Author Topic: Safe superjump?  (Read 26996 times)

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #90 on: 07 September 2019, 12:36:14 »
The Scout Jumpship likely asks for a top-up of fuel from any Dropships that want to jump.

A Li-F battery and a Energy Storage Battery are two different things.

The Li-F battery is linked directly into the KF core, and allows the vessel to make a second jump almost immediately.  It affects the KF core cost multiplier, and masses 1% of the mounting ship's mass.

An Energy Storage Battery is put on Space Stations and used to recharge a Jumpship or Warship the slow way.  It can charge faster if it is attached to the Jumpship Warship, but you still have to charge the KF core slowly with it, unless you are wanting to take risks with frying the core.  It does not affect the KF cost multiplier, and masses 100,000 tons, no matter the size core it is supposed to recharge.
So, some of that 100Kton is infrastructure, in the form of not only of power generation & charge storage, but also docking collars, connecting booms, cabling, crew stations & quarters, etc. ?

Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #91 on: 07 September 2019, 12:44:34 »
And power conditioning hardware... don't forget that.

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #92 on: 07 September 2019, 13:06:16 »
And power conditioning hardware... don't forget that.
yes, KF drives are very particular, they don't run on regular wall AC

and, they can charge multiple ships at once ??

Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #93 on: 07 September 2019, 13:09:37 »
The stations can... not so sure about individual "batteries"...

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #94 on: 07 September 2019, 13:21:14 »
The stations can... not so sure about individual "batteries"...
Guess the Olympus has 8x batteries for 8x JS...

still the 100kton includes a JS-sized docking cradle, power tether & reel, microwave transmitter array... power storage, conditioning, transfer equipment... personnel stations, locker-rooms & quarters etc.

and it certainly sounds like a "nice round (average) number", probably quite accurate for the Olympus which is the mainstay of still-surviving recharge station capacity, but there may have been other recharge stations with other tonnages of the same general order of magnitude

Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #95 on: 07 September 2019, 13:33:25 »
Guess the Olympus has 8x batteries for 8x JS...
*snip*
Yes, indeed, at least according to the original DropShips & JumpShips book.  It paid 800,000 tons for 8 batteries...

EDIT: Damned keyboard shortcuts... cut me off before I could post...
« Last Edit: 07 September 2019, 13:35:01 by Daryk »

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #96 on: 07 September 2019, 21:51:20 »
And each of those 8x batteries was designed to service such a high volume of SL-era HS traffic that at least the dry docks had months-to-years long waiting lists (tho' guess that includes DS & JS)

The general impression given is that just about as soon as one JS / WS undocked, another would already be waiting to start recharging

So Olympus 100kton battery "recharging dock/port/gate installations" could service everything the SL had in service or on the drawing boards, up to 2.5-3Mton WS designs (?)

And might require a primary and at least a secondary if not second full sized battery, so as not to keep customers waiting, and be able to service a near continuous stream of often-super-massive SL-era HS vessel traffic

2x 3Mton LF batteries = 60kton ???

Looks like the vast majority of the station mass was comprised of the charging docks... the Olympus was basically built around those, from the picture each of those was much more than merely 1x battery, but more of an entire "pressurized charging dock module" which plausibly could be swapped in and out individually (say) as one entire monolithic unit

adds up

space stations in their own rights, so to speak

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #97 on: 07 September 2019, 21:54:12 »
Being that the "Energy Storage Batteries" that Space Stations use for this exact purpose (TacOps, pages 406-407) weigh 100,000 tons, I can't see how you can justify installing them on DropShips.
well, maybe, as above, those ESB unit modules (from the Olympus ?) were self-contained stations-in-their-own-rights, and could almost already be detachable independent JS/WS dockable "battery tugs" ? Maybe the ultimate SL plan ?

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #98 on: 07 September 2019, 21:57:41 »
I don't know if this fits in this thread, but this discussion sparked the idea.

Why do we assume the jump drive works on electricity?
Could the sail be collecting something else that isn't efficient to convert from electrical power?
Similarly, could the Li-F batteries be storing that 'other' energy whilst the station system is using the inefficient but cheaper method to bank it?

Probably questions to make cray roll his eyes but I thought I'd throw it out there and learn.
just a quick thought

JS could hypothetically "reef" their J sails, angling them so as to "tack" laterally and drift around the JP, out of the way of other craft

perhaps one part of their purpose was to actually be light-sails, for radially-outward station keeping thrust vs. gravity, as well as lateral "sliding around out there" around the JP "jump harbor" ???

Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #99 on: 07 September 2019, 23:21:52 »
I think it was Cray who told me the sails actually hang below JumpShips, and the station keeping drives thrust the ship away from the star.  Both gravity and solar wind pressure are miniscule at that distance.

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #100 on: 08 September 2019, 00:54:50 »
Zenith/Nadir points would be the worst imaginable place to try and catch the stellar wind anyway. The strongest stellar winds are emitted at mid-latitudes and the poles are fairly weak.

The transit drives of JumpShips are actually strong enough to punt them into stellar orbit at the distance of a proximity point, anyway. Would only take a couple of hours at 0.1 g. And the orbital period would be measurable in decades, so for the few weeks they're hanging around waiting on a DropShip to dock, the position change would be negligible.
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Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #101 on: 08 September 2019, 01:38:42 »
I think it was Cray who told me the sails actually hang below JumpShips, and the station keeping drives thrust the ship away from the star.  Both gravity and solar wind pressure are miniscule at that distance.
yes, station keeping drives would need to thrust away from the star, and yes the sails are more realistically positioned opposite the drives, off the bow of the vessel, gravity would dominate radiation pressure for the entire vessel, but the sail itself would plausibly be billowed out away from the star ?

something like the following configuration would imply that radiation pressure on sail > gravitational weight of entire vessel, i.e. the entire craft was essentially a light-sail ship:



for the Sun, the ratio of Radiation pressure to gravity (= Lsun / 4 pi G c Msun )is always around 1.5g / m2 at all radii (assuming ideal reflection harvesting 2x each photon's momentum)

If a JS is actually absorbing much of that light, that would plausibly be more like 1 ton / km2

A 100km x 100km sail could support ~10Kton, 1000km x 1000km could support 1Mton

A Scout would require a 250-300km sail (~30 AT2 hexes)
A Monolith a 900km sail (~100 AT2 hexes)
WS would be 1000-1500km (~150 AT2 hexes)

It does happen that this is exactly what you get, if you read DS&JS "m" as "km", much as "tons per burn day" might hypothetically be read "Ktons per burn day" to immediately resolve the physics

would also boost power harvesting (from 100s MW ~ 1e8 W) to 10s-100s TW (1e13-14 W)

10s-100s TW x 10 days (~1e6 s) = 1e19-20 J

so happens if you retcon "m" to "km" you simultaneously make many things more realistic

might also be rather easy to deploy sails, they might unfurl like a parachute in the stellar radiation & wind ???

Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #102 on: 08 September 2019, 01:45:45 »
From what I remember, Cray had said the weight of the sail would make it droop toward the star.  The solar pressure just isn't enough.

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #103 on: 08 September 2019, 02:20:01 »
Well, Isaac Arthur says we can already conceive of solar sails, designed to reflect powerful GW/m2 lasers, at 1000t per 100km x 100km = 0.1t / km2

JS sails only need to reflect a miniscule fraction of such power densities, at most of order 1 KW / m2

So even if they were 1/10th as massive, they'd only be 0.01t / km2 = 10kg / km2 = 0.01 g/m2 << 1 g/m2

even a super-heavy duty laser reflector sail is only 0.1 g/m2 and would still billow away from the sun

A 500kton Monolith, with a 700km x 700km sail, would have to devote only about 5kton to the sail (at a seemingly reasonable 0.01t / km2), which is about what the stats suggest ?  A Scout's 300km sail would be about 1kton

Such sails could harvest enormous power, lift the vessels against stellar gravity, allow the vessels to "reef" and "tack" their ways around the JP jump harbors... and the depicted nose-down configuration would guard the sail against stellar winds, much like the NASA proposal to park a magnet at the L1 point to create a bow shock around Mars and protect its atmosphere:




and if 21st century engineers can imagine 100km sails, 24th century engineers could plausibly have produced 1000km sails

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #104 on: 08 September 2019, 06:56:56 »
I love BT b/c it makes me think  :D



You actually can carry out the calculation, given the Mass-Luminosity relation of stars, one can compute their Mass-to-Light (Light-to-Mass) ratios and so determine the area density (mass per area) which is just neutrally "radiatively photonically photo-buoyant" with "radiative photo-lift to weight" ratio equal to one:

(L/c) / (4 pi G M*) = 1 = outward radiation pressure over inward gravitational weight

Virtually all IS worlds orbit Suns of <2 Msol.  If JS jump sails are some sort of super-armored, 100 micron thick, 10 tons per square km material (capable of reflecting GW-TW/m2 power density lasers), then all jump sails throughout the IS are heavier than they are reflective in all IS star systems, and they would all & always droop down towards the central star (unless the JS let itself freefall towards the star)

Conversely, if all JS sails are some sort of gossamer super-thread, 100 nm thick, 10 kg per square km material, then all jump sails throughout the IS are always more reflective than they are heavy, and all would always billow away from the central star

For intermediate area densities, sails would billow away from the brighter stars, and droop down towards the dimmer stars

The original JS&DS era artwork seems to imply that they are the super-thin gossamer super-fabric variety, such that they all & always billow away from all IS stars.

