Space Freighters, Cargos & Crews

Go to brilliant.org/IsaacArthur/ to get a 30-day free trial and 20% off their annual subscription.
One day we may settle thousands of planets and trade between them, but what would a space freighter be like, who would crew them, and what would they carry?
Visit our Website: www.isaacarthur.net
Join Nebula: go.nebula.tv/isaacarthur
Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur
Support us on Subscribestar: www.subscribestar.com/isaac-a...
Facebook Group: / 1583992725237264
Reddit: / isaacarthur
Twitter: / isaac_a_arthur on Twitter and RT our future content.
SFIA Discord Server: / discord
Credits:
Space Freighters: Cargos & Crews
Episode 448a; May 26, 2024
Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur
Graphics:
Jeremy Jozwik
Melänovis
Udo Schroeter
YD Visual
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound epidemicsound.com/creator

[@user-st8fe7iv3t]

You do realise that space freighters means only one thing: Space pirates

[@seditt5146]

Lol, As usual... he already has a Video on that as well :D

[@TS-jm7jm]

piracy is a dodgy prospect when everyone with a mind for it and a willingness to point a telescope at you, can see you even from the other side of the solar system, and constantly track you, absolutely *everyone* would know who you are and what you have done.

[@archmage_of_the_aether]

​@@TS-jm7jm unless technology

[@SirHeinzbond]

har-har

[@iainballas]

@@archmage_of_the_aether it'll always be a race between detection and stealth... and that's a tech battle that favors the side with infrastructure, research budgets and a massive population, not the rag-tag fleet of renegades.

[@VisiblyPinkUnicorn]

"Traffic control, we reached the correct altitude and we're constantly accelerating. I'm turning on the autopilot" *turns to the co-pilot* "wake me when it's 2267"

[@rairaur2234]

"The original episode this was a companion to was pretty dystopian: thus assuming a lot of humans work full-time jobs or worse" 😂😂 The subtle irony was not lost

[@JohnSagin-SimViDeLucis579]

Man i love the "boring" logistics of space travel and accommodation. Dont know why, something about engineering safety and habitation in the least habitable place ever.

[@livethefuture2492]

I would love to see an entire series just dedicated to space transportation and logistical infrastructure. It would be really fascinating to explore the inner workings of how such interplanetary or interstellar civilizations we see in scifi movies and games might actually work. Particularly i would love to see you explore the Expanse universe as an example of what a kardashev 2 level civilization might actually look like.

[@zrebbesh]

Things can be done a lot more efficiently remembering that this isn't ocean shipping. The conditions are different. Cargo mass can also be reaction mass, loading and unloading can be done en route, and energy and reaction mass spent accelerating can be re-spent decelerating and recovered at the destination. This is true for any cargo that can be packaged to withstand some acceleration. The captain buys a million tons of widgets and some energy, the seller fires them at the ship from a mass driver using that energy, and the ship accelerates while loading cargo, taking delivery of both cargo and energy via its mass drive. They cruise until they are in range of the destination, sell the energy and cargo, start unloading, and deliver both via the same mass drive to the destination while unloading the ship. The ship starts and arrives empty (or nearly so) and ready to buy another cargo.

[@aserta]

That would require some pretty advanced acquisition of mass machinery on board that wouldn't put trillions worth of goods in peril from the dangers of a mishap. Don't get me wrong, the idea works,... but investors would not like the concept of someone shooting "mass" at their stuff. Rather than that, i think the cargo ship would travel all the time, these cargo volumes would be given to the ship en passant and along with it, additional "power" to move to the next station. Small "trucker style" businesses would not last in that kind of a world. This would be entirely driven by giants. There would be small cargo ships, but only for those desperate enough to pay exorbitant sums for Joe Spacebucks to burn his cones to get it under the speed the larger, behemoth cargo ships would go. Pretty similar to what we have now... space or no space, things tend to equalize to a finite shape after a while. As shipping goes, even in space, beyond small wonder given to them (the shipping corpos) the ability to freight truly humongous masses, ultimately, it's about the cost and having risky methods like the one described would not drive the cost down, especially when that one accident happens and a planet or shipping "lane" (with a pinch of salt) gets peppered with 90 billion salt crystals from the planet Ubuntu, making freight impossible until the mess is cleaned.

[@boobah5643]

At that point, your 'freighter' can be reduced to the cargo that you're already flinging around.

[@thestabbybrit4798]

The dystopian megaships are a storyteller's wet dream - I love the idea of entire civilisations of stowaways living in the 'bilges' of the vessel, surviving in part because the cost in stolen supplies is technically less than the potential cost of digging them all out and figuring out what to do with them afterwards.

[@annoyed707]

The last time I was this early I was actually on my space freighter instead of running along the space dock yelling "Wait for me!"

