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Uranus: Future Power or Eternal Ass-End of Space?

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Wed, 2013-01-09 12:01
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Alkahest Alkahest's picture
Uranus: Future Power or Eternal Ass-End of Space?
I think Uranus is underused (said the bishop to the actress). It has the lowest gravity of all the gas giants, it's blessed with relatively calm weather and managable radiation and it's a veritable treasure trove of resources like helium-3. Yet it seems to be populated mainly by brinkers and other loners, and none of the major powers seem interested in the planet. Now, there are of course some problems with Uranus (said the proctologist to the patient) as well. It's insanely cold, and it's very, very far from the Inner System. Despite these problems, the idea of Morningstar-esque faction of independent but allied aerostats housing millions of people living high on He-3 profits appeals to me. Does anyone have any ideas about how such a faction could develop? What problems would they run into? Where would the settlers come from? How would they handle the constant juvenile snicker from idiots like me?
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President of PETE: People for the Ethical Treatment of Exhumans.
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Wed, 2013-01-09 14:01
Prophet710 Prophet710's picture
I would think it would start
I would think it would start with 'skimmers' I think that is in Rimward. Eventually groups and alliances would develop. Then a business model among one of said groups. Then a legal battle with possible espionnage to get sole rights of the resources. Then more alliances and more expansion, until you have what might as well be a hypercorp, dominating the imports and exports of Uranus. At that distance from the PC, they could have access to the highest tech with the wealth of resources they have. Imagine being in a habitat like that on Kimino from Star Wars, the 'cloners'. Or perhaps it is just one man, cloning himself and now a self styled tyrant of Uranus, with several strains of himself as soldiers and technicians, monitoring and protecting himself from the outside influences. Personally I see skimmers uniting to join together and reap greater rewards.
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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."
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Wed, 2013-01-09 15:15
Alkahest Alkahest's picture
The problem with skimmers
The problem with skimmers seems to be that many are brinkers and other isolationists. They appear to live out there because they want to be left alone, I don't see them forming a cohesive society. But still, yeah, it's definitely a possibility. Hmm. What about the ultimates? It might be a good idea for them to diversify and not live on mercenary work alone.
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President of PETE: People for the Ethical Treatment of Exhumans.
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Wed, 2013-01-09 15:22
Prophet710 Prophet710's picture
The Ultimates
You know, that could work, but I would see that more as a deviation from their core philosophy. The Ultimates are bred and raised on supremacy and perfectionism. Granted this is in whatever capacity an individual desires, but the group as a whole were born of war and conflict. This is not to say that they do not have smaller operations for manufacturing, science, harvesting resources. But on a larger scale I cannot think that would happen, specifically because of the nature of the regime.
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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."
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Wed, 2013-01-09 16:07
Undocking Undocking's picture
A Brinker State
A smaller version of the Autonomist Alliance could get going on Uranus. Sure Brinkers like being left alone, but not everyone wants to leave Uranus alone. Having a united front against incursions by Titan, Jovians, or the PC would be a benefit. I kinda imagine skimmers as miners in the Wild West, making contracts among themselves and defending their skim from outsiders.
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Wed, 2013-01-09 16:37
NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture
Uranus is just too far out.
Uranus is just too far out. How would you get the Helium-3 supplies to your customers in a reasonable time frame? Ships are expensive, and a Uranus operation would have to have more ships in transit at any one time. It would be dramatically more profitable to just skim at Jupiter and pay the Jovians a big tax. You'd also get the side benefit of protection from their significant navy assets. Also, "defending your skim" at Uranus doesn't really make too much economic sense if the atmosphere is something like 25ppm Helium-3. You'd have to skim 1/25th of the *entire* atmosphere to drop it to 24ppm. The only one who would benefit by restricting skimming would be a system-wide monopoly or cartel. EDIT: You could profitably export through the fissure gate on Oberon, now that I think of it. In fact, there's probably no other way to economically do it. Your plot could come from this source of He-3 (through the gate mostly to Mars customers) threatening the stability of the Jovian Republic because a significant portion of their government budget comes from Helium-3 tarriffs.
