Greetings,
While driving to work this morning, I happened to be thinking
about the technical explanations for how jump drives work. A
question came to mind:
If you had a space station of some kind sitting out in flat
space that had a big fusion generator of the kind that powers jump
drives, could you hook it up to the crystals in a starship that was in
orbit with the station and charge the crystals without having to burn
any fuel in the starship itself. Then, when the crystals are charged,
the ship could move itself out a little from the station (into
effectively flat space) and jump on the power stored in the crystals.
This way the ship would not need jump fuel or a "jump drive" (fusion
plant). The only problem I can see with this is if the ship is
required to burn the fuel during the entire jump to maintain the
field. But then why do you need the crystals at all? Also, how do
drop tanks work in that case? (My understanding of drop tanks says
that the fuel in them is burned and the tanks are dropped prior to
jump, so you do not have to "jump" the mass of the tanks and fuel.)
Has anyone else had this idea?
-jan-
- --
Jan L. Peterson
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