Discussion of metallic hydrogen propulsion split from another thread.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

The general public is already clueless and misinformed about science in general. Feeding them myths won't improve this.

The general public already refunded the game at the first mention of orbital mechanic, those who keep playing are interested in the subject and will find what the limits of the game's realism are without problems, as we know that no sand storm can move a ship on Mars (the Martian) and that the Epstein Drive is not realistic (The Expanse).

As already stated it's a game that accidentally teaches you things about space, not an educational software, some choices are taken with gameplay in mind and that's ok.

 

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by Guest

[Dirkidirk]

54 minutes ago, ElJugador said:

those beasts deserve better than a vague throwaway line.

YES!

they should have at least told us what kind of engine they are and what fuels they use, Z-Pinch, nuclear salt water, D-T ICF, antimatter, monopoles?

Edited February 21, 2020 by Dirkidirk

[fragtzack]

Valentia recorded on a Jool mission that Kerbal's live a different dimensional galaxy then humans. Of course the laws of physics and chemistry are slightly different than humans. Near future tech is legit in a 5th dimensional galaxy of the kerbals. Go go metallic hydrogen

Edited February 21, 2020 by fragtzack

[Kerbart]

The game is full of made-up technology and physics  that don't exist, will never exist, but makes the game playable.

• Lifeforms that don't need food, water, or oxygen to survive (but do need space suits. Go figure)
• Batteries that require mere minutes to be fully charged
• Solar panels the size of a table cloth can power entire space stations
• Magical flywheels that never need to be de-saturated and can routinely rotate Saturn-V sized rockets
• Remote control systems that act, and provide feedback, instantaneously even at light-minute distances

You're free to draw the line at metallic hydrogen. But do recognize that it's still a rather arbitrary line.

[kerbiloid]

They could also use Xenon Octofluoride as superdense high-power storable solid booster monopropellant, like it was proposed.
Unhappily, irl it's now presumed also undoable, but in game it would be great itself, and many times greater in a pair with the metallic hydrogen.

[KerikBalm]

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

The excited nerd with the beard gave me hope. He’s just the kind of guy I’d hope to see developing this.

Not too judge people too much by appearance, but "nerd beard" guys give me the fear of Trekkies and Star Wars nerds who deviate very far from hard-science fiction, into fictional science.

They focused a lot on metallic hydrogen, still ignoring that the engine is based on speculation from the 1970s that has been nearly conclusively disproven.

Furthermore, they contact an expert, and in the frames of the e-mail I can see the expert is addressing the plume color of metallic hydrogen mixed with water, yet they treat that plume color as applying both to Cesium doped vacuum metallic hydrogen exhaust, and the more conventional H20+mH exhaust. Furthermore, even granting metastable Hydrogen (already a bridge too far for me), I was wondering just how the heck they were going to propose magnetic confinement of something that would have diamagnetic exhaust. Tossing Cesium into the exhaust would allow magnetic manipulation of Cesium, but that's not going to be sufficient to contain the hydrogen. 

Then they refer to *combustion products* (around 2:35)... what... Cesium doesn't react with Hydrogen as far I I can tell. I guess it might at high temperature, but then we'd have CsH, which would have a terrible atomic mass of 133... Terrible, terrible, terrible molecular weight, good bye Isp...

I'd like to see the e-mails between the science adviser and the team, because this sounds like a load of BS to me.

[Guest]

Metallic hydrogen is in, they've invested way too much into it already -- both in the assets and marketing. Deal with it.

[mcwaffles2003]

34 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Furthermore, they contact an expert, and in the frames of the e-mail I can see the expert is addressing the plume color of metallic hydrogen mixed with water, yet they treat that plume color as applying both to Cesium doped vacuum metallic hydrogen exhaust, and the more conventional H20+mH exhaust. Furthermore, even granting metastable Hydrogen (already a bridge too far for me), I was wondering just how the heck they were going to propose magnetic confinement of something that would have diamagnetic exhaust. Tossing Cesium into the exhaust would allow magnetic manipulation of Cesium, but that's not going to be sufficient to contain the hydrogen. 

Then they refer to *combustion products* (around 2:35)... what... Cesium doesn't react with Hydrogen as far I I can tell. I guess it might at high temperature, but then we'd have CsH, which would have a terrible atomic mass of 133... Terrible, terrible, terrible molecular weight, good bye Isp...

I'd like to see the e-mails between the science adviser and the team, because this sounds like a load of BS to me.

