Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

Why specifically Vinge's singularity and not just the singularity? How is it like Vinge's model and not Kurtzweil's or Bolstrom's?

Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

It's actually the other way around. The metals/salts in the battery have an inherent voltage (EMF) differential dependent on the chemistry of the combination of salt/ions/metals/acids. The current flow depends on the load attached across the voltage. If you put a wire across the battery then the only 'load' is the internal resistance of the battery, which is quite low. As a result, LOTS of current flows, usually heating up the wire and making it combust, or simply get hot enough to melt the guts of the battery.
In electronics you pretty much always have a voltage differential and the actual current drawn depends on the load. You can create 'current sources' but they are basically self-modulating loads that balance out resistance with the real load so the real load sees a constant current.

Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

Mostly just because Vinge is the name most generally associated with the Singularity idea in SFnal circles, he's the name that comes to mind for me rather than the others.

Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

No. The chemical composition of chemical batteries will have varying current based upon the resistance of the external circuit. But the chemical action produces electrons not voltage. Granted, by Ohm's Law, the three are highly interconnected but the chemical action produces electrons.

Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

I am an electronics technician, not an engineer. This is what I was taught.

Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

That's true in a sense, but it's a rather tortured sense. The chemical action 'produces' (at one end, 'consumes' at the other) electrons to (and from) the electrodes. But the reactions also point to a specific electrochemical, and thus electrical, potential.

It should be fairly obvious that the chemistry in a battery doesn't have any direct dependency on the resistance of the external circuit. What the resistance does is determine (in combination with the voltage) a rate limit on the flow of electrons which is (under typical conditions) the rate-limiting step in the battery reactions.

Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

I'm an engineer, but I hung out with the technicians running the labs a lot when I did my undergrad degree. I learned an awful lot of practical skills from them that weren't taught in the classroom.

Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

Getting back to Accumulators, it seems the only pseudo-realistic tech that makes sense is superconducting loops. Anything else requires a fair bit of handwaving to explain the energy density and discharge rates. I also wonder if star-trek style plasma could do the job? Maybe store the plasma in rings and draw the power down as you need it. Could use superconductors to help with efficient confinement of the plasma to generate containment fields...?

Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

There are issues with superconducting loops, too, when we're talking about Smithian energy storage densities. Our current physics might not allow for any means of duplicating those accumulators, at least the ones in use by Kimball Kinnison's time.

Actually, given that the great powers all have access to total-conversion power plants by KK's time, the only real reason for them to use accumulators at all would be speed of delivery, and maybe emergency backup. Otherwise, you could store your energy in a very safe stable high-density form, i.e. matter. If you've got total conversion tech, you can store energy as something like blocks of lead or other compact material, and not have to worry about accidental discharges or anything else until you need it. Furthermore, your storage density is E=mc^2, so a gram of whatever equals 25 gigawatt-hours. That's pretty good.

Re: Accumulators: A concept for GURPS Spaceships
 

Apparently the replicators in Star Trek fed off a stock of generic matter rather than trying to create matter from energy from scratch. The generic matter was reconstructed by the replicator which was much less expensive energy-wise. Storing fuel as matter for total conversion seems a similar concept.