[Mobius]

What's Zarium?

Now that I think of it, the Bastion may have even rammed the Lucifer into subspace. Desperate situations call for desperate actions.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Now that I think of it, the Bastion may have even rammed the Lucifer into subspace.

Why would the Bastion do that? I thought it was supposed to either prevent the Lucy from entering subspace or destroy it in subspace.

[Mobius]

And what if all bombers were down or uncapable of destroying the Lucifer in time? An epic kamikaze run would have been the only option.

[BengalTiger]

Actually we don't know how Shivan reactors work. I think it's pretty clear they work differently from ours. We also don't know what those Rahu miners were mining for...

In fact, if you look very closely at the FS1 command briefing animations, you can see them labelled "Xenon-Zarium" reactors (on the Hades ani anyway). The Lucifer's reactors have bits labelled "Elemental Harvesters".

So you think it could harvest elements such as deuterium (since it has harvesters, looks like it has to) to keep on going and going and going like the Energizer bunny?
Even if it could, wouldn't it need to take a pit stop in a nebula or gas giant once in a while?

[Snail]

So you think it could harvest elements such as deuterium (since it has harvesters, looks like it has to) to keep on going and going and going like the Energizer bunny?

No, that's not my point. I never said anything about how long it could operate without refuelling. All I said is that we don't even know if they use deuterium in their reactors.

[Mobius]

Their thruster colors are red, so they must use different fuel.

[Droid803]

naw, they just dump some stuff into it to make it look red cause its cooler.

[NGTM-1R]

Their thruster colors are red, so they must use different fuel.

Emission at different wavelengths does not mean different fuel. It means different operating properties of the engine. The fuel could be damn near anything.

[Satellight]

Their thruster colors are red, so they must use different fuel.

The same fuel that powers this engine? 

[Mobius]

Emission at different wavelengths does not mean different fuel. It means different operating properties of the engine. The fuel could be damn near anything.

But it's quite unprobable that Terrans, Vasudans and Shivans use the same kind of fuel, without any kind of specific processing. Our cars don't.

[NGTM-1R]

When you get up to fusion power sources, the concept of different fuels gets laughable.

I mean seriously, it's nuclear fusion. It can only run on so many elements and generate power, and hydrogen indisputably works better than the others and is indisputably easier to get.

If they're antimatter, maybe, but I suspect that's true there too and I'm simply not familiar enough to say so.

In the end you're down to very basic physical processes now, not complex (though the conditions to make them occur can be hard to create) and so complexity isn't going to avail you much.

[-Norbert-]

And do you know for sure that the shivan reactors work with fusion or fission? Maybe they just called the things in the Lucifer only reactor because they serve the same functions as reactors in terran and vasudan ships, while they really are something completely different.
But they create power for the ship, and if the get damaged badly enough they cause a big explosion. So calling it reactor is sufficient for the pilots. They don't need to know the details or the physics behind it, only how to put bombs into them.

[Mobius]

Everything depends on technology and availability. I find the idea of Shivan engines working just like Terran ones to be... quite weird, even if things are really that way.

[General Battuta]

i'm pretty sure nightmewunner is correct on all counts

[NGTM-1R]

And do you know for sure that the shivan reactors work with fusion or fission?

Well I know they're not fission.

My point was more about Terran and Vasudan ships. I'm not going to touch the Shivans because they're ridiculous sillytech like ZPE at which point needing power generation is questionable at best.

[Mars]

IIRC they are stated to run on Deuterium, thus it's most likely fusion.

[Snail]

If it's ever actually said that they use deuterium or fusion anywhere, it certainly overrules any nonsense CBAnim text only visible at 2x magnification that I've been staring at.

It's still interesting though.

[Mars]

It is mentioned that the GTVA uses deuterium sometime in the middle of the FS2 campaign.

[NGTM-1R]

The tech descriptions for the GTVA gas miners say it, but I don't know that we ever hear it about the Shivans.

[Trivial Psychic]

I always thought that the Lucifer's reactors were Meson reactors, since they bare some resemblance to the Meson bomb.  If you think about it, Shivans make meson reactors to power the Lucifer, GTI manage to copy the principles of such a reactor and builds a prototype aboard the Einstein, Einstein goes boom but a portion of its plans are salvaged by escape pods and after the Hades rebellion is crushed, their research is shelved for many years until it is dusted off and resumed by GTVA during NTF rebellion.  GTVA then succeeds in the creation of a Meson detonation device, but they are nowhere near as advanced as the Shivans' ones.  This is evidenced by the fact that it took the Lucifer's 5 reactors blowing to collapse the Sol-Delta Serpentis jumpnode, while it took quite a number of the GTVA's meson bombs in a gutted Orion to seal the Capella-Epsilon Pegasi jumpnode.  That's my theory.