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The Technology of Ilion; the topic formerly known as Space Prius
Topic Started: Feb 16 2016, 01:57 PM (657 Views)
malicious-monkey
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A while back I was working out the problem of waste heat in subluminal interstellar spacecraft (read: Odyssey) with Zerraspace. We just sort of agreed it would never be realistic and the only thing to do is gloss over the specifics and hope nobody scrutinizes it too closely.

Well, I think I may have come up with a piece of technobabble that might be plausible, or at least appear plausible enough for my purposes. The idea is to convert some of the waste heat from the engine into a novel subatomic particle. The particle is unstable but lasts long enough to be ejected as matter, which might even provide some extra thrust. Of course the process isn't 100% efficient and the ship will still need radiators. It's like a Space Prius.

What do you think of this? Does it pass muster?

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worth a shot
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Edited by malicious-monkey, Feb 23 2016, 12:13 AM.
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Ilion: an illustrated tour of a tidally locked planet
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Holben
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I don't see why not! The Fiat particle could behave something like a massive particle, only interacting via the weak force, that zooms away and decays after a short time, a safe distance from the craft. The nice thing about weakly interacting massive particles is that they're the leading dark matter candidate so they have a theoretical basis!
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

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malicious-monkey
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Cool! I'm surprised I've never seen this pop up in fiction before. Maybe because most space fic has FTL.
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Ilion: an illustrated tour of a tidally locked planet
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Scrublord
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That. The only reason to have slower-than-light interstellar travel in a story is if the whole story takes place on the spaceship, and there's not many plots you can do with that.
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malicious-monkey
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Exactly, and that's why I wanted faster STL. Which would require a special system to bleed heat. Now I just need a viable energy source. Helium fusion just won't cut it. Matter-antimatter is problematic.
"My recommendation would be to just draw things now and draw good things later." - Nanotyranus

Ilion: an illustrated tour of a tidally locked planet
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Kamidio
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Matter-Antimatter isn't problematic and you know that! They're a precious cinnamon roll who'd never harm a soul!
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malicious-monkey
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Yeah I just don't ship that. They're too volatile together.
"My recommendation would be to just draw things now and draw good things later." - Nanotyranus

Ilion: an illustrated tour of a tidally locked planet
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Flisch
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Quantum Entanglement :Sam:
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malicious-monkey
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( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
"My recommendation would be to just draw things now and draw good things later." - Nanotyranus

Ilion: an illustrated tour of a tidally locked planet
Spoiler: click to toggle

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malicious-monkey
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I want to develop this some more. Still looking for an energy source, but I've come up with a short background for this new particle.

...

The Beagle program relied on photonic propulsion to accelerate small probes through interstellar space within the lifetimes of those who launched them. Each probe weighed less than 200 grams, about half of which was sail, made of a superlight reflective material. The sail traded photons with a mirror stationed in Earth's orbit until the tiny messengers reached speeds sufficient to leave the Sol System, and even the Milky Way, given enough time. While an impressive feat, there was one thing they could not do, which would be essential for future missions to any planet found to sustain life. The Beagle probes could not slow down at their destinations, and could not return to Earth.

Naturally, this won't do for a human crewed spaceship.

Interstellar spaceflight is no joke. The sheer amount of energy required to accelerate and decelerate a crewed ship is hard for a mere human to visualize. Still, the technology existed even in the Beagle era. Several proposed engines could get a hunk of metal from Earth to Barnard's Star in a timely matter - as long as we use the term "hunk of metal" literally. Waste heat - also no joke.

That's where the Kearney-Rasmussen Drive comes into play. Developed by a team of physicists and engineers at the Cold Lake Aerospace Research Center (CLARC), the engine is one of the proposed designes with a crucial modification to vent waste heat. Radiators, it turns out, are not sufficient on their own no matter how carefully designed. The more heat produced by the engine, the larger your radiator "wings" have to be, and the more fuel you need just to push the extra mass. Then you need additional fuel to propel the fuel, and so on. The rocket equation strikes again.

"Radiators are not enough." That was the conclusion of Rodney H. Rasmussen, the lead scientist for propulsion technologies at CLARC. His team's work was going in circles. It was time for some out-of-the-box thinking. He took a hard left into a field he was only minimally familiar with, into a discovery that had, up until a few years before, been theoretical.

Kathleen Kearney is a particle physicist at Carleton University. Her research focuses on a newly discovered subatomic particle known as the ephemeron. Like the name suggests, it lasts only a few seconds after its creation. But a few seconds is a long time in the world of particle physics, and the ephemeron has attracted interest from a variety of scientists and engineers.

Like Rasmussen.

"He approached me in person," Kearney told us, "asking about how we produce [ephemerons], how much energy we need. It's a lot, by the way. He seemed happy about that for some reason."

Rasmussen asked if extreme heat was enough. "Absolutely not," was the answer he got. But heat can be harnessed to produce useful energy, which can be converted back into matter as ephemerons, which can be ejected into space.

The technology to harvest waste heat is nothing new. The problem is in storage and release, and early spacecraft designs either radiated all heat into space as pure energy, or deposited the heat into pellets to be jettisoned. The beauty of ephemerons is they do not need to hitch a ride on anything, least of all those aforementioned thermal pellets which can be quite heavy. Furthermore, they have enough mass when combined to create thrust, an appreciable addition to the thrust already generated by the main engine, making the Kearney-Rasmussuen Drive the most efficient engine to date.

And it might just get us to Ilion.
"My recommendation would be to just draw things now and draw good things later." - Nanotyranus

Ilion: an illustrated tour of a tidally locked planet
Spoiler: click to toggle

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malicious-monkey
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Curse you, thermodynamics
"My recommendation would be to just draw things now and draw good things later." - Nanotyranus

Ilion: an illustrated tour of a tidally locked planet
Spoiler: click to toggle

malicious-monkey.deviantart.com
sunriseonilion.wordpress.com
supermalmoworld.tumblr.com
Redbubble - Ilion art prints and more
Commissions are OPEN
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