an engineering problem which I need to solve for a story

[Quantus]

This refers to a bit of historical background for the next volume in the series of Thing I Want To Be Working On.

I have a human colony planet that is, between a combination of not having the right materials, losing some background knowledge, and having a government that is heavily down on research and progress and generally sort of stagnant, for the most part stuck at just-post-WWII tech levels. They have a fairly significant space presence, but it's been put there by brute force application of late 40s equivalent technology. (Sea Dragons!) They wanted to launch a large chunk of material to their moon for building with; a hundred-thousand-tonne or so total weight solid metal bullet packed with useful ores and things, launched with a suitably large nuclear explosion, and lithobraking on arrival. (Yep, there are bad consequences to setting off that large an explosion on one's planet; postulate a nihilistic imperium that is indifferent to some forms of collateral damage and actively welcomes others as signs of divine favour.)

I'm pretty good with most of what's needed to make this work - it's basically Jules Verne's Baltimore Gun Club writ large, except with realistic physics. My issue is that while smashing this thing into their moon and leaving a large crater with thousands of tonnes of metal buried in it is fine for delivering iron &c. one then intends to mine, I need somebody to hide a Significant Plot Object on the thing for later retrieval after its journey, and the Significant Plot Object has to make it through the journey intact. The Significant Plot Object can have plausible good real-world material strength (you can think of it as made of diamond or jade) but not be made of magic handwavium, and it can be cushioned by any plausible protective casing one could have made in, oh, 1948 (or say by 1960 if the technology to make it is something that works as an offshoot of tech development rather than having half a dozen other implications and obvious uses that mess up the setting) though the smaller and more discreet that protection is the better, and the upper limit would be, say, one standard shipping container; the object itself is small enough to hold in one hand.

So, anyone got recommendations for an engineering solution, or for good references/resources allowing me to figure one out ?





How in Sam Hell did I miss an Engineering thread!?!  Im an engineer that designs industrial processing plants for the mining industry, and in college I designed wheels for a now-scrapped JPL lunar rover.  So this will be all kinds of fun for for me.

I have several Ideas, but questions first: 
How much in the way of Time and Resources are available to encode the Object?
How much time and/or privacy to attach/implant this Object?
How much information are we talking?


A data recording can be done with anything that has a lasting pattern, so the options are wide open.  But size, time, and capacity will all be deciding factors.  Your basic need is a recorded pattern that can survive physical impact and/or deformation, some heat (the impact will make a bit even if with no atmo) and misc radiation during space-flight.  The temp swing on the moon is extreme (something like 40-400K shade to sun) so there is that even after impact.  You also have to deal with some pretty abrasive dust.  Magnetics are basically out, radiation, impact, or heat could threaten that.   The intensity of both the Nuke to Launch and the comparable explosive compression on impact is even enough to cause crystaline changes in certain minerals.

Landing is just a deceleration problem, so a prepared landing target would help quite a bit.  FIrst thing theu could do is pile up a bunch of moon-dust as a cushion.  The biggest issue with a zero-atmo landing is that the object has to decellerate from space speeds in the distance between its ass and nose, since its hitting a stone wall (floor, I guess).  IF you can give it a little more tome to slow down, it doesnt face near as much stress.  Outside of a physical cushion, a magnetic counterpulse to rob it of speed as it comes in could reduce a lot of strain. Even a little atmosphere on the moon would simplify things greatly.  If there is large-scale industrial work going on, a thin atmosphere of pollutants and industrial by-product could have been released from the Raw Materials they are crashing down and processing. 

Offhand encoding options:
-Metal laminant
-DNA Encoding, requires sequencing tech, and/or massive (analog) computer
-Radioactive serial tracer
-crystalline lattice


Tell me if Im picturing the Industrial process correctly:  They use a nuke and what is essentially a giant cannon to blast a material slug to escape velocity, presumably timed so that the trajectory will carry it to the moon.  Id expect there to be some orbital way-station on one end or the other to do some course corrections, or else that is a 250,000 mile bullseye, and I would be very impressed.  Once at the moon, it is crashed into a predefined landing site, where it crashes down, before some sort of sifter/excavator comes in and scoops up what’s left.  Whats left will come in two parts; the buried core and the ejected scrap.  At this point some machine or worker(s) are dispatched to dig out the primary core, while others sift out the scrap from the surrounding dust, to be sorted in the Factory.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Im an engineer that designs industrial processing plants for the mining industry, and in college I designed wheels for a now-scrapped JPL lunar rover.  So this will be all kinds of fun for for me.

