Subject: Jumping and Energy.
X-Envelope-to: [email removed]
Well, I thought I'd throw something into this discussion.
Q: How much energy is required to jump and can a fusion power
plant manage the energy required to escape a stellar gravity well?
A: Assumptions: one 4p -> He4 reaction leads to 26.73 MeV of
energy available to the power plant. I don't know if this includes
neutrino losses, but Nuke phys. isn't one of my physics specialties.
Also, the biggest jump you'd like to make is from Mercury's orbit
of a solar mass star to escape velocity. This is reasonable to first
order because you don't want to get much closer to a star than this (at
least on a bound orbit) and as mass goes up, luminosity goes up and
you don't want to be close to that star.
Also, I'll use a naive starship of a HG type Scout ship which masses
100,000 kg and uses 20,000 kg of fuel to jump 2.
The energy required to escape from the sun (GMm/r) at Mercury's
orbit is 2.22 x 10^9 Joules. I calculate that from 100% efficient
fusion (assuming the jump costs only escape energy) you could get
5.8 x 10^7 jumps from the Scout ship's required jump fuel. Obviously
there are other costs:-)
On a related note, I remember doing a calculation with Dow Rieder
(gods that was a long time ago) to find out whether such a scout
ship could thrust for 4 weeks (as the old rules seem to imply) on
its maneuver fuel. We calculated 30% mass-> energy conversion
was required if all the energy were converted to acceleration.
Obviously a problem.
The assumption that starship engines are 100% efficient is not
unreasonable, because if they weren't, the heat lost would fry
a starship in a fraction of a second (this is quoted from an
old Space Gamer, around #40 authored by a person whom I cannot
remember at this time.)
Lastly, I like the idea about jumping from bound state to bound
state with the same energy around a companion star, but it has
some flaws. How about transfer of angular momentum? It may
not be possible to satisfy both in a jump. Momentum would
have to take preference in the conservation laws as energy can
be released or absorbed by heat (and radiation.) Note that
it would be theoretically possible to make a jump where the
energy released in the jump to be greater than the energy
stored in the ship's heat, sending it below absolute zero in
temperature.
One "physics nullifier box" solution may be absorption and
release of energy from additions or subtractions to the vacuum
zero point energy in the jump region. Release would cause
a lot of particles to appear and annihilate each other and
release a lot of energy. Absorption is more of a problem.
Anyone want to consider wormholes?
Nick Christenson
[email removed]
#include <disclaimer.h>