At temperatures like 6000 K the concept of a chemical reaction is gone. Anything except perhaps tungsten oxide or magnesium oxide are turned into a plasma. Elements along the first row typically have emission spectra ranging from magenta and violet to orange-ish red

Here is the emission spectra of cesium:

 

and hydrogen:

and finally, oxygen from the water:

 

 

Notice these all have a strong emission in the mid 600nm range (deep red) with lesser emissions in the  450-500nm range (blue-cyan)

when  these colors are mixed we see a light magenta

(note hydrogen is doped with cesium so hydrogen makes up the majority of that mixture and hydrogen is 2:1 against oxygen in water[also not the majority])

I personally believe the pink/magenta flame sounds about correct

 

Also, with reference to your comment on diamagnetism, I wouldnt hold too tightly to that when it comes to a plasma since diamagnetism is due to the presence of no unpaired electrons and in a plasma that would not be the case as electrons would be hopping all over the place

Edited February 21, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[Incarnation of Chaos]

23 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Not too judge people too much by appearance, but "nerd beard" guys give me the fear of Trekkies and Star Wars nerds who deviate very far from hard-science fiction, into fictional science.

They focused a lot on metallic hydrogen, still ignoring that the engine is based on speculation from the 1970s that has been nearly conclusively disproven.

Furthermore, they contact an expert, and in the frames of the e-mail I can see the expert is addressing the plume color of metallic hydrogen mixed with water, yet they treat that plume color as applying both to Cesium doped vacuum metallic hydrogen exhaust, and the more conventional H20+mH exhaust. Furthermore, even granting metastable Hydrogen (already a bridge too far for me), I was wondering just how the heck they were going to propose magnetic confinement of something that would have diamagnetic exhaust. Tossing Cesium into the exhaust would allow magnetic manipulation of Cesium, but that's not going to be sufficient to contain the hydrogen. 

Then they refer to *combustion products* (around 2:35)... what... Cesium doesn't react with Hydrogen as far I I can tell. I guess it might at high temperature, but then we'd have CsH, which would have a terrible atomic mass of 133... Terrible, terrible, terrible molecular weight, good bye Isp...

I'd like to see the e-mails between the science adviser and the team, because this sounds like a load of BS to me.

This is what i was thinking myself the entire time "...Per what study?", "Are there academic papers we haven't seen", "Source pls" etc etc.

I still think Metastable Metallic Hydrogen could exist, but if it did it wouldn't exist at the pressures in that 70's study or the ones we've achieved on earth. Where are the papers showing the corrections needed? The papers adjusting tempatures and pressures for the new regimes the substance exists at? The papers showing this Cs "Doped" hydrogen and how the nozzle handles it? Do they realize how bloody REACTIVE Cs is at ROOM TEMP? That it's the MOST reactive of the Alkali metals; which are catagorized BECAUSE of their reactivity?

And you want to spew a mixture of H2 and CESIUM anywhere AROUND metal? Hydrogen EMBRITTLES metal, Cesium at 4000 degrees i don't even want to see. Yes i'm aware they think that they can steer the plume via electromagnetic fields, but that still doesn't eliminate leaks.

I don't mind technology based on known or reasonably predictable physics, but their entire Metallic Hydrogen tech reeks of nonsense. Which honestly i wouldn't have an issue with if not for them blushing at how "Realistic", "Authentic" and how they reached out to "Experts in the field" to make it so.

You can't on one hand claim that you're being grounded in science; while ignoring all of the evidence against the "Science" you've presented without ANY attempt to re-adjust the models to align with the new findings.

[mcwaffles2003]

24 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

The papers showing this Cs "Doped" hydrogen and how the nozzle handles it? Do they realize how bloody REACTIVE Cs is at ROOM TEMP? That it's the MOST reactive of the Alkali metals; which are catagorized BECAUSE of their reactivity?

Yet we have containers capable of handling fluorine, a far more reactive substance than even cesium. Is it impossible to imagine the holding tanks could be coated?

24 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

And you want to spew a mixture of H2 and CESIUM anywhere AROUND metal? Hydrogen EMBRITTLES metal, Cesium at 4000 degrees i don't even want to see. Yes i'm aware they think that they can steer the plume via electromagnetic fields, but that still doesn't eliminate leaks.

At these temperatures these elements become plasma, you should disregard any normal notions of chemical reactivity at this point

24 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

I don't mind technology based on known or reasonably predictable physics, but their entire Metallic Hydrogen tech reeks of nonsense. Which honestly i wouldn't have an issue with if not for them blushing at how "Realistic", "Authentic" and how they reached out to "Experts in the field" to make it so.