[@rharris22222]

As a shuttle pulls up and says "Sir, we can get get you on board, no problem! Just 100 credits!"

[@Jevaughn]

Lmao

[@supsup335]

Ok, so, a series about space freighters? Sign me up. Is there a sign-up bonus? My buddy said every new deckhand gets a bonus upfront.

[@brianramey273]

Im picturing a space freighter crewman taking long haul food routes, just so that they have a year long gap between ports to play farming Simulator 2124.

[@Tsurf]

You could actually get Pro-Civ players XD

[@KarolOfGutovo]

Nah, a space freight operator would play SCS's "AstroTruck Simulator" on breaks.

[@nativeafroeurasian]

​@@KarolOfGutovothere's already star trucker But they'd play ship sim extremes space edition

[@Tundra.]

This episode feels like it was made just for me! I end up trying to do all the shipping and logistics jobs in various games when they're available. I spent a whole summer in EVE Online fueling wars in Null Sec working for Red Frog Freight years ago, and I jump onto Truck Simulator or Elite Dangerous just to move stuff around for fun. There's just something very relaxing about taking long-haul drives and the extra bonus of getting paid for it. Thank you, IA!

[@ArcticNemo]

On the subject of crew side-hustle during the long transport phase: If I recall correctly, the novelization of 'Alien' had tech for the sleeping crew to record their dreams for sale. Edit: It appears I did not remember it exactly, but still fun to think about.

[@missZoey5387]

it talked about professional dreamers and how the crew would have fared in that job

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

I did not know that :)

[@TiagoTiagoT]

Regarding the scaling limitations due to loading/unloading, what if ships had whole shuttle-modules filled with a huge number of containers, that could be undocked and dropped/landed at the port, and replaced by already pre-filled modules that have been waiting on the port? Sorta like a mix of the concepts of big-rig trailers or train wagons, standard shipping containers, and those modular self-propelled platforms with a bunch of wheels that are used for hauling oversized/overweight cargo, in the form of a huge cargo pod with just enough fuel and maneuvering capability to handle loading and unloading themselves into ports, and maybe being moved around to organize things on the ground (or space station docking area) or the ship itself. That way as long as the airspace and landing/docking regions in the ports were cleared enough, you could pretty much unload the whole cargo and get a full new load for another destination almost like extra-large scale F1 pitstop....

[@highlorddarkstar]

Just remember the scale, if it’s 3 miles long and 1000 yards wide with 200 levels, then allowing 10 yards width (for easy math) you’re talking 20,000 3-mile-long trains. And you could store them AS trains, it would still take weeks to fully unload. Admittedly, you are talking about the equivalent to the yearly US grain export to Asia delivered at once. Your planet needs hyper efficient cargo rail, but the throughput is possible. And this is storing rather inefficiently, as comfortably spread out railyards. You could certainly go denser.

[@TiagoTiagoT]

@@highlorddarkstar The idea is basically you're leaving a whole ship behind (or even more than one), because it's just a module of your mega ship. Sorta like that joke about how no internet connection can beat the bandwidth of a truck loaded with HDDs hurling down the highway. And if you wanna optimize the unloading after delivery, you could go fractal and have container drones and just open walls and ceilings of the cargo pod and let the little containers swarm out on their own; or hell, go full fractal and make the cargo-pod built of container-drones lego-style, that lock together and share fuel and resources and coordinate while maneuvering in assembled bulk and then unlock and go swarm mode when it's time to organize things on the delivery site.

[@alexandroutsos5990]

I love these videos. They were a key factor in having hope for the future. Its one of the shows I watch like a religious zealot

[@ZaWyvern]

Nice timing. I recently rediscovered the game "endless sky" and have been living the cargo haulers dream. Rivals Privateer 2 for favorite game in that genre. In fact I'm gonna get in a few rounds while I listen to this.

[@jessepage6575]

What a great game! Best hidden gem on steam!

[@Archangelm127]

Same. I have a fleet of about 100 ships and I'm a multi-billionaire. I'm thinking of writing a fanfic about my character's obnoxious lifestyle onboard my Behemoth. 🤣

[@8darktraveler8]

I'd be happy to be a space trucker or asteroid miner as long as my family could prosper in my absence.

[@Mate397]

Just be sure to read the fine print of your employment before your ship's AI decides to take a detour because of a signal...

[@8darktraveler8]

@@Mate397 heh, I'm in danger.

[@1FatLittleMonkey]

_"as long as my family could prosper in my absence."_ Absence? On that multi-km ship with a million crew, your family would live with you. That's a small city. You'd have been born on the ship, go to school and university on the ship, only leave to escape the old home town, then retire back there when you're older and ready to settle down and have a family of your own. [Edit: Honestly, this would be a fascinating SF TV series, IMO. Like SILO but without the dystopia.]

