In a posting Hans Rancke writes:
> [Talk about that fuel is enough to power ALL ships systems for 30days]
> Now, that's not really a reasonable assumption, is it? Come to
> think about it, fuel consumption calculations also assume that
> the maneuver drive is going full blast for the entire 30 days.
> But traders usually spends 1 week of every 2 in jump space,
> where you can't use the maneuver drive, and several days more
> on the ground or in orbit loading and unloading passengers and
> goods. On an ordinary landing and takeoff a ship with a 1G
> drive would use the drive for less than 20 hours (this assumes
> a word size of 10). A refueling run would take longer, but the
> ship would be getting more fuel at the same time! So actually,
> many traders freighters could make do with 1 day's maneuvering
> fuel.
There really is a precedent in this question, In the GDW boxed module
"Beltstrike" there is a table on fuelconsumption when going less than
maximum acceleration, (On the other hand, the same module also stated
that the manueverdrive made a forcefield (:^)) that protected the crew from
the hazardous cosmic radiation. In MegaT this is accompliced with lots
of shielding (This is the reason why all exo-atmospherical craft must
have a Armor of 40 or more)).
A resonable way of handling this is to compute the Kilolitres of H/hour/MW
and then use the maximum energyconsumption during an hour as the
consumption for that hour. The systems that can be assumed to be operating
at all times are the environment, the computer, the controls & the sensors.
During jump only the environment and the computer needs power, When at normal
flight the drives (at normal Gee or less), the comp, the controls, the environ
and the sensors, And in combat: Everything (including agility).
This assumption also raises interesting questions regarding vehicle design.
One trick i've thought of (and used in a number of designs) is to power
weapons with a high energy demand from energy stored in zuruchai crystals
(jump-energy-sinks, see "Starship Operators Manual by DGP"),
Take for example that you want to power an 100MW weapon with a ROF of 10,
but the only Powerplant
that fits the hull only have 50MW to spare to such entertainment.
To solve the problem you install Z-crystals capable of storing 50MJ
(Mega Joule, measure of energy, if you have 1 joule you can power something
that demands 1 watt for one second) The storagecapacity of 13.5 kl of
z-crys os about 600MJ (deduced from MegaT & old HighGuard) so you
should install around 1-2 kl of crystals, The contraption will function
like this: Half the time the PP will load the z-crys with energy (50MJ) and
the other half of the time this energy and the 50MW that the PP outputs
this period combines to make 100MW for the weapon!
(The ROF will be halved to 5 because the weapon can't fire 50% of the time)
The biggest disadvantage is that z-crys can't store energy more than a couple
of minutes, Then they'll start to decompose and the energy will be released in
an uncontrolled form (heat mostly). 50MJ in close proximity is certainly
an health hazard :-) (A quick calculation gives that the energy released
is roughly compareble to 11kg (22lb) of TNT)
But, all in all, the old system of computing energy consumption *is* somewhat
oversimplifyed, and a more complex system could ease the burden on the
ship and vehicle designers.
> Hans Rancke
> University of Copenhagen
> [email removed]
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