Maybe WS would favor thicker and more rugged sails, capable of reflecting extremely high power-densities ???

Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #105 on: 08 September 2019, 07:00:06 »
That's really a question for Cray... he's the one who wrote all that stuff for the game.

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #106 on: 08 September 2019, 10:17:03 »
Real-world math is irrelevant. We explicitly know that charging JumpShips maintain position by pointing their station-keeping drives at the star, and that the sail's weight is greater than the outward pressure, so it must dangle below/behind the ship.
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Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #107 on: 08 September 2019, 10:21:53 »
Real-world math is irrelevant. We explicitly know that charging JumpShips maintain position by pointing their station-keeping drives at the star, and that the sail's weight is greater than the outward pressure, so it must dangle below/behind the ship.
That's carved in ferrocrete ?

The convex surface of the jump sail faces towards the star ?

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #108 on: 08 September 2019, 10:25:52 »
Yes, per StratOps.
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Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #109 on: 08 September 2019, 11:27:17 »
As written by Cray, no less.

skiltao

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #110 on: 08 September 2019, 15:02:59 »
Yes, per StratOps.

So when you said "Real-world math is irrelevant," what you really meant was that someone else had also done the real-world math and they came to a different result. ;D
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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #111 on: 08 September 2019, 19:59:30 »
What I meant was that StratOps said so, and rulebooks trump real-world. I haven't done the math myself so do not know for certain if it is based on actual math. Rulebook said so, therefore it is.
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Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #112 on: 08 September 2019, 20:56:47 »
If jump sails have an area density of 10 tons / km2 or greater, then yes they are heavier than they are reflective and would sag starward

Isn't that what the stats indicate?  How much does a 1km2 sail mass?

Only means that they are extremely thick, rugged, durable, more like a star shield than a sail, they would deploy more like solar panels than parachutes, if they sag starward have to have some means of lateral support or they would just bunch up like the parachute of a paratrooper who is hanging upside down in a tree

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #113 on: 08 September 2019, 20:59:01 »
 Have to agree with Thunderbolt - love BattleTech because it makes me think.
That being said, maybe the Jumpsail/KF drive likes only a specific radiation wavelength? This is contained in the solar wind at the jump points (and throughout the star system) and is absorbed at the usual listed rates. However a recharge station can broadcast at precisely this frequency, allowing for faster recharge times.
 It might also account for the different recharge times at different star types.

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #114 on: 08 September 2019, 20:59:55 »
What I meant was that StratOps said so, and rulebooks trump real-world. I haven't done the math myself so do not know for certain if it is based on actual math. Rulebook said so, therefore it is.

If Thunderbolt is sitting at a game table that you're refereeing, sure; but otherwise, that's not your call. The discussion seems to be more in the vein of just shootin' the breeze anyways, or maybe doing research for some fanfic, so "rules trump thinking" doesn't apply.

I haven't done the math for myself either, so I won't guarantee the figures are right; but I do recall that author discussing the math and considering it relevant in the years leading to StratOps.
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Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #115 on: 08 September 2019, 21:15:45 »
Super quick comment. Hypothetically. Every Battletech player ever has always been completely right. Hypothetically if jumpships have sales maybe they also have anchors. Maybe jumpships have both a lightweight parachute like sail. As well as a Super Heavy Starshield, which hangs down below the boat?

Some of the pictures some of the time have depicted the sale. And other pictures have depicted the Starshield.  Perhaps by Reefing and tacking and adjusting both the. Parachute like sale and anchor like Starshield. Jump ship captains are able to maneuver around jump harbors and so on.

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #116 on: 09 September 2019, 05:48:31 »



Quick concept art of a jump ship with both a
  • stern mounted heavy duty "Star anchor" star-shield against stellar winds and stellar flares and stellar storms (Ironically enough it would create a "bow shock" deflecting stellar winds and flares around the rest of the craft including the jump ship sail)
  • bow mounted super lightweight jump sail unfurling like a parachute in the stellar radiation
The Stern Mounted "Star Anchor" Receives strong stellar flux, and could incorporate solar panels. To harvest starlight?  So accounting for all those rules which attribute solar stellar. Power harvesting to the Stern mounted. Starward "starshade"?