[@8darktraveler8]

@@1FatLittleMonkey My example was more to do with early space infrastructure, where I and a very small crew are mining asteroids by remote, and any malfunctioning equipment is tagged and gently pushed away from the mining area, to be retrieved later as part of some sort of space reclamation contracts or something. I grew up in remote parts of Australia, in mining and agricultural regions. Where my father worked away from home on week or two week long shifts, I also worked in coal mining for 12.5 hours a day with half an hour travel time there and back. Now an O'Neil cylinder community on the fringe, mining my own claims would be a literal dream come true. Close enough to still be part of civilisation, far enough away that I don't have to deal with illogical humans.

[@BarbarosaAlexander]

Another fun episode to listen to and ruminate over for my Sunday Art Day.

[@mrjava66]

So, food that does not contain enzymes to break it down is naturally durable. All others is not. But, interstellar space is super cold. Interplanetary space with a heat shield,e.g. the jwst, is super cold too. So ANY food that can be cooled to -130F/-90C should be fine for multi century storage.

[@seditt5146]

Possibly although I suspect such foods would have a consistency which makes baby food appear bulky. Probably something along the lines of taking say, fruits, removing the destructive enzymes through mechanical means or genetic engineering and liquifying it into a nutritional paste to be frozen for centuries. Avoiding cosmic rays, radiation and other damaging factors the Amino acids, carbs, starches etc could potentially be maintained for a while at super low temperatures. I think the real hurdle is going to be turning it back into something appetizing. Then again, we are already working on it on that front in the cultured meat industry but that is super far behind what is needed at the moment. Perhaps the best solution would be to just take everything out of a fruit or meat, freeze the scaffolding separate from the nutritional stuff and put them back together as needed. See Thought Emporiums Meat Berries videos for ideas on how that can be done.

[@archmage_of_the_aether]

Not necessarily. Just because we could eat 20ky old mammoth meat, it does not mean we could survive off 20ky old mammoth meat.

[@manslaughterinc.9135]

Would really like to see more on this trade and economy angle. Maybe also how politics and regulation impact. Also, I understand the need to focus on food for this episode, but a review of more commodity types and how that might alter how trade is conducted, maybe from a higher level perspective. Food, for example, would be more broadly classified as perishable. Consider categories like hazardous materials, controlled and regulated goods like weapons, heavy goods like building materials (A ship factory probably needs external resources, pros and cons of in situ processing of raw goods) Where do small time freight runners fit in? Long haul lux goods only? You could follow up with an entire episode on smuggling. Honestly, this is a category that just keeps on giving.

[@hibbs1712]

We gotta start talking more about what’s to come for our in-house plant growers!! Whether it be agrifoods, herbs, or pretty houseplants (“space”plants?? ^.^), as a horticulturist, I’m excited for the prospect!!

[@seanhewitt603]

The best oxygen producer known to man😎

[@friendlyone2706]

Check out Square Roots, run by Elon's brother.

[@Hession0Drasha]

I wanna see what redwoods do, when they grow in zero gravity

[@maxpayne2574]

The future of food production are mega 'family' farms who control multiple states. The move to self driving equipment is well under way.

[@michealnelsonauthor]

Aquaculture is the way to go!

[@timothy8428]

One idea I thought of is the Free Ship concept. A ship run by an AI with its own bank account that operates autonomously. It could hire its own crew members and contract for jobs. It might exist as a free agent, budgeting for its operating expenses. The idea arose from a thought I had that if I paid my car an amount per kilometre, all fuel, maintenance and replacement costs would be paid from the car's account. I never did it though.

[@ASpaceOstrich]

You might like the novel Accelerando which features not quite the same thing, but self aware corporations at some point. it doesn't focus on them, or, well, its complicated. But they're a critical part of the narrative while never being the direct focus of the story. Also its just really good hard sci-fi.

[@josephreagan9545]

Maybe freighter ship will just be Space Costcos. You have at least 2 ships. The first ship will stay in orbit once it reaches its destination. Shoppers will use their space cars or space drones to go to the ship directly to pick up the goods as needed. The ship will stay in orbit until shoppers have picked it clean and then a 2nd ship will take the place of the first once it is empty. No need to unload the freighter ship if the ship is also the store itself. Customers can get lower prices by buying from the supplier directly and the suppliers saves time and money by having the shoppers "unload" the ship rather than having a crew do it.

[@JeremyKolassa]

This really does need to be a full series. At the very least, an episode on the effects of different drive systems would be fantastic.

[@archmage_of_the_aether]

You mean, motion sickness, radiation sickness, spacewarp sickness, teleportation glitches?

