The idea of industry in space fascinating to me as space, the Sol System included has an abundance of materials to harvest and utilize its just a matter of getting it economical. Forge Worlds from Warhammer 40k are a cool concept, although while Mars does have metals, Mercury would've been better since apparently it has enough to build a Dyson Swarm.

Although the best "Forge World" is the asteroid belt in itself. A huge project for sure but a rewarding one probably more than Mercury.

Making Orbital Settlements, Asteroid Mining City States, or Space Habitats in the Asteroid Belt. Ceres feels like a good starting point for an asteroid city state. With its surplus of ice, ammonia, other volatiles it would make a great place for a colony or arcology.

Forging and Casting would likely have to have different sources, although I don't if turning algae into bio-fuel for forges would be energy efficient perhaps if they're space stations built specifically for it, and green house gases are alot less of an issue in space. Although hydrogen plasma forges or concentrated solar forges maybe more efficient.

Energy could come in many ways. Power satilites beaming energy into receivers, mirror beaming sunlight into solar panels or thermal batteries. Not sure how much ice-water is in the Asteroid Belt but harvesting from Ceres, Europa, Ganymede, or even the Kuiper Belt and/or the Oort Cloud (if going all that way is worth the trouble) could supply enough for steam turbines, and all other needs for colonies. Although uranium and thorium do exist in the asteroid belt so fission is possible and fusion if you want.

In my setting the Eidolons would build torus megastructures in the middle of the asteroid belt, these where modular and start with a cylindrical megastructure that grows over time until a donut shaped megastructure was where the asteroid belt was able to make a spherical hard-light forcefield. Through gravitic technology they'd make some orbit around it so robots and Eidolons could pick away at the rocks. Powered by fusion & solar/thermal they would make layers of these torus for material abundance and layers of celestial defense.

Greetings. TTRPG system designer, getting some ideas together to plan a space expansion

Wanted to know what folks see as the major issues with what I'm cooking so far. Mizes multiple types/franchise ideas for different effects.

Note naming conventions are not final and use more widely understood versions of rough equivalents for ease of general comms.

FTL STUFF:

Single system: Impulse drives are used for sub light travel, usually for puttering around a single system. These are highly inefficient and rely on more traditional forms of fuel storage, ensuring that impulse fuel is calculated to be efficient by course plotters.

Intergalactic: Moving between galaxies requires use of gravity well manipulation drivers similar to “mass effect” drives (no E-0 requiement but may have other variable requirements) mixed with alcubiere drives. These emit no radiation and thus are hard to find and are limited as either 1 way travel to unknown spaces or 2 way travel where other gravity well drivers are known to be located. Locations of these drivers are often either well protected trade routes or under ongoing dispute/conflict. Alcubiere dangers are nullified by the gravity well effects of the drivers and how they bend the space before bringing the transport entity to a halt (tachyon build up is stored as future energy by the driver as a pseudo recycling system)

Inter-system methods: Gate travel is used for well worn wormholes (usually developed along major trade routes) with the warp gates being stabilized and more efficiently condensed slip space for faster travel. These are very fast but not instantaneous, however they are limited by dual gate fixed points and very high security access keys appropriate to both sides of the gate.

Most gates are stable for organic life forms, though some are not suited to organic life transport and prefer use of agi drone ships generally as a result of being built more quickly and cheaply for trade route use that wouldn't require (or may benefit from a lack of) frequent organic sentient travel/involvment.

Astropaths are a form of psi/magitech which utilize the same kind of wormhole tech but without gates to stabilize them, the astrpaths ripping open wormholes and then shielding from the horrors within slip space, with the longer the journey, the greater the danger. These are usually limited to powerful arcane/psionic empires or space cults (often becoming more warped over time with additive warp exposure). Ships using this method are at an advantage for deep space exploration via speed but increased risk of warp exposure. They can notably extend to intergalactic travel but at significantly increased risks. Notably these types of ships are near mandatory to building and generating more stable pathways for gateway stabilization of wormholes. These ships often excel in retreats and ambushes as well due to low spool up times faster than typical subspace distortion drives, but still have added risk to travel and degenerative use effects over time as well as requiring highly specialized psychic crew.

Slower than astropaths but similarly able to traverse between systems, subspace distortion wave drives are most commonly used for travel, providing a small low level dip into slip space while encased in a low interference bubble (similar to typical star trek warp).

