Definition of a 'TorchShip'

[Golan2072]

I've recently finished reading the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. Aside from being one of the best and most innovating sci-fi sagas I've read so far, it was quite inspiring in Traveller terms.

One thing though - the term TorchShip appears frequently in Hyperion and it's sequels, as well as in Andromeda; in most cases, the Torchship is some kind of a cruiser/battleship. Is there any definition for this term? A ship with a Fusion Torch drive? A ship that could "torch" entire fleets?

 

[clementk]

It's been a while since I've read the Hyperion books or watched Andromeda so they may have different meanings than the following.

According to Science Fiction Citations for the OED (link) it likely originated in a Robert Heinlein 1953 story "Sky Lift" and means a ship that uses a torch drive, with the implication that a torch drive is a spaceship drive.

A different page (link) quotes from a later Heinlein story, Doublestar, and implies that torchship means a high acceleration spaceship, though it's not the highest.

HTH,
Casey

[EDIT]added (link) to signify the two links in the post and added the name of the later Heinlein story

 

[The Oz]

In a Heinlein young adult novel "Time for the Stars," a torchship is a spacecraft with a torch drive (although exactly how it works is not described) that can accelerate at 1G (or more) for an extended period of time (weeks and months). They can use almost any liquid as reaction mass (in one case in the novel they land in an ocean of ammonia and use that for reaction mass). Torchships are large (carrying hundreds of people) and basically spherical. They can take off from and land on most planets with liquid oceans.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by The Oz:
In a Heinlein young adult novel "Time for the Stars," a torchship is a spacecraft with a torch drive (although exactly how it works is not described)

Does it have anything to do with a Fusion Torch drive (the page is from the excellent Orion's Arm project)?

 

[SType]

IIRC, torch ships play a role in a few of Heinlein's young adult novels, although they are described most completely in "Time for the Stars," as mentioned above. I believe "Between Planets" and "Farmer in the Sky" both featured torch ships for interplanetary travel. The Oz gives an excellent description of Heinlein's torch ship.

I'm guessing Simmons borrowed his terminology from Heinlein.

 

[The Oz]

I can't remember exactly how the drive worked (what the power source was, if it was ever mentioned) and the book is currently in storage. If I remember to look for it I'll see what it says.

I would think that it would be a fusion reactor for a power source, heating the reaction mass for thrust, but I can't say. They never seemed to worry about fuel, just reaction mass.

 

[endersig]

While i do not know what it means in Hyperion, a Torchship on Andromeda has two uses. One, it is used by the Pyrians, a race that breaths gasses poisonous to humans, to "Pyroform" a world, a form of teriforming that involves burning large quantities of a planet. Also, it is a ship that slows down its prey with GFG packets, Gravity Force Generators, then pulls up really close and, as Rommie puts it "roasts us with Plasma"

 

[Antony]

Well pretty much all ships in the TNE universe are Torch ships, they either have TL9 Fusion Rockets with radioactive exhausts of HePlaR thrusters which make a very nice torch (blow torch to be exact)

 

[LordVince]

Listen Young Ones, to the creaky old Heinlein Fan....

I don't know if anyone used the term Torchship, before Bob Heinlein, but he used the term several times, in several stories.

A "Torchdrive" was an Atomic Jet. It was called "torch" because it was "hot" -- Radioactive "hot". It was a nuclear fission "pile" that was run "hot" -- I'm talking a couple of THOUSAND degrees hot. Then, while the pile was running hot, the "fuel" would be tossed in and flash-vaporized into "steam", which was then directed out a nozzle and, viola! A big-assed steam jet.

In one story, Heinlein has the crew of such a ship using water -- doubles as fuel AND water. In another he used metallic zinc -- less volume of fuel for the same mass as water (yes, the reactor was running hot enough to flash-vaporize zinc powder into zinc "steam")

For the most part, Heinlein's "Torchships" were teardrop shaped. The "jet" was at the narrow point, and the front, rounded half was occupied parts of the ship. There was a solid, thick barrier of lead between the front of the ship, and the rear -- and there was no hatch leading between the two areas. As Heinlein says, in "Farmer in The Sky"...."If something went wrong, back in the engine section, then the Chief Engineer would have to suit up, go outside the ship and around to the back. And very soon after that, the Assistant Chief Engineer would be promoted to Chief Engineer." The Torchship's atomic pile was SO hot, that if an engineer needed to go back there, he was dead as soon as he passed the bulkhead -- it just took him a while to die.

