Self Sustaining Rocket

[Zarquan]

There was a post on Reddit here discussing the idea of an entirely self sustaining rocket interior that can operate forever without any resupply from the outside.

While there are various resource-saving exploits that can be used, like giving the dupe one oxyfern so they can gasp (which uses less oxygen), I decided that I wanted to sustain a duplicant by actually providing their needs as listed:

1. 1000 kcal/day
2. 100 g/s oxygen

In addition, any resources used by the dupe in the rocket has to be produced inside the rocket at least as fast as the duplicant can use the rocket.  I also want them to have a decent morale so they can be a high level pilot.  This is what I came up with:

Spoiler

• To support the dupe, I have 4 wild planted alveo vera and 3 wild planted sleetwheat, all exuberant.  This results in 120 g/s of oxygen and 1200 kcal/s.
  • Because of this, the rocket is kept at a rather chilly -30 to -40 C, so the duplicant has to be frost proof or they will not be happy.  They should also have interest
  • I have 2 oxylite sconces at the top of the rocket, though I suspect only 1 is needed.
• Based on the math, my dupe produces 2 g/s of CO2 and the alveo vera plants consume 2 g/s CO2, but the dupe actually does not produce CO2 when on the lower levels, so I added a wood burner in the basement to supplement the CO2 supply.  It's wood is supplied by a wild planted bonbon tree, which is to the right of the grill and has one branch.  The wood burner occasionally runs, but very rarely.  It turns on if the atmosensor on the left detects below 2400 g of CO2.  Lumber increased over a 100 cycle period and the wood burner did turn on.
  • The bonbon tree produces 75 wood every 18 cycles, which nets me 0.98 g/s CO2 maximum, which is more than enough to offset the time my dupe spends down below.
  • The bonbon tree gets its light from the carved lumen quartz
• Since the rocket is so cold and I can't fit a water sieve, I added an outhouse.  Technically, I could make the rocket cold enough so that the dupe just makes messes and they instantly solidify, but that sounds unpleasant and I would get regular notifications, so I decided against it.
  • To provide dirt, I added the largest heat producing component of the build, a compost heap.
• The whole rocket is cooled using the aquatuner in the middle, which is made of thermium and has a skim of nuclear waste to form a nuclear waste chiller.  Similar to an ethanol chiller, this uses the difference in specific heat capacity between nuclear waste and nuclear fallout.  However, unlike ethanol, the specific heat capacity difference is massive (7.44 for liquid and 0.265 for gas) and a massive difference between the boiling point of nuclear waste and the liquification point of nuclear fallout (526.85 C to boil and 66.85 C to liquefy), resulting in massive heat deletion every time the nuclear waste boils.  In the last 5 cycles, the aquatuner, which is running nectar, was active for 2% of the time of the last 5 cycles.  This means that it can easily be powered by a couple solar panels and a battery module on the main rocket.
  • Overall, the rocket seems to use around 53 watts on average, as measured by the amount of time a large power transformer has to run to keep the rocket charged.
  • I was thinking of using some of the excess gas to cool the aquatuner, but it was not enough heat removal, so I abandoned that idea.  I fear an ethanol chiller may be too power intensive for a reasonable rocket, so I went with nuclear waste.
• All natural tiles are 0.1 g of glass, making it a perfect insulator, except for the 4 green tiles, which are solid nuclear waste at various masses required to achieve 250 rads/cycle on the exuberant plants.
• The duplicant has a great hall, but it could also just as easily be a nature reserve for the same morale boost.  The entertainment building is a partially buried party line telephone and the decoration is a most buried metal statue.
• The duplicant has +10 morale (unless they have some morale boost or malus from their traits) from the rocket.  They have a morale need of 8 to be a maxed out pilot and basic grilling, so any frost proof duplicant should be happy in this rocket forever.

I'm thinking this is a good rocket design for space mining, as it can easily be set for round trips without any concern for the dupe inside.

[PHG]

UNTO ETERNITY
Amazing job, my friend!!

[IHaveQuestions]

you could use one flower potted exuberant alveo and still have enough oxygen, this gives just enough room for a bed if you want one, like this

 

[Gurgel]

Impressive! Another "insane contraption"!

[Zarquan]

16 hours ago, IHaveQuestions said:

you could use one flower potted exuberant alveo and still have enough oxygen, this gives just enough room for a bed if you want one, like this

 

True, but I don't generally use the flower pot trick.  It feels too unintended for me to want to use, mostly because you have to use strange interactions to get building to do something the standard user interface doesn't let you do to achieve something that nullifies a major mechanic in the game.

Also, you can't have a pip plant a plant in a tile that is over a building, so that party line telephone placement wouldn't work.  I learned that the hard way, probably from trying to put a party line telephone under that tile.

I think beds in rockets are overrated anyway, as they aren't traveling very far within the rocket, so the athletics penalty from sore back doesn't really cause any problems.  I would much rather have the grill occupy the lower section so that the frost buns wouldn't rot.

I will say that it was silly of me to choose a great hall when a nature reserve is just as good but with fewer requirements.

You need to also be careful about pathing, as the dupe could not navigate the inside of your rocket.

[Ceos]

Awesome stuff as always @Zarquan... I was puzzling about this a while ago as well. I went with morbs at the time but now with all the new stuff this is great!

I have not looked at it but I wonder if the nectar of a chilled bonbon could be used instead of the aquatuner... -60C liquid packs quite a bit of chill and might save space (#extra branches and thermal insulation vs. current setup size).

[Zarquan]

1 hour ago, Ceos said:

Awesome stuff as always @Zarquan... I was puzzling about this a while ago as well. I went with morbs at the time but now with all the new stuff this is great!

I have not looked at it but I wonder if the nectar of a chilled bonbon could be used instead of the aquatuner... -60C liquid packs quite a bit of chill and might save space (#extra branches and thermal insulation vs. current setup size).

Ewwww, morbs are slimy and gross, I would never force a dupe to be near them...  But actually I just forgot about them.

The tree idea isn't bad, but you need something to drive down the temperature so that the tree will keep producing at -60 C, because the nectar temperature is equal to the tree's body temperature.

[Ceos]

1 hour ago, Zarquan said:

The tree idea isn't bad, but you need something to drive down the temperature so that the tree will keep producing at -60 C, because the nectar temperature is equal to the tree's body temperature.

Humm... good call.  With aerogel base and prechill it would probably drift up at a few degrees per thousand cycles but that is not forever! In my current run I cooled down my trees with a hydrogen loop thermo regulator then cooled that with the nectar. That would be 5 more tiles though (4 TR + 1 for the automation). Since everything is cold it might net out some space... and might allow both a great hall and a park? Drat you have pulled me back in again... now... where did my post it notes go