antimatter engines partially replace jump engines?

[bodai]

Does TL 18 antimatter engines(100MW/m3) make the need for jump fuel and the fast burning fusion powerplants that jump engines actually are,obsolete? Recently I noticed that some hydrogen is released in a gas around the ship to help protect it in jump space and as coolant for some process.Taking all of these factors into account, shouldn't we be able to drop most of the weight and tonnage of fuel and j-engines for other more useful things(Guns,BIGGER GUNS

) I also noticed a problem with the fuel consumption for Ic turbines(x2)and fuel cells needing Higrade hydrocarbons.Iknow they use Lhydrogen and L methane but expensive fuels like gas,diesel or alcohol come on.this fuel consumption rate is horrible when u think about planes ,I ran across this problem when trying to do an MBT TL8 M1(560L/4hrs REAL LIFE)1.12MW vs. 336L/hrFF&S both editions.I went on the web and found a site that talks abotu a lot of rocketry from nasa eggheads/traveller fans(thrust,impulse etc.german v2 provides 20-40tons thrust etc.),does any body know similar sites for this stuff

 

[TKalbfus]

The energy released in a typical fusion reaction is 17.59 MeV when you fuse 1 Deuterium Muclei withe 1 tritium nuclei ( 2 isotopes of hydrogen). Put it another way, you fuse 1 proton and 1 neutron with 1 proton and 2 neutrons to produce a helium nuclei with 2 protons and 2 neutrons and 1 free neutron + 17.59 Mev of energy now double that to 35.18 to represent two such fusion reactions going on. Now take those same particles and instead of fusing them you bring them in contact with their anti particles converting their entire mass into energy. The rest mass of a proton is 938.28 MeV. The rest mass of a neutron is 939.573. As you recall there were 2 protons and 3 neutrons involved in the above fusion reaction. The total rest energy of all the particles are 2 protons(2 x 938.28 Mev) + 3 neutrons(3 x 939.573 MeV) = 4695.28 Mev. Add the same mass for the antiparticles and you get 9,390.56 MeV. compare that to 35.18 MeV fron the 2 fusion reactions involving the same initial mass as the antimatter reaction. Now divide 9,390.56 MeV by 35.18 MeV and you get 266.92 times the energy released in a matter/antimatter reaction as you get from a fusion reaction.
Conclusion: You need 1/266.92 as much matter and antimatter to make a given jump as you would need in hydrogen to make the same jump. Hope this helps. I pulled it out of my Physics Textbook.

 

[TKalbfus]

The Antimatter powerplant is at Tech level 17. No mention is made of an antimatter Jump Drive at that technology. Obviously you can't pour antimatter into a regular Jump Drive fuel tank. You would need specially built Jump drives 1 thru 6 at TL 17, but you really only need Jump 6 since it can do the job of lesser jump drives.
Here is the list of Antimatter Jump Drives. Its not official of course. I'm assumming that antimatter is 250 more efficient than fusion.
Type Size EP Fuel
Jump-1 1 ton 0.5 20 kg
Jump-2 1.5 tons 1.0 40 kg
Jump-3 2 tons 1.5 60 kg
Jump-4 2.5 tons 2 80 kg
Jump-5 3 tons 2.5 100 kg
Jump-6 3.5 tons 3 120 kg

Each Jump Drive can store enough antimatter to make its listed maximum jump. These jump drives are specially built and will not run on hydrogen. To store additional antimatter for multiple jumps, you can store it in an antimatter power plant each unit can hold 100 kg of antimatter according to my T20 handbook. You can use the power plants as fuel tanks, since no passive fuel tank can hold the stuff. Some of the antimatter needs to be tapped to maintain the magnetic bottle needed to contain the rest.

 

[marginaleye]

Shouldn't an antimatter-powered starship still require some hydrogen jump fuel? Isn't hydrogen required to fill, or support, the "jump bubble" that protects the ship as it travels through jump-space?

Consider the description of the black globe generator in "Book 5: High Guard." If a starship's jump capacitors have been charged by absorbing damage, it can jump without delay, but it still requires jump fuel to do so. This says that at least some of the jump "fuel" is not involved in power-generation!

So I'd say that high-tech antimatter-powered starships should still require at least some hydrogen jump fuel, but the difference is due to a better understanding of hyperspace physics at higher Tech Levels, rather than to anything directly associated with antimatter itself (thus, a Tech Level 17 starship with an old-fashioned fusion-based power plant would enjoy the same reduced jump fuel consumption).

