6 ms·
Realistic fusion drive with Epstein Drive-like performance
- dghughes 7y agotake a fictional propulsion technology from [Sci-Fi TV show, movie or book] and apply the appropriate science to explain its features in a realistic manner Doesn't everyone do that or is it just me? I always try my best to think of a way that such things could work.
- ksaj 7y agoThat's how I watch magic and mentalism acts as well. Until now, I'd not considered such a similarity between Darren Brown and Geordi La Forge.
- pmoriarty 7y agoWith the caveat that magic and mentalism don't actually work, but only appear to work. So a better analogy might be between magic/mentalism and those fake perpetual motion machines which appear to work but don't.
- garmaine 7y agoAssuming 100% combustion of fuel is not realistic, especially with fusion.
- rbanffy 7y agoIf the engine manages to get half as much useful thrust out of the fuel, it's still a nice 1g all the way to your destination. Still quite a revolution. How much would be realistic?
- garmaine 7y agoMaybe 2%? That’s based on yields common in nuclear weapons of this complexity. Fusion should be even harder to contain above critical temperatures.
- rbanffy 7y agoWell... I guess even .04 G can be useful... And if we are only fusing 2%, we can bring the reaction to much closer to the ship itself.
- oaiey 7y agoEveryone who has not watched The Expanse yet: start doing it. It is easily the best SciFi show in the last decade and a top contender for best SciFi show ever. It has a slow start but is increasing pace and when you realize you are being watching seasons you are doomed because soon the year long wait starts :)
- MagicWishMonkey 7y agoThe books are really good, too. I need to watch the series at some point.
- number6 7y agoThey work nicely together.
- onepremise 7y agoI not sure how many realize this, but the books were actually written by a team of writers, well 2 writers, in parallel, defining the world, characters, and storylines. James S.A. Corey is the pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Great series too :)
- oaiey 7y agoAnd it get really interesting who their friends are down there in New Mexico :)
- oaiey 7y agoI read them. All of it including Novellas and stuff. They are awesome. Especially once you are used to the chapter by character thing GoT also does. But surprise, New Mexico connection :)
- travmatt 7y agoNew season premieres Dec 14th! Already got a few friends hooked on it.
- jakedata 7y agoThey really did sell everything at Radio Shack back in the day.
- youdontknowtho 7y agoEpstein didn't kill himself...he died in an experiment to test his engine design. Thanks to his wife finding his research material people were able to take advantage of it. Seriously, I love the Expanse series, but Epstein drive is a name that didn't age well due to forces outside of the author's control.
- DennisAleynikov 7y agoReally serious and ominous sounding name. Too bad for this hyper-realistic concept. Never heard of Expanse before!
- bloopernova 7y agoIf you have Amazon Prime, please take the time to watch the first 4 episodes of season 1. And the books, starting with Leviathan Rising, are also fantastic. I highly, highly recommend them!
- youdontknowtho 7y agoThey are so good. Can't second this recommendation enough.
- rapnie 7y agoSmall correction: The first book is Leviathan Wakes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._A._Corey#The_Expanse_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._A._Corey#The_Expanse_...
- bloopernova 7y agoD'OH! I feel so dumb!
- tastyfreeze 7y agoI cannot recommend the books and series enough. Definitely worth the time. Some of the best sci-fi I have read and seen. It is this generation's Star Trek when it comes to inspiration to pursue science and influence of future technologies.
- pfdietz 7y agoIt's gratifying seeing a discussion that focuses on the central problem of waste heat control.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hirundo 7y agoIs it fair to call the Rocinante a time machine? If it can achieve 5% of C in 37 hours it can go seriously relativistic in a reasonable amount of time. It becomes possible to travel across hundreds or thousands of Earth years in a lifetime, like Andrew and Valentine Wiggin or Colonel George Taylor. The travelling through space feature is pretty cool too though.
- rbanffy 7y agoIf you want to go relativistic, you'll have to deal with the fact vacuum is not as perfect as you'd like it to be. You'll need some form of abrasion shield because you'll be hitting a thin wall of hydrogen at relativistic speeds.
- hirundo 7y agoMaybe with efficient fusion you could just push a small asteroid on acceleration, then drop it and use the drive plume as a shield on deceleration.
- dclowd9901 7y agoQuestion: Doesn't this already happen to us all the time every day? Isn't it the essence of all radiation damage to our bodies?
- hirundo 7y agoAtmospheric hydrogen hits you at around 10^3 m/s. Relativistic hydrogen hits you at around 10^8 m/s and has more mass, up to infinity.
- rbanffy 7y agoCheck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle for an idea of what being hit by relativistic particles will look like.
- rolph 7y ago
- rbanffy 7y agoWould the heat absorbed by the heat shield be enough to power the igniter and the magnetic field? Worst case scenario would be to use the heat to power a thermal rocket. Not an efficient use of propellant, but still doable.
- fowl2 7y agoAn "engineering challenges with today's technology" section would be great addition to this piece, I'm sure there'll be a few "biophysically possible but we don't know how" parts ;)