Re: Starship design revamping

[This came to [email removed], looks like it was
meant for [email removed].  Watch those automatic reply
headers! -- James]

W. Dow Rieder writes:

>  [email removed] writes:
>
> >I looked fusion up in a physics textbook and...
>
> [lots of calculations deleted]
>
> >This translates to about 99E12 MWatts per per kl of plant per hour or, in
                                  ^^^^^^
> >other words, 99,000,000 MW per kl of plant...

Oops, I seems to have made a fumble mishap. Well, that's what happens when
one uses a book to gain a temporary skilllevel :-)

The MWatt should have been Joules. This changes the final figure to
27500 MW per kl. Coming from a lump of machinery 1m x 1m x 1m this sounds
somewhat large (to say the least) , so the best solution might be to reduce the
fuelconsumption.
On the other hand, TL15 can be used to justify almost anything :-) so a simple
solution is to increase the fusion pp outputs with a factor 1000.
That way on kl of TL15 plant will produce 6 * 1000 MW, and if it was
part of a 14+ kl plant 6 * 1000 * 3 MW (18,000 MW) which is resonably close
to 27,000 MW.

> 	The problem with the Mega-Traveller power plants and manuver
> drives is very subtle. The inefficiency of the power plant is masked by the
> remarkable (read: physically impossible) efficiency of the manuver drive.

A suggestion, why not correct both things and with the same amount? If both
energy production and energy consumption is increased, lets say, 1000 times
(volume etc left untouched) the net change would be zero (Aside from a
net gain in space available, because the volume of the part of the power-
plant thats dedicated to supply the non-drive components is reduced by a
factor 1000.
Of course, the definition of agility would have to be changed, or else every
tom, dick and harry would have a ship with Agility 6.
As a definition of agility I would like to suggest the enery required to
make the ship rotate along its long axis with a certain speed.
This way, agility would be dependent on the mass of the ship *and* it's
configuration. (A ship with lots of stuff sticking out here and there is
harder to turn than a ship shaped as a sphere.)
Presumably, ships with AirFrame config should also get a agility bonus when
manuvering in atmosphere,because they can use aerodynamics to make faster turns.

- -bertil-
- --
Bertil K K Jonell @ Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg
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