[@rharris22222]

Not even close to first, but still early-bird greetings! I had given some thought about cargo transport a while back. I was thinking interplanetary not interstellar. A pitch and catch system, with untended ballistic flight in between the two ends of the flight might work, but only in places that are both empty enough to not be too hazardous, AND well enough patrolled to prevent easy casual theft.

[@SupaKoopaTroopa64]

About the loading/unloading issue: I've seen some concepts where the freighter is basically just scaffolding that holds one or more freight trains. This design could unload super fast. The main bottleneck would be getting the ship or the trains in and out of the atmosphere, but that's an issue for all cargo ships.

[@BobzeMovie]

This is one of my favourite things on the internet. SFIA is something I'd buy a ohysical boxset of

[@shadow4002]

Thank you as always to everyone involved

[@josephreagan9545]

I hope someone opens a space freighter dealership and names it "Freighter Joes"

[@Grevnor]

Why not combine the idea of a space freighter, an Aldrin Cycler and an O'Neill Cylinder agri-habitat for interstellar trade ships? The result would essentially be an ambulatory agricultural station that produces and stores their agricultural yield during the long trip to the nearest star, then sell their surplus at their destination and move on to the next, replenishing their stock in-transit. In this case a no-FTL universe is actually a positive thing! As for loading and unloading cargo, there is a definite advantage to unloading shipping containers as opposed to unloading separate crates and pallets. Just scale that up one step, and you have an entire module full of shipping containers ready to be delivered to an orbital station, for example, and then just have the locals deal with it while you load new modules into place. Sure, it will still take a lot of time to unload everything, even with automation, but at least the bottleneck is widened to not strand the freighter until everything is sorted out, and can get on with the next leg of its journey in a more efficient manner.

[@Honkious5824]

I'm curious what a port for such freighters would look like. Where would those thousand cargo train rails lead to? Would the freighters even have their own loading/unloading systems? Or would the ports themselves have dedicated megastructures for reaching into the cargo bays?

[@greggweber9967]

The time hole if a food ship is destroyed can mean millions die until another shipment arrives.

[@Archangelm127]

Obviously you don't rely on just-in-time delivery. At this density, having a century or several worth of reserves should be quite feasible.

[@vince38curious2]

Thanks Issac 👍🏻 I'm 54yrs old and Being a crew member ( Forklift or Truck Driver ) With 40yrs Experience on a Space Freighter Cis-Lunar or System Type Sounds Like an Interesting Change 😂😂😂 Especialy if you could Bring the Family along as My Wife is a Qualified Nurse and Could Also Be a Valuable Part of Any Crewed Ship..👍🏻✌😎

[@imperialofficer6185]

I just wanna say I love the spaceship on 13:00 , especially the art on the front(?) panel at 13:27 :DDDDD

[@tylersizelove7521]

Oh yeah...space truckers. The legacy continues in Orbital convoys!

[@greggweber9967]

15:16 Pirates walk the plank out the airlock?

[@CJ-2811]

This episode reminds me of Ep.7 of Cowboy Bebop - Heavy Metal Queen, in which explored the space trucker scene I more appreciate the human side of things among the inter-planetary logistic machine, the space truck heads are highly customized to each drivers interest and personality, possibly referencing the "Decotora" culture. I recommend anyone to view that episode if you are someone like me who is into the combination of logistics and individuals navigating through the system. The episode itself is somewhat self-contained, so I would still encourage a viewing even if you did not watch all the episodes prior.

[@kongthai..]

Space Tow for supplies will be done by CNSA. Likely to be Autonomous spacecraft. 😂❤

[@justlisten82]

First time I've been this early to thank you for your wonderfully amazing videos! Thanks for all that you do.

[@BitcoinMeister]

"3 new flavors" graphic was great! :)

[@robertgraybeard3750]

a bit if sarcasim there, I'm certain.

[@Comicsluvr]

Yet another wonderful episode. This is the kind of topic that really gets me thinking about things that might happen within my lifetime. It also does a great job of both building up our dreams of huge ships in space and then bringing us back to the reality of how to actually use them.

[@joemaxwell4954]

That's awesome! I have a small garden in comparison. Thank you also for making these videos God gives us many abilities and I loves hearing you talk about space the way you do. Anyways God bless you and your family. Keep it up!

[@Liethen]

So long as this leads to the storyline of Billy Bob Space Trucker I'll be happy

[@nellyjohnson7316]

10 mile long cargo ships would have to be constructed in space and manned by Borg type humans. Also Asteroids can be hallowed out to supplement cargo carrying.

[@ShadowKatt]

MY MAN! Freighters are life. In my Starfinder tabletop games my characters are always freighter captains. This is my (fictional) life!

[@youtube7076]

9:05 after all these long years, i really like the personal touch you decided to include for us. and i promise if i ever see you or your ppl in public NOT to approach you like some sort of celebrity.

