Nuke

just move the lights down range abit.

if you are that close to a black hole, you have bigger problems. id hate to get torn in half due to tidal stresses in my own body. if you are outside of the event horizion, you can escape with any regular old boring rocket engine, other side, you are spaghetti. and thats assuming the radiation doesn't kill you first.

thread has reached train wreck status.

this begs the question: how much range does he actually need? "high powered rocket" is kinda vague.

that xbee will do 10km, and all the ones of that model had one of those screw on antennas, so high gain is an option. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9099 xbee has the best options for long range. i just wish their radios had fewer pins (bluetooth has the same problem). its fine if you just want to buy dev boards instead of designing your own pcbs. i mostly use nrf24l01+ radios, ive got some cheap ones that can do 50 meters and another more expensive pair that can do 1km, though thats not good enough for this application.

i use avr but thats just because im familiar with the tool chain.

you dont so much design an mcu as much as picking one (though you can spin a soft processor on an fpga, but im not going there). arduino uses an 8-bit avr (well some of them, the due is a 32-bit arm chip). arms give you a lot of performance and lower power operation than avr. figure out how much cpu power, memory, and on chip features you need and pick a chip that fits those needs. it sounds like you are just sending a small amount of data, so you are basically reading sensors and transmitting their data. so an 8 bit chip might be all you need. there is pic, avr, ti, propeller, several others.

by purely space i mean, far enough out of the atmosphere where the reactor is exposed to better vacuum than it can get from a chamber on the ground.

for purely space application you can just stick the polywell outside and forget about the chamber. so i imagine having polywell driven mpd ships flying all over the place.

i dont have any numbers for the reactor (it hasnt been built yet, nor do they currently have funding to do so, but they have enough to finish with wb8 tests) there are some pics of the reactor here which might give you some idea about its size and mass: http://www.emc2fusion.org/ its not a hulking tokamak but its still pretty big. id bet most of the mass will be due to the vacuum chamber. a pollywell is mostly just some coils, electron guns, ion guns, and a few faraday cages, and some cryogenic hardware. im using the 100MW number from their demo reactor, but i have a feeling we could get them up to higher power levels if the technology has a chance to mature (proves to be viable). there are other reactor concepts that could be smaller than this. if dpf fusion works, you get a reactor thats about a quarter the size.

im starting to get sold on atmospheric arcjets from ground to hypersonic as k2 suggests. would it be possible to build an electric ssto? what kind of engines would we use between hypersonic and orbit. ion engines would not offer enough thrust, mpd thrusters probibly wouldnt cut it (but might work as an oms), hydrazine or lox/lh2 arcjets maybe (if they scale up well). 100MW is a lot, but is it enough to go to space?

sorry, i say stupid things when its 4 am and im tired. of course solid state can do it. its just things get really big and frankensteiny when the power goes up. you dont need rectification (ac->dc), but you do need to use an inverter (dc->ac) if you want to use an ac induction motor. dc brushless motors just switch each of 3 or more dc coils on and off based on the phase of the motor. usually using a hall sensor or back emf to detect phase. you still need high power dc switching there. speed controllers for a multi-megawatt motor will get pretty big.

the software for the agc was knitted by old ladies, quite literally.

if that is the case, then comes the problem of building an inverter that can move 100MW. you will be using tubes, i dont think solid state can do that without letting out the magic blue smoke. at these power levels everything needs to be superconducting to keep components from melting.

energy storage always comes with losses. you dont get out what you put in. batteries self-discharge over time and are subject to all kinds of effects that make using them for long term energy storage rather inefficient. i had some packs for my r/c heli that didnt even survive the winter, even with periodic maintenance chargings. youve mentioned capacitors, these are nice for short term buffering, or when you need to store up energy from a low power source to be discharged quickly. but their self discharge characteristics are worse than batteries. they have a very low internal resistance (all components have resistance), which gives them high discharge rates but this also speeds up their self discharge rates.

the military is for whatever the state that runs in says it is for. this could be "peacekeeping missions", this could be "defensive maneuvers", could be a "police action" and it could just be making sure the trains to the death camps are on schedule.

for some reason every modeling program that i have ever modded on has had this problem with whatever game i was modding. its something to get used to. rotate your mesh 90 degrees on the x axis. idk how to do this in blender, im a 3dsmax user.

even playing purely stock some of the tabs seem a little bit more crowded than others. add mods and it becomes a nightmare. engines and tanks should each get their own tabs. utility needs to be busted up into like 3 different tabs (electrical could use its own tab, so could wheels). modders should be allowed to add their own tabs so they can stick all their parts there. also is it too much to ask for each tab to remember what page you were on last time you had it selected?

yea but then the solar panels and their structural trusses are heavy. batteries are heavy, rtgs are heavy, nuclear reactors are heavy. there is no way around the problem. you want a supply to give you the most electrical power with the least weight. also a thruster is a thruster no matter if you point it front back or sideways. in ksp i have been known of using ion engines for steering using exotic action groupings. ive also done orbital transfers purely on rcs power. im quite fond of thruster arrangements that serve both purposes.

i also own an r/c heli. hobby grade parts work for us but are not that well designed. they are built for mass production and are made more cheaply that what you would see in actual aircraft applications. the motors and speed controllers used in r/c applications are not quite the state of the art (if they were we wouldn't be able to afford them). the primary point of failure in a brushless motor is the bearing. the smaller motors are much more sensitive to imbalance than their larger cousins. as motors get bigger you can start using fluid, air, or magnetic bearings instead of ball bearings and active balancing. hobby grade speed controllers have to be small and light while pushing a lot of power, they get hot as a result and are often designed with insufficient heat sinking. larger motor controllers will need to push even more power, so they use higher rated components, need better cooling systems, possibly active cooling. its an engineering problem that is quite workable.

most electric thrusters are quite small. its the power supply thats big and heavy.

in an environment of increasingly harsh conditions and dwindling resources, war is inevitable. genocide often comes with war. at this point its join up with the state or become its enemy. last place you want to be is on the conveyor belt in the murder mill.

The performance of small brushless motors have lead to a boom in their use in r/c aircraft. Then we started seeing them in sport class aircraft, solar powered research aircraft, etc. This has made me somewhat curious about the maximum limits of electric propulsion which can be achieved. Currently there are limits on the power output of aircraft power systems. It takes many megawatts (mechanical) to keep a commercial airliner flying. Suppose this problem went away. perhaps you have or or more 100MW polywells onboard. regardless of the power supply, what could you do with it as far as propulsion goes? could you achieve supersonic or hypersonic flight purely on electrical power? what about non-mechanical systems like what you see on ionic lifters, would they offer any improvement over electric ducted fans or props?

i have one but i havent uploaded anything in years, no ksp content.

when it comes right down to it, humans are horrific creatures. in the decay of civilization this will inevitably cause, those with the power to do so will horde and ration out resources, let people live, and dispense murder whenever it suits them. forget about suicide booths, there will be cannibalism.