4 ms·
Combustion engines mitigate that problem by having multiple cylinders. An eight-cylinder car engine runs much smoother than a single-cylinder scooter.
by krasin 3y ago
Combustion engines mitigate that problem by having multiple cylinders. An eight-cylinder car engine runs much smoother than a single-cylinder scooter.
- rpmisms 3y agoAlso flywheels, and I'm not sure what the rocket analogue for that is.
- randallsquared 3y agoGigantic shock absorbers.
- kurthr 3y agoI was going to just say springs, but this is more accurate. Orion (the original nuclear rocket) already had this. I'm not sure if the complexity of the multi-chamber pulsed plasma would make dealing with the vibrations more challenging though.
- adrian_b 3y agoThe rocket analogue of a flywheel is a very heavy rocket, whose large inertia would smooth the changes in its velocity due to propulsion pulses. Nevertheless, this solution is undesirable, because it would limit the acceleration of the rocket to small values. The right solution is that mentioned by the other poster, i.e. to have a large number of pulsed rocket engines, whose pulses should have distinct phases. In this case there should be pairs of engines with synchronized pulses and symmetric positions, to avoid the rotation of the rocket, because the engines can no longer be aligned with its center of inertia.
- db48x 3y agoAn Orion drive actually scales pretty nicely. As I recall, a city 20 miles wide planted on top of a big metal plate was just about the sweet spot. Mostly this works because it is easy to make a bomb with more yield without making the bomb larger.
- api 3y agoMultiple engines, and engines mounted on shock absorbers tuned to dampen out pulses.
- Terr_ 3y agoI have this amusing vision of a rocket ship that resembles a Slinky™ dog, the rear propulsion section connected to the habitable front by an exaggerated spring.
- api 3y agoMore likely you’d have the engines flying out in front on tethers, so like a skier behind a thermonuclear ski boat. Tethers would weigh a lot less than springs. You could also have fully electromagnetic “springs” using powerful superconducting magnets.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]