[@francoiseeduard303]

"A ship at sea is its own world. To be the captain of a ship is to be the unquestionable ruler of that world and requires all of the leadership skills of a prince or minister." Mine would be of the… YT-1300 Corellian freighter variety. It has quarters and a “living room”. Use FTL communication for news and streaming services.

[@linz8291]

Wow...maybe it's wonderful to consider starfleets and galactic vessels from local planet to interstellar stations.

[@francoiseeduard303]

@linz8291 The quote made me really want a 🛥️ship🛥️ so, yeah! By “light freighter” I meant a “hero ship”. Typically a small craft with multiple crew and a surprisingly heavy armament. They tend to have some space inside for socializing and what not. Making use of hidden compartments (good for smuggling).

[@digitalnomad9985]

I may be with you. I'm not the "I want to go to space so I can deal with people more" type.

[@francoiseeduard303]

@digitalnomad9985 Right!? If I had a well stocked ship or submarine in at roughly 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W  /  48.8767°S 123.3933°W  / -48.8767; -123.3933 I would be fine… but, space is an even safer distance from people! And ruling my own world (ship) makes it even better!

[@linz8291]

Well...why not to design your ships and thinks about more details of variant types?

[@TheCatzilla1]

please make this a series on sci fi shipping

[@Lutrian]

Something you didn't mention.... A lot of ships may have much of its cargo mounted to the hull, in some kind of standardized shipping containers. The ship might have some internal cargo holds and bays, but those would be for the crew's own supplies, and for cargo that the crew needs to interact with to maintain, such as live animals and planets, and stuff that needs strict monitoring. Most of the stuff could be put in large containers the size of garages, homes, or even office blocks, and latched along the spine of the ship. Most cargo needs no crew interaction at all, so it might not require any means of access from the ship's interior. External containers make loading and unloading very easy, and quick, as these containers could be loaded and unloaded of their contents before and after the freighter leaves. It could bear some resemblance to how it's done today, as the space equivalent of longshoremen, at the orbital loading dock, handles all the loading and unloading of the cargo containers from the ship. That could result in small crews, and possibly not a lot of desk space, as much of the ship's structure is simply points to attach containers.

[@palladin9479]

The loading / unloading issue is solved the exact same way we do current super cargo ships and trains, modular containers but on a much larger scale. The "ship" would be a mile or more in length with most of that a spine. Massive containers would then be attached to that spine during pickup, and then detached during drop off. The ships crew would not be loading / unloading, that would be the job of the dock crews at each destination. The only job of the ship would be to pickup these massive external containers at one location, move them to another where they are then detached.

[@cannonfodder4376]

Some good fiction to be had with more realistic depictions of space freighters and cargo drivers. An informative episode, as always, Isaac.

[@slabrankle9588]

No discussion of space freighters is complete without mentioning the most infamous and dreadful of them all: The Nostromo!

[@Archangelm127]

IIRC that wasn't a freighter per se; that was a mining ship. Certainly had a lot of cargo capacity, but a fundamentally different business model.

[@slabrankle9588]

@@Archangelm127 Close enough in my book. It was hauling 20,000,000 of ore.

[@Skorpychan]

I imagine it'd work a lot like modern shipping, where all the loading and unloading is done by specialists at the ports, who don't need to moonlight because the balance of ships to ports is enough to keep them employed full-time. For planetary-system journeys, you'd have the crew on board watching gauges and keeping up with maintenance and sending money home to families, but for longer ones (years in duration) I'd imagine they'd have their family on board and teaching the trade to their kids.

[@Rouleau84]

Amazing topic Isaac :D

[@MidwitObservations]

Aaaaawwwhhhhh! Love you Isaac! Love you SFIA!

[@animistchannel]