You can't on one hand claim that you're being grounded in science; while ignoring all of the evidence against the "Science" you've presented without ANY attempt to re-adjust the models to align with the new findings.

To be fair, studies are still being conducted and in 2017 (when the game began development) there was an active or at least recently active study going on in france. Im also going on a limb here but at the national ignition facility in 2018 they reported the creation of a metallic deuterium. Whether or not that has a metastable state (please inform me) I dont know but to completely cast this out as 99% impossible tech seems a bit too flippant

Edited February 21, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[kerbiloid]

I #nevahusemetallichydrogen, if possible.

It really looks like a fetish already.

Edited February 21, 2020 by kerbiloid

[mcwaffles2003]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

I #nevahusemetallichydrogen, if possible.

It really looks like a fetish already.

I'm surprised more people aren't mad about torchships... way more game breaking IMO

cant wait to use them though :p

IMO as long as the game is balanced and the physics react in a predictable manner I'm pretty happy, just no warp please as that would kill the challenge.

[Guest]

How on Kerbin is Mystery Goo and going to Jool strapped to a chair on the side of a solid booster ok but metallic hydrogen makes everyone throw a tantrum in every topic?

Can't you just make a "I don't like metallic hydrogen topic" to repeat the same thing over and over there instead of spamming the whole forum?

 

PS: There is already one

Edited February 21, 2020 by Guest

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, Master39 said:

How on Kerbin is Mystery Goo and going to Jool strapped to a chair on the side of a solid booster ok but metallic hydrogen makes everyone throw a tantrum in every topic?

Meditation. Moderation. Yoga.

P.S.
Also there are life support restriction mods.

Edited February 21, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Also there are life support restriction mods.

I've no doubt metallic hydrogen restriction mods will appear in no time.

[KerikBalm]

6 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

At temperatures like 6000 K the concept of a chemical reaction is gone.

Then its a bad sign when the lead developer refers to "combustion products", would you agree?

Quote

Anything except perhaps tungsten oxide or magnesium oxide are turned into a plasma.

No, they may vaporize, but not necessarily ionize.

http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jsu/Thesis/node31.html

"In 1912, Langmuir [39] immersed a hot tungsten wire in a hydrogen atmosphere, and found that above 3000 K, heat was carried away from the wire at a rate much higher than would be expected by convection alone. The abnormally high conductivity appears because hydrogen molecules dissociate into atoms at that temperature, absorbing heat which is later released when the atoms recombine. At higher temperatures (10000 K), hydrogen atoms separate into protons and electrons."

You need 10,000K to Ionize Hydrogen (turn it into a plasma). If it was a plasma anyway, magnetic nozzles would work and you wouldn't need to appeal to some "doping" for a magnetic nozzle to work.

Quote

Here is the emission spectra of cesium:

 

...

and finally, oxygen from the water:

Seems to me that the colors from Oxygen vs Cesium are quite different... the plumes should reflect that

Quote

note hydrogen is doped with cesium so hydrogen makes up the majority of that mixture and hydrogen is 2:1 against oxygen in water[also not the majority])

When mixing with water, the point is to bring the temperature down just enough that the nozzle doesn't melt. The mixing ratio for mH and H20 would be about 11:1. So you have 11 units of 18 MW mass per unit of mH, your effective MW(same energy distributed over larger mass) is more like 200, and Isp becomes a modest 538 (good thrust though, and still better than chemical Isp). If you instead cooled exhaust with liquid hydrogen, you can get that to around 1,100 Isp)

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

Now if you get rid of the water, and throw in some Cesium... if the hydrogen is not bound to the cesium, how the heck is the cesium going to allow you to contain the hydrogen in the magnetic nozzle... it won't. If the hydrogen is bound to cesium, then your average MW goes way down, worse than what you'd get by just cooling with LH2.

This tech makes no sense. If we were to grant metastable mH, then its 2 variants should be water cooled and lH2 cooled.

Also, why wouldn't the magnetic nozzle work in the atmosphere? heat transfer by direct convection? Liquid H cooled gets you better Isp and doesn't have that problem.

This tech makes no sense, again.