Meanwhile, your primary Stellar power harvesting Would be accomplished by the bow mounted Jump ship sail?

---

Quick origami question for everyone how exactly do you fold up a jump anchor or jump sail???
« Last Edit: 09 September 2019, 05:56:47 by Thunderbolt »

Talen5000

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #117 on: 14 September 2019, 11:25:22 »
Have to agree with Thunderbolt - love BattleTech because it makes me think.
That being said, maybe the Jumpsail/KF drive likes only a specific radiation wavelength? This is contained in the solar wind at the jump points (and throughout the star system) and is absorbed at the usual listed rates. However a recharge station can broadcast at precisely this frequency, allowing for faster recharge times.
 It might also account for the different recharge times at different star types.


I don't see that working. A big reason why sails shrunk over time is that they now drink in a much wider variety of EM radiation to use as "fuel".

If you want to explain things then you can't rely on just the 100% canon information. You need to extrapolate and bring in mew concepts that work within the existing rules, or at least, as much as possible.

For example, my own "headcanon" runs like this...

We all know the basics of the jump system...it is described in books.

It uses Germanium. More specifically, it is the rarest isotope...Germanium 76...which is of value. Why? Because it is radioactive.

More...because it so Germanium, it is transparent to IR light.

2....a jump process requires the core to hold about 130MWh of power. That's a fair amount, but nothing a diesel generator cannot produce in a couple of days. Heck, it should be possible to simply trickle feed the core from the existing power systems.

Why use a sail? Several reasons.

Early jumpsuits used a power plant. It was heavy enough that it reduced the jump radius by more than half.  Why would such a generator be so heavy? Because it isn't the amount of energy that is important....it is the density (for lack of a better word). The drive doesn't care where the power comes from....but what it does need is enough power to spark the jump. What the core and storage system does is allow the system to carry enough power so that it can be dumped into the system in a nanosecond.

That 130 or 200 or whatever MWh then becomes equivalent to an energy output of 130 PetaWatts or more. Only for a fraction of a second, but it is long enough to initiate the jump process. You could posit more power is required but that this may be drawn directly from KSpace itself.

3...The act of jumping creates a KF field around the core. The more power pumped into the field, the longer it can be stabilised for a jump, and the longer it is stabilised, the further it can be jumped. But, the more power pumped into the field then the more unstable the field becomes...a spring too tightly wound...and the more vulnerable it becomes to outside interference. A misjump happens when the field twisting becomes so severe it causes the field to break.

4...The outside "interference" is represented by our old friend in the BTU...Heat. Just as 76Ge is transparent to IR radiation, making it a necessity for jump drives, heat inside the jump core can interfere with the jump field. Thermal Poisoning of the Core is to be avoided. This is why Quick charging uses so much reaction mass....it isn't being burned. It is being flushed through the core to keep it cold and then any that can't be cooled quickly enough is thrown over the side. It is dumped. Any JumpShip seen with a bloom of reaction mass around it is dumping the fuel too hot to use in the core or even keep. But quick charging, regardless of source, still entails the risk of thermal toxicity, the risk of creating heat nodes within the core that will warp and twist a KF field.

This need to avoid the thermal contamination of the core is also why more advanced superconductors aren't used...the liquid helium is necessary to keep the germanium cold enough for the jump process, so it simply saves mass by doing a double duty as coolant and battery.

5...One other factor to consider is that the creation of a KF field leaves a charge upon the core. Jumping with this charge is dangerous as it interferes with the KF field. It is almost akin to jumping with a second core, not quite as destructive but still risky. Discharging the charge is dangerous and can damage the ship, a bit like static electricity and it effectively grounds the field into the KF core, equalizing the KF potential.  Most jumpships prefer to let the charge dissipate naturally over the course of a week unless absolutely necessary.

The LF battery system includes mechanisms to help dissipate the charge but still only doubles the discharge rate.

So....the sail replaces a heavy generator because the sail includes mechanics to boost the energy density to a point the jump can be sparked. This process doubled the range by removing the generator system but it didn't speed up the jump process because discharging the KF Potential of the vessel....shall we call it shimmer heat?...takes about a week due to safety.  The sail system was built and designed with this limit in mind. However, moving to the sail also introduced the problems of thermal toxicity within the core and did little to negate the issues of field twisting.

Now...this expands upon the existing info, but adds concepts and systems that aren't fully canon.  But it mostly works, even if it adds s couple of minor issues.

