SCP-6523 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-6523.

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Astronaut Post

GreenWolf 17 Feb 2022 17:24

Previously in this series:

1. Stairway To The Stars by ch00bakka — Moving to space together is usually fourth date material.
2. Harvester of Eyes by TyGently — Your Blood Is Your Own. Do Not Nourish The Earth.
3. Workshop of the Telescopes by GreenWolf and TyGently — Or, Memos from the Damocles Working Group Regarding a Confection-Based Black Hole Feed System

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And now…

This is it. The final countdown. When next we see our intrepid crew, they will be blasting off into deep space, never to return. What will become of the Joyeuse? Will our lesbian co-captains succeed in catching anomalous Elon Musk and stealing his lunch money? Will we meet aliens? Does anyone know why god needs a spaceship?

Stay tuned to the Ruiz Duchamp Memorial Contest Team Memorial Contest Team to find out the answers to these and other questions. Until then, all that is certain is that cake will be eaten.

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Crit Credits

Thanks to my teammates, ch00bakka and TyGently, for crit, as well as tawny0, LORDXVNV, Ralliston, psychicprogrammer, Roundabouts, and Anorrack.

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+Image Credits

The Department of Interstellar Containment logo is my own work, and was made from a blank Foundation logo base (provided by HarryBlank) and one of the swords in this image off Wikimedia Commons (by Commons user Pjmohedano); all elements are CC-BY-SA.

The Taskforce for Interstellar Threats logo is also my own work, and was made from the GOC Logo (taken from Greyve's GOC theme, which itself uses the public domain UN logo) and the same sword image; all elements are CC-BY-SA.

The renders of the Joyeuse are both my own work, and were made in Blender; both are released under CC-BY-SA.

The asteroid photo is actually of 951 Gaspra (there aren't any good photos of Herculina), and was sourced from this file on Wikimedia Commons. It was produced by NASA, and is therefore in the public domain.

The logos for MTF Psi-1 and Quintessence Aerospace are entirely my own work; both are released under CC-BY-SA.

The animation of the Joyeuse's mission profile was created by myself, TyGently, and tawny0; it is released under CC-BY-SA.

Last edited on 19 Feb 2022 00:16 by GreenWolf Show more

+1

Ralliston 17 Feb 2022 17:46

Wonderful, wonderful. It's all coming together now. Very excited to see where this ends up.

Re: +1

TyGently 17 Feb 2022 21:19

Gods willing, Alula Borealis. Of course, it depends on whose god you're asking.⭐
HLAOL TLAIB MNAPC NGALA LLOPL

Huh. Cool.

Clysm31201 18 Feb 2022 02:52

Have to say, you've definitely made an engaging thing here. The writing is adept, the science sounds plausible, the images are commendable, the story probably tops Rich Man's World; all in all, you got a good thing going here.

…one minor nitpick, though:

The primary mission of SCP-6523 and the DAMOCLES INITIATIVE is to intercept and neutralize the anomalous spacecraft identified in Incident ISHMAEL BREAKAWAY, using whatever means are deemed appropriate by the Tripartite Control Council.

If the Foundation does it deliberately, it's decommissioning. If it's not intended by them in any way, then it's neutralization.

Other than that, you can take my upvote.

Re: Huh. Cool.

GreenWolf 18 Feb 2022 03:01

"Neutralize" here just means "make it stop being a problem" and covers a wide range of actions, from containment to termination — basically, the Initiative has free rein to deal with Canvera however they want, so long as they deal with him.

By starlight the heaviest will rise up

Kothardarastrix 18 Feb 2022 03:25

The technical research that went into this is beautiful. I mean, one of you clearly sat down and actually worked out the time dilation with the Lorentz factor and all that, didn't you? And the little jokes and references are so well done, snuck in there at just the right points to make you chuckle without disrupting the piece.

Re: By starlight the heaviest will rise up

GreenWolf 18 Feb 2022 21:11

Yeah, I have a couple handwritten pages of math for the black hole parameters (mass, lifespan, power output, etc…), ship performance in different configurations, and the relativistic travel calculations. My undergrad degree was in Physics, so I've been putting in the extra work to make everything grounded in actual science — or as grounded as a starship powered by cake can be, at least.

