But no one knows how that magical reaction works? :(
Germanium was selected during the beer-n-pretzels phase of BattleTech's creation. I might be able to pass along a question to the original writers, but I think just about everything made it into the books, especially DropShips & JumpShips. What I've been able to write into TacOps and Strategic Operations is the most detail yet.
If there's any information I've missed I'd appreciate a point in that direction other wise thanks for your help.
Off the top of my head, the main books with KF drive operational data are:
DropShips & JumpShips
BattleSpace
Explorer Corps
Aerotech 2 Revised
Tactical Operations
Strategic Operations
Strategic Operations tries to summarize KF drives data found in DS&JS, BattleSpace, Explorer Corps, and AT2R, and adds quite a few new details. Do you have Strategic Operations? I don't want to summarize two chapters if you have the book. ;)
I mean I wasn't looking for the whole codex of research from the Deimos project but I was hoping for a few technical details. Maybe they will let you guys do that as part of another retotech tro.
It's not a matter of letting, but rather an issue of how much verifiable detail you want to put into a fictional, magical technology. The more detail that goes in, the more loopholes open up and the more flaws become apparent. KF drives are at a point where they work in game rules, and work fairly consistently in fiction. For example, there are no arguments over differing
warp speed scales to trip up authors. And there are no inconvenient real world
gravity telescopes undermining hyperspace travel, the way a lot of the
Honorverse FTL just got kicked in the tenders by the confirmation that gravity travels (very boringly) at light speed.
A fair portion of Strategic Operations' discussion on KF drives is about addressing questions raised by increasing detail available on KF drives. How "pigeons" are possible without KF cores; how KF drives can match the movement of target stars, but can't emerge with some relative velocity; which Lagrange points are viable jump points without violating prior rules of hyperspace travel; how recovering stranded JumpShips can be done; why mobile shipyards can't jump with JumpShips on board; etc.
Look at our discussion here: based on prior references about superconducting aspects of KF cores, you're looking at alternatives to germanium to change a fundamental aspect of KF cores. (For one thousand years, only titanium-germanium mixes have been used in cores despite endless research efforts). Others have observed that the precisely defined solar sails of KF drives don't really soak up that much energy - I once calculated you could recharge a typical drive with a few hundred tons of diesel and oxygen, so sails or the high hydrogen consumption of fusion charging doesn't make sense. It's also fun to try to show how a JumpShip with lots of docking collars can send signals a few minutes into the past.
Kearny-Fuchida drives are in a good place where their behavior is predictable, where they're usable in fiction and games, and some technobabble is available to help fill in the background. Giving even more detail to something that works for fundamentally fictional, hard-to-justify reasons doesn't necessarily help. It'd be too easy to write in something that felt clever about KF cores now (e.g., "the unique hexavalent configuration of titanium-germanium is required to shape hyperspace fields"), only to watch it undermine staples of their operation later (e.g., someone points out a dozen elements with hexavalent states).