the air domes can be made of transparent solar panels that make electricity out of the microwaves, x-rays, and so on!
the air domes would like look like typical scifi air domes, except the supporting beam thingies would be tiled with solar panel, and there'd probably be smaller triangles than typical-air pressure helps to hold the dome up, and you need to have lots of solar panel space. not sure if this belongs in Architecture Thread or not.
anyway solarpunk architecture things for a space colony: lots of solar panels, especially on the air domes and so on-the sun's bright in space, you'll be having something to absorb the light anyway, might as well make it useful. (for moons etc) a river with a reservoir lake at both ends and hydropower turbines in it-during the day water is pumped from the bottom lake to the top lake, storing energy; during the night, the top lake slowly empties into the river, spinning the turbines and powering the colony with the energy stored during the day hardy, small, high-yield, probably gengineered plants-there's no wild ecosystem to worry about messing up, you can make florescent trees and super-efficient-photosynthesis crops if you want with no worry the roads are likely topped with solar panels, with metal charger plates in them so electric cars can charge as they drive-possibly even room-temperature superconductors (zero-emission maglev cars anyone?) if you want grass that fluoresces when you step on it, that's probably a thing! grass or something on every roof-insulation, plus the plants produce oxygen vertical farms! no need for steps, there's a magnetic or metallic or superconducting rail in it and you stand or sit in a levitating 'cart' thing with little air-jets to start it or stop it, that you just ride to the right level/area and stop. (depending on the superconductor's critical temperatures, you could even park the cart with flux pinning) levitating trains and trams! you know gogo's bike? yeah every thing with wheels could have wheels like that, unless it works somewhere where the superconducting levitator bits would stop working buildings that are generally white for heat-management that sort of thing!
also can I request that we move this to the main KiS thread? This one was mostly meant for dumping information
and blue, and red, and yellow, and purple, and pink, and red, and odd shades of green, and possibly a dull, cold off-white, and greys, and...
Hyperspace drives are more energy-efficient than other forms of FTL travel, but a bit less practical to use. As long as the drive is running, it transfers the ship into another dimension where distances are much shorter and still mapped to main-universe coordinates. However, once you reach your destination, similarly to an Alcubierre drive, you retain all your relative velocity. This is generally taken care of at designated arrival sites by slingshot maneuvers using artificial gravity, or in the case of the rare few colony ships that use hyperspace, massive quantities of fuel. When a hyperspace drive fails, part of the mass of the ship is converted into energy and simply adds to the background energy levels of the universe. The rest of the ship rematerializes at the equivalent coordinates to the breaking point in main space, but not all at once - which causes the distinctive line of light. The debris, again, keep their relative velocity, and aren't necessarily moving in line with the original path.
Plane drives are one of the magical types of FTL. It can be described as the magical equivalent of a hyperspace drive: it moves the ship to another plane, but unlike hyperspace, the ship has a relatively large area of possible reentry points to the main universe, meaning that the ship doesn't have to exactly match its location. However, this also means the ship can end up in unexpected areas, especially with the tendency of the reentry point to match up to any existing portals that are large enough and not obstructed. Think Minecraft's Nether transportation: you can go into another plane, go back without moving at all, and find yourself somewhere else. Usually somewhere inconvenient, like in a very dark unexplored cave, or in the middle of town, or in one memorable case that got on interstellar news, inside someone's unnecessarily huge house. Unlike a hyperspace drive, a plane drive only needs to be turned on during planeshifts. Unlike hyperspace, other planes are full of weird things, often dangerous weird things, especially as planes include everything from the Plane of Earth to the Plane of Forests to the Plane of Titanium to the Plane of Sideways Glass Rain. People generally stick to planes like Water or Air, and away from planes like Forest or Caves or Ocean. And especially away from the Plane of Australia-which includes things like metaphorical and alternate-universe Australias.
The drive of Infinite Leap works by creating a wormhole around the ship, and quantum entangling it to a new location. Expensive to build, goes very bad if not used properly. fastest possible method of transportation, as long as you ignore the hour or so long calculation to make sure you don't dis-entangle inside of a solid object.
And don't go to the Plane of Sour Cheese either. You'll be scrubbing cheese off your ship for ages. Same with the Plane of Honey. Ships aren't meant to work in honey. Ever. It doesn't even have compressed distances so nobody even bothers; it's one of the relatively few planes that don't, so nobody tries to make ships that can safely go there. Even worse, planes sometimes overlap-for example, you might find a giant lump of earth and rock in the Plane of Air, where it overlapped with the Plane of Earth. Or you might find Sky Australia. Or, worse, a three-way overlap: Chaos Sky Australia.
Another way to make a wormhole drive is making one that creates lots of extremely tiny wormholes that each transfer a few molecules of matter to the other side, reassembling it there. There is some philosophical and ethical debate over it, and many people prefer to use it on unmanned and non-sapient cargo ships.