Whee ! Excellent, thank you.  And I really must clear out my PM box this weekend, home connectivity permitting.

How much in the way of Time and Resources are available to encode the Object?
How much time and/or privacy to attach/implant this Object?
How much information are we talking?

What we are talking about is a download of half a dozen or so human personalities, which I am thinking of as a relic artifact from a higher tech level.  Diamond about the size of a thumb would do it, for example.  Time to encode is on the scale of a few days, time to attach/implant has to be fast and sneaky.

Your basic need is a recorded pattern that can survive physical impact and/or deformation, some heat (the impact will make a bit even if with no atmo)

Back of an envelope calculations, unless I'm slipping a zero, largely melted on landing is an option the designers could not rule out.

and misc radiation during space-flight.

Fairly deep inside the shell should answer that one, I reckon.

The intensity of both the Nuke to Launch and the comparable explosive compression on impact is even enough to cause crystaline changes in certain minerals.

Indeed, and that's my principal problem with the diamond idea.

IF you can give it a little more tome to slow down, it doesnt face near as much stress.  Outside of a physical cushion, a magnetic counterpulse to rob it of speed as it comes in could reduce a lot of strain. Even a little atmosphere on the moon would simplify things greatly.  If there is large-scale industrial work going on, a thin atmosphere of pollutants and industrial by-product could have been released from the Raw Materials they are crashing down and processing. 

There's nothing on that scale, alas. part of the plan here was to get the raw materials ttere for setting up that scale of industry.

(The people doing that scale of set-up are a) not great at long-term planning and b) crazy death-worshipping nihilists. Collateral failures on the scale of the famine caused by Stalin's collective farming initiatives are not implausible.  This is not a long-term survivable regime, and has in fact been overthrown some time ago.)

-Metal laminant
-DNA Encoding, requires sequencing tech, and/or massive (analog) computer
-Radioactive serial tracer
-crystalline lattice

DNA's not feasible, but options derived from the other three might be.

They use a nuke and what is essentially a giant cannon to blast a material slug to escape velocity, presumably timed so that the trajectory will carry it to the moon.  Id expect there to be some orbital way-station on one end or the other to do some course corrections, or else that is a 250,000 mile bullseye, and I would be very impressed.

The planet and moon are Earthlike but not exactly identical.  Inflight course correction's not hugely feasible, unless I'm missing an option for attaching 1948-tech rockets with enough reaction mass to make a big difference that could plausibly survive the launch; I suppose tugs to intercept en route are vaguely feasible.  And the scale of accuracy of landing is, they don't care overly much where on the moon it lands - this is not "place bits for building a station", this is "land resources we can mine out of an impact crater for a few decades to develop the whole moon."

Once at the moon, it is crashed into a predefined landing site, where it crashes down, before some sort of sifter/excavator comes in and scoops up what’s left.  Whats left will come in two parts; the buried core and the ejected scrap.  At this point some machine or worker(s) are dispatched to dig out the primary core, while others sift out the scrap from the surrounding dust, to be sorted in the Factory.

More or less, yes.

[Quantus]

The reason you have all of that heat and pressure and such as the Bullet hits is that essentially its ass doenst start decelerating until the nose has already touched the ground, so the distance left is very short.  But all that heat and pressure only exists because you are talking about a solid material and a whole lot of mass.  It its a separate object, and that object has an escape path out the ass of the bullet, then it only has to survive its own mass''s deceleration, and could be ejected out the back during the impact event. Then you could make a bouncy re-entry cushion like they use for the mars rovers.  An even better route might be to have it be rigged to explode off the back just before impact.  This could be done so that the gravitational acceleration on lunar approach would trigger a small bomb that would separate and decelerate the Package.  If it can be separate by still in the air when the Impact event hits, that could also provide a sort of shock wave cushion (in the dust and debris, if not atmo).  That would also be a useful source of the later evidence that you said they needed to find: the explosion cold leave trace chemical residue, a camera may have caught the separation explosion, and the crash pattern might show evidence of the bullet coming apart just before impact. 

