Post by SevenOfCarina on Sept 21, 2017 8:27:15 GMT
I was wondering as to the utility of the age-old concept of 'shifting gears' in CoaDE, so I modified my main ship-of-the-line to utilise two different types of MPDTs :
As can be seen, the ship generates 25GW, using it to power either one 200km/s neon MPDT for 209km/s of delta-v and 10.1mg - 28.6mg of acceleration
or sixteen 50km/s neon MPDTs for 52km/s of delta-v and 37.8mg - 107mg of acceleration.
This clearly has potential - the same craft can now be used for both interplanetary missile boosts (125km/s over <50Gm) and intraplanetary missile boosts (15km/s over <300Mm), and utilising the same fuel too, to boot. There's a bit of room for improvement - slashing the specific impulse of the intraplanetary MPDTs by 20% should significantly reduce the acceleration distance, and it's not like that spare delta-v is needed anyway.
So, would being able to vary the specific impulse of our MPDTs be of any further advantage? It's not like it'll be much of a mass burden - if there isn't any way to vary the thrust of an MPDT, which I highly doubt, we could quite literally just physically remove it and bolt on a different one.
Thoughts?
As can be seen, the ship generates 25GW, using it to power either one 200km/s neon MPDT for 209km/s of delta-v and 10.1mg - 28.6mg of acceleration
or sixteen 50km/s neon MPDTs for 52km/s of delta-v and 37.8mg - 107mg of acceleration.
This clearly has potential - the same craft can now be used for both interplanetary missile boosts (125km/s over <50Gm) and intraplanetary missile boosts (15km/s over <300Mm), and utilising the same fuel too, to boot. There's a bit of room for improvement - slashing the specific impulse of the intraplanetary MPDTs by 20% should significantly reduce the acceleration distance, and it's not like that spare delta-v is needed anyway.
So, would being able to vary the specific impulse of our MPDTs be of any further advantage? It's not like it'll be much of a mass burden - if there isn't any way to vary the thrust of an MPDT, which I highly doubt, we could quite literally just physically remove it and bolt on a different one.
Thoughts?