First: Solar Foods in Finland has already made it possible to have relatively compact modular on-site food production. You can look up their vids here on YT. It's the pre-prototype of the food replicator, and it already exists. In the future of big space vessels and colonies, you won't be shipping tons of food around. You'll have your solein food products, then you'll have whatever airponic, hydroponic, or natural meats your facility can produce or support on site. A newer facility/vessel may ship in a variety of seeds or eggs or embryos to start with, then grow their own from there. Other manual tasks from cleaning floors to tending gardens will be handled by swarms of minibots using colony-task behavior models like ants do. On a big O'Neill Cylinder, you can be more involved in your personal acreage of ecology/garden if you want, or you can just let the ship assign bots to raise crops according to current general uses. If people want more onions or chicken or whatever, the bots will use common and unspecified grounds & facilities to produce them. Given the vast living areas of such habitats, even a crew of thousands will each have the equivalent of a small manor farm to work with, even after common areas like the bigger forests, ponds, and streams. Manufactured goods will barely be worth moving, because each habitat and their 3-D printers and internal industrial shops will be able to make just about anything needed. Post scarcity also basically means post-patent office. Plans and schematics will become creative commons. There's just no way to prevent people in space from freely sharing whatever they think is cool or useful. So what does that leave that's worth shipping? Raw materials, elements and minerals, gasses and liquids. Will anyone make a profit on that? Will anyone even need to or care? Considering the level of local autonomy these technologies lead to, if a given ship thinks that a given project is worth their time to support, they can bring resources to it. If they have nothing better to do at the time, they can take a loop to the outer moons or comets for more stuff to develop more ecologies, or they can grab a load of fuel off the gas/ice giants, or they can snag a hold full of nitrogen for the mars atmosphere project, or do some mining to build new habitat hulls, or whatever the heck they want next. So these space cans will be floating around out there. 99% of the time they will be just living out their pleasant lives casually coasting from A to B to C, then at the given stopover points, there will be a flurry of excitement to gather or deliver or trade some materials, then they start chugging off again on the way to the next thing that seems like a good idea at the time. Big mobile self-supporting habitats will make for a modular civilization where lives may expand overall, but local concerns will be all the interest. They will be their own canton, their own transport, and their own farm & industry. Being part of the general supply chain that transforms dead resources into live ecologies & habitats will just be something they contribute to the general civilization on the side. It will cost nothing to be part of it, and it gives you something to do and see along the way.

[@DAYBROK3]

space freighters will probably crewed by automated systems watched after from a base, not necessarily from earth

[@WrongParadox]

made me think of Red Dwarf ... before most of the crew gets rendered non-functional okay Red Dwarf was small in comparison 6 miles (10 km) long, 5 miles (8 km) tall, and 4 miles (6 km) wide with over 2000 levels 120 cubic miles (480 cubic km)

[@nortonwedge]

I love that one of my favorite KZbinrs, posts so consistently. Great episode as always!! 😁

[@zico739]

Good stuff as usual.

[@voidstarq]

6:20 "...not soylent green..." Dude, I'm still trying to process the image of your cubic kilometers of olive oil.

[@kdkerr2]

Isaac, I always call my spacecraft crew spacers not sailors because spacecraft usually don't have sails unless you're talking about a light sail. Also in the video I don't recall you mentioning much about the use of shipping containers.

[@magusesper616]

Awww the family how cute good on you growing stuff. Thanks for the videos Duders.

[@ltsgobrando]

Love you Isaac! Best channel on KZbin! ❤ Also I really want your thoughts on space manufacturing

[@dakh_5704]

I love listening to these videos while playing stellaris

[@DJRCMACH]

Loving the approach still

[@michealnelsonauthor]

Your Max size freighter makes more sense if it’s a high speed carrier between systems. Smaller freighters dock at high speeds, as others detach. They decelerate into the system, dropping freight pods near each major destination. Outbound cargo containers are picked up and the whole menagerie drops thru the inner system, back up to the outer, and the medium freighter is picked up by the next mega carrier. Works better in an FTL or Stargate type universe, but who knows what we gave by then…

[@Dreamfox-df6bg]

Depending on the size of the ship, a freighter's crew could be one or several families, sometimes loosing a member to another ship or someone settling down somewhere and sometimes gaining a member form another ship or someone new to space. In other cases people could become freighter crews because they can't qualify for the military or exploration fleet.

[@mrjava66]

7:27 ok, I have a problem with this we can move water and dirt therefore we can move food idea. We could terraform mars simply by causing Sedna to collide with mars. Sedan’s orbit is so elliptical, a fairly small delta v at aphelion, and it is done. It is a one way trip. It is one movement. It is no packaging. Also, no unpacking or direct distribution effort. The collision would be enough to destroy almost any food. But water , o2, and n2 gas would be unbothered.

[@razorednight]

Sedna is a massive object - over 1000 km diameter, some estimates are up to 1800 km. That would cause one heck of a bang.

[@mrjava66]

@@razorednight it’s also enough water to be a whole ocean for mars. 100 years for the steam to cool, and it becomes a freshly washed and livable planet for over a million years. Forever if you drop a 10k icy body on it every decade or so.

[@bmyers7078]

Mars has lower gravity than the Earth. Had anyone done some maths on how long it would take for the debris to fallout from the atmosphere ? Mars has no rain cycle to help clean up the sky, like earth. [my late uncle had a friend in the 1980’s who was debating nuking Mars, for a terraforming project. He gave it up as it wasn’t economically viable at the time]

[@mrjava66]

@@bmyers7078 there would be a rain-cycle, once you have a ‘mars-ocean’, I.e. enough water to cover 50% of the surface, of water. The main delay after impact would be from heat dissipation. I’ve seen studies that show a rocky asteroid of similar size hitting earth would take a few thousand years to rain out. Mars has about one tenth the mass of earth. So, one tenth the gravitational energy. and as a SWAG, about one tenth the time to disapate the energy.

