|
|
Post by Kerr on Sept 10, 2017 13:16:58 GMT
Here is my Micro Missile using advanced modded fuels ![]()  Fuel: Metastable Helium Acceleration: 60-156G Delta-v: 28km/s Turnabout: 0.5s Metastable helium is the electronically excited state of the helium atom. It is created by an 24 kev Electron beam in liquid helium. It has a half-life of 2.3 hours which can be extended to 8 years with decrease in specific impulse. Bonding the He* with diatomic helium molecules allows for relatively long-lived storage and 2,000s Isp, the decay can also be stopped using an coherent laser pump for 3,000s. Or use it as an short-lived booster stage. Because helium can easily be converted into He*. |
|
|
|
Post by The Astronomer on Sept 10, 2017 13:49:08 GMT
Here is my Micro Missile using advanced modded fuels ![]() Fuel: Metastable Helium Acceleration: 60-156G Delta-v: 28km/s Turnabout: 0.5s Metastable helium is the electronically excited state of the helium atom. It is created by an 24 kev Electron beam in liquid helium. It has a half-life of 2.3 hours which can be extended to 8 years with decrease in specific impulse. Bonding the He* with diatomic helium molecules allows for relatively long-lived storage and 2,000s Isp, the decay can also be stopped using an coherent laser pump for 3,000s. Or use it as an short-lived booster stage. Because helium can easily be converted into He*. Now, please give me the code so I can add it to my future rocket thread~! |
|
|
|
Post by teeth on Sept 10, 2017 13:51:47 GMT
Here is my Micro Missile using advanced modded fuels *snip* Noice. how realistic is this? Can metastable helium be produced on an industrial scale with coade manufacturing tech? |
|
|
|
Post by Kerr on Sept 10, 2017 13:52:23 GMT
Here is my Micro Missile using advanced modded fuels ![]() Fuel: Metastable Helium Acceleration: 60-156G Delta-v: 28km/s Turnabout: 0.5s Metastable helium is the electronically excited state of the helium atom. It is created by an 24 kev Electron beam in liquid helium. It has a half-life of 2.3 hours which can be extended to 8 years with decrease in specific impulse. Bonding the He* with diatomic helium molecules allows for relatively long-lived storage and 2,000s Isp, the decay can also be stopped using an coherent laser pump for 3,000s. Or use it as an short-lived booster stage. Because helium can easily be converted into He*. Now, please give me the code so I can add it to my future rocket thread~! Material Metastable Helium Elements He ElementCount 1 Density_kg__m3 300 EnthalpyOfFormation_kJ__mol 1800 BondDissociationEnergy_kJ__mol 0 GibbsFreeEnergyOfFormation_kJ__mol 0 MeltingPoint_K 600 BoilingPoint_K 1000 SpecificHeat_J__kg_K 5193.12 ThermalConductivity_W__m_K .1513 Viscosity_Pa_s .000019 RelativePermeability .9999999941 Resistivity_Ohm_m 1e-8 RefractiveIndex Helium I could only find (energy/) density and melting point. But because this is normal helium in an excited state I think it is fine. |
|
|
|
Post by Kerr on Sept 10, 2017 13:54:19 GMT
Here is my Micro Missile using advanced modded fuels *snip* Noice. how realistic is this? Can metastable helium be produced on an industrial scale with coade manufacturing tech? An 500MW Beam should produce roughly an kilogram metastable helium per second. So it depends on your energy budget. It's production cost is roughly equal to Metallic hydrogen. But way easier to produce in mass with conventional methods. |
|
|
|
Post by teeth on Sept 10, 2017 14:01:00 GMT
Noice. how realistic is this? Can metastable helium be produced on an industrial scale with coade manufacturing tech? An 500MW Beam should produce roughly an kilogram metastable helium per second. So it depends on your energy budget. It's production cost is roughly equal to Metallic hydrogen. But way easier to produce in mass with conventional methods. That doesn't sound too bad actually, energy is pretty cheap in space. Do you have an entry for it in ChemicalReactions.txt? I don't think you can use it in rockets without one. |
|
|
|
Post by Kerr on Sept 10, 2017 14:03:06 GMT
