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Post by ambulatorycortex on Mar 6, 2017 17:53:41 GMT
This sums up my views on mankind's inexorable progress. We will not be stopped, even if Earth burns behind us.
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Post by ambulatorycortex on Nov 16, 2016 18:07:58 GMT
What hopelessly complex math are we talking about here? A lot of the equations needed to calculate things like mass, propulsion, delta-V. I handwave that stuff in my story by using an impulse drive not unlike in Star Trek. The thing is, how to make it plausible or at least believable. Anything you come up with is going to be handwavium anyway, so just own it and say it's magic. Several of your inspirations include magic of various types anyway.
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Post by ambulatorycortex on Nov 14, 2016 18:33:27 GMT
So I was thinking about how I can run fluorine through a diamond reaction chamber and expect it to be fine, and I think some complicating factors should be added: - Components that contact propellant should allow you to specify a passivating layer and erode(modeled as seconds of operation) if the layer is not suitable.
- Cryogenic propellants should boil off and require heat pumps to limit boiloff. A kilotonne of liquid hydrogen should be energy-intensive to store.
- Hydrogen should cause embrittlement. Hydrogen is sneaky stuff and gets everywhere, damaging many materials.
- Knife-edge safety margin components should have some sort of cost or risk associated with quality control. Right now, running a rocket at a few pascals from burst pressure is one of the ways to keep it cheap!
- Material cost should include both rarity and cost of extraction/refinement. Elemental fluorine should be expensive stuff because of its strong bonds.
I'm sure there are more things I have missed, but these items would significantly improve the realism of our components.
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