[@Archangelm127]

@@mrjava66 Doesn't lower gravity mean longer time to pull everything down? I'm genuinely asking; I don't do math and physics well.

[@TroyRubert]

I’ve been waiting since reusable rockets for this one.

[@bigboxofstuff]

Other then special items like Ming Vases or relics like that the only things I can really think would be shipped via non-FTL would be raw materials as by the time they got there they would be able to terraform at least a base for farming which they should have brought with the initial ships if not sent ahead, maybe medical items or diplomats but again by the time they got there any war would be over for good or bad.

[@comentedonakeyboard]

An interesting point, brought up by Douglas Adams, is that food import/export (even in form of body mass) would change the mass of the involved planets.

[@peterfromaustria724]

Working at a customs clearance agency at an airport I would be interested on your take on “space customs” as one of the tasks of customs (in our world) is also to ensure no pests or bugs get into the local ecosystems (which can easily happen when ship food around) Also in a context of “forbidden items” like drugs, weapons or technology this could be interesting

[@kingsilvergrass8751]

still awesome.

[@joeradford1055]

I was not ready for the epic dubstep intro music

[@starclone4]

Gotta love those long trips to, and from our destinations.... Man hyper sleep is rough !!!!😊

[@christopherfjwood5494]

The volumes required for geo engineering an entire ocean are mind blowing. You will have to move comets the size of our moon.

[@tsubakistein1088]

Six months ago, I read an article by a certain author who stated that if superluminal travel does not exist, then civilizations are dying out due to the inability to transport cargo not only between planets, but also between stars...

[@ArawnOfAnnwn]

This one's for the Elite Dangerous space haulers gang! :D

[@sarcasmo57]

I wish I could live to see all this.

[@UrdnotChuckles]

I could easily see crews on such ships spending the majority of their time raising families, writing books or papers, studying any given subject, attending classes, working in the ships hydroponic bay, and all manner of other secondary tasks or sub-careers. And yeah, there could easily be the space for everyone to live quite comfortably. Having said ships effectively be gigantic pressurized container ships would make a lot of sense too for the most part, as I don't see some flavour of containerization going away anytime soon. It just makes too much logistical sense for everything but certain bulk goods. And heck, even then a container-equivalent might make sense if they were built right for XYZ bulk good like liquids or grains, etc.

[@mikebozik]

This is brilliant stuff! Thanks for all the. Did you know you are a futurist? This was a degree offered at North Carolina State University in Raleigh in the 90s. Don't know if they still have it, but it was the real deal. The job was to study the possibilities of the future and frame them in a way that people or industry can use to design a better future. Thinking ahead.

[@nicholaibrchner2374]

I hate the fact, I will never be part of the space traveling future, but thank you for setting my imagination running wild!

[@izzyhaze7347]

For the issue of the unloading of a cargo ship, I think for that much cargo the ship may need to be a ship that uses multiple smaller efficient cargo ships they stack up inside of it and interlink but for unloading and loading you would deploy one hundred ten kiloton cargo ships to be unloaded individually.

[@MarcoServetto]

'the upper limit about loading/unloading' What about modular ships? that can split in many parts to increase the surface volume, thus opening more ports for loading/unloading?

[@jlmwatchman]

I was inspired by this vide to write the first paragraph, but couldn't stop, don't worry I wasn't going to explain too much: Space Freighters in the distant future might be used to freight resources from distant stars or rogue planets that aren’t as far away. After we have accepted that humanity won't be leaving this solar system any time soon, we will be looking closer to home. The only thing that will be freighted in the not-too-distant future will be people to their new home within a Protection Cylinder. Mars is too harsh to terraform, let alone live on the surface without a Protection Cylinder. The overpopulated Earth will be looking to the Moon and the plenty of space in-between to live in a man-made Protection Cylinder. The Protection Cylinder has 10 layers of habitable space, with the robots growing the vitamins and minerals a human needs in three meal bars a day. The Protection Cylinder’s will have a port-way through the center to keep it as safe as microgravity can be while transferring from the Starship Bus to the cylinder. Each habitable layer will have a nature relief aria, much like a central park in the average city on Earth, along with a sporting aria. With a hundred meter ceiling, each layer has thirty-story apartment buildings along side of the offices. The malls and entertainment facilities are scattered throughout the habitable layers. The schooling is more of a youth growth center with individualized arts, but mostly focused on teamwork. Relationship building is key to the development of strengths and interests to enable them to thrive as an organization and operate as a collective. In a world where most things are done by autonomous robotics, it is easy to become addicted to a virtual world of your choosing.

