[Space] FTL Ideas/Thoughts

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

That's still worse than fission/fusion at the same TL and a _lot_ less reliable than the ones with no moving parts. Appears like a solution looking for a problem to me.

Fission/fusion require huge minimum sizes, and waste heat that would be a problem in any vaguely realistic ship. Of course, FTL isn't super realistic either, but I prefer to keep my super sciences to a minimum.

But true, chasing high efficiency can lead to over designing an old technology making it less effective in the one niche it out performs newer techs.

[scc]

One thing I've got to work out is how fast the original colony ships went. Depending upon how much boost I give them (Which is partly dependent upon TL) I'm getting figures ranging from 550 years at the high end, right down to 37 years at the low end

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Fission/fusion require huge minimum sizes

Well, if your definition of "huge" includes objects that are cylinders some 22 cm in diameter and 40 cm long, weighing about 300 kg. It doesn't really take much demand for electricity before fission reactors are more efficient than RTGs.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Well, if your definition of "huge" includes objects that are cylinders some 22 cm in diameter and 40 cm long, weighing about 300 kg. It doesn't really take much demand for electricity before fission reactors are more efficient than RTGs.

Tiny for a fission reactor and really not awesome compared to RTGs of similar outputs. So I will adjust my statement to that of, "...with safety shielding, nuclear reactors are rather large."

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Tiny for a fission reactor and really not awesome compared to RTGs of similar outputs. So I will adjust my statement to that of, "...with safety shielding, nuclear reactors are rather large."

The entire satellite containing the shielded version was maybe twice the size of a human. Tiny, indeed, which was exactly my point, correcting the assertion that "fission/fusion require huge minimum sizes". Apparently we're now in agreement on the point that fission reactors can be small.

SNAP-10 was an experiment. The Soviets did a lot more with fission reactors in space, with 3 kW and 5 kW models (ten times the power for three times the weight of SNAP-10). They have current plans for ones up to a megawatt. RTGs are used for spacecraft with more modest power requirements.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by scc

Because the FTL drive system I proposed is like the one in David Weber's Honorverse, a velocity multiplier, it doesn't impart speed.

He avoids confusion by calling them "bands" of hyperspace. Even that would clearer if he called them levels.

So lets say that you have a "level one hyperspnace shunt".
You can only reach level of hyperspace without aid. Level one of hyperspace is what's called a "co-ordinate" dimension where every point in one dimension has a corresponding point in normal space. Only in H1 those points are much closer together. Higher levels of hyperspace are even "smaller" compared to normal space.

So what you have on your ship is a "hypershunt" that enables you reach a specified level of hyperspace (and probably lower ones too). You still need to the same propulsion system you use in normal space to cover distance. Weber's starships 8se their "gravitic impeller wedges" in both normal and
hyperspace (yes, I'm skipping over Warshawski sails and grav waves as unhelpful additional sources of confusion).

So I think this is basically what you men but phrased in what other people might find less confusing verbiage.