High Energy Pulse Rocketry Versus Continous Plume Rocketry.... Analysis

[Spacescifi]

Feel free to correct if wrong, but if the energy to propel the propellent is high enough, then you can increase your mileage so to speak more than if you fired propellant continously with a less energetic method.

I am thinking that rockets convert heat and pressure into kinetic energy, and what limits them are a combo of limited energy available and material stress limits.

 

What if we could avoid both of those in a scifi setting?

Scenario: Instead of fusion, let us try to mimic it's energy level using lasers and laser portals.

What is a laser portal? You know about stargates in scifi right? Same idea, only it only can send laser beams across.

 

The spaceship engine design: I am not giving up on a proper SSTO just yet... mainly to use as an efficient crew transport shuttle and nothing more.

So ithe dea is that the engine reaction chamber is spherical and also a vaccuum chamber. It is also lined with hundreds of lasers on it's inner walls, and the walls can generate uber magnetic fields.

Propellant: Spherical balls of ice a meter wide each.

 

Function: Lasers from an uber powerstation back on the homeworld fire lasers through the laser portal, which are to hit an ice ball that enters the vacuum reaction chamber through a plasma window that seals the vacuum reaction chamber. The lasers vaporize and turn the ice ball into plasma, which reacts with uber magnetic fields of the reaction chamber to shoot it out as plasma exhaust.

 

The magnetic field is so powerful that it repels any stray gases or plasma from the exposion of the ice ball and instead compresses all of it it rapidly before shooting it all out as exhaust as a powerful pulse of thrust.

 

The fiction: Magnets that powerful are fiction but if we could make them so they could do just that.

A sturdy and thick nozzle will be necessary to not crack under the massive pressure from the powerful pulse of thrust from the exhaust plume.

 

Best of all? Fusion level pulse thrust but without ANY of the nasty neutron radiation or any other fusion problems!

 

It's a scifi scenario as per the usual, but I think it could mimic pulsed fusion well enough.

 

By the way, the reason I am relying on a vacuum chamber and pulsed rocketry is because firing arbitrarily high energy lasers through a portal that is INSIDE a reaction chamber full of liquid propellant just seems... foolish. May blow the ship up.

 

With a vacuum chamber and uber magnetic fields to compress and direct the blast of the ice ball, it won't be allowed to blow up or damage the ship.

 

Nevermind the fact that the temperature differences of being in cold liquid propellant one second and then an inferno from an uber laser the next would likely damage or destroy a portal gate inside the liquid propellant reaction chamber anyway.

 

Which is why I opted for ice balls.

 

Feel free to critique.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Spacescifi

[Cavscout74]

10 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

if the energy to propel the propellent is high enough, then you can increase your mileage so to speak more than if you fired propellant continously with a less energetic method.

That's basically the idea behind the Orion drive - pulsed nuclear detonations with a giant shock absorbing pusher plate.   Isp significantly higher than chemical rockets and still producing high acceleration as well. 

[kerbiloid]

A new spin-off in the Orion franchise universe.

Now with portals.

P.S.
If you can teleport photons, there is no need in 99% of spaceflights, as you can communicate and observe sitting at home.

[Spacescifi]

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

A new spin-off in the Orion franchise universe.

Now with portals.

P.S.
If you can teleport photons, there is no need in 99% of spaceflights, as you can communicate and observe sitting at home.

 

It's also a real time ansible for FTL communication with no light travel delay.

 

I kind of like propellant being finite but energy being virtually unlimited (since it does not have to supply it's own power to lase the fuel other than powering the uber magnetic field and whatever FTL drive the ship has).

Also allows every ship with portals to have uber laser cannon... since they are getting the lasers from a power plant back home.

 

With this technology you can go far but are still dependent on finding propellant. Fortunately virtually any source will do so long it is solid and non-ferromagnetic.

 

Could even use moon rock.

Edited July 9, 2022 by Spacescifi