[@GhostOfSnuffles]

I'd imagine for those really massive ships the ship itself would be modular, so for example instead of having million of individual barrels to unload you'd have a cargo section of the ship packed with millions of barrels of product that you would swap out for an empty ship module section once you got into port. Then the station/planet could unload it at their leisure.

[@nerdyPanda7288]

Yes series

[@MrSHADOWANGEL999]

Glorious

[@kzrlgo]

This feels like someone a thousand years ago speculating that 250m long cargo ships would not be practical as loading and unloading would take too long and it would take a crew of 1000 to operate... yet here we are because other advances were made in parallel.

[@thomashiggins9320]

Many years ago, a table-top RPG writer named S. John Ross knocked together an essay on space freighters, and how to set up a space campaign so that small tramp merchant vessels such as those favored by gamers could actually earn a decent living. I looked for it while watching this video, but I think it's long gone. Wish I'd copied it out of Ross' "Blue Room" site and saved it to a file.

[@mahatmarandy5977]

Who did the animation at 10:25-30? That was interesting. I’d like to look up more of their work

[@panathaninf]

Now I need to go play Star Citizen...

[@Archangelm127]

Go play Elite Dangerous or Endless Sky. They actually exist.

[@markguyton2868]

Oh cool you mad a vid on freighters, galactic logistics has always an interesting think for me since the factors between point a and b are insurmountably complex. Then again, being the crew-mate of what is essentially a rocket propelled warehouse may also be mind numbingly boring as well if few incidents occur besides the occasional damaged cargo and space rodent.

[@seanhewitt603]

I want a YT-1300!

[@dusanradin5868]

Who doesnt? I would love to have an Ebon Hawk...

[@Archangelm127]

You really don't. Those things are ancient and shitty. You want a much more modern YT series. All the same benefits, much less maintenance. CEC remains CEC.

[@seanhewitt603]

@@Archangelm127 lol, tell that to Solo or Chewie...😎

[@Archangelm127]

@@seanhewitt603 The only stock component still on the Falcon is its hull. The fact that it's ostensibly such an obsolete model is excellent camouflage. The Falcon is not representative of the few YT-1300s still in use in the Imperial Period. ;)

[@seanhewitt603]

@@Archangelm127 the fact that the series can be so completely modified is the draw. Dozens of configurations, I read that it was numerous in the extreme (high hull numbers) and popular with...mom and pop delivery😉😎

[@napoleano2748]

Hello Isaac Arthur, just wanted to say how much I love your show. I watch an episode just about every night on my TV before going to sleep. I was just thinking how cool it would be if you could go more into detail on a Dyson Sphere. My understanding from you was the easiest way would be to hollow out an asteroid but what if we didn't go that route? How would it be possible to get that much material together? Or how about going deeper into a finished Dyson sphere, would we have weather? Would we have a salt water ocean or lakes and rivers? How would we change between day and night? How would we protect ourselves from stellar radiation. What insects or which animals would we take and which plants? Are Dyson sphere going to have more ground than earth for example? I'm sure you could do 100 episodes just on this lol. I have a thousand questions I could ask but i'm really wondering if it is feasible to even plan something like that and if it would be accepted. You have a great show! Please keep our minds wondering ;)

[@spircklem685]

Why would you even need a crew on a space freighter? Passengers, maybe, but freighters could be wholly robotic. Also, most food supply shipped would likely be freeze dried, at least if the target planet has water. And to Mars, make sure food is packed in nitrogen pressurized containers, for shelf-life and also because colonists will need the nitrogen.

[@highlorddarkstar]

You need crew to handle the issues that robots can’t. If your robots are smart enough to solve edge cases, then they’re crew not equipment.

[@SteveSiegelin]

I went back to a lot of my favorite old games and I've been doing a lot of space hauling lately😂 I came across this video and said you know what I haven't watched Isaac's videos in a while and I'm delivering 200 tons to a star system not too far from Sol right now😅 unfortunately all the games have FTL which of course we don't have yet!

[@brookestephen]

But what energy, materials & cubic space does one need to feed one person with a healthy variety? I'm pretty sure that's gotta include aguaponics! Would grains like wheat & oats be a rational choice if they require the most space, energy & materials? Designer bacteria could make some foods, like milk cheese & eggs.

[@peterallen5575]

If the ISS crew schedule is any indication, the bulk of a freighter crew's time will be spent on spacecraft maintenance.

[@SirHeinzbond]

what i can see is freighters act also as grow or farming ships (maybe some specials with higher price value like cinnamon, vanilla, or something like...) when you found a colony you look for the bulk of food, but never hear about the herbs or seasonings...at least as long it is in our own solar system... for interstellar, i guess the colony ships alone had to be self sustaining, so where the colonies out there from the start...