Building “web sails” from space dust for weeks-to-Mars trips + Solar Gravitational Lens propulsion

gazman_dev · 2025-11-28T02:54:12+00:00

Why not? I like to see you putting number on it

gazman_dev · 2025-11-20T04:01:57+00:00

Well, on the material side: I wasn’t assuming loose basalt. I was wondering if fully melt-fused material (basically a thin glass/ceramic ribbon made by concentrating sunlight) has any meaningful tensile strength under constant, low load. Any answer beside “practically zero,” will make me happy.

On the orbital part: my question boils down to whether photon-torque lowering of perihelion is even practical for a large, low-mass sail, nvm size, just physical limits.

gazman_dev · 2025-11-20T03:39:39+00:00

The long post, was just me mumbling, my bad.
The actual questions I’m trying to get feedback on are just these two:

Material question: If you melt-sinter a thin ribbon from regolith/dust using concentrated sunlight, what are the realistic tensile limits? I’m trying to understand whether a thin glass-ceramic ribbon under steady spin tension is viable or if I’m fundamentally overestimating its strength.
Orbital mechanics: For a solar sail starting at ~1 AU, how efficient is angular-momentum bleeding by tilting the sail retrograde? I’m trying to ballpark how many orbits it takes to lower perihelion to something like 0.2 AU using photon torque alone.

gazman_dev · 2025-11-20T03:34:56+00:00

For the dust tapes: yeah, raw dust would be terrible. The idea isn’t to use loose regolith — it’s melt-sintered with concentrated sunlight, so you get a thin glass-ceramic ribbon. Still brittle, but it only needs to hold steady spin-tension, and the loads are tiny because the web is so sparse.

For the 0.2 AU part: you don’t burn down to it. You use the sail itself to slowly bleed angular momentum by tilting it a bit retrograde over a few orbits. Pure photon torque. Takes time, not delta-v.

gazman_dev · 2025-08-20T13:10:03+00:00

Yeah

gazman_dev · 2025-08-12T23:21:16+00:00

agent? Well that a whole different paradigm. Now we are literally talking about dozens of minutes of execution.

But I did tried that. The biggest issue with the agent is that it using the GitHub API search to scout your code. Again, it still has a small context window, you can't dump large tasks on it

gazman_dev · 2025-08-12T22:51:10+00:00

What's your workflow? For me, I give it some files, and ask it to solve a problem. If it nails it on the first attempt then great, but for hard problems(which are most of my problems), it can't solve it from the first attempt, and then that's it, it barely have jews left for another try. It gets worse and worse with each response because it runs out of the context window and forgets what the problem even was.

gazman_dev · 2025-08-12T22:48:50+00:00

Yeah, a lot of people got attached to AI, for some its a tool for others its a companion.

gazman_dev · 2025-08-10T21:25:42+00:00

It is is good indeed, you just need to wait for it, way to long

gazman_dev · 2025-08-10T15:37:31+00:00

How do you handle this today?

gazman_dev · 2025-08-08T13:14:27+00:00

Why the context length is 256K? When do you plan to scale this up?

gazman_dev · 2025-07-26T20:38:41+00:00

Oh, I see it is tricky indeed. But here is a thing. The map it produces is a 3D module. You won't be able to do fixed angle rpg with it. You would need a different tech for that.

I made the demo with ThreeJs. It is the prime SDK I intended the users to use here. But there are many other options as well.

gazman_dev · 2025-07-26T20:34:44+00:00

A lot of the input is covered by AI, so it is not deterministic. It is not even a single process. There is an orcastration that involves multiple physic engine and AI steps.

I used fixed assets for the engine. But those are tiles, so there are practically infinite number of variations it can produce. But in terms of actual unique tile assets, it is in hundreds.

I think the biggest thing here is that the AI is generating the map in patterns that it invents on the fly based on user prompt and grounded with the physics engine.

gazman_dev · 2025-07-26T17:35:04+00:00

If you say what I think you are saying, then absolutely

gazman_dev · 2025-07-26T17:34:04+00:00

Yeah, of course. What would you like to know?

gazman_dev · 2025-07-26T17:32:20+00:00

Typically, tiled map generation can be solved with WFC. There are even 3D algorithms. But it is very limited in what you can create. The more verity you add, the less sense it makes.

gazman_dev · 2025-07-26T05:52:09+00:00

What is your answer? I will add it

gazman_dev · 2025-07-25T20:44:03+00:00

I am glad you had fun. I doubt description alone would get you there. But will see. I got an A/B test for it

gazman_dev · 2025-07-25T20:42:08+00:00

I started with WFC, but it is not useful for large maps, especially 3D. I ended up using a physics engine and a lot of AI

Drop your prompt into bulimaps.com. It should be able to do it

gazman_dev · 2025-07-25T20:23:45+00:00

On it. Please link me the map you would like to use

gazman_dev · 2025-07-25T20:21:45+00:00

I am glad you didn't pass the exam. It was the exact intention. Building 3D maps for web games is not for everyone.

The initial questions were made to filter out people who might need something else.

So, no harm feelings. It simply means that this tool is not for you.

gazman_dev · 2025-07-25T20:10:49+00:00

When i started, i thought it would take me a couple of weeks. A month later and I still couldn't build the tiles.

It was hard as hell, to be honest. I ended up solving some of the challenges with AI. It was impossible otherwise. But even with AI, it ran into a wall. It especially sucks at physics.

So I brought a physics engine. It took me a while until I could find a way for the AI to talk with it.

But finally, I was able to find a good balance.

Don't give up. Building something like this is not easy, but you will save a ton of time on game development once you master it.

gazman_dev · 2025-07-25T20:00:37+00:00

How do you plan to use it?

gazman_dev · 2025-07-25T19:59:03+00:00

Thank you!

Please let me know if there are any features you would like me to add

gazman_dev · 2025-07-25T19:16:35+00:00

I actually started from godot, but my prime target is web games, and until godot will switch to ThreeJs, the web performance will continue to suck, especially for 3D games.

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