Which Energy Collecting Satelite Is Easier To Mass Produce?

[Spacescifi]

 

Scifi Scenario: This is based on an earlier thread.

Scifi batteries that can store enough electricity to equal their own mass are used for power generation (safer than antimatter). A fully charged kilogram battery would weigh 2 kilograms for example.

 

To charge such batteries two plans are proposed.

1. Send out satelite swarms of satelites with pusher plates and pure fusion bombs to propel them to an orbit where they can use solar panels most effectively. It may take a decade or so to charge a single satellite's battery via it's solar panels, but once charged the battery would be the most energy dense and compact power source known that could be easily handled. Just don't overcharge it if you don'want it to explode.

 

2. Send out satellite swarms of mini-mag satellites with solar panels to charge the super batteries. Unlike a pusher plate a magnetic nozzle needs a power source, which is not a problem given the availability of super batteries.

 

 

Main question: Which drive is easier to mass produce a satellite swarm with?

 

I am partial to pusher plates because they look cooler in action, but not sure if pusher plates are easier to mass produce than mini-mag.

Let's presume for the sake of argument that pure fusion bombs are mass produced.

 

In that case I really do not know which would be more economically sound to produce en mass.

Pusher plates or mini-mag drive satelites?

 

Mini-mag may offer higher performance overall, but once a satellite reaches the right orbit for solar energy collection it's days of travel are done anyway.

 

So it seems from my reasoning pusher plates may be the way to go... and they look cooler in action too.

 

Thoughts?

Edited March 5, 2023 by Spacescifi

[darthgently]

27 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Scifi batteries that can store enough electricity to equal their own mass are used for power generation (safer than antimatter).

Given E = mc^2, it is very hard to imagine a rechargable form of this battery.  It would consume itself in one use!

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

Given E = mc^2, it is very hard to imagine a rechargable form of this battery.  It would consume itself in one use!

 

You can gradually drain the battery or use it up in one go.... just make sure that if you do drain it in one go that wherever the electricty is going is massive enough to tank an explosion.

It goes without saying that if you were to discharge it all at once, the blast from wherever it was discharged into would destroy the battery anyway.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Spacescifi

[darthgently]

5 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

You can gradually drain the battery or use it up in one go.... just make sure that if you do drain it in one go that wherever the electricty is going is massive enough to tank an explosion.

It goes without saying that if you were to discharge it all at once, the blast from wherever it was discharged into would destroy the battery anyway.

My point is that if its storage is equal to its mass then using all of its energy would involve converting its mass to energy.  You'd need a replicator to create a new battery as there would be nothing left to recharge if you converted all its mass into energy.  And that replicator would either need raw materials to build a battery or the ability to create matter from energy.  The amount of energy to create a new battery would be at least as much as you got out of the first one.

TINSTAAFL

Edited March 5, 2023 by darthgently

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

My point is that if its storage is equal to its mass then using all of its energy would involve converting its mass to energy.  You'd need a replicator to create a new battery as there would be nothing left to recharge if you converted all its mass into energy.  And that replicator would either need raw materials to build a battery or the ability to create matter from energy.  The amount of energy to create a new battery would be at least as much as you got out of the first one.

TINSTAAFL

 

 

I see. So non-rechargeable but still useful power banks.

 

Thanks for the correction.

 

So basically a rod shaped power bank would become shorter and shorter until it disappeared as you drained it's energy.

 

Nice.

[razark]

3 hours ago, darthgently said:

My point is that if its storage is equal to its mass then using all of its energy would involve converting its mass to energy.

That's not what it says.  It's "A fully charged kilogram battery would weigh 2 kilograms for example."

So, a 1 kg empty battery plus 1 kg of electricity gives a 2 kg charged battery.

 

Whatever a kilogram of electricity is...

[darthgently]

32 minutes ago, razark said:

That's not what it says.  It's "A fully charged kilogram battery would weigh 2 kilograms for example."

So, a 1 kg empty battery plus 1 kg of electricity gives a 2 kg charged battery.

 

Whatever a kilogram of electricity is...

A charged battery doesn't weigh significantly different than dead one.  In real life or in KSP.

