Degenerate thinggies for KSPIE (and mabe KSP2)

[AntaresMC]

Started with a proposal about ultra dense (aka degenerate) deuterium and...

10 hours ago, AntaresMC said:

Lets see, Ive got a design for my WIP scifi setting. Its a dFe (should work with most heavy metals as well) bullettip for anti ship weapons. Could use the idea for dD

A mag levitated sandgrain sized pellet. Cryo cooled and kept under pressure to stabilize it. Too much pressure, lets say (I dunno the exact number, info insnt easy to find outside white dwarves XD) 10000A, probably more. This is impossible to withstand by any material or mag field, and if it dont touch the walls better (a so dense thing pierces at the lest vibration).

So you apply force to maintain pressures, the maglev is helped by LH2 railguns to cool and whose recoil reduces inward force of pressure. An external set of 3 torus (1 each axis) with a plasma/metal coil rotating inside magleved whose centrifugal force also prevents from collapsing. All of it wastes energy and generate heat but keeps a stable pressure.

This is assuming stabilization, if you only want it to live a few days or hours, dD 1/2lives like an hour in most optimistic estimates. Thats around a min until its expected to heat up 1eV and explodes. If cryo cooled you can delay that time that temp comes. Pressurizing it prolongs its 1/2 life.

Ill try to make a useful fuel tank, because bullets need not be as light nor dense, but thats the idea to my knowledge (im not expert in the subject and AR doesn't have a page on that). If you can search if there's any way other than cold or pressure, I couldnt find other than grav confinement... 

This is not something I know a lot of, just like it and think it deserves attention.

Active support is the same thing that allows concepts like space towers and static orbital rings. Taken to the extremes Ive seen concepts of matrioshka worlds and birch planets under known science, so quite a strong technique... Basicly shoot a rocket upwards so the weight is suspended in the exhaust. SFIA has a lot of discussion on that topic, if you're interested

 

11 hours ago, AntaresMC said:

Ah, you will lose dD to WasteHeat, He, He3, T, H and n (all its fusion products) and regular D if not completely stabilized. Small quantity, but just cryo cooling isnt enough.

 

8 hours ago, AntaresMC said:

What about it?

Its a 1st idea. Stores a few mm^3 of dD, potentially 100% stable (assuming enough radiators to keep He3 cryo), D-He3+He3 final fusion. The asterixes Im gonna explain in the post. Not to scale.

*1) wall: carbyne is a high tech carbon fiber of 1D carbon bond with triple bonds. Can be used to reinforce other mats and a single string (1 atom wide) has a strength similar to a full nanotube (tensile, 0 compressive strength as any rope). I cant think of a better material to resist this, the best compressive material reinforced with the best tensile, but Im not material scientist. The wall is several cm thick, a good fraction of  meter and the cooling fluid is injected radially to absorb some stress.

*2) Compressor (aka sD railguns): at least 4 railguns shooting micro pellets (cell sized at biggest) of cryo metalic D to the pressure vessel. As they are so small come relativistic, but the huge amount of superfluid He3 absorbs all the heat without stopping the mD. Speed finely tuned so dont ignite the pellet nor the metal. Also they dont punch directly but tangential to minimize relatve velocity, bouncing a few times and disperse kE uniformly around the blob. Only shooted when not extracting, for volatility reasons.

I think 1.25m, scalable 1 time up and down, and then a new design is needed...

How a rocket may look like. Note thats a hi tech space tug made probably to brachistochrone cargo delivery. The reactor aint a muon cat, was intended to be unespecified, but went out like that (I take the oportunity to say that muon cat should give CP and let the gammas scape, shadow shielded). Forget the upper right corner, didnt think it would be so long. Energy comes from the mag nozzle. Li6H blanket is always good, and we need a dense, hi pressure coolant (dont worry, at this pressure almost anything should be a supercrytical fluid).

 

7 hours ago, AntaresMC said:

This should be an open thread, Im sure a material scientist or astrophysicist would help a lot. Only I know is a few papers about white dwarves or around that let a portion to the expected DM properties, and some about UDD.

Ive got a specialized storage device may look like this:

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Or more probably be shielded, like this:

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The individual spheres: 

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Layered (the circles are spheres, ok?)

