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Post by anonymous on Oct 15, 2018 2:45:57 GMT
What ever happened to having a way to store excess power? I find it ridiculous that a ship run by nuclear power that has two missile/drone launchers doesn't have enough electricity at a time to use both of them at once.
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Post by RiftandRend on Oct 15, 2018 3:24:20 GMT
Energy storage systems generally have extremely low energy density compared to reactors. If more power is needed, the best solution is to increase power output rather than attempt to store excess energy.
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Post by vegemeister on Oct 15, 2018 4:12:09 GMT
On the one hand, player-optimized reactors totally clobber chemical batteries in both power and energy density. ( Wiki says 20 kW/kg for state-of-the-art Li-ion. Player-optimized reactors are >60 kW/kg including radiators.) You'd be better off building for Moar Power in the first place than storing it. And capacitors are already in the game for pulsed-power. On the other hand, that *is* ridiculous. Reasonably sized missiles and non-capship-sized drones can be deployed with 100 kW or less. Try gadolinium for the stator and calcium for the forcer. For very small missiles, blast launchers may be lighter overall because of their smaller crew requirement, and they don't need power at all. Optimal material is boron filament, if you care about cost, or UHMWPE fiber, if you don't. Optimal propellant is nitroglycerin if you're minimizing mass and don't care about launch velocity, or either nitrocellulose or octogen if you want high launch velocity.
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Post by thorneel on Oct 16, 2018 21:17:35 GMT
On the gripping hand, superconductor solenoid battery storage should reach 20 MJ/kg easily and extremely high power density (with the slight drawback of violently exploding if breached or going above their possibly cryogenic working temperature), and those are probably closer than we think. Both chemical battery and superconductor are fields that move fast.
The limit for both chemical and superconductor energy storage is how much energy you can cram in chemical bonds. For superconductors, it is because you need those chemical bonds to prevent the thing from violently expanding from Lorentz forces.
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Post by The Astronomer on Oct 17, 2018 3:05:20 GMT
On the gripping hand, superconductor solenoid battery storage should reach 20 MJ/kg easily and extremely high power density (with the slight drawback of violently exploding if breached or going above their possibly cryogenic working temperature), and those are probably closer than we think. Both chemical battery and superconductor are fields that move fast. The limit for both chemical and superconductor energy storage is how much energy you can cram in chemical bonds. For superconductors, it is because you need those chemical bonds to prevent the thing from violently expanding from Lorentz forces. They actually use those superconductor batteries for explosives in Vergeworlds, and I think I should mod in one too. Interesting stuff.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Oct 17, 2018 8:45:31 GMT
On the one hand, player-optimized reactors totally clobber chemical batteries in both power and energy density. ( Wiki says 20 kW/kg for state-of-the-art Li-ion. Player-optimized reactors are >60 kW/kg including radiators.) You'd be better off building for Moar Power in the first place than storing it. And capacitors are already in the game for pulsed-power. On the other hand, that *is* ridiculous. Reasonably sized missiles and non-capship-sized drones can be deployed with 100 kW or less. Try gadolinium for the stator and calcium for the forcer. For very small missiles, blast launchers may be lighter overall because of their smaller crew requirement, and they don't need power at all. Optimal material is boron filament, if you care about cost, or UHMWPE fiber, if you don't. Optimal propellant is nitroglycerin if you're minimizing mass and don't care about launch velocity, or either nitrocellulose or octogen if you want high launch velocity. Ugh. Structural Calcium again.
As for UHMWPE fiber, how good it is as anti-laser ablative armour compared to aramid? You can make really sweet blast tubes out of it, but aramid isn't much worse in terms of mass and blast launchers are prime candidate for lasing.
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Post by smithblack on Oct 19, 2018 0:24:09 GMT
On the gripping hand, superconductor solenoid battery storage should reach 20 MJ/kg easily and extremely high power density (with the slight drawback of violently exploding if breached or going above their possibly cryogenic working temperature), and those are probably closer than we think. Both chemical battery and superconductor are fields that move fast. The limit for both chemical and superconductor energy storage is how much energy you can cram in chemical bonds. For superconductors, it is because you need those chemical bonds to prevent the thing from violently expanding from Lorentz forces. They actually use those superconductor batteries for explosives in Vergeworlds, and I think I should mod in one too. Interesting stuff. That might be rather hard. Superconducting batteries should be a constant current, rather than a constant voltage, power storage device. This is because of how inductors behave: they like to keep flowing, and will provide whatever voltage is needed to achieve this. This has some great benefits on certain applications which have behavior restricted by current, not voltage, such as railguns; unfortunately, they are so utterly unlike capacitors an entirely new part model would likely be needed to handle them.