OK, so safe to say a full personality is out of the realm of real world media storage capacity.  If its encoded on a diamond of some form, call it a Hyderdiamond Matrix or lattice, saying that the crystallize structure was artificially constructed on the molecular level to function as a storage media, and in doing so it optimized its crystaline structure by varying the presence of interstitial atoms (Graphene, necessary to act as circuitry) and the density of dislocations (natural result of artificial crystal ordering).  That has enough basis in reality to appease the hard-asses, but enough recognizable pseudo-science x-factor to keep them from being able to run too many calculations on its actual strength. 


Wrap it all up in an inner shell that is as hard and light as possible, and a much thicker outer shell that is elastic enough to divert some of the compressive energy around the harder core.  Then it will be able to bounce the energy a little bit, and have a plausible chance of surviving with the rest.


Thoughts?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

  It its a separate object, and that object has an escape path out the ass of the bullet, then it only has to survive its own mass''s deceleration, and could be ejected out the back during the impact event. Then you could make a bouncy re-entry cushion like they use for the mars rovers.  An even better route might be to have it be rigged to explode off the back just before impact.  This could be done so that the gravitational acceleration on lunar approach would trigger a small bomb that would separate and decelerate the Package.  If it can be separate by still in the air when the Impact event hits, that could also provide a sort of shock wave cushion (in the dust and debris, if not atmo).  That would also be a useful source of the later evidence that you said they needed to find: the explosion cold leave trace chemical residue, a camera may have caught the separation explosion, and the crash pattern might show evidence of the bullet coming apart just before impact.

All of these eminently practical suggestions, alas, fall foul of the "hidden" requirement.   The package needs basically to have been sneaked into the bullet by a local intelligence type.  Shooting a couple of workers who get in the way is an option, but some sort of recovery mechanism that anyone involved in the project could have seen, or that could have been noticed en route, is not.  It needs not to have been obvious that the thing was there; it needs not to show up on a reasonably thorough examination of the landing site  that does not know there's an Object to look for.  Indeed, it needs not to show that the Object's been retrieved until a forensic team who find out about it by other means confirm it.

OK, so safe to say a full personality is out of the realm of real world media storage capacity.

I'm willing to count that under "we really have no clue so I can assume as appropriate for setting".

If its encoded on a diamond of some form, call it a Hyderdiamond Matrix or lattice, saying that the crystallize structure was artificially constructed on the molecular level to function as a storage media, and in doing so it optimized its crystaline structure by varying the presence of interstitial atoms (Graphene, necessary to act as circuitry) and the density of dislocations (natural result of artificial crystal ordering). 

Something like, yes, though I am not sure I would be convinced of a dislocation pattern surviving the stresses of transit.  Or maybe it could be patterns of which isotope of carbon is at which position in the crystal.

Wrap it all up in an inner shell that is as hard and light as possible, and a much thicker outer shell that is elastic enough to divert some of the compressive energy around the harder core.  Then it will be able to bounce the energy a little bit, and have a plausible chance of surviving with the rest.

That is the direction I am thinking is most likely to work.  So what's a good candidate for the relevant materials that could have been machined in 1948 - or as I said, in 1960 if you can do it without technology that implies a bunch of other stuff that was around in 1960 but not 1948 ?

[knnn]

What if the Bullet itself was set to explode prior to impact?  Could you argue that the effect of having 90% debris is better for mining/gathering operations than having a 50% debris and 50% buried deep in the ground?  This way, a secondary explosion might not be noticed.

Another idea is to have a *lot* of redundancy in the message.  If you send 100 copies of the same steel plate you might reasonably assume that even if parts of some of the plates got warped beyond recognition, finding enough intact fragments might allow you to reconstruct the entire message.  Archaeologists have had decent successes reconstructing ancient texts using these methods.

