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Building Starfleet The Hard Way


Spacescifi

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Given what we know of physics, if we had a lot of antimatter to spare and could launch ten orion pusher plate battleships to orbit a year, would the air still be safe?

 

Better than if we did the nuclear fallout version?

 

Since AM bombs I read don't pollute as bad as nukes even though they are far more destructive. Which is a parodox if I have ever heard one one.

 

Discuss?

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2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Heck, even 10 fission Orions per year would probably release less radioactive material than fossil fuels/natural gas.

And that’s before considering the brine...

Really? Any proof? I really want to know. Never heard that b4 but it sounds plausible.

6 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Orion pusher plates have nothing to do with the antimatter.

AM would make a more efficient Orion.

 

Bigger starfleet that way.

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9 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

The mini orion tests are a series of explosions.

The mini-orion test explosions produce gas flow from the puny chemical explosions which can push a puny model.

They are just a test of the external pulse propulsion, having nothing common with the nuclear Orion work principle.
They are many orders of magnitude weaker and don't need to direct their energy or to create the gas flow separately from the energy production.

Edited by kerbiloid
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4 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Since AM bombs I read don't pollute as bad as nukes even though they are far more destructive. Which is a parodox if I have ever heard one one.

Two things with different underlying physical principles are different. Shocker.

Annihilation produces gamma rays, fission produces gamma rays and neutrons. An annihilation bomb should produce zero fallout.

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55 minutes ago, DDE said:

Two things with different underlying physical principles are different. Shocker.

Annihilation produces gamma rays, fission produces gamma rays and neutrons. An annihilation bomb should produce zero fallout.

True... it's just that every other powerful thing O knowof on par or betterthan a nuke in nature also is highly radioactive.

 

So AM is a key to orbital infrastucture if we had plenty available like in scifi

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2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

a nuke in nature also is highly radioactive

Nope, not once the results are diluted.

That, and you have certain warhawks from a certain pentagonal building clamoring for a pure fusion warhead to put on their cruise missiles ever since the late 1990s.

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11 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Since AM bombs I read don't pollute as bad as nukes even though they are far more destructive. Which is a parodox if I have ever heard one one.

lol. Do you know what the difference is between fission and annihilation?

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10 hours ago, DDE said:

Nope, not once the results are diluted.

That, and you have certain warhawks from a certain pentagonal building clamoring for a pure fusion warhead to put on their cruise missiles ever since the late 1990s.

 

Fusion bombs are hard to make no?

 

Not saying they are impossible, but you would think we would already have them if they were viable right now.

Making them mini enough to use them for project Orion should take a higher level of tech than we currently utilize today.

 

So scifi are pure fusion bombs.... for now.

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1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Fusion bombs are hard to make no?

I could tell you, but then I'd have to [redacted]

The desire is clearly there; their proponents view them as not falling under CNBT and free of all the usual political and moral hazards of tacnukes - and there always was a demand for nuclear weapons with the lowest possible barrier for use among US nuclear strategists.

Necessity, or in the case the DARPA RFP, is the mother of invention.

Edited by DDE
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37 minutes ago, DDE said:

I could tell you, but then I'd have to [redacted]

The desire is clearly there; their proponents view them as not falling under CNBT and free of all the usual political and moral hazards of tacnukes - and there always was a demand for nuclear weapons with the lowest possible barrier for use among US nuclear strategists.

Necessity, or in the case the DARPA RFP, is the mother of invention.

 

According to wikipedia having some antimatter could initiate a pure fusion bomb, including the small ones for project orion.

 

Otherwise we are looking at a 3 ton big bomb to generate the power.

Overall it is hard to make mini without a lot of compact energy ready to go (looking at AM again).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon

 

Edited by Spacescifi
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(Imagines the Challenger having in the tank antimatter instead of chemicals.
Imagines it 10 times bigger.
Bye, Canaveral, you were a nice place).

  

7 hours ago, DDE said:
8 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Fusion bombs are hard to make no?

I could tell you, but then I'd have to [redacted]

Oh, come on...
Two pieces of uranium in a barrel of d+t, didn't you see the schoolbook?

Edited by kerbiloid
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6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

(Imagines the Challenger having in the tank antimatter instead of chemicals.
Imagines it 10 times bigger.
Bye, Canaveral, you were a nice place).

  

Oh, come on...
Two pieces of uranium in a barrel of d+t, didn't you see the schoolbook?