But within canon itself, the jump process, quick charging, core construction, etc have a number of built in paradoxes that simply need to be accepted. Would tbe concept that the drive requires only a special frequency if EM light work? Maybe, but then you are drawing in even less power, and contradicting other information.









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Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #118 on: 14 September 2019, 12:39:46 »
a jump process requires the core to hold about 130MWh of power. That's a fair amount, but nothing a diesel generator cannot produce in a couple of days. Heck, it should be possible to simply trickle feed the core from the existing power systems.

Why use a sail?
Well, canon stipulates 150MWh or so is required to replenish the drive

Not sure it specifically defines that as the total power requirement of the jump, or merely the losses from the previous jump which must be replenished to "top off" the charge in the core

The sail, given its mass per density, is extremely thick & sturdy, more of a "Jump Shield" than a light gossamer thin "sail" like is usually discussed -- more of a Nuclear Pulse Propulsion pusher-plate when compared to commonly conceived "sails"

The "Jump Shield" hangs below the JS and not only harvests power but could (by all rights) protect the priceless JS & KF drive from frequent stellar flares, storms, radiation

So the "Jump Shield" is plausibly the best way to squeeze everything from stellar radiation shielding to power generation into a single light but rugged multipurpose component

76Ge is transparent to IR radiation, making it a necessity for jump drives, heat inside the jump core can interfere with the jump field. Thermal Poisoning of the Core is to be avoided...But quick charging, regardless of source, still entails the risk of thermal toxicity, the risk of creating heat nodes within the core that will warp and twist a KF field...the liquid helium is necessary to keep the germanium cold enough for the jump process, so it simply saves mass by doing a double duty as coolant and battery.
Supercooled certainly suggests some sort of delicate quantum entangled state something-something which has a high degree of plausible-sounding-ness

Use of heavy Germanium semi-metal instead of lighter Silicon (or Carbon) also supports the notion of trying to minimize random thermal motions for some exquisitely controlled quantum state something-something

use of quasi-stable Ge76, as the heaviest essentially stable isotope, would further reduce thermal motion -- if there's any mention of Selenium 76 anywhere, into which Ge76 decays, such would corroborate your speculations

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #119 on: 14 September 2019, 16:49:39 »
Well, canon stipulates 150MWh or so is required to replenish the drive

Which still means 150MWh are used to jump.

However, the supposition that the sail simply tops up tbe charge is destroyed by the simple fact a JumpShip cannot jump without charging.

Quote
The sail, given its mass per density, is extremely thick & sturdy

The mass of a Volgas Jumpsail is 420 Tons, assuming that is all sail and includes none of the mass for the rest of the sail system. Its diameter is 1270m, and its area is approximately 1.3 million square meters, less space for the cut out, estimated at a generous 200m diameter, for a total estimated area of 1.27 million square meters.

That suggests approximately 331g per metre squared.

That does not imply a thick material, but I suppose it could be foamed.


 But I am aware of nothing in the canon which suggests a Jump sail is thick and sturdy. Quite the opposite...the sails are fragile and thin.



Quote
use of quasi-stable Ge76, as the heaviest essentially stable isotope, would further reduce thermal motion -- if there's any mention of Selenium 76 anywhere, into which Ge76 decays, such would corroborate your speculations

There isn't...I thought with Cray involved, he might have had the same ideas I did but I'd assume any 76Se would either be scavenged during maintenance or occurs at such a low level that its presence doesn't significantly affect field creation during the drives working life. An accumulation of 76Se could pose a minor, albeit growing risk, to the use of old cores but given the half life of 76Ge, probably wouldn't ever be anything more than a trace. That's not to say it couldn't cause issues, especially if a structurally pure core is needed for a jump, one where any contaminant can be problematic, but at that scale, scavenging would likely be unwarranted, with the core simply ground down for recycling and the parts purified


However, my speculations, though an extrapolation of tbe information provided in game should still be considered headcanon, especially as several new concepts...thermal toxicity, 76Ge, heat nodes, field twisting, shimmer heat. etc...are added to explain the known jump systems and the idea of blooming, that a ship uses reaction mass for cooling and then jettisons it to avoid heat contamination because cores aren't built for quick charging is simply a possible explanation for the in game rules.

I mentioned this merely to indicate that deriving a passable system from the known information is possible, but not...repeat NOT (IMO)...without introducing new concepts.

It still leaves the jump requiring very little power, and quick charging as somewhat paradoxical

« Last Edit: 14 September 2019, 19:32:39 by Talen5000 »
"So let me get this straight. You want to fly on a magic carpet to see the King of the Potato People and plead with him for your freedom, and you're telling me you're completely sane?" -- Uncle Arnie

 

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