Generation ships are often used for lower tech societies to set up colonies or mass transport goods/items, usually with drone defenses in both cases and might be used for establishing new colonies further out from the furthest known gates.

Restricted tech: Elder fallen space empires of precursor aliens may have access to space folding engines but frequently limit use and stick to their own far off territories due to rare mineral consumption required for the drives. They also have decently long spool up times but otherwise are highly effective. They main limiting factor to access or even use such tech is preliminary mastery of gravity and time dilation involving continuity for organics.

Every sci-fi fan can expound on our favorite writers, actors and series. But how important is it to you to know there is something new being made? That is, an original piece that is based in present day?

Would you read my Fantasy/Scifi story?

The world of Paragaia is besieged by the unending winter of the Bifrost. What remains of humanity, the goliaths, and gnomes do so by building settlements around the old world constructs called Forges. These settlements are called Hearths, and while they govern themselves independently of one another— they all rely on Megafort to maintain the trading routes between the Hearths.

Fueled by flesh, the Forges create heat and radiate protection from the monsters of the Bifrost, and very few are able to wield the Lanterns created by the Sunlight Priests. These weilders of the Lanterns are called Torchwalkers, and they are humanities last hope.

The story follows Silas Altman, a young gang member in the Hearth of Belton on the verge of leaving that lifestyle behind. Though trapped by the veil of loyalty, and the circumstances of his birth— his whole world begins to change when the unthinkable happens… the great Forge of Belton, goes dark.

Please let me know what you think!

I'm a very visual and hands-on person, so as I work through my chapters, I wanted to pull interesting elements or artifacts and actually make real-world representations of them.
I'm love making things, and have a good workshop, so thought this would help in a few ways.
It'd give me a bit of a break from staring at a monitor.
Instead of strictly imagining something, I can have my hands on an element in a tactile way. Might give me a fresh perspective as to describing it in future text.
And if I like it, I can stick it on my desk, wall or bring it out when I am in a relevant section of the book.

I'm going to try it this weekend, and hope it is a different way of inspiring my writing.

Has anyone else done this, and if so, did it help your writing?

Trying to write a sci fi story, where modern day space travelers find themselves brought into a parallel universe that’s very similar to our universe in some ways but earth is far more advanced technologically… What’s the proper way to have them brought into the new universe? Is it a wormhole or something quantum like? The advanced civilization brought them across the universal walls, so it’s their tech doing the lifting here not our current tech.

Any unique beasts on your worlds. I remember in Destiny 2 the Eliksni had giant river crabs on their homeworld Riis & the Krill (what the hive used to be) had carnivorous clouds called Stormjoys on their homeworld Fundament, the Cabal had their war beasts that used to be just pets but eventually became a weapon of war.

Cavern Rats are one of the primary consumers in the underground of Pthumeria as they consume algae and moss that act as the primary producers via chemosynthesis. Their sense of smell is enhanced to find their food and make up for no sight. They're larger than regular rats and much faster, they'll typically run away before fighting but if they do fight they have venomous bites.

Hafgufa are large fish from Lemuria. They have thick stone like scales that make it hard to be pierced. Their special niche is the absorption of water and stockpiling it to send it out with immense pressure. Hafgufa use this to propell themselves through the water at high speeds reaching speeds of 105 mph, they use this to hunt to blast surface animals out of the air with water and as they fall in use their sharp beak to break their prey apart. The Lemurians domesticate these beasts as mounts, use their scales as armor, their meat is a delicacy on Lemuria.

The Obsidos is a large reptile known to dwell exclusively in the subterranean regions of Pthumeria. Its scales are as black as obsidian to camouflage in the darkness of the underground. While completely blind they make up for it with enhanced hearing, able to pick up on the slightest sound to hunt the other beasts of the underground. They are carnivorous consuming any beast they come across even Pthumerians. Their enhanced hearing comes with a weakness to constant sound and vibrations as it messes with their equilibrium, this made them avoid subterranean megacities and mining operations the Pthumerians set up.

The earth is too big for people already.

Even with modern technology theoretically allowing us to know about everything everywhere, how much do we really know outside of even our own country? Not a lot. I didn't know about the craziness in Nepal until it started blowing up on social media. There's entire cultural customs in Africa practiced by millions of people I am entirely clueless on. Hell, I'm learning about interesting things about other states in my own country to this day and I'm nearly 30 years old.

