List of new propulsion systems

[SynX]

On 11/14/2019 at 5:44 PM, KerikBalm said:

I thought that the Epstein drive was explicitly a fusion torch?

What the show doesn't say is what kind of fusion reactor it is.... Inertial confinement, magnetic confinement, beam colliders, dense plasma focus... etc.

"Fusion Torch" doesn't say what method is used to achieve fusion.

Epstein, or in this case, the Kerbstein drive of KSP Interstellar, has the highest TWR amongst fusion engine, probably runs on ultra dense deuterium

[KerikBalm]

Probably not. For such a high energy output, you'd want an aneutronic reaction where the products are all charged particles that can be directed by magnetic fields.

So likely a P-B11 or He3 reaction

[Terwin]

On 2/22/2020 at 10:54 PM, SynX said:

with existing tech, I would say that something that the spacecraft itself aren't that powerful and independent, which a light sail will be fine. also, even we don't have controlled fusion out of the lab yet, but we do have hydrogen bombs, which allows project Orion to work. 

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Beam-beam_or_beam-target_fusion 

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These small devices are miniature particle accelerators filled with deuterium and tritium gas in an arrangement that allows ions of those nuclei to be accelerated against hydride targets, also containing deuterium and tritium, where fusion takes place, releasing a flux of neutrons.  Hundreds of neutron generators are produced annually for use in the petroleum industry where they are used in measurement equipment for locating and mapping oil reserves.

So it seems like we do have commercialized fusion, even for the sake of energy production, just not directly...

[bulb gaming]

pc gamer uploaded this yesterday

 

 

[Pyro_doughnut]

I'd love to see many of the different systems talked about in the atomic rockets site...

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

Not only do many of them make sense... Many of them are completely kerbal and should be a part of the game...

Just to name a few:

- Beer rockets: you got it using beer as your propellant

- mass drivers: an interstellar engine that is powered by simply flinging rocks out the back of the rocket... after accelerating them with a electromagnetic accelerator of course...

- nuclear ramjets: yep those ramjets the us developed which could fly in the atmosphere ready for months but decided not to make as they would irradiate the earth way too much

- and many more

you get the idea... but it think as this site has been a source of sci fi fun for so long many of the engines featured in it should be a part of the game...

[FreeThinker]

On 2/23/2020 at 9:27 AM, KerikBalm said:

Probably not. For such a high energy output, you'd want an aneutronic reaction where the products are all charged particles that can be directed by magnetic fields.

So likely a P-B11 or He3 reaction

In case you didn't knew, Ultra Dense Deuterium supposedly allows Aneutronic fusion, at least according the Atomic Rockets website. If true, it would be the best way to achieve engines capable of Epstein levels of power output.

Edited March 23, 2020 by FreeThinker

[King Of Kings]

On 8/24/2019 at 9:15 AM, bartekkru99 said:

I've noticed a plane flying at 1:38 in the cinematic trailer in an oxygenless atmosphere. Do you think it might confirm nuclear powered jets?

Yeah, me too. I noticed it as well!

But i may say, that could not be nuclear power! That may be a new type of liquid fuel rocket engine, as far as i'm concerened of. This may be true as mars (being Duna in this case), being an oxygen deprived planet, cannot sustain jets.

But as you said, "Nuclear Power". That made me thinking.

I went and done some research, and i found that it could be hypothetically correct, but then it would have so much technical problems, which make it as hard as gong at the speed of light (Though hypothetiacally it could happen)! 

[Stevex]

An alternative method of propulsion that still has a possibility of working is the "Colbourne drive" where the spacecraft is made from anti-matter. The assumption is made that anti-matter would be repulsed by normal matter (Being tested by CERN at the moment).

An anti-matter  spaceraft launched from a matter planet would accelerate away  until close to another matter planet or star where it would slow down. Anti-matter is very hard to make but if a planet of anti-matter was found a manufacturing plant could be set up , making these spacecraft as cheaply as submarines. A trade could then take place between these two types of planets selling ships to each other. 

These ships are also good for travelling from star to to star or even galaxy to galaxy, as no fuel is used (except for manoevering) on either accelerating or deaccelerating. Getting close to powerful black holes will give a really powerful push to maybe faster than light speeds.

[KerikBalm]

You ever read a post, and there's so much wrong, you don't know where to start?

On 3/28/2020 at 4:35 AM, Stevex said:

An alternative method of propulsion that still has a possibility of working is the "Colbourne drive" where the spacecraft is made from anti-matter. The assumption is made that anti-matter would be repulsed by normal matter (Being tested by CERN at the moment).

* I have never heard of such a drive, and I don't find anything with google either.