[Quantus]

What if the Bullet itself was set to explode prior to impact?  Could you argue that the effect of having 90% debris is better for mining/gathering operations than having a 50% debris and 50% buried deep in the ground?  This way, a secondary explosion might not be noticed.

From the Mining operation standpoint that would make a lot of sense, it would do a lot to spread out the impact force.  Makes a larger recovery zone, but it might be worth it.

[Quantus]

All of these eminently practical suggestions, alas, fall foul of the "hidden" requirement.   The package needs basically to have been sneaked into the bullet by a local intelligence type.  Shooting a couple of workers who get in the way is an option, but some sort of recovery mechanism that anyone involved in the project could have seen, or that could have been noticed en route, is not.  It needs not to have been obvious that the thing was there; it needs not to show up on a reasonably thorough examination of the landing site  that does not know there's an Object to look for.  Indeed, it needs not to show that the Object's been retrieved until a forensic team who find out about it by other means confirm it.

I was thinking something that they could bore a hole in the tail end, stash it in a cavity, then lodge a plug in the top of the hole to hold it securely and hid it.  The force of the launch will be pushing it forward, so it will be pressed further in instead of coming out.  IT would be the force of the impact (or the separation charge) that pushes it back out once its over the moon. 

Something like, yes, though I am not sure I would be convinced of a dislocation pattern surviving the stresses of transit.  Or maybe it could be patterns of which isotope of carbon is at which position in the crystal.

Ooh, I like that.  Assume they could customize a graphene sheet to place individual atoms as they choose, then stack it up into a Hyper-diamond matrix for structural hardness.

That is the direction I am thinking is most likely to work.  So what's a good candidate for the relevant materials that could have been machined in 1948 - or as I said, in 1960 if you can do it without technology that implies a bunch of other stuff that was around in 1960 but not 1948 ?

For the Inner Shell, more of the same diamond could make sense for hardness, or maybe a ceramic carbide of some kind, Id have to dig into the materials.  Titanium is strong for its weight, but only as strong as some low-grade steels, and its difficult and expensive to produce (still possible with 1940's tech i think). Memory Metal (a Nickle-Titanium Alloy)  is head and shoulders above all other metals for resisting permananent deformation. For the outer... Im not sure, we are talking pretty far outside the normal range of materials.  Something a durable as possible in a collapsible foam structure that will absorb as much energy as possible as if deforms.   How specific do you want to get on its description?

[Snowleopard]

I'm not an engineer or scientist but just to let you know.
Diamond is the hardest stone but if you hit or just tap it in the wrong place you
can reduce it to diamond dust.
Jade is the toughest stone and can take punishment that would reduce a diamond to dust.
That's why the Chinese used it in wind chimes so to speak.

You want your ginormous payload to hit the moon in more or less a certain position, yes?
What if there were tunnels inside the payload filled with fluid and a giant rough kind
of gyroscope to keep it 'level and/or upright'.  Venting or shifting fluid into different
tunnels to adjust trajectory.
Perhaps your 'special package' could be disguised as flotsam floating in this fluid.
Along with other junk.

[Quantus]

I'm not an engineer or scientist but just to let you know.
Diamond is the hardest stone but if you hit or just tap it in the wrong place you
can reduce it to diamond dust.
Jade is the toughest stone and can take punishment that would reduce a diamond to dust.
That's why the Chinese used it in wind chimes so to speak.

True, which is why a super-special Hyperdiamond sounds better.  The simple fact is that ANYTHING would be destroyed by what we are talking about, so a touch of X-factor has to be added.
Jade is durable in earth terms because its soft (as opposed to brittle)  and so can deform easier.  It it also proous enough to be impregnated with resin to stabilize it, which is where the really durable pieces come from.  But it wouldnt survive impact without complete deformation.  in this instance it would be better for it to shard off but maintain its relative shape than deform overly much, which would corrupt the internal patterning that it would be using for data storage.