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Post by The Astronomer on Oct 19, 2018 0:43:25 GMT
They actually use those superconductor batteries for explosives in Vergeworlds, and I think I should mod in one too. Interesting stuff. That might be rather hard. Superconducting batteries should be a constant current, rather than a constant voltage, power storage device. This is because of how inductors behave: they like to keep flowing, and will provide whatever voltage is needed to achieve this. This has some great benefits on certain applications which have behavior restricted by current, not voltage, such as railguns; unfortunately, they are so utterly unlike capacitors an entirely new part model would likely be needed to handle them. I attempted to mod an explosive out of the thing, and failed laughably. Might try it later.
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Post by apophys on Oct 19, 2018 0:44:03 GMT
Try gadolinium for the stator and calcium for the forcer. Ugh. Structural Calcium again.
I use & recommend zirconium carbide for the forcer. The forcer's melting point is relevant for the outlet temp of the launcher.
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Post by newageofpower on Oct 22, 2018 0:44:13 GMT
On the one hand, player-optimized reactors totally clobber chemical batteries in both power and energy density. ( Wiki says 20 kW/kg for state-of-the-art Li-ion. Player-optimized reactors are >60 kW/kg including radiators.) You'd be better off building for Moar Power in the first place than storing it. And capacitors are already in the game for pulsed-power. On the other hand, that *is* ridiculous. Reasonably sized missiles and non-capship-sized drones can be deployed with 100 kW or less. Try gadolinium for the stator and calcium for the forcer. For very small missiles, blast launchers may be lighter overall because of their smaller crew requirement, and they don't need power at all. Optimal material is boron filament, if you care about cost, or UHMWPE fiber, if you don't. Optimal propellant is nitroglycerin if you're minimizing mass and don't care about launch velocity, or either nitrocellulose or octogen if you want high launch velocity. I did a calculation showing you can exceed 2 MJ/KG using Spectra (UHMWPE) flywheels, and with carbon nanomaterials you hit ~ 150 MJ/KG... I don't think manufacturing microreactors will actually be cheaper than producing polymer flywheels, so, flywheels may be perfectly viable IRL.
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Post by treptoplax on Oct 22, 2018 2:43:24 GMT
On the one hand, player-optimized reactors totally clobber chemical batteries in both power and energy density. ( Wiki says 20 kW/kg for state-of-the-art Li-ion. Player-optimized reactors are >60 kW/kg including radiators.) You'd be better off building for Moar Power in the first place than storing it. And capacitors are already in the game for pulsed-power. On the other hand, that *is* ridiculous. Reasonably sized missiles and non-capship-sized drones can be deployed with 100 kW or less. Try gadolinium for the stator and calcium for the forcer. For very small missiles, blast launchers may be lighter overall because of their smaller crew requirement, and they don't need power at all. Optimal material is boron filament, if you care about cost, or UHMWPE fiber, if you don't. Optimal propellant is nitroglycerin if you're minimizing mass and don't care about launch velocity, or either nitrocellulose or octogen if you want high launch velocity. I did a calculation showing you can exceed 2 MJ/KG using Spectra (UHMWPE) flywheels, and with carbon nanomaterials you hit ~ 150 MJ/KG... I don't think manufacturing microreactors will actually be cheaper than producing polymer flywheels, so, flywheels may be perfectly viable IRL. Flywheels on a maneuvering spaceship could get tricky because of gyroscopic effects, though. I guess you can build them in counterrotating pairs, but then you have to worry about the mass required for the structure joining them to make sure that doesn't come apart either (but maybe that's trivial if you can build the flywheels? I don't actually know).
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Post by Pttg on Oct 30, 2018 21:25:42 GMT
Build the flywheels to be freely rotating inside the ship.
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Post by RiftandRend on Nov 2, 2018 9:06:06 GMT
Build the flywheels to be freely rotating inside the ship. How would you maneuver without hitting the free floating flywheels inside the ship?
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Post by airc777 on Nov 2, 2018 23:42:40 GMT
Build the flywheels to be freely rotating inside the ship. How would you maneuver without hitting the free floating flywheels inside the ship? Having an empty, spherical room inside the ship containing the not actually free floating but rather free rotating flywheels.
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Post by Hicks on Nov 15, 2018 23:22:55 GMT
And when anything hits it, the explosive debris of the flywheel will bisected the ship.
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