|
Post by bigbombr on Jun 5, 2017 19:01:46 GMT
Oh, alright. But why Amat engines? The have like 10x the power of fusion drives but cost like million-fold. Amat rockets are our only hope for fast interstellar travel if >hundred-gee acceleration beam power is to be ruled out. Lasersails anyone? With the proper infrastructure, they easily beat amat rockets for interstellar travel. Both need an extensive infrastructure, but a lasernet is more versatile than an antimatter production facility. And if you have several laserstations/mirrors, acceleration can be spread out, so >100 g acceleration isn't necessary.
|
|
|
Post by zorbeltuss on Jun 5, 2017 19:37:04 GMT
Anyway I just found out that while the extra energy would permit the fourton to be mildly muon catalyzed, since the reaction does not give off neutrons it wouldn't work, but I have heard it being proposed for power generation, that was however like my own understanding of it used with a slight muon injection to keep pressure and temperature higher. muons reduce required temps for fusion (one of the elusive "Cold Fusion" methods) Yes and that could have been a good starter except for the fact that it doesn't work well with aneutronic fusion.
|
|
|
Post by Kerr on Jun 5, 2017 20:06:27 GMT
isn't Amat fusion better? In what way?
|
|
|
Post by Kerr on Jun 5, 2017 20:10:53 GMT
Amat rockets are our only hope for fast interstellar travel if >hundred-gee acceleration beam power is to be ruled out. Lasersails anyone? With the proper infrastructure, they easily beat amat rockets for interstellar travel. Both need an extensive infrastructure, but a lasernet is more versatile than an antimatter production facility. And if you have several laserstations/mirrors, acceleration can be spread out, so >100 g acceleration isn't necessary. Laser Sails aren't really an option for large scale Interstellar travel. You get like 10N per Gigawatt laser power. Laser Sails might be useful for interstellar trade but not really for travel. Do you have some pro Laser sail arguments? I would like to know.
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Jun 6, 2017 4:59:03 GMT
Lasersails anyone? With the proper infrastructure, they easily beat amat rockets for interstellar travel. Both need an extensive infrastructure, but a lasernet is more versatile than an antimatter production facility. And if you have several laserstations/mirrors, acceleration can be spread out, so >100 g acceleration isn't necessary. Laser Sails aren't really an option for large scale Interstellar travel. You get like 10N per Gigawatt laser power. Laser Sails might be useful for interstellar trade but not really for travel. Do you have some pro Laser sail arguments? I would like to know. Antimatter production is even more inefficient than lasers. If you have the power generation to mass produce antimatter, you have the power generation to boost heavy payloads via lasersail. And lasersails would be orders of magnitude cheaper. Lasersails already work, and lasers keep getting more efficient. Lasers can also be used to drive laser thermal rockets for reusable SSTO. Laser installations also double as a massive defense screen against asteroids and projectiles. Antimatter is less versatile, more expensive and less mature as a technology. Furthermore, antimatter rockets still don't escape the tyranny of the rocket equation because they carry their own propellant.
|
|
|
Post by 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖒𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖑𝖊 on Jun 6, 2017 5:54:08 GMT
quick question. why does the game not have Hydrogen bombs like the Tsar bomba and Castle bravo? is it just not possible to code with the current data?
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Jun 6, 2017 5:58:39 GMT
quick question. why does the game not have Hydrogen bombs like the Tsar bomba and Castle bravo? is it just not possible to code with the current data? Qswitched couldn't find the exact formula's/specifications necessary to accurately model them. Otherwise, we would be flinging fusion bombs around.
