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How do Honorverse ships generate their energy?

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Re: How do Honorverse ships generate their energy?
Post by Joat42   » Fri Jan 21, 2022 6:54 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Though unless your technology also includes something like Honorverse grav plates - an artificially gravity field that can be adjusted almost foot by foot throughout a ship I'd think that being that close to a small black hole would be a bit disorienting. You'd have a gravity gradient down the length of the ship - the bow at 6m from the hole is experiencing 1g but the stern isn't (though it's being pulled towards the bow at that acceleration because the ship's structure would be strong enough to handle that stress).


Not necessarily that big a gradient when done right. Consider if the hole is projected ahead of a long gantry connected to the ship proper to avoid the worst effects of the gradient. The gantry will be heavily influenced by the hole, thus pulling the rest of the ship along. Of course, this means that you have limited yourself to how fast you can accelerate without making a paste of the crew.

To utilize the gravitational pull from an artificial black hole in the most efficient and practical manner and avoiding gravitational sheers/gradients a spherical cap design with the hole being equidistant from all parts of the ship seems to be the best design in my opinion if you have a narrow limit on what gravitational gradients you want to deal with.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: How do Honorverse ships generate their energy?
Post by tlb   » Fri Jan 21, 2022 8:25 pm

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Daryl wrote:Poul Anderson"s Tau Zero was an intelligent look at this, that illustrated how a Bussard Ram Jet space craft could outlive the heat death of this universe.
A one pager I enjoyed also pointed out that as you got closer and closer to C your weight grew exponentially. Ultimately as you reached C you would be infinitely heavy, and the universe would crunch down around you, forming a new Big Bang. The moral is that you can travel at C, but only momentarily, and only one per universe.

There has been recent paper that shows the the engineering of this ram jet is not possible, even though the physics works out. The problem is that the ram mouth needs a diameter of around 4000 km.

Bussard Ram Jet unfeasible

Also it would seem that if you are accelerating in a way that does not tear your equipment apart, then you will never get to the final limiting speed.
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Re: How do Honorverse ships generate their energy?
Post by Daryl   » Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:08 am

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I have no doubt that it has been proven to be theoretically impossible.
Mind you I bet that if you had asked Socrates or Plato to look into using the same sort of energy as found in stroking a cat or even lightening, to power cities. That they would have proved that such was impossible.
tlb wrote:
Daryl wrote:Poul Anderson"s Tau Zero was an intelligent look at this, that illustrated how a Bussard Ram Jet space craft could outlive the heat death of this universe.
A one pager I enjoyed also pointed out that as you got closer and closer to C your weight grew exponentially. Ultimately as you reached C you would be infinitely heavy, and the universe would crunch down around you, forming a new Big Bang. The moral is that you can travel at C, but only momentarily, and only one per universe.

There has been recent paper that shows the the engineering of this ram jet is not possible, even though the physics works out. The problem is that the ram mouth needs a diameter of around 4000 km.

Bussard Ram Jet unfeasible

Also it would seem that if you are accelerating in a way that does not tear your equipment apart, then you will never get to the final limiting speed.
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Re: How do Honorverse ships generate their energy?
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Tue Jan 25, 2022 12:27 pm

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Daryl wrote:I have no doubt that it has been proven to be theoretically impossible.
Mind you I bet that if you had asked Socrates or Plato to look into using the same sort of energy as found in stroking a cat or even lightening, to power cities. That they would have proved that such was impossible.


Well, the energy of stroking a cat we all agree.

But the energy responsible for a cat landing on its legs can be harvested. Tape a bread or toast with the butter side up on the back of the cat and the cat-toast pair will rotate forever without touching the ground. Everyone knows that.
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