MANY years later -- I think it was sometime in the 70's, but my creaky old mind forgets -- as the potential for FUSION power became more and more a likely reality, some writers borrowed the term "Torchship" and applied it to the blow-torch like appearance of Fusion Rockets.

But Heinlein coined it first, and the Torchship is an Atomic Steam Jet.

Thus endeth the lesson, from the Creaky Old Heinlein Fan...

 

[Spinward Scout]

When I first started reading this, I thought maybe TorchShip was like FlagShip. As in "Bearer of the Torch."

Scout

 

[Straybow]

In present and near-future interplanetary travel the low power transit between orbits (called a Hohmann transfer) uses thrust only at the beginning and end of the path.

A high power ship that can burn continuously and thus shorten transit time dramatically is sometimes called a torch ship. It doesn't really take a massive, fire-plumed rocket to do that. At a mundane 0.1 m/s² travel time to Mars would be 3-6 weeks instead of 6-8 months.

 

[aramis]

as an aside:

In traveller soft-cannon/pre-cannon (triplanetary board-game by GDW) it's used for Fusion Torch powered vessels.

Basically, a fusion reactor venting high-velocity plasma result for thrust.

I've seen scifi uses for torch ships as either:
the above fusion drives
coolant-as-reaction-mass fission drives ala-heinlein.

 

[Antony]

HePlaR - High Efficiency Plasma Recombustion

From FF&S1
Hydrogen is injected into the recombustion chamber and the power generated by the engine (normally a fusion reactor, though most power plants can be used) heats the hydrogen to a plasma state. The plasma is then released as a high velocity stream of reaction mass, proving thrust.

Comment in brackets is mine

 

[mike wightman]

And as another aside:

in 1st edition High Guard and various Judges Guild and Paranoia Press supplements (approved for use with Traveller - at the time - and set within "their" parts of charted space) the CT maneuver drive was a fusion rocket.

 

[BMonnery]

Hyperion, excellent stuff. Still one of my favourites.

The accelerations of Hyperions Torchs are huge, 300 odd Gs, and armed with jump torpedo weapons. Hehehehe!

 

[aramis]

I actually liked the JG Sectors... they provided me with a full domain back at a point before Atlas, when only two official sectors were in print... SM and SR... and had a much easier to use 8.5x11 format. Yeah, they were on bleached newsprint....

 

[JAFARR]

Also according to the Hienlien Stories, torchships accelerated over a period of time to 90% of lightspeed.

 

[jhulse]

Many moons ago, in the mid 80's, I purchased the game "Space Opera". There were several types of "normal space" maneuver drives, and I know that a "TORCH drive" was one of them... I think...
It stood for something but that was too long ago, and we never played the game anyway.

 

[aramis]

Nerva is similar in concept to HEPlaR, in that both use heat from a nuclear plant to heat a working fluid and expand it for use as a thrust agency.

NERVA uses a flow-by coolant over a fission core to generate thermal expansion of the coolant for use as a thrust agency, and according to a NASA slideshow (http://astp.msfc.nasa.gov/ast/presentations/7f_litch.pdf) masses 5Kg/MWth which I can't find a conversion rate for 200kgF per kg, or 200MgF per Mg (TOns thrust per metric ton). I don't have volumes to work from with the sources I've seen, but we could make the safe assumption for drives of 2l/kg., pushing a NERVA drive to roughly 1400Tons thrust per Td

Of course, NERVA stats above fail to account for the whopping ****-load of fuel they suck, and minimum operational flow rates, etc.

HEPlaR uses working fluid heated by plasma from the fusion reactor or some other initator. It then uses bsium methods to accelerate the working fluid to high sublight velocities, thereby massively reducing fuel load.

that help?