|
|
|
Post by Kerr on Jun 6, 2017 6:59:48 GMT
Laser Sails aren't really an option for large scale Interstellar travel. You get like 10N per Gigawatt laser power. Laser Sails might be useful for interstellar trade but not really for travel. Do you have some pro Laser sail arguments? I would like to know. Antimatter production is even more inefficient than lasers. If you have the power generation to mass produce antimatter, you have the power generation to boost heavy payloads via lasersail. And lasersails would be orders of magnitude cheaper. Lasersails already work, and lasers keep getting more efficient. Lasers can also be used to drive laser thermal rockets for reusable SSTO. Laser installations also double as a massive defense screen against asteroids and projectiles. Antimatter is less versatile, more expensive and less mature as a technology. Furthermore, antimatter rockets still don't escape the tyranny of the rocket equation because they carry their own propellant. But this limits you to the range of the laser installation, you could only expand this range with a lot of refocusing mirror you have to drop behind your path. Creating something akin to fuel. Pure Amat is pretty inefficient way of interstellar travel, that's why I prefer Antimatter catalyzed fusion. Instead of tons of antimatter you'd only need few grams or a fraction of a gram of antimatter to catalyze cheap (relative) fusion.
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Jun 6, 2017 8:21:55 GMT
Antimatter production is even more inefficient than lasers. If you have the power generation to mass produce antimatter, you have the power generation to boost heavy payloads via lasersail. And lasersails would be orders of magnitude cheaper. Lasersails already work, and lasers keep getting more efficient. Lasers can also be used to drive laser thermal rockets for reusable SSTO. Laser installations also double as a massive defense screen against asteroids and projectiles. Antimatter is less versatile, more expensive and less mature as a technology. Furthermore, antimatter rockets still don't escape the tyranny of the rocket equation because they carry their own propellant. But this limits you to the range of the laser installation, you could only expand this range with a lot of refocusing mirror you have to drop behind your path. Creating something akin to fuel. Pure Amat is pretty inefficient way of interstellar travel, that's why I prefer Antimatter catalyzed fusion. Instead of tons of antimatter you'd only need few grams or a fraction of a gram of antimatter to catalyze cheap (relative) fusion. For interstellar travel, I'd expect you to drop into orbit around Mercury, get boosted by however many gees you're comfortable with, pass by Luna (repeat the boosting), and get boosted near Mars or one of the outer planets. And if you're doing interstellar travel with craft that aren't nanoprobes, you've probably started construction of a Dyson swarm and an interplanetary lasernet. If you can boost continuously from Earth (or Mercury) to the same orbit occupied by Saturn, you should be able to reach decent fractions of c even at a mere one g of acceleration.
|
|
|
Post by RiftandRend on Jun 6, 2017 8:53:03 GMT
But this limits you to the range of the laser installation, you could only expand this range with a lot of refocusing mirror you have to drop behind your path. Creating something akin to fuel. Pure Amat is pretty inefficient way of interstellar travel, that's why I prefer Antimatter catalyzed fusion. Instead of tons of antimatter you'd only need few grams or a fraction of a gram of antimatter to catalyze cheap (relative) fusion. For interstellar travel, I'd expect you to drop into orbit around Mercury, get boosted by however many gees you're comfortable with, pass by Luna (repeat the boosting), and get boosted near Mars or one of the outer planets. And if you're doing interstellar travel with craft that aren't nanoprobes, you've probably started construction of a Dyson swarm and an interplanetary lasernet. If you can boost continuously from Earth (or Mercury) to the same orbit occupied by Saturn, you should be able to reach decent fractions of c even at a mere one g of acceleration. The main issue I see with laser propulsion is the infrastructure required. With a D+T fusion ship you can get 20 Mm/s of Delta V in a few kilotons.
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Jun 6, 2017 9:02:33 GMT
For interstellar travel, I'd expect you to drop into orbit around Mercury, get boosted by however many gees you're comfortable with, pass by Luna (repeat the boosting), and get boosted near Mars or one of the outer planets. And if you're doing interstellar travel with craft that aren't nanoprobes, you've probably started construction of a Dyson swarm and an interplanetary lasernet. If you can boost continuously from Earth (or Mercury) to the same orbit occupied by Saturn, you should be able to reach decent fractions of c even at a mere one g of acceleration. The main issue I see with laser propulsion is the infrastructure required. With a D+T fusion ship you can get 20 Mm/s of Delta V in a few kilotons. With lasersails, you get even more delta-v in a few tons of spaceship. Most of the mass doesn't have to be in orbit. And I wonder what we'll have first, MW- to GW-class laser arrays or practical fusion? And what would the TWR of the fusion drive (not the craft, the drive itself) be? 0.05 g? And how do you power it? Utilizing the heath produced by the drive or a seperate fission reactor? And fusion drives don't scale down well. Lasercraft can be scaled down (or up) as much as you like. And mass production of tritium requires infrastructure too.
