cthia wrote:ThinksMarkedly wrote:Which means I don't see any reason why those capacitors would remain charged after the wedge is brought up. A charged high-energy capacitor is a danger. Especially if it is full of plasma. Keeping them charged probably also reduces their useful life.
Ok, I take that back. I can see one reason: under battle conditions, you may want to be able to restart your wedge if it gets somehow knocked out. You don't want to wait for half an hour to trickle-charge the capacitors while trying to flee an enemy... which you aren't doing since you have no wedge in the first place. And if your ship is damaged, you may not even have all reactors running at full output or have the power distribution system at 100%, so may not be able to charge capacitors until you effect repairs.
Another reason - perhaps the main reason they are used in the first place - is for quickly available high bursts of power. Like deploying all grasers at their fastest rate of fire.ThinksMarkedly wrote:The remaining question would be if you keep the capacitors charged while not under battle conditions. If you know you're going into battle, you can charge the capacitors ahead of time and ride the whole battle charged -- and maybe the capacitors help in charging missiles' capacitors too. But this would be a problem if battle surprises you, unless David decides that once you have the wedge up, you can extract energy from the Alpha band via the wedge and recharge the capacitors very quickly.
I've never known capacitors to be used in any system and not kept fully charged. That would be defeating the purpose of having these very expensive devices.
Any system? Capacitors in an AC to DC power converter are continually cycling between charge levels as they work to smooth out the AC ripple. Earlier in another thread there was a discussion of whether missiles were kept fully charged, even in supply ships.
Obviously capacitors would not be fully charged in any device that was turned off for an extended period of time. Normally in a ship there is a reactor working at all times, because reactor startup needs plasma. In a repair dock all reactors can be shut off and the capacitors drained, because the station can supply plasma when work is finished.
I expect that the grasers and defensive lasers are fed from the capacitors, as the reactors work to keep the capacitors' charge up. So in a warship the capacitors will be charged.