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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto
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Wed, 2013-01-09 21:11
Alkahest Alkahest's picture
Prophet710 wrote:This is not
Prophet710 wrote:
This is not to say that they do not have smaller operations for manufacturing, science, harvesting resources. But on a larger scale I cannot think that would happen, specifically because of the nature of the regime.
Hmm, maybe. But what if, for example, some sub-faction of the ultimates decide to apply their whole social Darwinism thing to the market, and attempt to outcompete everyone else by taking over helium-3 extraction on Uranus and driving the feeble biocon Jovians into ruin? Seems like something they could get behind.
Undocking wrote:
A smaller version of the Autonomist Alliance could get going on Uranus. Sure Brinkers like being left alone, but not everyone wants to leave Uranus alone. Having a united front against incursions by Titan, Jovians, or the PC would be a benefit. I kinda imagine skimmers as miners in the Wild West, making contracts among themselves and defending their skim from outsiders.
Uranus is a very, very big place. I don't see the people who live there now having any kind of success in keeping others out. If we're going to make an Uranian faction, we're going to have to increase the amount of egos who live out there.
NewtonPulsifer wrote:
Uranus is just too far out. How would you get the Helium-3 supplies to your customers in a reasonable time frame? Ships are expensive, and a Uranus operation would have to have more ships in transit at any one time. It would be dramatically more profitable to just skim at Jupiter and pay the Jovians a big tax. You'd also get the side benefit of protection from their significant navy assets.
I actually doubt that it's more profitable to get helium-3 from Jupiter than from Uranus. The way I see it, it's all about the delta-v budget. When it comes to Jupiter, we're talking a mass ratio beyond 20, while we can get away less than 5 if we choose Uranus. That's a dramatic difference.
NewtonPulsifer wrote:
Also, "defending your skim" at Uranus doesn't really make too much economic sense if the atmosphere is something like 25ppm Helium-3. You'd have to skim 1/25th of the *entire* atmosphere to drop it to 24ppm. The only one who would benefit by restricting skimming would be a system-wide monopoly or cartel.
Well, they could band together because they have some kind of unifying ideology (like my hypothetical group of ultimates), or to keep out competitors in an attempt to drive up the price of helium-3.
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President of PETE: People for the Ethical Treatment of Exhumans.
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Thu, 2013-01-10 16:22
Prophet710 Prophet710's picture
I still don't see the
I still don't see the Ultimates making a huge entrance on the industry scene. As I said earlier, I definitely see small scale operations, boosted by ruthlessly efficient practices by brilliant leaders in their area of operation, but that is about it. More over, I definitely see Brinkers and Anarchists banding together being most likely. Trade with the Republic doesn't even need to happen there are plenty of independant habitats to trade with that far out to turn a nice profit. Could even have massive loads snail shipped to the PC for an even larger profit. Not to mention the Commonwealth and the AA itself.
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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."
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Thu, 2013-01-10 19:06
NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture
Alkahest wrote:
Alkahest wrote:
I actually doubt that it's more profitable to get helium-3 from Jupiter than from Uranus. The way I see it, it's all about the delta-v budget. When it comes to Jupiter, we're talking a mass ratio beyond 20, while we can get away less than 5 if we choose Uranus. That's a dramatic difference.