* A spacecraft made from antimatter is not a "drive"

* Antimatter is not repulsed by normal matter. Like charges repel, so an electron and an antiproton would repel, but an un-ionzied anti-hydrogen  moleculeand an un-ionized hdrogen molecule would not repel. An proton and an anti-proton would in fact attract each other. 

* I can almost gaurantee that it is not being tested by CERN at the moment, and you are just spouting stuff with no basis in reality, or based on a severe misunderstanding of the facts.

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An anti-matter  spaceraft launched from a matter planet would accelerate away  until close to another matter planet or star where it would slow down.

No, an anti-matter spacecraft launched from a matter planet would annihilate itself and release massive amounts of gamma rays, as if it were a gigantic nuclear weapon.

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Anti-matter is very hard to make but if a planet of anti-matter was found a manufacturing plant could be set up , making these spacecraft as cheaply as submarines. A trade could then take place between these two types of planets selling ships to each other. 

* Anti-matter is very hard to make, ding ding ding, we have a true statement.

* If a planet of anti-matter was found, I don't know how you'd go about setting up a manufacturing plant, unless you could already make large amounts of antimatter anyway. If you built anything out of matter and sent it down, it would explode in the atmosphere of the planet.

* It seems highly unlikely that there are any antimatter planets. There are no significant concentrations of antimatter in the observable universe, yes they've looked, and yes they'd be able to tell from the massive amounts of gamma rays that would be released even from the diffuse mass in the interstellar or intergalactic medium.

We can't see anti-matter galaxies, nor stars, an antimatter planet would not form without an antimatter star, which wouldn't form without an antimatter galaxy. To the best of our knowledge, there are no antimatter planets in the observable universe.

Quote

These ships are also good for travelling from star to to star or even galaxy to galaxy, as no fuel is used (except for manoevering) on either accelerating or deaccelerating.

* No, just no

Quote

Getting close to powerful black holes will give a really powerful push to maybe faster than light speeds.

* Getting close to a powerful blackhole would destroy an antimatter spacecraft, as there is quite a bit of matter flying around a black hole, and when this contacts your antimatter spacecraft, it annihilates with normal matter in massive gamma ray bursts.

* It absolutely would not push to FTL speeds.

 

So, in summary, everything you said is wrong except that antimatter is hard to make.

[Lewie]

I just want a huge, oversized, overpowered rocket that will *hopefully* not spatgehtify my poor Kerbals, or attract a kraken attack.

[RoninFrog]

1 minute ago, Lewie said:

I just want a huge, oversized, overpowered rocket

Whackjob is your friend.

1 minute ago, Lewie said:

that will *hopefully* not spatgehtify my poor Kerbals, or attract a kraken attack.

No, Whackjob is not your friend.

[mcwaffles2003]

 

On 4/2/2020 at 4:11 AM, KerikBalm said:

* Antimatter is not repulsed by normal matter. Like charges repel, so an electron and an antiproton would repel, but an un-ionzied anti-hydrogen  moleculeand an un-ionized hdrogen molecule would not repel. An proton and an anti-proton would in fact attract each other. 

To be unnecessarily fair, the interaction between antimatter and gravity is still unknown and I believe he was trying to say a vessel of antimatter would be repelled by masses of normal matter

Edited April 4, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[KerikBalm]

14 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

 

To be unnecessarily fair, the interaction between antimatter and gravity is still unknown and I believe he was trying to say a vessel of antimatter would be repelled by masses of normal matter

Ok, to be fair, despite the consensus that antimatter behaves just like normal matter in response to gravity, the observational evidence confirming this is weak due to the difficulty of making such observations. There are a few dissidents, but the vast majority of physicists expect it to have positive gravitational mass.

I will also point out that photons are unique in that they are their own anti-particle, and we observe that they are affected by gravity.... we would expect this to apply to all other antiparticles. E=MC^2, and we can observe that the energy release from a proton and anti-proton, that the energy is equal to the mass of 2 protons.

They have positive energy, thus presumably positive mass, and presumably positive gravitational mass, and should act like any other mass with regards to gravity.

and the 2nd part of your statement:

"he was trying to say a vessel of antimatter would be repelled by masses of normal matter"

This has no observational evidence backing it, and the consensus among physicists is that this statement is probably false... so he shouldn't go around stating it as if its true, and I will call out any statement that is probably false that seems as if it claims to be true.

Edited April 5, 2020 by KerikBalm

[mcwaffles2003]

On 4/5/2020 at 2:09 AM, KerikBalm said:

I will call out any statement that is probably false that seems as if it claims to be true.

Ok, well I will too

On 4/5/2020 at 2:09 AM, KerikBalm said:

Ok, to be fair, despite the consensus that antimatter behaves just like normal matter in response to gravity, the observational evidence confirming this is weak due to the difficulty of making such observations. There are a few dissidents, but the vast majority of physicists expect it to have positive gravitational mass.