 

[bodai]

I'm going to have to label my posts T20,MT etc.I'm sorry I do not have T20,so the ep thing throws me.Yes,if you have enough energy and fuel you can jump in high guard.I've always figured if you had the energy you can jump,but then again this never came up in a campaign(amazing since i have been accused of many GM crimes

)because none of my characters achieved that holy grail the blackglobe

.The use of hydrogen for coolant and atmosphere for jumpspace seems to be a new thing that just cropped up I cant even remember where i saw it.IN MT,TNE,and T4 antimatter Fuelcells?/ engines are available at TL17 50mw/m3 continuous for a year,TL18 100mw/m3,TL18 is the max available? in my campaign as prototype/government research stuff,hence my post requesting opinions.In MT jump fuel reqirements were lessened as TL went up,I was just thinking I had found one of those loopholes I've found b4 in other systems,especially since j-fuel is required to run j-engines which were described as fusion plants that use some sort of brute force compression to generate the massive quantities of energy needed for transposition to j-space(in other words if your p-plant goes out u can use the J-engines for power in a pinch).If a new power source is found that can replace those engines that doesn't require L-Hydrogen for fuel then a ship would have a huge advantage in interstellar travel times(great courier)especially if hydrogen necessary for jump could be reduced to less than 10% fo that needed or done away with all together.In essence I would think Anitmatter engines make fusion plants(j-lants included) obsolete in all ways somewhere along the way even if the brute force compression thing could be done with amatter engines,I wonder if the cost/ benefits would make that feasible,like what one of you(sorry i cant remember off the top of my head)were sounding like you were going.Anyway thank you for participating in this thread,I will stay tuned and look forward to all responses.Check out my stuff in the my campaign section-- bodai ninviet----babiuk@mindspring.com

 

[TKalbfus]

So I'd say that high-tech antimatter-powered starships should still require at least some hydrogen jump fuel, but the difference is due to a better understanding of hyperspace physics at higher Tech Levels, rather than to anything directly associated with antimatter itself (thus, a Tech Level 17 starship with an old-fashioned fusion-based power plant would enjoy the same reduced jump fuel consumption).

Well of course it does. An antimatter jump drive requires 10 kg of hydrogen and 10 kg of antihydrogen. The 20 kg I mentioned above was for the total combined matter/antimatter reactant. The hydrogen is kept in a tank and the anti-hydrogen is kept frozen and suspended in a magnetic field inside a vacuum chamber. Little bits of antihydrogen is vaporised and then ionized of of that block of antihydrogen ice and channeled by magnetic and electric fields into the reaction chamber where it mixes with hydrogen and is annilhilated in a 100% conversion of the matter/antimatter mixture into pure energy. The energy is then channeled in such a way as to bend the fabric of space and produce a jump field. What else did you imagine hydrogen was for?

 

[lightsenshi]

Again, this assumes that a hydrogen bubble is actually required to enter and stay in hyperspace....

 

[marginaleye]

Again, this assumes that a hydrogen bubble is actually required to enter and stay in hyperspace....

Yup...this is exactly what I'm assuming. Switching from a fusion-based power plant to one that consumes antimatter will greatly reduce the amount of power plant fuel required (although this gain will be partially negated by the need for multiply-redundant magnetic and/or gravitic containment systems for the antimatter), but it shouldn't reduce your need for jump fuel, which merely inflates and supports the protective "bubble" that surrounds the starship as it travels through hyperspace. Now, I am perfectly willing to believe that theoretical breakthroughs in the understanding of hyperspace will make it possible to use smaller "bubbles" (or "bubbles" that require less gaseous hydrogen for "inflation") but that's not directly related to using antimatter as a power source instead of fusion.

 

[bodai]

I guess what i really need is a power amount to enter jump space since a ship has 2 power plants.A jump engine(short term high output) and a power plant(continuous).A jump engine opens jump space with a large amount of power in a short time frame I would assume a sufficiently large enough engien could replace the jump engine,I guess im thinking loophole here,especially since antimatter engines produce so much power 50-100mw perm3 continuously as compared to 1-6mwm3 for fusion.

 

[far-trader]

Well I'm not sure this is where you're hoping to go but let's see what you think. The more I think about it the more I'm convinced the fuel is as much for the Jump bubble as the initial tear. Maybe this could tie in with the T20 optional rule for 50% Jump fuel. For no other reason then the related breakthrough that allows drop tanks let's say the 50% deal comes with TL15 construction too.

So, you need 50% of the normal fuel, onboard or in drop tanks for the Jump bubble. That being 30% for creation and 20% for maintaining it through Jump. In earlier construction levels you need the extra 50% of fuel for the hot and fast burn for the high energy to create the tear and convert the initial 30% for the bubble. The TL15 Jump drives, while being the same size and cost, are much more efficient in the powering of the grid for the initial tear and the fuel conversion to plasma for the bubble. In fact all you need is the calculated EP requirement, supplied by any powerplant.

