Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships

starslayer · 12-31-2017, 08:24 AM

Just for some real world numbers on the sort of sizes your going to need:

The already existing supercapacitor:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor )

Assuming that we don't make any further strides in this technology in terms of energy density (which may or may not be possible, my understanding is we are quite close to the theoretical limits already) you store ~200 wh/m^3 in a supercap. To get to a GWh of power, you would therefore need 5km^3 of space for your 'accumulator'

Superconducting loop magnetic energy storage already is a thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superc...energy_storage ); admittedly for niche applications right now, but apparently we could already achieve 1 GWh of energy with 160km of superconducing coil assuming you aren't doing anything fancy with stacking small coils inside large coils you would need 7.345km^3 (assuming 130mm spacing between each loop). Give that massive size for the loop, I think we can safely assume ten loops are possible (so one largest loop and then incrementally smaller ones inside), lets assume that we can do this a hundred times (it would be more like 300-500 loops because each loop would have a smaller distance than the first, giving about 130mm between each loop)- we are looking at 73.45m^3 of space way better than the supercap above, but requiring superconductors, cooling, conversions, enough teslas to rip the iron out of your body if you were unfortunately next to it (which also precludes it from being supported by anything magnetic, or being next to structural components of the ship, and something that strains under lorentez forces with every discharge, and any damage to the not very strong ceramics at supercooled temperatures which are supporting the whole mess results in an instantaneous and catastrophic discharge that turns the whole thing into a self-propelling rail gun projecile with 1 GWh of power. IE this practically needs a LOT of shielding (non-magnetic shielding), as well as support infrastructure, and probably some thoughts about causing it to catastrophically fail AWAY from the ship rather than INTO it, which will radically increase its size.

12-31-2017, 08:24 AM	#17
starslayer Join Date: Dec 2006	Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships Just for some real world numbers on the sort of sizes your going to need: The already existing supercapacitor: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor ) Assuming that we don't make any further strides in this technology in terms of energy density (which may or may not be possible, my understanding is we are quite close to the theoretical limits already) you store ~200 wh/m^3 in a supercap. To get to a GWh of power, you would therefore need 5km^3 of space for your 'accumulator' Superconducting loop magnetic energy storage already is a thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superc...energy_storage ); admittedly for niche applications right now, but apparently we could already achieve 1 GWh of energy with 160km of superconducing coil assuming you aren't doing anything fancy with stacking small coils inside large coils you would need 7.345km^3 (assuming 130mm spacing between each loop). Give that massive size for the loop, I think we can safely assume ten loops are possible (so one largest loop and then incrementally smaller ones inside), lets assume that we can do this a hundred times (it would be more like 300-500 loops because each loop would have a smaller distance than the first, giving about 130mm between each loop)- we are looking at 73.45m^3 of space way better than the supercap above, but requiring superconductors, cooling, conversions, enough teslas to rip the iron out of your body if you were unfortunately next to it (which also precludes it from being supported by anything magnetic, or being next to structural components of the ship, and something that strains under lorentez forces with every discharge, and any damage to the not very strong ceramics at supercooled temperatures which are supporting the whole mess results in an instantaneous and catastrophic discharge that turns the whole thing into a self-propelling rail gun projecile with 1 GWh of power. IE this practically needs a LOT of shielding (non-magnetic shielding), as well as support infrastructure, and probably some thoughts about causing it to catastrophically fail AWAY from the ship rather than INTO it, which will radically increase its size.