 But that (if you get the thousands of details just right) gives you a fusion boosted fission bomb.  Direct fusion requires a far different approach.  To get one with enough yield to bother is, as far as I know, still future tech.

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20 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

 But that (if you get the thousands of details just right) gives you a fusion boosted fission bomb.  Direct fusion requires a far different approach.  To get one with enough yield to bother is, as far as I know, still future tech.

 

More or less true it seems. Wikipedia indicated we could make a pure fusion bomb similar in yield to a conventional explosive, the main problem being that it is more complex bur not more destructive beyond radiating the area.

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On 2/26/2020 at 12:30 AM, Spacescifi said:

Do you not think AM will provide a bigger boom?

Or do you not think the designers cannot do the math to make the boom not so big that the ship dies?

If you have ample AM you can make the boom so small that you can contain it on the vessel itself. 

The whole reason you need a pusher-plate(ie orion-style) is that you can't make fission bombs small enough to contain on the vessel, and need to use shaped-charge nukes to throw some dense material to bounce off a 'pusher-plate'.

Ample MA gives you torch drives(assuming you can handle the waste-heat) which is so far superior to Orion that it is hard to compare them.  Using AM for Orion is like using black-powder based bombs with a pusher-plate instead of liquid fuels.  Sure you can do it, but it is so wasteful that it makes no sense.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Terwin said:

If you have ample AM you can make the boom so small that you can contain it on the vessel itself. 

The whole reason you need a pusher-plate(ie orion-style) is that you can't make fission bombs small enough to contain on the vessel, and need to use shaped-charge nukes to throw some dense material to bounce off a 'pusher-plate'.

Ample MA gives you torch drives(assuming you can handle the waste-heat) which is so far superior to Orion that it is hard to compare them.  Using AM for Orion is like using black-powder based bombs with a pusher-plate instead of liquid fuels.  Sure you can do it, but it is so wasteful that it makes no sense.

 

 

 

Not handeling AM waste heat is my primary issue. By the time we have enough mass in heat rejection equipment such as heatsinks and big rad fins, it will lower the awesome thrust we were supposed to have anyway.

 

On the other hand, the external combustion engine AKA Orion project has less of of an issue there.

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1 hour ago, Terwin said:

If you have ample AM you can make the boom so small that you can contain it on the vessel itself. 

The whole reason you need a pusher-plate(ie orion-style) is that you can't make fission bombs small enough to contain on the vessel, and need to use shaped-charge nukes to throw some dense material to bounce off a 'pusher-plate'.

Ample MA gives you torch drives(assuming you can handle the waste-heat) which is so far superior to Orion that it is hard to compare them.  Using AM for Orion is like using black-powder based bombs with a pusher-plate instead of liquid fuels.  Sure you can do it, but it is so wasteful that it makes no sense.

 

 

Well there is one other advantage:

A pusher plate makes no attempt to contain high temperature propellant. This lets you use very high temperature propellant which is why an external system like a pusher plate is actually quite good - a similar proposal to Orion using a large internal chamber with the propulsion units had much lower isp despite immense energies. The temperature was limited.

Now it is possible to use magnetic nozzles and other such things to contain high temperature propellant but it’s far easier to just build a slab of steel.

Since the Orion doesn’t contain hot propellant you only need radiators for the other on board systems - boosting performance (assuming highly advanced radiators aren’t available). The temperature change for the plate can be made quite small due to the short period of contact.

So while the boom can be made smaller and something like Mini-Mag Orion could be built using AM, a pusher plate will likely be easier. It also enables larger thrust power.

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2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Well there is one other advantage:

A pusher plate makes no attempt to contain high temperature propellant. This lets you use very high temperature propellant which is why an external system like a pusher plate is actually quite good - a similar proposal to Orion using a large internal chamber with the propulsion units had much lower isp despite immense energies. The temperature was limited.

Now it is possible to use magnetic nozzles and other such things to contain high temperature propellant but it’s far easier to just build a slab of steel.

Since the Orion doesn’t contain hot propellant you only need radiators for the other on board systems - boosting performance (assuming highly advanced radiators aren’t available). The temperature change for the plate can be made quite small due to the short period of contact.

So while the boom can be made smaller and something like Mini-Mag Orion could be built using AM, a pusher plate will likely be easier. It also enables larger thrust power.

 

It's a pity the TOS Enterprise would look goofy with with an orion pusher plate.

As would most popular scifi vessels.

 

It is still far more practical though.

Edited by Spacescifi
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