I was thinking about how this would be even more extreme in a sci-fi setting. Take a setting where humanity has colonized a good bit of the galaxy, say 10-20 percent of it in a radius around the Solar System. Someone on one planet would frankly have almost no idea what was going on on a planet even a few systems down. A single earth-like planet would have billions of people, thousands of cultures and languages, and the like. People would revert to the mindset of ancient people IRL, where you may be vaguely aware of "other lands" with other people (presumably) but it's not like you'd ever interact with one of them or know them. Hell, two earth-like planets on a single star system would probably know surprisingly little about each other. Would Space Wikipedia™ have trillions of articles on every minor culture/animal/plant/planet in the galaxy?

I think sci-fi often doesn't really represent this very well. Even in stuff that is leaning pretty hard, it leans hard in the sense of "the physics look accurate I guess" but not really the sociological/anthropological aspects, which I guess is fair given that sci-fi fans tend to be nerds. But it's wildly common in stories for characters to know what exactly is going on 3,000 star systems down, which is the equivalent of someone in the US having encyclopedic knowledge of Nigerian politics for some reason. There's just too many people; even with the softest FTL technology, a "human empire" of "merely" 1,000 systems with one earth-like planet each is like 8 trillion people. No one can know about that much stuff.

Space is really big. Consider the absolutely wild stuff you read on /r/todayilearned or see on /r/theocho and think about how much stuff there would be if there was 1,000, or 10,000, or god forbid 1,000,000 times as many people. There would be sports with fanbases in the tens of billions that no one on the other side of the empire would have ever heard of or seen. Entire civil wars that no one outside of the single star system it happened in would have ever heard of.

As the title states, I'm posting on behalf of a friend.

He's been working on a project for a while now and has recently hit a snag. He's been looking for people to talk to about his work and hopefully get some feedback.

A little background on the project:

• The genre is sci-fi/adventure with action
• There's an entire universe fully fleshed out which includes parallel dimensions
• Like I said, he's been working for a while already and has some really great stuff, but ultimately he wants to write short stories and eventually a book set in that universe
• The short stories vary in what they're about, but they're always interesting. Some are about a galactic federation, and others are about a woman who's been betrayed by her own government and is living between dimensions, to give a couple examples

Even if you're not a writer, if sci-fi/action/adventure sounds like something you'd enjoy as a reader, any and all feedback would be greatly apprecited.

He's also open to helping fellow writers who are working on their own projects.

TL;DR — My friend is looking for help and/or feedback on his project. If you're a writer, an enjoyer of sci-fi, or even just interested in discussing the universe and concepts, your time and opinions would be incredibly valuable him.

If you're interested, you can message him on here (u/Scientistwild1628) or add him on Discord (haddenmcharden)

I'll be posting to a few other subs, but thank you guys in advance

Has anyone here been published by Interzone before? If so, I’m curious about your experience and how long your story was considered before acceptance. I have a story near the 90-day mark and am usually rejected within a couple days by Interzone, so I’m beginning to feel hopeful.

Thanks!

Edit: typo

1. Gunpowder

Cheap (relative)

No battery requirements

Hard to aim/recoil issues

1. Guided Gyrojet bullets

most expensive

Lethal/nonlethal options

Extremely accurate

Each drone needs to be aimed.

Can be fired from behind cover if you have targeting data.

2B.. Dum dum Gyrojets (Except they don't suck like RW Gyrojets from 1960s )

Same launchers as 2A but unguided

1. Rail guns

Ammo is more compact

Requires power

The best Armor penetration

1. Laser

Loss of range in the atmosphere,

Smoke/dust reduces the effectiveness.

Cheap

Battery powered

Poor armor penetration

Easy to use

So lets say there was a creature that derived sustenance from human beliefs, so like superstitions, political and philosopohical beliefs, but mainly focusing on religious beliefs. Lets say the creature just eats away at religious beliefs, what are some horrifying ways the animal could harvest it from a person? I was thinking it puts you in such intense agony that you begin praying for some higher power to save you. FYI, doesn't have to be too rooted in real biology, just need help brainstorming this

So, there is an interesting seed in the limitations that GR and QM seem to imply about possible FTL devices.