2 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

To be fair, studies are still being conducted and in 2017 (when the game began development) there was an active or at least recently active study going on in france. Im also going on a limb here but at the national ignition facility in 2018 they reported the creation of a metallic deuterium. Whether or not that has a metastable state (please inform me) I dont know but to completely cast this out as 99% impossible tech seems a bit too flippant

It was not metastable. The most recent paper claiming metallic hydrogen also explicitly says " Upon pressure release, the metallic state transforms back to the C2/c-24 phase with almost no hysteresis"

And it wasn't even predicted to be since the 1970's, see my post here:

 

 

 

 

[Superfluous J]

58 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Yes i'm aware they think that they can steer the plume via electromagnetic fields, but that still doesn't eliminate leaks.

Oh that one's easy. In the Kerbal universe there are no leaks. They had to make a special part just to make controlled leaks POSSIBLE.

7 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

I've no doubt metallic hydrogen restriction mods will appear in no time.

I'll be a bit surprised if there isn't one by the time I buy the game.

Which will likely be the evening of the day it releases.

[KerikBalm]

18 minutes ago, Master39 said:

How on Kerbin is Mystery Goo and going to Jool strapped to a chair on the side of a solid booster ok

Mystery Goo is vague, and doesn't have any gameplay effect other than science. You could easily replace it with a geiger counter, or spectrometer, or whatever, and it wouldn't matter. Its a science generating part. Its dry mass on your rocket... its a "kerbal" lulz version of some kind of generic biology experiment I guess. They are also very low profile. I'm fine with that.

On the other hand, metallic hydrogen engines aren't just affecting a core gameplay mechanic (spaceflight, thrust, Isp), they are featured very prominently, seem to be intended as a core progression step, and are masquerading as hard-science. Mystery goo does not put on such a charade.

Likewise, the chair thing: its not a core gameplay mechanic/progression step (I never do it, I've never heard of players saying they feel like the game pushes them to do that, the dev statements very much show an intent to push players to MH engines though.) Its also taking advantage of something not being simulated, lifesupport. Its not portraying this as realistic.

I don't like when something pretends to be realistic when its not.

I'd feel much better about this engine if they just called it the "liquid explodium drive", instead of promulgating bad science.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

58 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Yet we have containers capable of handling fluorine, a far more reactive substance than even cesium. Is it impossible to imagine the holding tanks could be coated?

At these temperatures these elements become plasma, you should disregard any normal notions of chemical reactivity at this point

To be fair, studies are still being conducted and in 2017 (when the game began development) there was an active or at least recently active study going on in france. Im also going on a limb here but at the national ignition facility in 2018 they reported the creation of a metallic deuterium. Whether or not that has a metastable state (please inform me) I dont know but to completely cast this out as 99% impossible tech seems a bit too flippant

I'm not talking about the containers these substances are in (Also the majority of compatible containers for F exploit them forming an oxide layer that prevents further reactions upon contact); i'm talking about the fragile scalffolding hanging mere millimeters from a plume of super hot Cs + H PLASMA. And no; unless we're at tempatures required for fusion the chemical reactivity is not 0. It's enhanced wildly; blowing a stream of Cs + H plasma at anything is likely to result in an explosion in the BEST cases.

Magnetics aren't perfect; just look at the sun for an example. You wouldn't have this nice conical sheet of plasma extending outwards; it would be messy with sections peeling, sputtering and otherwise seperating from the magnetic field lines into your superconductors. That's my primary issue; even if we assume they're correct on the chemistry this thing shouldn't be intact for more than a couple seconds before becoming a beautiful violet fireball.

And yeah; i'm aware studies are actively being done. And i'm not casting the concept as a whole as "Impossible tech"; i'm just saying the information hasn't been adjusted for the new findings. Information which would require even HIGHER pressures and even HIGHER tempature plasmas to achieve the results they desire. That's what i'm getting at.

21 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Well they bought KSP back in 2017 so 4 years ago and planned to release this spring so I assumed they was done with the codebase and was now fleshing it out with balancing and getting stuff like carrier mode to work. 
They might had some serious performance issues they was unable to figure out but more than that and we get into Anthem territory.
That is no real plan and lots of redesigns who is kind of hard to do with an game like KSP2. All they needed to do was to make an better KSP.

Have more an feeling this is an business related as other say it looks like star theory is out of private division. 

I'm really hoping it is just a case of "More money; sweeter digs, better location, dem perks"

[mcwaffles2003]

14 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Then its a bad sign when the lead developer refers to "combustion products", would you agree?

