[Scotty]

Heat boils water, moves turbines.  Works all the time, even now.  Not useless, but maybe not practical either.

[General Battuta]

Hmmmm.  Has anyone ever though of using heat buildup from equipment to power engines?  Those (?) could possibly be a form of radiator.  Think about it, the more you shoot, the faster you go.  Only downside (that I can see) is equipment lifespan.

David Brin. Sundiver. Not exactly a weapons system, but definitely usable. Downside is, you need LOTS of heat to produce enough energy to power a laser.

Doesn't work in real life, I believe the consensus is. Putting a lot of heat in one place (laser beam) involves a pretty sharp decrease in entropy, right? That's expensive. The laser would have to generate heat. Herra or Rian can comment in more depth.

Heat boils water, moves turbines.  Works all the time, even now.  Not useless, but maybe not practical either.

Yeah. I should've said 'hugely inefficient.' You could use waste heat from your guns to boil water for steam jets, I guess...or something like that...

But in the end it's a thermodynamically silly process to say that 'the more you shoot, the faster you move' -- in the end all you're doing is redirecting energy that originally came from your power source. You could get a bit more speed out of it, but all you're doing is slightly improving the efficiency of your ship as a system.

Right?

[The E]

http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/science21/LaserCooling.html
http://www.rp-photonics.com/laser_cooling.html
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1997/

There are at least a few people disagreeing with you, General

[General Battuta]

http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/science21/LaserCooling.html
http://www.rp-photonics.com/laser_cooling.html
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1997/

There are at least a few people disagreeing with you.

They're not talking about laser cooling inside the Sun.

Laser cooling of the kind described in those links is well-established and frequently used in experiments that involve cooling things towards absolute zero. You're shooting a laser at something to cool it down.

Sundiver uses a different system that these articles do not address.

You're missing the fact that this is as much an engineering challenge as a physics one -- and under these conditions Sundiver is simply a horribly inefficient refrigeration system.

[The E]

No, they're not. That's because they're physicists, not fiction writers. Fiction writers can get away with a lot more BS. Also, Sundiver, like almost every other SF spaceship ever invented runs on large amounts of plot.

[General Battuta]

No, they're not. That's because they're physicists, not fiction writers. Fiction writers can get away with a lot more BS. Also, Sundiver, like almost every other SF spaceship ever invented runs on large amounts of plot.

For instance, the refrigerator laser was (I believe) augmented by stasis.

Brin, who wrote the book, is a physicist. He's probably aware that his refrigerator laser won't work without a lot of Galactic tech.

[The E]

Oh well. Guess I was wrong about that (Note to self: Next Time, check library before posting).

[General Battuta]

I dunno. I have to say...there must be something Brin knows that I don't. Because he used the laser in another one of his books. Granted, still had Galactic tech, but...

Maybe he just didn't think it out all that well? I dunno.

[The E]

I guess he just needed something that gave him cool images to put in his books. And never forget that Sundiver was written back in 1980, so I guess it's only to be expected that even if Brin based his concepts on something floating around back then, someone sooner or later managed to point out how and why it doesn't work in the real world.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

* Androgeos Exeunt skips five pages of posts.

I personally like the Aeolus. It's quick, mobile and has too many anti-fighter defences. Having its two frontal SGreens firing at once also sounded pretty cool the first time I heard it.

[Phoenova]

Hey Im not the only one who likes the Aeolus 

Deimos is a close second.

[S-99]

Hmmmm.  Has anyone ever though of using heat buildup from equipment to power engines?  Those (?) could possibly be a form of radiator.  Think about it, the more you shoot, the faster you go.  Only downside (that I can see) is equipment lifespan.

This could work or be overly ridiculous. This is sort of like trying to take advantage of all the excess heat your computer outputs as extra energy for something.

[Pred the Penguin]

Make a new thread?



Back on topic, I've never really seen the Aeolus used at it's full potential though... or am I forgetting some missions?

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Love the Treason, Clash of the Titans

[Snail]

Stupid hostile Aeoluses.

[DIO]

I know this is getting off topic, but this http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3e.html#radiator website has something interesting.

It says that

Propulsion systems like nuclear thermal rockets do not need heat radiators because the waste heat is carried away by the exhaust plume. In effect, the exhaust is their radiator (the technical term is "Open-Cycle Cooling"). Electrical powered drives like ion drives will require radiators on their power plants. Fusion drives may or may not require radiators, depending upon whether the design can dump the waste heat into the exhaust or not.

Since FS ships uses a fusion drive, if this is true they wouldn't need any radiators. But is it true?

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Love the Treason, Clash of the Titans

If you play the demo, include Crisis in Capella.

[IronBeer]

While I'm a bit surprised at the direction this thread has taken, let me just jump in with the following fact: Outer space, being a vacuum, is a poor conductor of heat. Yes, its temperature is technically absolute zero, but with so few atoms around to transfer that heat, things won't cool off very quickly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_adaptation_to_space#Unprotected_effects (Not the link I had in mind, but it works). So, yeah- space radiators would have to be designed much differently than radiators on Earth.
By the way, let's try to stay on the broad topic of capital ships- just a friendly reminder.  

[james777]

GVCv Sobek

[Androgeos Exeunt]

GVCv Sobek

Do you have enough free time to explain why? The Sobek is a good warship, but which part of it do you like?