Cargo:Old:Research

Cargo:Old_Descriptions

Old Research Items

Planetary Stripmining

As always the case, corporate greed drives this type of research. Research into the extraction of raw materials and natural products has combined into investigations on how to strip a whole planet of all useful material. Examples include blowing the planet into asteroidal debris and the removal of atmospheric gases and water via huge transport motherships.

Thermal Boreholes

These boreholes are wide - fifty kilometer - holes bored into the planetary crust. The deeper they get, easier it becomes to extract heat and liquified materials. Problems still arise, however, as at a certain depth pressure and temperature combine and treat these boreholes as open volcanoes.

Deep Core Mining

For those rarer elements that require great pressure or heat to produce. These are commonly found within the cores of asteroids, or planetary mantles. Deep core mining involves multistage operations removing the requisite ores in high pressure and temperature, and maintaining the ores until conversion into a more readily usable material.

Cold Transmutation

Since the days of the ancient alchemists, humans have been searching for a process to transmute common elements into rarer ones. Although theoretically possible, the massive amounts of energy required to reconfigure the atomic cores of common elements makes it impractical on any scale. Research on cheap processes to transform elements is advanced through a highly competitive race between corporations. The first one to discover the process will make a massive profit.

Self Repairing Metal

The goal of this type of research is the ability to make a metallic 'skin'. Such a skin is intended to repair itself, resealing and reforming over a period of time. This research has military, industrial and damage control applications.

Automated Farms

Throughout history, the productivity of food sources has always been labor intensive. The intention of this research is twofold. Firstly, the ability to automate all farm activity, rendering sentient interaction unnecessary. Secondly, the ability to deposit a farming module in a suitable location, which will convert to an operating farm with no further interaction.

Soil Fortification

Improvements to any soil used for food growth will return a greater benefit in production of food. As such, research continues into maximizing the productive value of growing soil in different regions via different soil combinations, fertilizers and environmental reactions.

Quantum Deductor

The ever so polite name for the class of devices being developed to attack quantum cryptosystems.Should such a device by designed and implemented, no encrypted data security system will be safe and communications will become unreliable. Society will be reduced to isolated data storage and implant couriers for communication.

Biparticle Transistor

Nanotechnology continues to be refined. The reduction of functioning electronics has reached its current pinacle in the biparticle transistor. While it doesn't work very well, it's top notch on the smallness scale and bodes well for the future of communications.

Virtual Communications

The next step in communications is expected to be virtual. It is expected that both sender and receiver, while in separate planetary systems or even sectors, will be able to meet, sit down and dicuss their concerns in a full virtual reality matrix.

Quantum Foam Processor

Harnessing one of the most basic structures of the universe, the tiny quantum bubbles that exist in the very fabric of space, promises an unlimited frontier of processing power and speed. A computer that conducts its processes in the intricate networks within the quantum foam will be able to outperform all previous computers ever made. The positive and negative consequences of such an advance are staggering.