|
|
|
Post by Kerr on Jun 6, 2017 9:27:37 GMT
But this limits you to the range of the laser installation, you could only expand this range with a lot of refocusing mirror you have to drop behind your path. Creating something akin to fuel. Pure Amat is pretty inefficient way of interstellar travel, that's why I prefer Antimatter catalyzed fusion. Instead of tons of antimatter you'd only need few grams or a fraction of a gram of antimatter to catalyze cheap (relative) fusion. For interstellar travel, I'd expect you to drop into orbit around Mercury, get boosted by however many gees you're comfortable with, pass by Luna (repeat the boosting), and get boosted near Mars or one of the outer planets. And if you're doing interstellar travel with craft that aren't nanoprobes, you've probably started construction of a Dyson swarm and an interplanetary lasernet. If you can boost continuously from Earth (or Mercury) to the same orbit occupied by Saturn, you should be able to reach decent fractions of c even at a mere one g of acceleration. Ok, and how does your ship decelerate? You'd have to send a fusion/orion whatever spaceships first to build laser station on the other system to decelerate and send it back. Or you use the star as a brake but I don't think it would stop your spacecraft from slamming into the star when it was travelling at a fraction of c. Let's get some numbers: If a 5t spacecraft propelled through a 10TW 50% FEL achieves an acceleration of 1,35G. I think there are some reactor design that achieve 10t/GW on the forum so let's go with this number. 10kT pure reactors. plus several kilotons of concrete cooling towers etc. 1kg Reactor Grade uranium produces 3,456TJ. This means our reactor needs 3kg Reactor Uranium per second at 100% efficiency. At 5TW Beam power your Spacecraft accelerates at 1,35G. After 24 hours your spacecraft reaches 1152,5km/s. Already at this point our reactor burned through 260t of reactor grade uranium. This reactor could also power 7,25 billion houses (first-world standard) For 1,8TJ (520g reactor grade uranium) at 50% efficiency (max) you produce 10mg of Antimatter, which could propel an 25t ACF Missile (10t fusion fuel) with a 5t payload to 2300km/s.
|
|
|
Post by RiftandRend on Jun 6, 2017 9:38:10 GMT
The main issue I see with laser propulsion is the infrastructure required. With a D+T fusion ship you can get 20 Mm/s of Delta V in a few kilotons. With lasersails, you get even more delta-v in a few tons of spaceship. Most of the mass doesn't have to be in orbit. And I wonder what we'll have first, MW- to GW-class laser arrays or practical fusion? And what would the TWR of the fusion drive (not the craft, the drive itself) be? 0.05 g? And how do you power it? Utilizing the heat produced by the drive or a separate fission reactor? And fusion drives don't scale down well. Lasercraft can be scaled down (or up) as much as you like. And mass production of tritium requires infrastructure too. Based on in game tests (dubious accuracy) the drives can get up to 10 g TWR with the ships reaching about .01 g. In my tests a separate fission reactor is used to pretend supply all the energy needed for fusion and assumes no ignition whatsoever.