I will also point out that photons are unique in that they are their own anti-particle, and we observe that they are affected by gravity.... we would expect this to apply to all other antiparticles. E=MC^2, and we can observe that the energy release from a proton and anti-proton, that the energy is equal to the mass of 2 protons.

Anti-photons aren't a thing. Anti particles are characterized by having equal magnitudes in mass and opposite charges, spins, and quantum numbers (such as lepton number, strange number, etc...). Photons have no mass, charge, spin, or quantum number so the idea of calling it its own antiparticle is superfluous. Also I find it best not to rely on baseless speculation no matter how popular, science doesn't work on votes. Feynman's idea that anti particles are merely normal particles traveling backwards in time and the light emitted from annihilation actually is the light released from that one particle undergoing acceleration in what appears as a collision in our reference frame is just as plausible despite its (un)popularity and being originated from a smart person.

Also, the fact that a photon is effected by gravity is in part due to our perspective of forward motion in time and times relation to the phenomenon of gravity which IF anti-particles actually end up being particles going backwards in time then they should accordingly react in a reverse direction with gravity as well

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[DStaal]

7 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Also, the fact that a photon is effected by gravity is in part due to our perspective of forward motion in time and times relation to the phenomenon of gravity which IF anti-particles actually end up being particles going backwards in time then they should accordingly react in a reverse direction with gravity as well

If it's going backwards in time and being accelerated by gravity away from masses, in our perspective (going forwards in time) they'd be attracted to masses, exactly like normal gravity. 

All of which is kinda off-topic - none of these have been mentioned or shown to be in KSP2.

[KerikBalm]

9 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Anti-photons aren't a thing. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiparticle

A photon and an anti-photon are the same thing, as I said. Some particles are their own antiparticle.

These cases should be very insightful for the way other antiparticles behave.

To quote the relevant parts of the wiki article:

Quote

Some particles, such as the photon, are their own antiparticle. Otherwise, for each pair of antiparticle partners, one is designated as normal matter (the kind all matter usually interacted with is made of), and the other (usually given the prefix "anti-") as antimatter.

...

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Although particles and their antiparticles have opposite charges, electrically neutral particles need not be identical to their antiparticles. The neutron, for example, is made out of quarks, the antineutron from antiquarks, and they are distinguishable from one another because neutrons and antineutrons annihilate each other upon contact. However, other neutral particles are their own antiparticles, such as photons, Z⁰ bosons, π⁰ mesons, and hypothetical gravitons and some hypothetical WIMPs.

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by KerikBalm

[mcwaffles2003]

14 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

 

Quote

 

Although particles and their antiparticles have opposite charges, electrically neutral particles need not be identical to their antiparticles. The neutron, for example, is made out of quarks, the antineutron from antiquarks, and they are distinguishable from one another because neutrons and antineutrons annihilate each other upon contact. However, other neutral particles are their own antiparticles, such as photons, Z⁰ bosons, π⁰ mesons, and hypothetical gravitons and some hypothetical WIMPs.

 

Among the list you've provided here exists gravitions and WIMPs (unconfirmed particles), Z⁰ bosons ( a gauge boson WITH spin) and  π⁰ mesons (a composite particle). For the latter 2 having an anti-particle makes sense as the anti Z⁰ boson would carry a -1 spin  which differs from a +1 spin z- boson and a π⁰ mesons sub components are quarks each with their own obvious anti-particle. Charge and mass aren't the only things that matter in the governance of elementary particle interactions. In short, everything except a photon has a recognizable difference from its antiparticle counterpart where as an anti-photon is in no way recognizably different from just a photon so calling it an antiparticle is, as I said earlier, superfluous.

 

Edit: photons have a spin of 1, my mistake, I retract my statement

 

15 hours ago, DStaal said:

If it's going backwards in time and being accelerated by gravity away from masses, in our perspective (going forwards in time) they'd be attracted to masses, exactly like normal gravity. 

All of which is kinda off-topic - none of these have been mentioned or shown to be in KSP2.

you did a double negative when I stated a single. In its reverse time component it is being attracted to the earth as any other particle, just in our reference frame its un-falling. But my point overall is this is all in an unknown area of physics and is just as up to interpretation as the essence of quantum theory with its Copenhagen interpretation, many worlds theory, etc...

Edited April 7, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[KerikBalm]

7 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

In short, everything except a photon has a recognizable difference from its antiparticle counterpart where as an anti-photon is in no way recognizably different from just a photon so calling it an antiparticle is, as I said earlier, superfluous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truly_neutral_particle

Quote

In particle physics, a truly neutral particle is a subatomic particle that is its own antiparticle. In other words, it remains itself under the charge conjugation which replaces particles with their corresponding antiparticles. All charges of a truly neutral particle must be equal to zero. This requires particles to not only be electrically neutral, but also requires that all of their other charges (like the colour charge) are neutral.