So you're saying the cost of the propellant (presumably metallic hydrogen, which can be compressed at the aerostat) to boost the product out of the gravity well would dominate the costs? Delta-v can be provided by metallic hydrogen fuel provided at the heliostat. If you assume a fusion powered heliostat for helium-3 skimming is the same cost as a fusion powered transport, and it requires another fusion powered heliostat equivalent whose sole purpose was to create metallic hydrogen to boost the helium 3 to a higher orbit is the same price, you'd still only be at double the capital cost. Jupiter is about 5 AU from the Sun. Mars is 1.38 AU. Minimum 3.62 AU, Maximum 6.38 AU. Uranus is *19.2*. Minimum 17.8 AU, Maximum 20.38 AU. More than 3x farther out on average. So Uranus would likely need 3-6x factor for the ships. Let's call it 5x (3 leave, 3 come back, but usually empty, but at least they make the trip faster). And 1x for Jupiter (leave full, come back full). So you have 1x5=5 units of investment for Uranus, 2x1=2 for Jupiter. And this is giving a free pass to Uranus as to not requiring any metallic hydrogen in comparison. Also, I don't think a metallic hydrogen compressing station is going to double the capital investment of a skimming heliostat, so there's that. The skimming station *already* has to process a bunch of hydrogen to get at the less than 1 part per million helium-3, why not divert and then compress it? And we haven't even done a rough calc on Saturn, which is also still better than Uranus from an economics standpoint. EDIT: Surface pressure is of Jupiter is 10x of Uranus too, so a heliostat should be able to process faster (denser atmosphere). So it's not just Delta-v (basically gravity) but also atmospheric pressure, and percent helium content (15% Uranus, 10% Jupiter).
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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto
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Fri, 2013-01-11 01:41
rfmcdonald rfmcdonald's picture
If Uranus it's underused, it
If Uranus it's underused, it's likely because it lacked the substantial pre-Fall settlement which supported rapid growth in the Jovian and Saturnian systems. The Jovian system was a major destination for investment and settlement on the part of multiple Earth nations, and two million people from the NAC countries lived on Titan. How many were in the Uranus system? Give it a decade.
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Fri, 2013-01-11 20:07
Alkahest Alkahest's picture
Prophet710 wrote:I still don
Prophet710 wrote:
I still don't see the Ultimates making a huge entrance on the industry scene. As I said earlier, I definitely see small scale operations, boosted by ruthlessly efficient practices by brilliant leaders in their area of operation, but that is about it.
Perhaps. Though personally, I don't see anything in the philosophy of the ultimates that prohibits them from making money doing something other than being glorified thugs. It seems to be more of a cultural thing, since their "demiurge" was a mercenary leader.
Prophet710 wrote:
More over, I definitely see Brinkers and Anarchists banding together being most likely. Trade with the Republic doesn't even need to happen there are plenty of independant habitats to trade with that far out to turn a nice profit. Could even have massive loads snail shipped to the PC for an even larger profit. Not to mention the Commonwealth and the AA itself.
Absolutely. As said, mining and shipping helium-3 from Uranus might be painfully slow if we're going towards the Inner System, but at least it's dirt cheap.
NewtonPulsifer wrote:
So you're saying the cost of the propellant (presumably metallic hydrogen, which can be compressed at the aerostat) to boost the product out of the gravity well would dominate the costs? Delta-v can be provided by metallic hydrogen fuel provided at the heliostat.
*slaps forehead* Oh man, now I feel positively moronic. I had totally forgotten about the fact that they could get the frickin' reaction mass while they are extracting the cargo itself and that, you know, the atmospheres are 80-90% hydrogen. Yeah, I'm an idiot. Hrnh, still. All plans for helium-3 mining I have seen the last few years seem to focus on Saturn and Uranus, with Jupiter being overlooked because of its insane gravity and murderous magnetic field. And even if we disregard the reaction mass cost and distance, we still have stuff like how erractic the weather is, wind speeds, ring systems, rotation periods, etcetera to think about. So many factors! Edit: I created a new thread for the purpose of discussing profitability of helium-3 mining in all the gas giants, not only Uranus.
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President of PETE: People for the Ethical Treatment of Exhumans.
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Tue, 2013-01-22 15:33
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Uranus really won't be a
Uranus really won't be a commercial powerhouse (as was discussed). If we reach the point where transportation is cheap enough to make Uranus competitive, you'll likely find exoplanets competitive as well, and the market will be flooded. However, it does offer a friendly platfom with lots of gravity and no neighbors. So if you can think of projects which require gravity, they may want to move there, and establish communities.
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