Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Starships: Fisics and Stealthed Jump Drives

I can't recall, what form of signal does a jump flash send? Is it visible?

Could it be jump a gravitational pulse from the jump drive, or a glimpse of the hyperspace dimension, as it spits out a foreign body?

Theoretically, if the jump drive is no longer sucking power after slipping into hyperspace, there can be no energy signature from it, unless some energy residue prevails for a week, and evaporates the moment it re-enters normal space.

I guess if you can mask that pulse, or energy flash, you have a stealthed jump drive.

If it's a glimpse of another dimension, than the jump drive just creates a minimal sized hole.

 

[wbnc]

Starships: Fisics and Stealthed Jump Drives

I can't recall, what form of signal does a jump flash send? Is it visible?

Could it be jump a gravitational pulse from the jump drive, or a glimpse of the hyperspace dimension, as it spits out a foreign body?

Theoretically, if the jump drive is no longer sucking power after slipping into hyperspace, there can be no energy signature from it, unless some energy residue prevails for a week, and evaporates the moment it re-enters normal space.

I guess if you can mask that pulse, or energy flash, you have a stealthed jump drive.

If it's a glimpse of another dimension, than the jump drive just creates a minimal sized hole.

I have always visualized entry and exit from Jump space as being rather noisy on the EM frequencies, with a bit of visual noise to boot. when the jump bubble spits out the ship it also spits out the gas, or other particles injected into it to inflate it...

a stealth drive would be set up in a way that those EM frequencies appear to be a more natural signal, say something that might be mistaken for a signature of a gamma ray burst, or supernova which happen randomly. couple that with jumping in at the very fringes of the system, or near a natural source of radio and thermal energy such as an out gas giant or Neptune/Uranus sized world and a computerized filter might have trouble telling it's a manufactured signal.

since humans would not be listening to the raw feed from a surveillance system, viewing the data only after it's been through several layers of filters, and automated detection subroutines. There is a likelihood that if the computer thought the signal was background signal the computer might not alert the operator to the presence of a potential artificial signal.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and Propulsion

Moving on.

Starships, assuming they don't misjump, just need acceleration factor one, and assuming speed is now capped at factor nine, have a shuttle onboard rated at that acceleration for interplanetary traffic.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments and Modular Missiles

https://youtu.be/If4JGx4MAQc

Modify payload, sensors, range and speed as you engage.

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Armaments and Modular Missiles

https://youtu.be/If4JGx4MAQc


Modify payload, sensors, range and speed as you engage.

now thats a nasty system to have to counter...air to ground, air to air, surface to surface...

And here's a demonstration of a triple missile turret in action...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo86Sy7_kuw

 

[Condottiere]

That you could shoot off a bunch of missiles in second bursts was never in question, just what the turrets did with the rest of the six or twenty minutes.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and variant Hyperspace Fisics

One neat thing I found about D^D 2.5 was the option to customize your classes, including as to where exactly your magic juice was squeezed from.

It may be that there are more than one way to open up a hole in another dimension, and navigate in it.

One variant seems to be that the ship requires the presence of a sizable gravity well, in order to be able to exit in that parsec; this may allow those engines to be smaller and/or cheaper, and navigation less demanding, thus lowering the chance of a misjump. Perhaps, even less fuel per parsec.

 

[wbnc]

Starships: Engineering and variant Hyperspace Fisics

One neat thing I found about D^D 2.5 was the option to customize your classes, including as to where exactly your magic juice was squeezed from.

It may be that there are more than one way to open up a hole in another dimension, and navigate in it.

One variant seems to be that the ship requires the presence of a sizable gravity well, in order to be able to exit in that parsec; this may allow those engines to be smaller and/or cheaper, and navigation less demanding, thus lowering the chance of a misjump. Perhaps, even less fuel per parsec.

Or a jump drive that has to jump to a midpoint between two High gravity bodies. Such as two gas giants, Gas Giant and its parent star, or between two binary stars.

I use a Hyperspace set up in my games, Hyperspace being of gas, dusts, floating rocks as big as continents.Due ot a small quirk in the physics of Hyperspace there is no native gravity, but gravity leaks in from Real space..which means areas around stars are natural sumps for Hyperspace material. Creating huge reefs, and drifts of debris near star systems.