[razark]

21 minutes ago, darthgently said:

A charged battery doesn't weigh significantly different than dead one.  In real life or in KSP.

I know that.
 

Quote

 

Scifi Scenario: This is based on an earlier thread.

Scifi batteries that can...

 

This has nothing to do with KSP or real life.

Edited March 6, 2023 by razark

[kerbiloid]

Such dense waste heat will vaporize everything.

[darthgently]

11 hours ago, razark said:

I know that.
 

This has nothing to do with KSP or real life.

As Fi increases and Sci decreases SciFi transmutes eventually into Fantasy with no detectable levels of Sci remaining

[razark]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

As Fi increases and Sci decreases SciFi transmutes eventually into Fantasy with no detectable levels of Sci remaining

Okay.

 

Which has nothing much to do with the situation presented in the op, which set up a specific case, however unreal it may be.

[Shpaget]

I don't get it. What do magic batteries, mini mag, fusion and orion have to do with energy collection?

The payload of a single one kg battery is trivial to send to orbit even with 60's tech. A single Falcon 9 can launch all the magic batteries you could ever hope to need.

[Spacescifi]

14 hours ago, Shpaget said:

I don't get it. What do magic batteries, mini mag, fusion and orion have to do with energy collection?

The payload of a single one kg battery is trivial to send to orbit even with 60's tech. A single Falcon 9 can launch all the magic batteries you could ever hope to need.

 

You have a point.

 

Sending satellites to an orbit to capture a lot of sunlight does not require advanced rocket technology.

 

Just time.

Yet sending won't be nearly as long as the charge wait time.

 

See if you put up a falcon nine in an orbit to capture sunlight for solar panels, it would take decades, even centuries to fully charge all the super batteries.

 

Only way to shorten the time is with bigger solar panels that are linked to deliver power to specific batteries being charged.

 

 

Given the sheer mass of solar panels required... seems like I was right in an earlier thread.

 

Just cover the moon with solar panels and network them to charge batteries.

[magnemoe]

On 3/6/2023 at 3:22 AM, razark said:

That's not what it says.  It's "A fully charged kilogram battery would weigh 2 kilograms for example."

So, a 1 kg empty battery plus 1 kg of electricity gives a 2 kg charged battery.

Whatever a kilogram of electricity is...

The extra weight is the weight of the energy because E=MC^2. 

You want to charge the batteries with sunlight in space. 

Now this has some implications. More interesting if the batteries could be made very small like smaller than watch batteries. 
Yes it would make stuff like electrical planes very easy to build. You would also make very good explosives as it would work like stable antimatter. 
Use an tiny shaped charge to  vaporize the battery releasing the energy and you have an 20 mm round exploding like an tactical nuke. 
And you could use the battery as power source until you set it off. 

You could also use this for an very effective orion pulse drive.  Changing it so you needed 10 kg of matter to store one kg of energy would not change this significantly. 
So you get an starship engine but everybody with lots of electricity also has assess to nuclear bombs. 

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Leaving aside the fact that matter/antimatter does exactly what you seem to want (energy -> mass and vice versa), at what point does having that much energy stored in a trivially small package become necessary? Can you just slice a little piece of exa-battery off for when you only need a smaller dose of UNLIIIMIIITEEED POOOOOWEEERRRRRR!!!! to avoid lugging around a planet-destroying bomb in your pocket when you’d rather not accidentally destroy said planet by damaging/shorting/otherwise compromising the little box of annihilation?

Any civilisation able to make such a battery would also be able to make a Dyson swarm in a low altitude, high inclination orbit well out of the plane of any important planet(s) and send the power around via a network of large beamed-power relays, rendering power storage somewhat irrelevant.

[kerbiloid]

Any such civilisation would be finished in a week when a container of batteries had accidentally fallen into water and caused a world-wide short circuit.

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Leaving aside the fact that matter/antimatter does exactly what you seem to want (energy -> mass and vice versa), at what point does having that much energy stored in a trivially small package become necessary? Can you just slice a little piece of exa-battery off for when you only need a smaller dose of UNLIIIMIIITEEED POOOOOWEEERRRRRR!!!! to avoid lugging around a planet-destroying bomb in your pocket when you’d rather not accidentally destroy said planet by damaging/shorting/otherwise compromising the little box of annihilation?