Known examples of such elementary particles include photons, Z bosons, and Higgs bosons, along with the hypothetical neutralinos, sterile neutrinos, and gravitons. For a spin-1/2 particle such as the neutralino, being truly neutral implies being a Majorana fermion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon

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To illustrate the significance of these formulae, the annihilation of a particle with its antiparticle in free space must result in the creation of at least two photons for the following reason. In the center of momentum frame, the colliding antiparticles have no net momentum, whereas a single photon always has momentum (since, as we have seen, it is determined by the photon's frequency or wavelength, which cannot be zero). Hence, conservation of momentum (or equivalently, translational invariance) requires that at least two photons are created, with zero net momentum. (However, it is possible if the system interacts with another particle or field for the annihilation to produce one photon, as when a positron annihilates with a bound atomic electron, it is possible for only one photon to be emitted, as the nuclear Coulomb field breaks translational symmetry.)^[29]:64–65 The energy of the two photons, or, equivalently, their frequency, may be determined from conservation of four-momentum.

Seen another way, the photon can be considered as its own antiparticle (thus an "antiphoton" is simply a normal photon). The reverse process, pair production, is the dominant mechanism by which high-energy photons such as gamma rays lose energy while passing through matter.^[30] That process is the reverse of "annihilation to one photon" allowed in the electric field of an atomic nucleus.

When matter and anti matter annihilate, they make photons. Photons are affected by gravity. Photons cannot really be said to be matter or antimatter, unless you say they are both and neither at the same time.

While I admit the observational evidence is weak, it seems to me like its most likely the case that they behave like everything else with positive energy in response to gravity. It seems to me like there would be serious violations of conservation of momentum and energy if they were repelled by gravity, but could then convert to energy (photons) which is attracted by gravity...

[mcwaffles2003]

 

18 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

When matter and anti matter annihilate, they make photons. Photons are affected by gravity. Photons cannot really be said to be matter or antimatter, unless you say they are both and neither at the same time.

While I admit the observational evidence is weak, it seems to me like its most likely the case that they behave like everything else with positive energy in response to gravity. It seems to me like there would be serious violations of conservation of momentum and energy if they were repelled by gravity, but could then convert to energy (photons) which is attracted by gravity...

You speak of gravity as a force as opposed to the geometry of space-time. We see light "bend" around massive objects but in reality the light is moving straight and space itself is what is bending. And if the hypothesis feynman put forward is true where in antiparticles are normal particles traveling backwards in time then being made of positive energy shouldn't be a problem.

ref :https://faraday.physics.utoronto.ca/PVB/Harrison/AntiMatter/AntiMatter.html

this references : https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.76.749

Also, using light when talking about this is a bit strange as light does not experience time from its own perspective since to anything that travels at light speed the universe is infinitesimally thin in the direction of its travel, meaning traveling between its origin and destination takes no time (which can be interpreted to mean there is only 1 photon in the universe at any time based on ones frame of reference and wow is that a head spin) :p

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Goodness Gracious; we have no experimental evidence either way that shows how Antimatter behaves under gravitational fields. Even if it had an antigravity effect it's attracted so strongly to normal matter that it's unlikely that it would overcome the attraction to float up. That would still be demonstrable in experiments (It wouldn't "Fall" towards a center, but just seemingly head in random directions until annihilation).

Can we leave it at that?

[Lewie]

I feel that we have all forgotten that in the end, KSP2 is just a game, and we really don’t need to be fighting over this stuff. Seriously, what does it matter? It’s just a game. Chill out everyone.

[OOM]

On 4/7/2020 at 12:16 PM, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Goodness Gracious; we have no experimental evidence either way that shows how Antimatter behaves under gravitational fields. Even if it had an antigravity effect it's attracted so strongly to normal matter that it's unlikely that it would overcome the attraction to float up. That would still be demonstrable in experiments (It wouldn't "Fall" towards a center, but just seemingly head in random directions until annihilation).

Can we leave it at that?

 

On 4/12/2020 at 1:10 AM, Lewie said:

I feel that we have all forgotten that in the end, KSP2 is just a game, and we really don’t need to be fighting over this stuff. Seriously, what does it matter? It’s just a game. Chill out everyone.

No.
KerikBalm loves arguing on useless topics.

Edited April 16, 2020 by OOM

[Lewie]

Well really...who cares about anti matter and if it works in gravity fields and whatever? It’s just a game. Chill.

[Bej Kerman]

15 minutes ago, Lewie said:

It’s just a game.

Correction: It's a space simulator.

[Lewie]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Correction: It's a space simulator.

Ah, thank you my friend!