You can safely exit from hyperspace anywhere in a system. But to safely enter hyperspace you have to find an area has been swept clear of debris by the "gravity shadow" of real space objects. Usually these occur at points I just mentioned above. Or at manufactured Transit points that are created by large navigation Buoys the precursor race left behind Eons ago. Due to the way debris aggregates jumping out of hyperspace to avoid/initiate combat is possible but jumping into hyperspace to run away is a lot trickier..

Which is why people build scout ships..part of their job is to locate temporary eddies in hyperspace that allow large ships to jump out. and patrol local Hyperspace for incoming starships.

 

[Condottiere]

Does Eddy work on a zero hour contract?

Gravitational wells could be both, hyperspace hazard and geographical landmark.

You could assume that in fact, gravitational wells effects are magnified in hyperspace, and create space currents that draw in starships like a vortex.

 

[wbnc]

Does Eddy work on a zero hour contract?

Gravitational wells could be both, hyperspace hazard and geographical landmark.

You could assume that in fact, gravitational wells effects are magnified in hyperspace, and create space currents that draw in starships like a vortex.

Eddy is on salary, with no bonus for on call duty...the front office keeps him busy.

yes I added things like being ejected from hyperspace, sudden energetic eruptions from a star or brown dwarf, that tore a hole in hyperspace..and Black holes create nebulae so dense they begin to heat and neabry become stars themselves.."Hot Nebulae" I've got it typed up around here somewhere Message me and I'll send ya a copy. It would be a huge Wall of text.

 

[Condottiere]

That should be interesting; I'll try to make a cohesive summary.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Fuel and Metallic Hydrogen

British researchers think they have come close to creating a long-sought new state for hydrogen.

They have put a sample of the familiar gas under so much pressure that it takes on a previously unseen solid crystalline form.

The team tells the journal Nature that this phase may be just a step away from so-called metallic hydrogen.

Predicted 80 years ago, this exotic substance could lead to ultra-fast computers and even super rocket fuel.

"We think we've reached a state of the material that is probably the precursor to metallic hydrogen," explained Ross Howie, formerly at Edinburgh University but now based in China.

"If you compare what we've observed experimentally with what's theoretically predicted for metallic hydrogen - they're very strong similarities between the two," he told the BBC's Science In Action programme.

The group used a set-up called a diamond anvil cell to compress its sample of molecular hydrogen.

This apparatus is essentially two gems that have been placed in opposition to each other.

Their polished tips, comparable in size to the width of a human hair, are made to press into a cavity containing the sample.

"The volume of hydrogen we use is about a micron cubed - a size that is on the order of a red blood cell," said the Nature paper's lead author, Philip Dalladay-Simpson, from Edinburgh's Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions.

"We use brute force - a large lever arm. We apply about a tonne of force on the back of the diamonds to generate huge pressures inside the cell."

Image caption An artist's impression of a hydrogen molecule under compression in a diamond anvil device

In their experiments, the scientists are able to achieve in excess of 350 gigapascals (3.5 million atmospheres) at room temperature. These pressures are not dissimilar to what would be experienced at the centre of the Earth.

The big squeeze on the molecules of hydrogen gas turns them first into a liquid and then into a solid.

As the pressure gets ever more intense, the atoms in the hydrogen molecules pack closer and closer together, and the electrical conductivity in the crystalline material increases.

Ultimately, the hydrogen atoms should stack so efficiently that their electrons become shared - just as in a metal.

However, the team does not quite see this phase, but rather something that is probably just short of it.

"This would be a mixed structure of different layers, where you might get a layer of hydrogen molecules followed by an atomic layer, and these alternate," said Dr Howie, who is now affiliated to the Center for High Pressure Science & Technology Advanced Research in Beijing.

The work puts new constraints on where the full metallic hydrogen phase might exist: possibly below 450 gigapascals at room temperature.

The ambient temperature is very significant, because if metallic hydrogen can ultimately be produced this way it opens the door potentially to a new type of perfect (zero resistance) conductor - a material to boost the performance of next-generation computers.

"It's been predicted that metallic hydrogen could be a room-temperature superconductor, which is still yet to be achieved with any material," said Dr Howie.

"However, because we are playing with such small quantities, the practical applications at this stage are not clear."

Another prediction for metallic hydrogen suggests it could form the basis of a super fuel, producing substantially more thrust than the standard super-chilled hydrogen used in today's rockets.

Scientists are also fascinated by metallic hydrogen because they think it may account for a large fraction of the internal composition of planets such as Jupiter.