This idea does get away from the zero fuel Jump some might be looking for but it seems more reasonably balanced, at least to me, at first glance anyway

 

[TKalbfus]

My impression was that an initial amount of hydrogen was fused to get into Jump space while additional amounts of jump fuel is fused to generate the energy required to maintain the jump bubble around the ship. Energy is energy, it doesn't matter whether that energy comes from hydrogen fusion or some other source. An antimatter Jump drive could therefore replace a regular jump drive. But lets say I'm wrong, and that they hydrogen itself is required to maintain the jump bubble. Does that mean that the hydrogen is vented out into jump space and that the hydrogen gas pressure itself is what keeps the jump bubble inflated. If that is the case one must determine what hydrogen gas pressure is required to maintain the jump bubble. If the gas pressure is high enough an astronaut could then venture outside with only a gas mas and no space suit. Since all that hydrogen is out there, couldn't it be pumped back inside the ship and be reused for the next jump? One could have a hydrogen balloon inflated around the ship with some hydrogen outside, but most of it inside the balloon. When the ship exits from jump space it still has this hydrogen balloon around it, so it just sucks the hydrogen back inside, deflating the balloon and folding it inside itself. The hydrogen can then be used for the next jump.

 

[bodai]

Time to really mess with your minds,I found a real world example for room temperature storage for hydrogen gas that is 95 times more efficient than liquid hydrogen.I visited this site,and im a little suspicious of his math(id have to run it and although i got an A+ in physics i hate math)because i havent gone through it all, he said there was a tech breakthru(new scientist magazine) for hydrogen storage for h2 burning cars involving graphite nanofibers,there is apparently a shrinkage effect(due to electrical/chemical effects of the graphite) of the electron "cage"of the hydrogen atom from .26nm to .064nm,this stuff is really weird.Graphite nanofibers are hexagonal shaped one atom, 5-100mm long and 1-100nm in diam with a space of .335nm between them ,too small to allow o2(or any other spoilage gas to get in,an obvious safety factor)have an additional quality of a surface area of 200-700m2 per gram(talk about hi tech magic)investigations for filters,fuel cells,and hi def+ plasma tvs are being investigated,some catalytic reactions for a specific alcohol are being reported at 100% with GNF as opposed to 79% with current techniques.The communitiy is excited about the use of less platinum in the fuel cells for the shuttle 5%by wt instead of 25% a significant price savings.
Sorry back to the hydrogen storage with Gnf(graphitenanofibers)gas hydrogen is pumped into the GNF at 120 atmos,the atoms shrink giving you 95x the storage of liquid hydrogen(1m3 of GNF=2200kg and can retain 6600kg of h2(25%to75%ratio max,so far),or the equivalent of 89.1m3 of liquidh2 in 1m3),the container is kept at 40 atmos to prevent leakage.His site www.caco.demon.co.uk/2300ad/Power.html suggests 1m3=2.5t(empty GNF) 8.5t full(6t H2)=lv1800
He probably explains it better than me and says its scalable up or down and he figured in a shell and compression equipment and calls it aGNF cartridge, enjoy. this is gonna really help my liquid hydrogen lo tech vehicles ,IC turbines use too much fuel as it is ,not counting the obvious error in the fire fusion and steel rules.

 

[bodai]

And you thought that T4 wasnt good for anything.

T4 Fire,Fusion and Steel pg12

"the energy required to initiate a jump is equal to 64MJ per m3 per parsec jumped .This energy must be provided to the drive in an hour or less(meaning that a starship must have .018MW of pwerplant perm3 per jump number )."

Additionally hydrogen must used to create a bubble of gas to protect the ship and a sufficient amount of pwer must be available to support the jump bubble itself equal to .018MW per m3 per jump number ...this appears to be a typo the same amount of power is necessary to retain the jump as to initiate it?I would think tath more pwer was neede to rip open space and samller amount would be needed to transfer between jump point -space-jump point and of course if you dont maintaint it it collapses

 

[Sophiathegreen]

I never like the 10 % fuel needed for each jump of the jump drive in classical traveller that you mean you need 60 % of your displacement ton as fuel. With fuel wasteage like that I would think Starship companies and merchant companies along with government would carry out research to reduce the amount of fuel need to what say 5 % per jump. I use the 1 % ruler in my past classical traveller camp.

 

[TKalbfus]

Why do they have to make it so complicated? Why not just require X amount of energy to make the jump and Y amount of energy to maintain it. It just turns out that a chemical or fission reactor can't generate X amount of energy, you need something like fusion to create X amount of energy. Antimatter goes one better than fusion, therefore with the higher technology of antimatter power generation you do away with the fusion fuel storage requirements, this means you can make one jump right after another, it also means that you can have a jump 6 starship with manuevering capability rather than being stuck with an X-boat, and why not? Its a higher tech level, you should be able to do more with a higher level of technology.