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Old 04-04-2019, 12:34 PM   #10
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: [Spaceships] Dealing with Cheap World-Killers?

Quote:
Originally Posted by DataPacRat View Post
"Horizon Mechanics" expands conservation of mass-energy to conservation of information-mass-energy.
That's not actually an expansion, current theory is that information should never disappear (hence the black hole information paradox).

In any case, vacuum energy plants already violate conservation of energy, so that's not the issue per se; the issue is the rate. A 1G SM+11 ship with a reactionless drive is violating conservation of energy at up to 9e+16W. By comparison, 1 EP appears to be about 100W/kg or 3e+9W on that ship, so your engine is producing the equivalent of 30,000,000 power points.

In practice, any actually interesting ship drive is a WMD, but limiting your drive to, say, 100 km/s, and assuming you can push on the structure of space rather than producing a photon drive, reduces the free energy to about 3e+12W, which is a lot less troublesome.
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