No, they may vaporize, but not necessarily ionize.

http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jsu/Thesis/node31.html

"In 1912, Langmuir [39] immersed a hot tungsten wire in a hydrogen atmosphere, and found that above 3000 K, heat was carried away from the wire at a rate much higher than would be expected by convection alone. The abnormally high conductivity appears because hydrogen molecules dissociate into atoms at that temperature, absorbing heat which is later released when the atoms recombine. At higher temperatures (10000 K), hydrogen atoms separate into protons and electrons."

You need 10,000K to Ionize Hydrogen (turn it into a plasma). If it was a plasma anyway, magnetic nozzles would work and you wouldn't need to appeal to some "doping" for a magnetic nozzle to work.

Seems to me that the colors from Oxygen vs Cesium are quite different... the plumes should reflect that

Bah my bad, you're right. Been a second since I've done ionization energies... Cesium will be the only thing to ionize, though everything will dissociate so the flame color would be a mix of a 6000K blackbody (white like the sun) with the emission spectrum of cesium (mix of red and blue = magenta). The dissociation of hydrogen should still lead to it being paramagnetic though on that topic.

 

28 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Now if you get rid of the water, and throw in some Cesium... if the hydrogen is not bound to the cesium, how the heck is the cesium going to allow you to contain the hydrogen in the magnetic nozzle... it won't. If the hydrogen is bound to cesium, then your average MW goes way down, worse than what you'd get by just cooling with LH2.

Couldn't an electric current be run through the exhaust which already has the ionized cesium, which can act as a conductor, to ionize the rest of the gas (similar to an ion drive)?

 

43 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

This tech makes no sense. If we were to grant metastable mH, then its 2 variants should be water cooled and lH2 cooled.

Also, why wouldn't the magnetic nozzle work in the atmosphere? heat transfer by direct convection? Liquid H cooled gets you better Isp and doesn't have that problem.

If metallic hydrogen were metastable could it be turned to to lH2? I feel like that release of energy would heat it too much for it to be brought back to liquid for a coolant.

 

48 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

It was not metastable. The most recent paper claiming metallic hydrogen also explicitly says " Upon pressure release, the metallic state transforms back to the C2/c-24 phase with almost no hysteresis"

And it wasn't even predicted to be since the 1970's, see my post here:

 

 

 

Fair point, didn't know meta stability was disproven back then. Any idea why it's still being persued?

[Incarnation of Chaos]

1 minute ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Bah my bad, you're right. Been a second since I've done ionization energies... Cesium will be the only thing to ionize, though everything will dissociate so the flame color would be a mix of a 6000K blackbody (white like the sun) with the emission spectrum of cesium (mix of red and blue = magenta). The dissociation of hydrogen should still lead to it being paramagnetic though on that topic.

 

Couldn't an electric current be run through the exhaust which already has the ionized cesium, which can act as a conductor, to ionize the rest of the gas (similar to an ion drive)?

 

If metallic hydrogen were metastable could it be turned to to lH2? I feel like that release of energy would heat it too much for it to be brought back to liquid for a coolant.

 

Fair point, didn't know meta stability was disproven back then. Any idea why it's still being persued?

Well like iv'e said before; we've only proven solid Hydrogen isn't metastable at 450Gpa; doesn't mean it couldn't be metastable at higher pressures. Even found a paper written in 2016 outlining calculations showing potential metastablity at 550Gpa. But there's also the point that the reason we're even bothering trying to create it on earth is because we think the interiors of the gas giants are chock full of the stuff, and could explain the strange properties they have both magnetically and thermally.

So any demonstration of novel effects is somewhat of a side effect instead of the main scientific purpose of these experiments, and that's fine.

[mcwaffles2003]

25 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

I'm not talking about the containers these substances are in (Also the majority of compatible containers for F exploit them forming an oxide layer that prevents further reactions upon contact); i'm talking about the fragile scalffolding hanging mere millimeters from a plume of super hot Cs + H PLASMA. And no; unless we're at tempatures required for fusion the chemical reactivity is not 0. It's enhanced wildly; blowing a stream of Cs + H plasma at anything is likely to result in an explosion in the BEST cases.

As far as I know plasmas are in such a high energy state molecular bonds are out of the question. I guess we could say a plasma torch cutting through metal is a chemical reaction but it just seems a bit like semantics then

25 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Magnetics aren't perfect; just look at the sun for an example. You wouldn't have this nice conical sheet of plasma extending outwards; it would be messy with sections peeling, sputtering and otherwise seperating from the magnetic field lines into your superconductors. That's my primary issue; even if we assume they're correct on the chemistry this thing shouldn't be intact for more than a couple seconds before becoming a beautiful violet fireball.

