The Many Uses Of Scifi Freeze Portals ....

[Spacescifi]

 It seems the more simple an idea is the more scientific analysis can be brought to bear upon it

 

 

Scenario: Wireless Portal gate pairs which can transfer mass between them.

They must always be a paired. No such thing as a portal network that links to multiple portals wirelessly.

 

The catch: When you pass any liquid through it freezes solid.

 

 

Applications and uses:

 

1. May use this over and over as a kind of heat sink internally instead of relying on giant radiators to shrug off uber engine or hyperdrive/FTL waste heat.

2. You could use it to tansfer frozen propellant tanks... or just frozen propellant chunks.

How in the world can you use frozen propellant as rocket propellant?

Seems to me you need a reaction that won't happen as readily with it being frozen solid.

Or some powerful pulse lasers to zap propellant into liquid form.

Thoughts?

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Spacescifi

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Lounge topic 

[kerbiloid]

Griefers: pouring liquid helium to DDoS it.

[Shpaget]

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

1. May use this over and over as a kind of heat sink internally instead of relying on giant radiators to shrug off uber engine or hyperdrive/FTL waste heat.

Sounds thermodynamically illegal.

[JadeOfMaar]

12 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Sounds thermodynamically illegal.

It is. In a sufficiently hard sci-fi world, the energy demand of the portal (especially if it's man-made) will always produce more waste heat than the portal itself cancels out. And so it precludes the OP's point #1 below.

15 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

1. May use this over and over as a kind of heat sink internally instead of relying on giant radiators to shrug off uber engine or hyperdrive/FTL waste heat.

Thermodynamics says no. If you care about waste heat (you're therefore allowing enough hard physics such that --) you can't have a freezer portal.

Even if we dismiss the need for radiators (which is all too common in sci-fi. Those damn things require exponentially more space, the more powerful or the smaller your fusion reactor is) we cannot ignore these four things:

• Thermal shock. A sufficiently aggressive temperature change will cause a thing to fracture and even shatter. If this portal can cool the FTL engine, it would also destroy the engine.
• Engineering nightmare. You don't want to implement a "pulsed" heat rejection system. In addition to causing thermal shock you'd also need to regularly shutdown and disconnect the device in order for it to be moved through the portal. It's the same kind of cringe as hot-plugging a kitchen appliance, and more frequently if the device generates or receives extreme heat (like a fusion reactor or the warp coils). You'd need to build your ship with the internal volume to hold two of the device that needs to be cooled, so that the device can alternate occupying these volumes when it moves through the portal. Oh, and the portal would need to be really large in order to fit anything and everything that's important.
• Mutual exclusion. Anything that involves a huge energy stream probably requires all of that energy at a moment's notice, and continuously, and will instantly bring itself to superheated temperatures when it's turned on. If it has to be put through this portal in order to be cooled then it can't be running and doing its job at the same time. So... it makes no sense to try to use this portal to cool any vital ship systems.
• Strategic blunder. In a war story, your enemy is going to be hyped to catch you at the moment when you need to and try to use this portal to cool any vital ship systems, or concerning the portal size issue, they can just shoot the portal off of you and watch you melt yourself.

 

15 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

How in the world can you use frozen propellant as rocket propellant?

Umm...

• Make it into crushed ice and let it warm up to the nominal temperature of the cryo-tanks of the rocket that wants to launch.
• You mention a technology concerning laser blasting some ice. This might be the case with some form of Meta-stable Helium that I read up on once. The laser would have to be a stream of electrons of other charged particles and the particular fuel would decay if it's not kept solid.

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by JadeOfMaar
Added "mutual exclusion" problem

[KSK]

Insta-frozen beer would suck and likewise, without a means of stirring the ingredients in transit, this thing would make a lousy ice cream maker.

I suppose you could spray water into one portal and turn the other one into a snow maker.

[sevenperforce]

On 1/28/2023 at 9:05 AM, Spacescifi said:

 It seems the more simple an idea is the more scientific analysis can be brought to bear upon it

Uhm...in theory, yes. I suppose.

On 1/28/2023 at 9:05 AM, Spacescifi said:

Scenario: Wireless Portal gate pairs which can transfer mass between them.

What happened to "the more simple an idea"?

On 1/28/2023 at 9:05 AM, Spacescifi said:

They must always be a paired. No such thing as a portal network that links to multiple portals wirelessly.

See above.

On 1/28/2023 at 9:05 AM, Spacescifi said:

The catch: When you pass any liquid through it freezes solid.

You said "the catch" but I think you meant "the appeal"?

If thermodynamics is getting thrown out the window then I suppose all bets are off.

On 1/28/2023 at 9:30 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Lounge topic 

Agreed.