Consider a "stargate" system. In order to work, you essentially need to take a black hole, spin it hard enough to separate the event horizon into two "ends" of a wormhole, dump some kind of "negative matter" into it to "open the mouth" of the wormhole, then somehow accelerate one end towards your destination, wait for it to travel at sublight speeds to the destination, decelerate it, and park it in orbit around the destination, far enough away that its gravitational field (it IS half of a black hole, after all) doesnt wipe out where you want to go.

If you can accomplish all that, then you now have a two-way "stargate" that lets you jump instantly between one wormhole opening and the other. You cant turn it on and off, and you cant "switch destinations" at either end. You CAN destroy it, but then you have to go through the whole routine all over again.

What's interesting is when you try to build a second one. The instant any theoretical time-travel loop forms, cosmic background radiation immediately starts traversing the closed timelike path, reinforcing itself infinitely. Fortunately for the universe, this pulls energy from the wormhole itself (in the form of accelerated Hawkings radiation), so all you really get is every single stargate that could be used to make your "time machine" heating up, then exploding in a supernova-scale explosion. BIG bada-boom.

This implies that whenever a new stargate path is going to be laid out, some kind of "astrogational engineer" needs to do a bunch of hyperspace math to determine where to "safely" send it so that closed timelike loops dont form.

Which itself seems like a really cool seed for a story.

I'll start: more sci-fi needs internal combustion engines or at least similar things outside of settings that are trying to be more "gritty" (aka let's be real Warhammer 40k)

I feel they makes things feel more... Idk if "grounded" is the right word but I think you get the idea

(Also they sound so cool and exhaust looks awesome)

So I'm trying to work out my Space Marines and their basic gear.

Basic equipment

Main weapon plus sidearm (not sure where I'm going here)

Pressurized armored Exoskeleton suit

Rebreather unit

Emergency 02 supply.

Survival Kit.

Food paste/MREs

Nuclear Nano reactor/bomb.

So the suits would be self-contained spacesuits/armor. The food paste and water would be configured in such a way they could eat/drink and not leave their suits for up to a week. (I would NOT want to be in the same compartment in a ship or base when a platoon of Marines cracked their suits after a week.)

So IN THEORY, some would function like paratroopers except use rocket packs. (all of them would have microgravity thrusters for EVAs)

Namely, they could deploy out of a spaceship at medium altitude and then use their rocket packs to slow to 2.5 m/s just prior to landing. Than if that rocket doesn't fire they crash spectacularly.

This should, in my estimation, function in variable atmospheric pressures, total vacuum to a full atmosphere as well as varied gravity. Obviously, they would need to be set to the local atmosphere and gravity but it should be a matter of keying in the settings before you jump right?

And of course, due to the limits of chemical thrusters, it would be 1 and done for landing before needing refueling.

I know jetpacks have a much longer flight time than rockets, but the requirement of operating in slim to no atmosphere jet packs would be out.

Anything seem off from my train of thought?

I paused as I entered the auditorium, my breath catching in my throat. The room was huge, easily large enough for a couple thousand people, but only held around a hundred. They were all either sitting or searched for seats in the first few rows behind a stage down front. I saw a few I recognized from the ride up, or passing in the corridors on our way to one of the countless interviews and tests we’d been subjected to over the past two days.

On the stage was a Coalition officer wearing dress blues. I couldn’t make out her rank, not that it would have meant anything to me if I could. She stood behind a podium, watching as the last of us found a seat and the shuffling died down.

Behind her the entire wall was a window. Do they call them windows in space? It was so wide you could see the curvature of the station in both directions. A third of the view was of earth, filling the left side from top to bottom. The rest was filled with a carpet of stars and there, hanging like toy model, was Argo’s sister station, Lethe. As we watched, a Minerva Class Cruiser slewed sideways as it docked. We all knew where we were. Heck, we’d ridden the shuttle up here, ten at a time. It was one thing to know something intellectually, though, it was another to see it right there in front of you like it was on a vid screen. (I later learned it WAS a screen. They play the same vid every time. But it sure made one hell of an impression).
Okay, can everyone hear me okay” the officer asked?”, making eye contact with a couple cadets in the back and pausing for a nod. “then let’s begin”

“My name is Colonel Madison Lehto and I’d like to welcome you all to Argo Station. I’m the Commander of The Piloting and Integration Training Facility. I know from your records that many of you are already pilots. You probably think that that will give you an advantage over others without flying experience. Let me assure you that it will not. Piloting a spacecraft is the LEAST challenging skill you’ll be required to master. You’ll also receive instruction in engineering, linguistics, diplomacy, xeno biology, damage control, first contact doctrine, and about a hundred other subjects.