You want your ginormous payload to hit the moon in more or less a certain position, yes?
What if there were tunnels inside the payload filled with fluid and a giant rough kind
of gyroscope to keep it 'level and/or upright'.  Venting or shifting fluid into different
tunnels to adjust trajectory.
Perhaps your 'special package' could be disguised as flotsam floating in this fluid.
Along with other junk.

"More or less the same position" seems to be more of a "Within a hundred miles or so of the target"  but not a a bullseye by any means.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

  Ooh, I like that.  Assume they could customize a graphene sheet to place individual atoms as they choose, then stack it up into a Hyper-diamond matrix for structural hardness.For the Inner Shell, more of the same diamond could make sense for hardness, or maybe a ceramic carbide of some kind, Id have to dig into the materials.  Titanium is strong for its weight, but only as strong as some low-grade steels, and its difficult and expensive to produce (still possible with 1940's tech i think).

This is precisely where my own knowledge is at its weakest.

How specific do you want to get on its description?

Specific enough that nobody reading the text can fill in plausible assumptions based on details I've not given, do the sums and conclude that I have in fact broken physics.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

You want your ginormous payload to hit the moon in more or less a certain position, yes?

Not with any huge degree of accuracy.

What if there were tunnels inside the payload filled with fluid and a giant rough kind
of gyroscope to keep it 'level and/or upright'.  Venting or shifting fluid into different
tunnels to adjust trajectory.
Perhaps your 'special package' could be disguised as flotsam floating in this fluid.
Along with other junk.

That, however, is a very nice thought.  Thank you. It would fit well with being something that would not be obvious to anyone looking over the crash site afterwards, either.

[Snowleopard]

Er, good jade doesn't require resin to stabilize it.
I worked at a jade importing firm.
Maybe resin is used to color some jade but not stabilize it.
Now Turquoise is often stabilized but jade?

[Quantus]

Er, good jade doesn't require resin to stabilize it.
I worked at a jade importing firm.
Maybe resin is used to color some jade but not stabilize it.
Now Turquoise is often stabilized but jade?

Then Ill bow to your expertise, i was workign off this fromt eh wikipedai article:

Enhancement

Jade may be enhanced (sometimes called "stabilized"). Note that some merchants will refer to these as Grades, but it is important to bear in mind that degree of enhancement is different from colour and texture quality. In other words, Type A jadeite is not enhanced but can have poor colour and texture. There are three main methods of enhancement, sometimes referred to as the ABC Treatment System:[11]

    Type A jadeite has not been treated in any way except surface waxing.
    Type B treatment involves exposing a promising but stained piece of jadeite to chemical bleaches and/or acids and impregnating it with a clear polymer resin. This results in a significant improvement of transparency and colour of the material. Currently, infrared spectroscopy is the most accurate test for the detection of polymer in jadeite.
    Type C jade has been artificially stained or dyed. The effects are somewhat uncontrollable and may result in a dull brown. In any case, translucency is usually lost.
    B+C jade is a combination of B and C: it has been both artificially dyed AND impregnated.
    Type D jade refers to a composite stone such as a doublet comprising a jade top with a plastic backing.

[/tt]

[Snowleopard]

That's something new to me, Quantus.
The jade carried by the firm I worked for wasn't treated in anyway that I know of.
I do understand why they would enhance it however.
Jade is sold in boulders - they cut a couple of small windows in different places to show you
the quality of the jade.  Problem is - you can't see what's inside the rest of the boulder - so
the really high quality stuff you see may only comprise one percent of the entire boulder - so
the cost of the boulder has to be spread over all the stones you get out of it.  So if you could
get more stones of a better color out of it - then yes I can understand the resin and coloring stuff.

By the by - jade is actually two minerals with the same chemical composition but a different
molecular structure.  Nephrite which has duller colors and a kind of waxy or soapy look to it
when polished.  (most antique Chinese jade is Nephrite)  And Jadeite which can be polished to
a hard shine and has brigher colors - apple green, black (really a dark green) red, yellow,
and lavender.  Pure jade is actually white.

[Quantus]

I would imagine its a practice used on the cheap tourist stuff ive seen on ebay and such.  It sounds like you worked in a higher quality area of the industry, or at least well upstream from those kind of shenanigans.