Any civilisation able to make such a battery would also be able to make a Dyson swarm in a low altitude, high inclination orbit well out of the plane of any important planet(s) and send the power around via a network of large beamed-power relays, rendering power storage somewhat irrelevant.

This, batteries has crap energy density compared to jet fuel but its not that bad if you has to bundle the oxidizer. It get better if you compare them to high explosives or you account for the high efficiency of an electrical engine over an gas turbine. 
An magnitude better batteries than today would be awesome, but it would also become an common warhead if as safe as TNT. 
In the Man Kzin wars , the Kzin  banned humans from using electrical cars as they was so easy to make the battery blow up.
Exception is if you need air for the battery to work, Lots of Nobel prices to get here. 
But making the mini nuke probably disqualify you. 
 

[Spacescifi]

On 3/7/2023 at 1:01 AM, magnemoe said:

The extra weight is the weight of the energy because E=MC^2. 

You want to charge the batteries with sunlight in space. 

Now this has some implications. More interesting if the batteries could be made very small like smaller than watch batteries. 
Yes it would make stuff like electrical planes very easy to build. You would also make very good explosives as it would work like stable antimatter. 
Use an tiny shaped charge to  vaporize the battery releasing the energy and you have an 20 mm round exploding like an tactical nuke. 
And you could use the battery as power source until you set it off. 

You could also use this for an very effective orion pulse drive.  Changing it so you needed 10 kg of matter to store one kg of energy would not change this significantly. 
So you get an starship engine but everybody with lots of electricity also has assess to nuclear bombs. 

 

 

Thanks... no need to change my OP after all. You explained what I was already presuming... since mass and energy are interchangeable.

Energy is like the given capacity for how much work you can do with a given mass, but mass itself is like the potential to do work.

Question: I realize you could easily make a thermal rocket with this technology, but also no ceramics and tungsten have heat limits, which limits the efficiency any given drive unless you just do mini-mag orion.

 

I presume in a setting like this, magnetic nozzles in space would be common as tires on cars, since small bombs are really easy to make.

So we are talking second stage mini-mag rockets that are space only vessels.

 

 

Sadly even with technology with power densities this high I don't think you could get van sizs shuttle craft using just rocketry.

 

But you could if you used a combo of rocket thrusters for belly VTOL and a rear pusher plate for reaching orbit with tiny battery bombs.

 

That would be funny..  a van size star trek shuttle detonating huge explosions behind it to get to space.

[kerbiloid]

Let's call antimatter "mass-to-energy batteries", and - bingo!  -we are here again, the antimatter-powered Orion.

[Shpaget]

12 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

presume in a setting like this, magnetic nozzles in space would be common as tires on cars, since small bombs are really easy to make.

Small nuclear bombs are not easy to make.

12 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

So we are talking second stage mini-mag rockets that are space only vessels.

 

12 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

But you could if you used a combo of rocket thrusters for belly VTOL and a rear pusher plate for reaching orbit with tiny battery bombs.

The idea behind mini mag is that it doesn't use pusher plates.

12 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

That would be funny..  a van size star trek shuttle detonating huge explosions behind it to get to space.

So what is it, tiny or huge bombs?

And what does any of this have to do with mass production of energy collecting satellites?

[Spacescifi]

8 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Small nuclear bombs are not easy to make.

 

The idea behind mini mag is that it doesn't use pusher plates.

So what is it, tiny or huge bombs?

And what does any of this have to do with mass production of energy collecting satellites?

 

The batteries can be used as bombs given how much energy they can store.

 

You could cover 20 acres of lunar terrain with solar panels to charge a battery no heavier than a gram for decades on end until it's stored electricity is near equal the battery's mass.

As for pusher plate shuttlecraft, it works both in atmosphere and vacuum... which is kind of important given the very purpose of a shuttle.

 

Magnetic nozzle vessels are optimizdrd for space only travel