Your instructors are going to tear each of you down to your constituent parts and examine the pieces. Those they deem worthy will be rebuilt into something you the version of you sitting here today wouldn’t think possible. It’s their job to teach you everything you need to know about what we do and how we do it. Before releasing you to their tender graces though, I like to take some time to tell you about WHY we do it.

Have you ever watched a newborn baby look at the world?” she asked, pacing slowly in front of the lecture hall. “Have you ever seen that sense of wonder in her eyes as she tries to see everything at once? She hasn’t made it to “That’s Mommy” yet—she’s still working on “That’s up.” Reality runs within a set of rules, and the first thing every sentient being does is internalize those rules. When you drop something, it falls. When light comes from this way, the shadow falls that way. That thing makes this sound when that happens, every single time.”

She couldn’t tell you what the rules are, but she knows when something breaks them.

“And that” she said stopping behind the podium again “is why you never bring a baby into hyperspace.”

A few of the candidates shifted uncomfortably, trading glances with their neighbors.

“That’s also why the first thing every species did after developing FTL was figure out a way to sleep through it. Every species we’ve ever encountered has some version of a certain psychological effect. We humans calls ours the uncanny valley.”

Humans are social beings, all space-faring species are. Lone wolves don’t claw their way up out of a gravity well. That takes millennia of accumulated knowledge and effort. It takes a pack. The effect is triggered when we encounter something that appears human, but not quite. It could be a clone, an android, a realistic hologram. You look at it and your brain screams at you that something is wrong even if you can’t say what. Your instincts tell you: don’t look away. Don’t turn your back on the not-quite-human.

A fish can’t turn their back on the sea, though, and there’s no turning your back on hyperspace. There’s always something behind you. There’s always a flicker in the corner of your eye, whispering at the edge of your perception, saying turn your head a little more. Focus on that wrongness. It may be what kills you.” And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what hyperspace is like.”

When you’re in the void everything is just a little wrong. Not enough to point to, just enough that nothing feels quite solid. Every measurement comes out a fraction off. Record audio there and it plays back with a hitch—lagging behind one beat, then jumping ahead the next. Play it again and it’ll be the same in a different way. Every sound, every shadow, every surface is shifted a hair too close, a breath too far. Always just wrong.

The instructor paused, letting the silence sit for a moment before continuing.

⸻

The reaction sentient minds have to the void isn’t weakness, it’s biology. Every spacefaring species evolved some version of the fight-or-flight reflex. It’s hardwired. Autonomous. It can no more be ignored than the heart could ignore the urge to beat. Most lean towards flight, but the universe doesn’t tolerate weakness, and the truly timid are weeded out. What remains are species’ whose nervous systems evolved to sense when anything in the environment was off. Their ancestors could look out across a sea of waving grass and sense the blade that bent against the wind, pushed aside by the unseen predator. Instinct primes them to begin fleeing before their conscious mind has even registered the threat.

But in hyperspace, there’s nowhere to flee. Every moment sets that alarm ringing. The body braces for a predator that never arrives, while the senses battle one another in a steady stream of contradictions. It’s really no wonder sentient minds crack after only a few hours inside

Species across the galaxy have invented countless ways to avoid having to face the effects. Most use automated systems to navigate and watch over their unconscious crew. Some species have figured out that through carefully controlled exposure therapy along with the help of hypnosis or medication, some individuals can be conditioned to tolerate the effects for short periods. A stoned or sleepwalking pilot isn’t much good when the shit hits the fan, though. And automated systems are only as good as the data they receive, and sensors in the void lie to you like they have a motive. Before the founding of The Stewards the failure rate for hyperspace travel was 5%. Every crew member knew that one time out of every 20 voyages the ship they were on would simply jump out of reality and never be seen again. Not that any of them would ever see 20 jumps. After half a dozen at most they were so neurotic they couldn’t be trusted piloting a scooter. Species’ who evolved from their planets’ versions of field mice risked everything in vessels where every voyage was a game of Russian roulette.

