

    posted 7 months ago

    I’d love to turn this into a longer story! Sequels and prequels solicited!

  12. On At the Station:

    posted 7 months ago

    I’m not sure if we want the rocket brat to continue on, but the symbology seemed to fit. Old/wise beyond her years, named Hope…

  13. On Launch Warning:

    posted 7 months ago

    @Whitehat, FTL is an entire order of WTF than fusion based drives. We basically know what we have to do for torchships, though our engineering isn’t up to it. We don’t have the first clue what to do about FTL.

  14. On Launch Warning:

    posted 7 months ago

    For assumption 1, we need to assume that we’ve terraformed Mars. If we have sufficent engine tech for torchships, we can do terraforming without too much difficulty.

    For assumption 2, we need to assume we’re on an incredibly dense asteroid (which makes sense, since most asteroids are boring.)

    Either way, we need a prequel looking at the universe. Feel free to contact me for specific research for your ficlet.

  15. On Launch Warning:

    posted 7 months ago

    Justifications:
    The story shows them in an age of commodity spaceflight. This means that they’ve got nice happy fusion engines. (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3c2.html#icfusion) Therefore, they can boost in non Hohmann transfer orbits. Those are the paths around the solar system that exchange a little DeltaV (Thrust) for a lot of time. Instead, they can use the DeltaV expensive Brachistochrone transits.

    (Cont…)

  16. On Launch Warning:

    posted 7 months ago

    Okay, we’ve got two options.
    1) This commuter shuttle pushes them to orbit, where they transfer to a ship. The ship will take (at a reasonable continuous acceleration) around 3 days to get to Mars from Earth. (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3i.html)

    2) They’re on some asteroid named Hope, or whatever, as it’s in the asteroid belt, it takes around 18 hours (give or take with a lot of handwavy) to get to Mars.

    (Cont…)

  17. On The Wrath of an Old Man (Challenge: A Picture is Worth A Thousand Characters):

    posted 7 months ago

    Thank you.

  18. On Permission Denied (Tellman Tales):

    posted 7 months ago

    Well, he’s internal affairs. An accountant in internal affairs would do this sort of thing.

  19. On The Cats Strike Back.:

    posted 7 months ago

    Thanks! Much obliged.

  20. On Revenge of the Librarians.:

    posted 7 months ago

    Thanks for that link, THX. I tried for a more serious tone in the story you referred me to.

  21. On The Wrath of an Old Man (Challenge: A Picture is Worth A Thousand Characters):

    posted 7 months ago

    Well, I hadn’t read the other entrants, though it seems that this one is very close to the second entry. Sorry.

  22. On The Dillard Legacy:

    posted 7 months ago

    Hehehe, PBS pledge bags.

  23. On Special Book Services:

    posted 7 months ago

    Thanks. This is fun.

  24. On The Protectors of Literacy:

    posted 7 months ago

    Hehehe. I like your sketch of “Howard.”

  25. On Revenge of the Librarians.:

    posted 7 months ago

    And if someone wants to introduce people similar to those found in “Read or Die” well… I can’t stop them.

  26. On The Last Thing You Should Do:

    posted 7 months ago

    Actually, reclining is one of the best g-tolerant positions. And I imagine that lawsuits aren’t a problem in this ‘verse.

  27. On Launch Warning:

    posted 7 months ago

    Honestly, this place doesn’t strike me as earth. More like some hastily terraformed asteroid. Torchships, with a 1.5G constant burn will get around the inner solar system surprisingly quickly. http://www.projectrho.com/ has the math, and in another post or two I should be able to compute the time to Mars from either Earth or an Asteroid.

  28. On Revenge of the Librarians.:

    posted 7 months ago

    The preceding ficlet just seemed so appropriate as a start to an adventure story.

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