🚀 go-pugleaf

Ross Ridge <rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> looked up from reading the
>No, it would require too much mass to have a belt of the density you're
>imagining.  

Xocyll  <Xocyll@kingston.net> wrote:
>Since I never specified a density I wonder how you can say this.

You described an asteroid belt were the density was high enough for
physics modeling complex enough to benefit from technologies introduced
in the last decade.  For an asteroid collision to a chance of happening
in an asteroid belt in the time frame of real-time space-sim game then
it would have to be incredibly dense.  An actual asteroid *belt* would
be more massive than the star (or stars) it orbits.

>>Now there's a good chance there will be the dense sort of asteroid belts
>>you want in this game, but like the faster-than-light travel that will
>>also likely be in the game, it'll be made up science fiction, not reality.
>
>Little hard to say what reality for the entire universe is based on one,
>single sun, system Ross.

No, it's not in this case.  Like I said, even if an asteroid belt dense
as you describe existed, it would soon be reduced to dust by all the
collisions you want to happen there.  Even if every planet is destined
to explode one day then it would still be infinitesimaly unlikely that
one would have naturally exploded recently enough.  Planets just aren't
been created fast enough for all the regularily colliding asteroids you
imagine to naturally exist.

>How many times over the years have scientists looked at local conditions
>and declared "this is how it all works" then found they were completely
>wrong when they looked at a larger area?

Of course we know how it works, if it we didn't understand the
basic physics behind it all, we couldn't do the physics simulation
you want.  Seriously, what do you think would happen if you ran the
physics simulation you want in the game?  What's going to keep all
the asteroids bunched up together?  What's going to prevent all the
collisions you expect to happen from pulverising the asteroids into
smaller and smaller rocks?  Any space-sim game that uses a physics
based model for its asteroids is going to have to cheat the physics in
some way.  Asteroids are going to have to be prevented from flying off
into space every which way and new asteroids are going to have to come
out of nowhere to replace the asteroids that have gotten too small and
too numerous to track.  It'll probably also have to just completely
reset all the asteroids every time you leave the area and come back.

The laws of physics don't magically change in a binary star system or
anywhere else in the universe.  While it's almost certain that the dense
kind of asteroid belts that exist in every space-sim game ever made
will also be in this game, they're nothing more than science fiction.
Whether the fiction has these asteroids occurring naturally or more
plausibly by the actions of a Death Star, they're not going be modelled
by truly realistic physics.  A true and accurate physics simulation just
isn't going to produce the results that you and every other space-sim
gamer expect.

					Ross Ridge

-- 
 l/  //	  Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]  rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
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