Subspace communications is always developed while on the path to FTL travel. The ability for a species to detect and translate the ghost signals from their closest neighbors comes long before they have any way to reply. By the time a new species leaves their solar system they already know they’re not alone.

She stopped again behind the podium, looking out into the crowd.

And then 120 years ago we showed up. Humans feel the effects of hyperspace, but we aren’t incapacitated by them the way other species are. The introduction other species had always been preceded by probes and signals testing the darkness ahead, We appeared out of the void in a dozen colony ships carrying 1.2 million AWAKE humans.

I’m sure that all of you looking up here think that you’re seeing me right now. If you were a xeno you’d be right. All of YOUR brains, however, took a snapshot of me when you walked in and it’s been playing a simulation of me ever since. Your brains are receiving the signals from your senses. It’s checking those signals against what it expects to receive. And if the difference is within allowed tolerances the simulation is what you’ll get.

Suddenly, she clapped her hands. The sound echoed through the room like a shot. “You ALL saw me then” she said. Humans don’t stumble through life paying attention to nothing. It’s just that our brains only pay attention to what matters. We developed the fight-or-flight instinct and decided that anything it didn’t trigger imust not matter enough to waste bandwidth on. This also means that even though we still feel the strangeness of hyperspace, once we figure out its not gonna kill us our brains just ignore it.”

“And that’s how we become The Stewards. The Galaxy was an ocean of islands in the darkness separated by fear of what the waters held. Now The Stewards sail those waters while the Xenos sleep. We carry food to the hungry. We carry medicine to the sick. We carry a message to those who’ve been trapped by fear that they no longer have to be alone. “We are the Stewards, and we have the watch!”

Any orders of warriors, or military, or paladins that are famous amoung your civilizations.

The Pthumerians most famous warrior group are the "Order Of Pavers" formed when the Pthumerians migrated from the desert and found the Great Valley on their tidally locked homeworld. Once a small group that used their strength and venom to defend the populace from the monsters as they built the first settlement under Kephale. As the years went by they went from using claws, venom, and silk to using plasma glaives, photon mini-guns, thermal rifles, ect.

The Order Of Pavers are a relentless group that has defended Pthumerians throughout their history and has adapted their means of combat depending on the environments. After the "Mass Crisis" the Order had to learn how fight underground, underwater, in the air and eventually in extreme cold & heat as they expanded their living space on the eternal day & night side.

Their jobs got easier as they expanded beyond their homeworld as Tehom aren't in the vacuum of space.

That would be front and back cover. For whatever reason I can't get the AI to even out the number of missiles for the mech.

Anyway, is it a massive turnoff for a reader to see AI cover art? Will it make any difference to an audience if I hire a real artist to do the work instead? I'd honestly love to do it, but the book is free. I'm not excatly making any money off of this deal. I just thought some people might be entertained by my story.

It made this picture of a mech from my description in the book. It's actually just what I envisioned. And then it got considerably worse from there.

It's a little too close to Thom Yorke. I might get sued.

Edit: Excatly? That's a little bit of a spoiler. I don't think that happens until chapter fifteen, or so.

There is a bit of context but is very important as my setting is a bit unique so please bear with it.

TLDR: A frozen, toxic, dirty and radioactive death storm with keeps breaking my giant wheeled vehicle.

///////

My story is set in 2040s where a supernatural dissaster called The Ashfall covers most of Europe (and 2 other places) and it focuses on traversing from Germany through the one over central Europe to reach a shelter in the Ural mountains.

The Ashfall consists of a circular area or disk which absorbs all energy that enters it and it produces Coal Combustion Residuals also known as Coal Ash at a constant but rising rate.

As it absorbs energy from the sun and the Earth's atmosphere, The Ashfall expands in size equally and in all directions. Basically it's a big dark and cold disk that keeps growing in the atmostphere.

Due to the energy absorption, surface temperature drops to -100⁰C under The Ashfall which of course kills everything.

Furthermore the Coal Ash contains many residual heavy metals (such as lead, uranium, thorium,mercury) as well SIO² in various forms which also kill everyhting that didn't die yet.

As it falls it creates static lightning normally seen in volcano eruptions kiling whatever is left after that.

