Phantom forces: In pursuit of the Kannae Drive

[RocketSquid]

Today at the KSC, work began on a new type of thruster, one that would consume no fuel. It has gone by many names... K-drive, kannae drive, kraken drive. Regardless of what we choose to call it, it promises much for the future of spacecraft... If it works.

The existence of the "Phantom Forces" the drive operates off of is indisputable, but great difficulties are involved in harnessing them. This log will attempt to chronologue their attempts.

Attempt #0: Accidental discovery:

The first k-drive came about during the test of a bearing where incorrect wheel placement summoned phantom forces, flinging the device off of the pad.

These forces clocked in at 2-3 gees, but were expected to reach higher in certain situations

Attempt #3: Hints of sucess:

After two unsucessful attempts, a third prototype was gave valuable information.

It moved fairly little, but taught much about wheel placement. After thorough analysis, it was determined that the pusher plates needed to be thicker, to prevent the macroscale quantum tunneling, or "clipping" that often resulted.

Attempt #4: Altered apparatus:

At this stage, a new, different design was tested.

It seemed promising, but unfortunately suffered alignment problems.

 

Attempt #5: Alignment:

The next device was identical except for four additional struts to maintain alignment.

This one seemed to work. Unfortunately, it overloaded and damaged itself.

On the other hand, it did move...

 

Next, our engineers will try solving problems using MOAR TORQUE!!!

Stay tuned.

[Scotius]

This looks more like Kraken summoning altar than a drive. One simply does not summon The Tentacled One to do his bidding - beware!

[RocketSquid]

Actually, my most recent attempts work. A bit hard to control, and sometimes fragile, but they work. Unfortunately, they take a very long time to make it to space, seeing as they top out at about 10 m/s, and their max speed decreases as warp increases.

[0111narwhalz]

Curses! I have a competitor in the writing-stuff-about-K-drives niche! I've been quiet too long!

Furious typing ensues.

[RocketSquid]

Attempt 10/ Drive Mk1: Success:

After numerous failed attempts, a new design resulted in a breakthrough. Using a hollow fuselage and a girder, they had finally produced a stable configuration that didn't fall apart. Additonally, they had discovered a problem with the previous configurations: They were upside-down. They were producing thrust downwards, leading to odd behavior. The new drive fixed that, although it had some stability issues.

 

Next from the Kraken Experiments division came another, slightly more durable modification.

 

KrEx was proud of their creation. The drive flew for several minutes before being ordered out of the sky by the KAA, but that didn't matter. They had finally succeeded.

Kraken Applications, which I am not allowed to abbreviate here, was not so lucky. Their first attempted application was on a plane, the Flying Kraken.

Unfortunately, the control problems proved far worse on the plane, and it spun out of control without taking off. They constructed the Flying Kraken Mk2, but it had even bigger problems.

Regardless of configuration, the drive seemed to rob the plane of control before overloading and breaking. Not one design made it off the ground.

 

They had further bad luck during the attempted space-test. After mounting a K-drive to a truly impractical lifter, they planned to launch it into space and test it there.

Things went well for approximately 11 seconds.

The rocket totally lost control and the drive smashed into the ground moments later. The drive remained responsive until impact, and was activated in an attempt to slow descent. Unfortunately, it was unable to decelerate fast enough to escape its demise.

Nobody knew whether it had responded to the force of liftoff and vibrations during flight, or whether it was simply secured improperly, causing wobble and imbalanced weight.