An 500MW Beam should produce roughly an kilogram metastable helium per second. So it depends on your energy budget. It's production cost is roughly equal to Metallic hydrogen. But way easier to produce in mass with conventional methods. That doesn't sound too bad actually, energy is pretty cheap in space. Do you have an entry for it in ChemicalReactions.txt? I don't think you can use it in rockets without one. ChemicalReaction Metastable Helium Reaction Reactants Metastable Helium ReactantCounts 1 Products Helium ProductCounts 1 ActivationEnergy_kJ__mol 450 AutoignitionTemperature_K 700 CharacteristicLength_m .97 |
|
|
|
Post by RiftandRend on Sept 10, 2017 22:27:55 GMT
That doesn't sound too bad actually, energy is pretty cheap in space. Do you have an entry for it in ChemicalReactions.txt? I don't think you can use it in rockets without one. ChemicalReaction Metastable Helium Reaction Reactants Metastable Helium ReactantCounts 1 Products Helium ProductCounts 1 ActivationEnergy_kJ__mol 450 AutoignitionTemperature_K 700 CharacteristicLength_m .97 It is common practice to post element and reaction definitions inside code segments. Like so. It makes it easier to copy paste only what you need and makes the code more prominent. ChemicalReaction Metastable Helium Reaction
Reactants Metastable Helium
ReactantCounts 1
Products Helium
ProductCounts 1
ActivationEnergy_kJ__mol 450
AutoignitionTemperature_K 700
CharacteristicLength_m .97 |
|
|
|
Post by madmike on Sept 11, 2017 2:57:54 GMT
I wanted to try to replicate the performance of the USN's new railgun, so here's what I came up with. I was almost entirely going for comparable performance, so this probably looks very little like the real thing, but hey, it's something. By CoaDE standards, frankly, it sucks. The tradeoff for projectile mass isn't really justified, since it just cleanly overpenetrates with minimal spalling no matter what you shoot it at. Decent against obnoxiously hardened targets, but even then you're not inflicting a lot of damage. It would really work better with a lower sectional density or even a flak payload, so that you dump more of that projectile energy into the target. Then again, we're not dealing with atmospheric effects in space, so we actually can get away with hypervelocity dinner plates of doom. Source for projectile, muzzle velocity, etc.RadiationShieldModule USN Railgun Projectile
UsesCustomName true
Composition Tungsten
Dimensions_m 0.018 0.762
CraftBlueprint USN Railgun Projectile (KE)
Modules
USN Railgun Projectile 1 0 null 0
Armor
RailgunModule 150mm USN Electromagnetic Railgun Proposal
UsesCustomName true
PowerConsumption_W 3.1e+008
Capacitor
Count 4
DielectricComposition Hafnia
Dimensions_m 1 2
Separation_m 4.2e-006
Rails
Composition Zirconium Copper
Thickness_m 0.4
Length_m 10
BarrelArmor
Composition Diamond
Thickness_m 0.28
Armature
Composition Vanadium Chromium Steel
BoreRadius_m 0.15
Mass_kg 5
Tracer null
Payload USN Railgun Projectile (KE)
Loader
PowerConsumption_W 6200
ExternalMount false
InternalMount false
Turret
InnerRadius_m 2.5
Extruded true
ArmorComposition Boron Filament
ArmorThickness_m 0.15
ElectricActuators
PermanentMagnet Neodymium Iron Boron
PowerConsumption_W 2e+006
AttachedAmmoBay
Capacity 300
Stacks 2
TargetsShips true
TargetsShots false
|
|
|
|
Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Sept 11, 2017 17:42:11 GMT
In my quest to fire all kinds of weird shit from guns, I made a gun that fires smaller guns. The projectile is a 110 kg tube containing a 1.4 MW railgun, a 1.4 MW powerplant and some radiators to cool the reactor. The lack of engines cuts down the cost of these munitions and also seems to reduce lag. I was able to have around 400 of the things firing simultaneously without going into the minutes per frame range of performance. I'm not sure if it's actually a good idea but at least it looks entertaining. Gun, bullet and ship design: Combat test: Guns shooting a heckload of bullets:  1 meter of VCS torn to shreds:  |
|
|
|
Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Sept 12, 2017 19:21:20 GMT
After a bit of fiddling I've designed a weapon system that can put out 107 GW of kinetic energy in projectiles (plus a bunch more if you count the guns that collide with the target) for just under 35 Mc. Calculation for the kinetic energy output below if you care:
(relative) muzzle velocity of the gun: 1.37 km/s (gun) + 7.18 km/s (rocket booster) + 10.7 km/s (ship dv) = 19.25 km/s
Projectile mass = 100 g
Single projectile KE: 1/2 * m * v² = 0.5 * 0.1 * 19250 * 19250 = 18.5 MJ
One gun shoots 10 rounds per second, so each gun puts out 185 MW.