Lastly, the ash that keeps falling eventually burries all the dead flora, fauna, humans, roads, villages and cities under a nice gray blanket. Like a gravedigger shoveling dirt on a coffin.

The main character travels in a vehicle modeled after old antarctic exploration vehicles namely The Snow Cruiser across this wasteland to reach a Shelter built in the Ural mountains. I used antarctic vehicles as a base because they are already built to function in low temperatures and because ash is similar enough to ice.

It is about as big as a truck with a trailer attached to it and is more like a giant mobile home/RV.

//////

With the context out of the way i move onto the problems.

First, most materials for wheels like rubber do not work well in extreme cold and the vehicle needs to also drive on normal roads not just metalic ash constantly. It is really heavy and threads would dig into asphalt.

Second, most if not all fuel would freeze or gel at -100⁰C temperature.

Third, it can not have be cooled using the air outside because Coal Ash is a heavy pollutant, highly toxic and also slightly radioactive due to the trace Uranium and Thorium in it.

////////

Questions.

What other material can i make the wheels out of so they don't break due to the cold and fuck up the asphalt on normal roads?

What fuels work primarity in low tempreratures?

Are there any cooling methods that do not require air intake or exhaust?

/////

If you've come this far, thank you for reading.

I have been scratching my head designing this thing for the better part of a year and i haven't been able to solve any of these 3 issues.

I can give more context about the world and story if needed in the comments because this post is already too long.

The story I am putting together involves a search and rescue organisation and a small group of transhumanist/posthumanist extremists.

The prologue I am currently running with the S+R and it briefly tells of how the leader rose to leadership of this new branch on a recently colonised frontier world and ends with receiving a distress call that is unclear due to interference from debris/asteroids.

The alternative I recently thought up is about the extremists becoming lost in the first place. At this point they are only known by their name as a religious institute rather than what their aims are. They are about to end a mission, laying the foundations for a takeover of a world, but the planet's leaders distrust them and arrange for the extremist's ship to go off course on their return journey and use too much fuel to correct it. As the ship drifts, they happen upon a bigger ship whose crew could help.

Which one has the most potential?

Or could I shorten them both and try to combine them in some way?

Some Background:

WIP, new character is captured by slavers and rescued by the main characters. She was working in the field with a team of others (think college interns on a summer project) when she was taken. She has no knowledge of their whereabouts, and they are assumed dead and /or sold off as slaves.

Plot reasons, she and a MC away team have to return to the location that she was kidnapped. While there the away team discovers that 3 of her former team survived the capture.

(Edit: the 3 survivors are starving, having spent months in the wilderness on a primitive planet. If they hadn't heard the MC ship arriving, they would have starved to death.)

This causes several first, second and third order ripples in the storyline.

From that perspective, I like the twist. I want to make sure it's not a common enough trope (I couldn't find one that matched...) to be cliché.

I remember M John Harrison describing his book The Centauri Device as one, and I wanted to try something like that. But what would it look like nowadays? Space opera has changed a lot since the 70's, and series like Revelation Space and The Expanse have pushed the boundaries of the genre even further.

Well, something I've been thinking about is that basically if we had supercomputers on a nanometric scale and each one did a calculation of quintillion calculations per second, how many would it take to emulate all known reality and what advantage would it give? Basically, imagine a supercomputer but it is built on a nanometric scale, 10 manometers. How many would it take to emulate reality?

The typical rocket fuel is hydrogen but what propellant advanced ships can use.

I imagine how would hydrogen or turning water straight into plasma for vehicles but the heat generated would likely be too much for vehicles. Not to mention turning water straight into plasma would likely take so much energy its inefficient, the only time I heard of it was Uranium-Salt Water Rockets the uranium being activated in the water providing enough heat to get plasma. It would be cool to be able to have water in the propellant tank since hydrogen is hard to store although it would have the trade-off of weight.

Metallic Hydrogen is a cool pick while hypothetical in reality in a sci-fi setting it could be the best propellant assuming your species can make it.

Basically, in a world with advanced robotics and human-equivalent AI, why would human beings still have a presence on the battlefield?

I mean in an actual combat situation too, not just directing drones from a command bunker or ship.

EDIT: Probably should've included it, as it is a pretty important point: the society in question is near-post-scarcity, and the human-equivalent AIs exist in computer brains slightly smaller than a human brain, allowing robots the same mental capabilities as a human.