And yeah; i'm aware studies are actively being done. And i'm not casting the concept as a whole as "Impossible tech"; i'm just saying the information hasn't been adjusted for the new findings. Information which would require even HIGHER pressures and even HIGHER tempature plasmas to achieve the results they desire. That's what i'm getting at.

I can't find the source at the moment but I remember looking at some stuff about plasma confinement at the tokamak. They have a method that intentionally leaks plasma along these premade little spiky ends of the magnetic field which leads to an overall stable plasma. Perhaps these could be directed between the gaps in the nozzle? If I find the source I'll get back to you on it.

Edited February 21, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[KerikBalm]

40 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Well like iv'e said before; we've only proven solid Hydrogen isn't metastable at 450Gpa; doesn't mean it couldn't be metastable at higher pressures. Even found a paper written in 2016 outlining calculations showing potential metastablity at 550Gpa. But there's also the point that the reason we're even bothering trying to create it on earth is because we think the interiors of the gas giants are chock full of the stuff, and could explain the strange properties they have both magnetically and thermally.

So any demonstration of novel effects is somewhat of a side effect instead of the main scientific purpose of these experiments, and that's fine.

Source?

Also, "metastable" is an imprecise term. One of the papers I link to in my linked post speaks of possible metastability of metallic hydrogen on the order of picoseconds. Something that will remain metallic for even 10 seconds after pressure release would be several orders of magnitude more stable than the calculations, but yet would still be several orders of magnitude below what is needed. Given the huge energy difference, with our only example being the diamond-graphite transition (where the phase it would transition to is also stable) with a very low energy difference, I doubt that one can just "push harder" to get it to stay metallic.

47 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

The dissociation of hydrogen should still lead to it being paramagnetic though on that topic.

Paramagnetism is quite weak. O2 is paramagnetic for instance. I doubt this would be enough to contain such a high temperature/pressure fluid.

Quote

Couldn't an electric current be run through the exhaust which already has the ionized cesium, which can act as a conductor, to ionize the rest of the gas (similar to an ion drive)?

Hmm, I suppose, but then you'd need a pretty beefy energy supply, and it wouldn't be operating like a chemical rocket where fuel and propellant are the same thing.

Quote

If metallic hydrogen were metastable could it be turned to to lH2? I feel like that release of energy would heat it too much for it to be brought back to liquid for a coolant.

You are right, that would be a problem, but the solution is very simple: Have 1 tank with liquid hydrogen, and 1 tank with metallic hydrogen. Mix and enjoy.

Quote

Fair point, didn't know meta stability was disproven back then. Any idea why it's still being persued?

Because its still a very interesting substance that dominates the bulk composition of gas giants like Jupiter, and has very interesting properties that depend on quantum stuff, and is needed to test various physics models.

 

But realistically, Star theory is clearly too far along and has focused a lot on these engines... they won't get rid of them now.

At this point the most I can hope for is that they do a quick rename of metallic hydrogen to "liquid explodium" or something like that. Plus, since Eve has Explodium seas, you can go there to extract it, but then you need to be able to do an Eve Ascent to make use of the extracted explodium (or make much bigger colonies elsewhere to synthesize explodium).

Now that I think about it, I'm liking that idea even more... call it explodium, and have Eve be a good source of it... because... why not, no one will confuse Explodium for actual science.

[Guest]

Ah, good to see there are a couple of people over here also displeased at the KSP2 devs creating a whole fictional tech tree around metallic hydrogen despite it seemingly debunked In reality as a possible rocket fuel.

Edited February 21, 2020 by Guest

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Kerbart said:

The game is full of made-up technology and physics  that don't exist, will never exist, but makes the game playable.

• Lifeforms that don't need food, water, or oxygen to survive (but do need space suits. Go figure)
• Batteries that require mere minutes to be fully charged
• Solar panels the size of a table cloth can power entire space stations
• Magical flywheels that never need to be de-saturated and can routinely rotate Saturn-V sized rockets
• Remote control systems that act, and provide feedback, instantaneously even at light-minute distances

You're free to draw the line at metallic hydrogen. But do recognize that it's still a rather arbitrary line.

Not really, all those things represent real tech which might have been streamlined a bit for gameplay or aesthetics. Batteries charge and discharge, solar panels generate power reducing in effectiveness further away from the sun, reaction wheels are a thing, so is communication. But is it possible to use Metallic Hydrogen as a storable rocket fuel? So far signs point to no, so it might be pure science fiction rather than futurism.

Edited February 21, 2020 by Guest