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Jun 6, 2017 9:46:47 GMT
For interstellar travel, I'd expect you to drop into orbit around Mercury, get boosted by however many gees you're comfortable with, pass by Luna (repeat the boosting), and get boosted near Mars or one of the outer planets. And if you're doing interstellar travel with craft that aren't nanoprobes, you've probably started construction of a Dyson swarm and an interplanetary lasernet. If you can boost continuously from Earth (or Mercury) to the same orbit occupied by Saturn, you should be able to reach decent fractions of c even at a mere one g of acceleration. Ok, and how does your ship decelerate? You'd have to send a fusion/orion whatever spaceships first to build laser station on the other system to decelerate and send it back. Or you use the star as a brake but I don't think it would stop your spacecraft from slamming into the star when it was travelling at a fraction of c. Let's get some numbers: If a 5t spacecraft propelled through a 10TW 50% FEL achieves an acceleration of 1,35G. I think there are some reactor design that achieve 10t/GW on the forum so let's go with this number. 10kT pure reactors. plus several kilotons of concrete cooling towers etc. 1kg Reactor Grade uranium produces 3,456TJ. This means our reactor needs 3kg Reactor Uranium per second at 100% efficiency. At 5TW Beam power your Spacecraft accelerates at 1,35G. After 24 hours your spacecraft reaches 1152,5km/s. Already at this point our reactor burned through 260t of reactor grade uranium. This reactor could also power 7,25 billion houses (first-world standard) For 1,8TJ (520g reactor grade uranium) at 50% efficiency (max) you produce 10mg of Antimatter, which could propel an 25t ACF Missile (10t fusion fuel) with a 5t payload to 2300km/s. Antimatter production is considerably less efficient than 50%. Lasers with an efficiency greater than 65% already exist in labs. And I suspect infrastructure to produce dozens of mg's of antimatter every year and contain it would be more expensive than a multi-GW laser array. Containing your antimatter will also be expensive, mass-wise. And not having to carry around a massive power source for your containment of antimatter means you can have a much larger payload fraction. Deceleration at your destination can be done by using your lasersail as a solar sail (lower intensity makes it several orders of magnitude less effective, so it's something that has to be used in conjunction with something else), magsails and more conventional means. Like antimatter, but probably something cheaper. I personally think a lasersail-magsail combo is very promising if used in conjunction with a MPDT.
|
|
|
Post by Kerr on Jun 6, 2017 10:01:41 GMT
Ok, and how does your ship decelerate? You'd have to send a fusion/orion whatever spaceships first to build laser station on the other system to decelerate and send it back. Or you use the star as a brake but I don't think it would stop your spacecraft from slamming into the star when it was travelling at a fraction of c. Let's get some numbers: If a 5t spacecraft propelled through a 10TW 50% FEL achieves an acceleration of 1,35G. I think there are some reactor design that achieve 10t/GW on the forum so let's go with this number. 10kT pure reactors. plus several kilotons of concrete cooling towers etc. 1kg Reactor Grade uranium produces 3,456TJ. This means our reactor needs 3kg Reactor Uranium per second at 100% efficiency. At 5TW Beam power your Spacecraft accelerates at 1,35G. After 24 hours your spacecraft reaches 1152,5km/s. Already at this point our reactor burned through 260t of reactor grade uranium. This reactor could also power 7,25 billion houses (first-world standard) For 1,8TJ (520g reactor grade uranium) at 50% efficiency (max) you produce 10mg of Antimatter, which could propel an 25t ACF Missile (10t fusion fuel) with a 5t payload to 2300km/s. Antimatter production is considerably less efficient than 50%. Lasers with an efficiency greater than 65% already exist in labs. And I suspect infrastructure to produce dozens of mg's of antimatter every year and contain it would be more expensive than a multi-GW laser array. Containing your antimatter will also be expensive, mass-wise. And not having to carry around a massive power source for your containment of antimatter means you can have a much larger payload fraction. Deceleration at your destination can be done by using your lasersail as a solar sail (lower intensity makes it several orders of magnitude less effective, so it's something that has to be used in conjunction with something else), magsails and more conventional means. Like antimatter, but probably something cheaper. I personally think a lasersail-magsail combo is very promising if used in conjunction with a MPDT. Containing antimatter might not be that expensive, storing it as frozen antihydrogen pellet would make it very easy to store them. Even a Neodymium magnet could at that point contain it. Yes, I said (max) to state that this value is the highest possible efficiency for AM-Production. But even at 1% (9PJ/gram) efficiency Antimatter wins the day. For 90TJ you could produce 10mg of antimatter (5t payload to 2300km/s) or accelerate a 5kg spacecraft with 1-2kg payload to 120km/s. If the star is the same size as the sun, just calculate how fast your lasersail would get if you place directly it on top of the sun. Take this number and subtract it from your velocity.
|
|