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The images are in the spoilers, they are too big. This should contain 19 shots of the generator/inyector above, but need the other part to break it in usable chunks, unless you make an engine that works on that shots (read Orion^2). Thats quite a lot of tonnes of easily igniteable fusion fuel (read nukes). Dry mass and energy cost? No idea, but a mass ratio of less than 2 isnt so far away (please dont aply the kerbal mass ratios). Energy cost no idea, but quite a lot. Let it to balance until I find how much pressure is needed. Mabe a slider in where less energy cost but more loses and WasteHeat?

Have an even more kerbal idea, post it if get a way to be reasonable.

I might have started to design seriously...

Edited May 29, 2020 by AntaresMC

[AntaresMC]

Here Im gonna post ideas to try to contain, store and use marbles with hundeds Kg of highly unstable fusion explosives that will waporize your ship unless you burn them quick, slow, cold and pressurized enough. Im talking on seconds, %s od a percent per sec, supercryogenically (the colder the better) and diamond avil pressures SQUARED.

Im not material scientist nor astrophisicist bu I wouldn recommend having a white dwarf in your house! Ill try in your ship. Im just a super nerd and its quite at the ege of my understanding, so if Im wrong correct me, as I will be building above previous blocks.

Also Im making the best assumptions and assuming the most convenient model: an ultradense supersolid that dont instantly explode provided pressurized and cold enough.

I dunno the exact numbers, ax there are little studied (at lest are difficult to find) and all  have mostly a different theory when it comes to numbers, so I will let it to game balance to find the answer...

Edited May 29, 2020 by AntaresMC

[AntaresMC]

Ok, a really kerbal engine:

Spoiler

This is not a definitive design, just a sketch, and if I knew of CGI would make an actual model.

The shock absorbers are Orion style at least.

Note that we are burning a lot of tens of Kg of fusion fuel each pulse, and a pulse more than once per sec is desirable which gives it an astounding thrust power of several TeraWatts! Using dD as fuel is recommended He3 as propellant instead of He4, as it fuses as well, and aneutronically, meaning less heat to our poor engine... Can burn only fusion fuel without propellant, and still gets torchlike thrust. Lets say 1/2Ms probably more (theoretical max around 8e5s). Depending on its pulse rate, so heat cap, so radiators, you can get more or less thust depending on radiative cap and how may Gs you want. If not enough radiators always can, lets say we need more thust than our radiators allow so we inject He propellant. Every superfluid cryo propellant will work.

We ignite the pellet by shooting a laser to the pellet. This isnt an IC laser, we only need to heat it up untill around 400K or mabe less to make it do BOOM.

There's almost no unburnt fuel less (unless you consider fuel the fusable He3 propellant, as most He3 is unburnt).

Also in this example you only get around 104 charges + He prop assuming 2 5m wide tanks (will explain the tanks later). But each charge is like a nuke, not a orion nuke, but one with the yiel of a small thermonuclear weapon. Good fractions of a megaton. If detonated if detonated 400m from the nozzle, will give 1/1600 of its heat, or a 1/16 of a %, but require a 4800× more powerful nozzle, or 1600× if we reduce efficiency by a factor of 20 (unacceptable). So we need distance to reduce heat, closeness for a efficient nozzle, ablator to smooth the heat shock, radiators to cool down between pulses and a lot of thermal mass to withstand the pulse in the first place.

Thermal mass: we can use the all mass in the He tank. The more thermal mass the less distance/ablator required.

Ablator: extra propellant and the cheapest in terms of mass. Can only withstand so many shots and its hard to replace. The more ablator the less of all but closeness, so a good pick for not so long trips.

Radiators: obvious. No one playing KSPIE will doubt. But other cooling is needed as if not there would be too much time between pulses.

Distance: the most the nozzle allows you. The more, the less heat but less energy to pick and more to use. Since ignition lasers arent virtually any cost at all, youll can go further than Kerbstein or OPdalus. 

Closeness: the most heat allows you. Same but inverse to the distance. The nozzle loses power cubed, the heat squared...

This is NOT a all in one engine, you'll need another, smaller engine like a kerbstein to do fine ajustments, since this may cancel 1/2Km/s in a blow. Did you think Orion was kerbal? You dont know me.

Any questions? Not kerbal enough? Shadow shield, enough shock absorbers and other safety features not included.