Since I'm on the subject, a little bit more behind the math and technical jargon:

• "anomalously stable degenerate electron gas" is a real thing (sort of). It's a material made entirely out of electrons, which are packed so densely that their behavior and structure is governed entirely by electron degeneracy pressure arising from the Pauli exclusion principle. This material is sometimes called electronium, and is believed to be what the outer crust of a neutron star is made from. Degenerate Fermion matter has a lot of interesting properties, but it is mainly useful here because the wavelength of gamma rays is too short to be intercepted or reflected by normal matter.
  Yes, this is a hell substance. No, I don't know how Prometheus made it.
• a "brachistochrone trajectory" is the curve of shortest time. In the context of astrodynamics, it's a thrust profile where you burn continuously at a constant acceleration until you are halfway to your target, then flip over and continuously decelerate. If you do it right, you'll stop exactly at your destination, in the shortest possible time.
• There were actually some math errors in the original PL Grant Request that this builds on — that's mainly because the paper I was relying on as a reference had its own mathematical errors, which were only realized relatively recently. There's a slight retcon here that explains this as an in-universe mistake, and part of why the original Daedalus was ultimately abandoned.
• I've done some very rudimentary napkin math for the Katabasis spaceplanes, although I can't guarantee total accuracy on the specific figures — they are sound in principle, but actual performance parameters for spaceplanes rely so heavily on specific details of engineering implementations that it's impossible to actually say what the capabilities would be without testing in a simulator.
• Alula Borealis is a real K3III orange giant star that is actually located 400 lightyears away. However, to my knowledge, it is not home to extraterrestrial life.

Re: By starlight the heaviest will rise up

Kothardarastrix 19 Feb 2022 03:47

Dang, I wish my physics degree had been that useful.

I thought that’s what you meant by electronium, but I was like “nah, no way did PL do that”. Guess I underestimated them, lol.

However, to my knowledge, it is not home to extraterrestrial life.

👀

Anyway, mad respect.

Re: By starlight the heaviest will rise up

GreenWolf 19 Feb 2022 17:24

I thought that’s what you meant by electronium, but I was like “nah, no way did PL do that”. Guess I underestimated them, lol.

The electronium is by far the most upsetting part of the ship, at least from the perspective of the Foundation. The black hole follows entirely conventional physics that they understand, and the Antoinette Machine is at least something they built themselves — but they have no idea how Prometheus managed to stabilize electronium, and they're not 100% sure that the whole thing won't suddenly explode for no reason at all.

But it's probably fine.

Ethagon 23 Feb 2022 13:11

No further contact with SCP-6523 or the DAMOCLES INITIATIVE is expected after this point.

They won't even try to stay in contact? Well, that's a bummer.

In the event of irreparable and catastrophic failure, all outstanding instances of SCP-871 are to be immediately consumed by surviving crew members.

Wouldn't that just result in the cakes turning up again in 24 hours?

Either way, I'm excited about what's to come. +1

Rancorious 24 Mar 2022 05:19

Wake up babe, new K-class scenario dropped.

boldyeller 05 Mar 2022 17:20

Farpoint station…Redshirts…this tale is rife with Star Trek references and I LOVE IT😍

Mackeye 07 Mar 2022 15:34

fun piece to read, the techy stuff was done well. also subsystem antoinette made me laugh lol, +1

Djoric 19 Mar 2022 20:11

The absurd logical conclusion of a cake-based spaceship is the sort of thing I truly love about this site.

Maxyfran73 21 Mar 2022 06:20

A necessary link between pieces; although not as exciting as the rest, mainly due to laying out and explaining that which has been explained before (Out of necessity, obviously), it was still a very good read, introducing all the pieces necessary for the journey to start fully. The research done for this one is impeccable, same with the overall flow of the piece.

Can't wait to see what we're heading towards. +1~

Rounderhouse 25 Mar 2022 23:12

#50

This definitely does suffer from being a mid-point contest piece — a very large portion of it echoes information laid out in other piece, but I'm not stupid, I understand the necessity that went into that decision, so I'm definitely not holding it against the article. I may just not be quite the right person for this one, since I found the technical explanations a little boring and drawn out (Personal Taste Disclaimer™️).

That said, I can still definitely appreciate the almost-blindingly-obvious amount of thought and care that went into every single piece of this. It's apparent in every word, every sentence, every paragraph. This is… thought-out to an extreme, and the conclusion manages to be pretty badass: we have to go to space to find and beat up Elon Musk. While I did whinge about the technical aspects, those are almost entirely limited to the part about the ship's systems and design — the clinical writing in the rest is awesome, the footnotes keep it light and fresh, and it really does feel like a dossier in the best way.

To me, this is less of a story unto itself, and more of a necessary intermission — you've introduced us to the pieces, this article is setting up the pieces on the board for the game. That's not an easy job, but this article manages to do it in a way that was still pretty fun, all things considered. I like it.

P.S: I love the idea of the Brotherhood of Auspicious Survivors. Anomalous Ottomans. Ottonomalous? Anottomans. Stealing them.

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