The high pressures and temperatures that exist several thousand kilometres below the gas giant's cloud surface are believed to produce a fluid form of metallic hydrogen. Movement in this electrically conducting liquid is very likely the source of the world's colossal magnetic field.

Nasa has a probe called Juno arriving at the planet later this year to investigate the possibility.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35237985


Could also be used as a form of armour, at least an internal composite layer.

 

[wbnc]

That should be interesting; I'll try to make a cohesive summary.

Oh please nothing as fun as sharing ideas for gaming

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Software and Jump Control

Calculating hyperspace jumps should become more complex the further you want to go.

The appropriate formula for programme rating should be:

Distance in Parsecs plus one squared [P+1][P+1]

 

[Spartan159]

Starships: Software and Jump Control

Calculating hyperspace jumps should become more complex the further you want to go.

The appropriate formula for programme rating should be:

Distance in Parsecs plus one squared [P+1][P+1]

So:

4 for J1,
9 for J2,
16 for J3,
49 for J6

Or am I doing it wrong?

 

[Condottiere]

Yup.

Fits in with my view that relatively, it should become far more complex to jump more than three parsecs, and promoting unijumps.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and Jump Drives

So it now takes power points equivalent to ten percent of the hull volume to jump per parsec.

As I understand it, a parsec is thirty one trillion kilometres, so let's say that what happens is that the computer programme instructs the power plant to build up the exact power required for the desired length of the tradition.

The most sophisticated programmes, computers and power plants can do this to eleven decimal points, basically, accurate within batches of thirty one kilometres from the desired exit point, or thirty kilometres if you want to simplify it. One percent transfers your starship in batches of three trillion kilometres, much as a full ten percent transfers your starship thirty trillion kilometres.

The dungeon master can make an informed guess as to the exact distance between the point the starship enters hyperspace, to the point where it's supposed to exit.

This would prevent starships on the rimward edge of a parsec, to make a single parsec jump, and arrive on the coreward edge of the next parsec. not without powering up the jump capacitors with 19.99 percent energy.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and Jump Drives

The corollary, would of course, be that fuel consumption has to be exactly the same as energy input, and any discrepancy between the two actually are the cause for the slight or greater randomization of the transition exit.

As you move up the decimal chain, the less sophisticated the jump control programme has to be, and/or less advanced variants f the power plant and jump drive. However, these tend to result in greater variances in distance from the desired hyperspace exit point. For simplicity, an eleven decimal place transition means distance variances would be calculated in batches of thirty kilometres, a ten decimal place transition has distance variances calculated in batches of three hundred kilometres, a nine decimal place transition, the norm, would have distance variances in three thousand kilometre batches.

A six decimal place transition would calculate the variance is in three million kilometre batches, and considered a minor misjump; an eight decimal place transition is not usually acceptable, though poorly maintained jump drives, or badly coordinated jump control system could result in this. A seven decimal place transition is usually considered the bare minimum performance.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and Sweet Spots

While for naval auxiliaries in the tech level range of thirteen to fifteen, this would tend to settle at factor four across power plant, manoeuvre and jump drives, since four is the standard fleet range for the Imperium, and support ships can save themselves three point five percent in less engineering allocation, even if this doesn't sound like a great deal, and actual warships could easily absorb it.

Basically, it's because for power plants the differences in factors jump from half percents to a full one, and for manoeuvre drives from a quarter percent to three quarters.

You could, in theory, attach the afterburner for that additional two factors, but it's the fuel cost and rapid consumption that gets you.

For commercial ships it would be factor three, easily maintainable and repairable at tech level twelve facilities, at the top range, and I suppose factor two is still competitive, especially if you're planning on dirtside landings.

At least factor one gets you somewhere, and normally, a five and a half hour trip from a planet to the jump point seems tolerable.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Tandemization

As I recall Tee Five, you can link up simultaneously nine engines of each type to create power or propulsion.

If this applies in Mongoose it certainly helps with redundancy, and you can save on depreciation and maintenance by only switching on as much as is required at any one time, most obvious with ships which only need a power surge just prior to transition, more easily calculable as the game system switches to energy points.

Now that we know what the basic power requirements are, we can certainly switch over to an auxiliary engine, if distributed engineering wasn't being used, and it would stretch out fuel consumption, even moreso, if you could breakdown exact energy requirements, and switch off power to entire sections of the ship.

If I were a starship captain, I wouldn't be that keen on this concept when it comes to jump drives, since you want and need to have it perfectly in sync between power input and whatever form the energy takes in the exhaust pipes.