Subject:
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Re: Engine Idea -- but seriously
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Tue, 11 Jul 2000 01:19:33 GMT
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Highlighted:
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(details)
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Jeff Elliott wrote in message <396A151F.B78216AD@telepres.com>...
>
> But seriously - the whole thing with flange rebates and the like - I
> *do* think in those terms when I'm designing engines, weapons, etc.
> There's an art to putting a sufficient number of doohickeys on a
> tech item to make it look realistic. F'r'instance, Mladen's engine
> has that nice ring of handles around the outer rim which are suggestive
> of thrust vectors / coolant tubes / whatever. The big tanks look like
> fuel chambers. Has anyone got some kind of library of neat thingy
> ideas for designing technical components? It might be useful to seed
> ideas from. A good widget can form the heart of a wicked spacecraft...
I tend to try and keep it pretty simple. Take an antimatter
engine/storage-cell - I just postulate a pseudo-science where you can
contain an anti-matter plasma (of any mixture of atoms) in a magnetic
"bottle" and you keep the plasma "warm" by injecting small amounts of normal
matter from a "fuel" store (some of the waste energy is collected and used
to maintain the magnetic bottle). The normal-matter "fuel" store doubles as
the propellant when you inject both out of the back of the spacecraft where
they annihilate and produce thrust. The BOAC uses this fairly simple design.
I've posted a picture of it before but I'll, um, do it again anyway ;-)
http://www.geocities.com/doctorshnub/galv-eng.JPG
The large round container at the front of the engine bay surrounds the
anti-plasma in its magnetic bottle, and has heatsinks around its
circumference to radiate waste heat. The ring of eight ribbed ellipsoids is
a system of electromagnets (or perhaps thermomagnets!) that project a field
into the adjacent container to form the magnetic bottle.
This sort of engine is being phased out because it's extremely dangerous.
After all, if you run out of fuel or there's some other malfunction, you
can't keep the anti-matter as plasma, it condenses, diffuses out of the
magnetic bottle and touches the sides of the container, and BOOOM!!!!
Needless to say, this sort of engine is not used on space stations or near
populated areas on planets. Even on spacecraft, sensitive subsystems are
required to detect as early as possible when to "eject the core" in the
event of a malfunction.
Newer anti-matter engines and storage cells tend to contain the antimatter
within "hard" electromagnetic fields or even microscopic hyperspace pockets.
I haven't made doohickeys for those yet, but I'd be interested to see what
other people come up with. Those faceted gold-chromed Spaceport domes are
pretty cool.
Cheers,
Paul
LUGNET member 164
http://www.geocities.com/doctorshnub/
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Engine Idea -- but seriously
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| (...) Ha ha! Your superior weapons are no match for my puny intellect: I override us back to lugnet.space! But seriously - the whole thing with flange rebates and the like - I *do* think in those terms when I'm designing engines, weapons, etc. (...) (24 years ago, 10-Jul-00, to lugnet.space)
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