Different types of interstellar rated engines

[ChubbyCat]

We know about the Daedalus style engine. And from inference we can assume that there will be other interstellar engines in the game than just that one. I wonder if the other interstellar engines will just be slight variations, or differently sized versions of the Daedalus. But I also wonder if there will be entirely different types of interstellar engines, that are completely different, and that use a totally different fuel/ method for moving between stars. 

[SciMan]

In general you have only 2 choices for an interstellar-class drive system.

Fusion (like the Daedalus, or not!), and Antimatter.

Personally, I'd like the Daedalus drive to be just the first one we ever get.

There's several other kinds of proposed interstellar-capable fusion drive systems out there, if you care to look on Google or the Atomic Rockets website.

And then there's the Antimatter drives. Provided that you have the infrastructure to supply the vast quantities of Antimatter (usually as anti-hydrogen), these are what you would REALLY like to use to travel between the stars at high speeds or with high payloads.

After all, the only thing that has higher specific impulse than an antimatter rocket is literally a photon rocket, and since you're going to need to carry matter to make energy to create those photons anyways, you're probably still going to need that antimatter in any case, in which case why not just simplify the drive and use the reaction products of the antimatter reaction directly for thrust in the first place?

[The Aziz]

Highly depends on what this thing is:

It's (almost) clearly an interstellar ship, but the engine in tiny compared to the Crucible.

[Pthigrivi]

If you can I'd check out Nertea's (excellent) Far Future Technologies mod too if you want to play around with a few of these types of engines. Plus nuclear salt water (one of my current faves).

 

[Axelord FTW]

Yeah, NSW is the... birdy.

As for what the engine, it can't be pellet-driven considering the large spherical tanks. The large radiation shield is a hint, but what exact flavor of exotic drive we can't say.

[Zaffre]

Particularly high end fission engines (think Medusa which is Orion but a forward sail, and highly enriched NSWR/LSWR) and perhaps a breed of electric engine (laser or plasma sail?) will likely be the first interstellar-grade propulsion units we get. Then bigger fusion would come along, I'd imagine. Antimatter? Don't bank on it. Because A. blasted stuff is hard to produce and B. it's freakin' antimatter. Yet it remains a possibility since we've seen metallic hydrogen, but we've yet to see antimatter engines.

7 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Highly depends on what this thing is:

It's (almost) clearly an interstellar ship, but the engine in tiny compared to the Crucible.

It's entirely possible this is a large interplanetary vessel heading out from its base. It reads like one at first, but this could also be interstellar, albeit a somewhat lower grade one. Though... I don't see a shield at the front. Perhaps one traveling across a binary star system? Looks to me like a Z-pinch magnetic confinement engine or something along that vein. Those are not super high-octane like the all too common Daedalus engine that may be our "crucible" motor.

[The Aziz]

I checked, and that ship is almost identical to the one seen in the first trailer - at the end, Merble lander undocks from it. Plus you can kinda see the engine up close, but it's still unclear what it is.

[Timmon26]

17 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Highly depends on what this thing is:

It's (almost) clearly an interstellar ship, but the engine is tiny compared to the Crucible.

10 hours ago, Zaffre said:

It's entirely possible this is a large interplanetary vessel heading out from its base. It reads like one at first, but this could also be interstellar, albeit a somewhat lower grade one. Though... I don't see a shield at the front. Perhaps one traveling across a binary star system? Looks to me like a Z-pinch magnetic confinement engine or something along that vein. Those are not super high-octane like the all too common Daedalus engine that may be our "crucible" motor.

It definitely looks like a Z-pinch engine. If you look close you can see the ring of capacitor modules like in the HOPE design.

Atomic Rockets says these get ~38 KN thrust at ~19,000 seconds I_sp, vs Daedalus' 7.5 MN at 1 million seconds. That suggests an interplanetary ship. 

[Zaffre]

3 hours ago, Timmon26 said:

It definitely looks like a Z-pinch engine. If you look close you can see the ring of capacitor modules like in the HOPE design.

Atomic Rockets says these get ~38 KN thrust at ~19,000 seconds I_sp, vs Daedalus' 7.5 MN at 1 million seconds. That suggests an interplanetary ship. 

Seems to be very similar. Not 100% the same but a similar species of MIF. Curiously, the starship they used in the example animation of a brachistrochrone flight has what appears to be a straight 1:1 HOPE fusion drive. Its performance is trash at least compared to other options out there. Perhaps they found a way to boost performance with one of their guys, or did it for balance. Curiously it may well be a first interstellar trip engine. The system we see it go to appears to be a brown dwarf? No other objects glow pink. That'll probably be the closest system.

Of course, this is all speculation.

[SciMan]

Still personally hoping for a beam-core fusion drive, and depending on how much nuclear physics they want to drop on the player, perhaps we could also have various different fusion fuel combinations possible each with their own advantages and drawbacks (D-T for high power output but also high radiation output because of the neutrons, D-He3 for striking a good balance between power and radiation, pure Deuterium for when you just can't find anything else to run thru the fusion reaction chamber (higher radiation than D-T, but mediocre power output even compared to D-HE3), pure He3 (for when you wanna show off just how rich you are), maybe even P-11B (for when you want to use fusion, but only need the thrust of an ion engine, so it's great for things like fast interplanetary scouting and/or resource/landing site scanning probes), that kind of thing. We can probably safely leave out the Triple-Alpha and/or CNO cycle processes, because those are stellar fusion, and the criteria for igniting that kind of fusion is simply "too hot" for just your average fusion reactor or fusion engine to be able to start (or contain) that.

Basically, nuclear propulsion has A LOT OF VARIATION in it, and it would be nice if the game could reflect that.

[Jcklemme]

Do we know what the Torch engine they've talked about does? 

[MechBFP]

32 minutes ago, Jcklemme said:

Do we know what the Torch engine they've talked about does? 

Allows for brachistochrone trajectories for interplanetary travel. Could technically be used for interstellar as well, probably, but not what it is meant for.

[Jcklemme]

11 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Allows for brachistochrone trajectories for interplanetary travel. Could technically be used for interstellar as well, probably, but not what it is meant for.

Ok, then that definitely makes sense why they said it's FAST.