16 boosters times 36 guns per booster equals 576 guns.
185 MW * 576 guns = 107 GW
Designs for everything below: gun drone:  gun:  drone bus:  launcher ship:  Combat test: Buses start their acceleration at around 300 km range. They'll be done within 3 seconds of combat start, moving at about 18 km/s after the burn.  Guns being deployed from the buses. The bus blast launcher on the launcher ship died halfway through and disabled all the buses, and I ended up with only about half of the guns I should have had. Still pretty good though.  Guns opening fire. A few casualties due to the tight formation but we can afford to lose a couple of guns here and there.  Target absorbing around 50 GW of kinetic energy just fine apparently. At least for the one frame this screenshot is from.  Here's the same target one frame later. A lot of the damage is due to impacting gun drones, at least I think so. It's hard to tell when everything happened in a single frame.  |
|
|
|
Post by RiftandRend on Sept 12, 2017 22:22:22 GMT
Use octogen instead of cyclonite, little difference in performance but about half the cost.
|
|
|
|
Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Sept 12, 2017 23:58:03 GMT
I made a weapon system that can deliver a cloud of tiny laser satellites to a little under 5 kilometers away from the target ship. It works by carefully balancing the forward velocity of laser delivery buses and the muzzle velocity of a rear-facing blast launcher that's deployed by the delivery bus. When the two velocities cancel out, you end up with a hundred or so 1.4 MW lasers that are close enough that they reach the 25 MW/M² ablation cap. Currently they can only do a maximum of 2 km/s approach velocity, but it should be possible to get that way higher by using an unguided rocket instead of a blast launcher for braking. It might end up being cheaper too, since the blast launcher walls dominate both cost and mass budgets. Relevant designs: laser satellite:  laser:  braking blast launcher:  ship:  Combat test against a gunship: Braking vehicles approaching braking range. The delivery vehicle for them is just a hunk of laser-proof armor with four blast launchers that pop out the electric launchers at 20km, allowing them some time to clear the tight grouping.  After delivery, you get a pile of spinning laser sats moving towards the gunship at 34 m/s, giving them a few dozen minutes of loiter time before they're too far to be effective. The turret has a 900 degree/s gimbal so it can deal with a little spinning easily enough as well.  A few seconds later, the gunship has lost all dangerous weapons facing the satellite pile. A few seconds after that they melt the engines to prevent escape, and then systematically burn off everything else.  Around 20 seconds in, the gunship is just a helpless hunk of metal.  And finally after about a minute of burning, there's nothing left on the gunship's hull and the reactor dies out.  |
|
|
|
Post by RiftandRend on Sept 13, 2017 0:52:57 GMT
Another material suggestion, boron fiber is much more cost effective blast launcher material.
|
|
|
|
Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Sept 13, 2017 1:00:18 GMT
Another material suggestion, boron fiber is much more cost effective blast launcher material. Not so good on the mass side unfortunately. It's pretty bad regardless of what material you use. |
|
