Shuttle engines

[Elessar]

(when I realized I'd broken my own rule, I combined 3 posts )

I've got some questions for you technophiles out there. What's the power source of the Enterprise NX-01 era shuttlecraft? What type of engine does it have and what is the fuel source? Would Romulan shuttles have a different power source than Earth or Vulcan shuttles? What sort of distances would a shuttle be capable of traveling without refueling?

It's some kind of fusion-reactor based propulsion system, probably whatever the "impulse" drive is (which is never REALLY explained in star trek at all) and powered by a fusion reactor.

Romulan warbirds in 24th century have vastly different power sources for their warp drives than starfleet ships (they use quantum singularities instead of antimatter to draw enough energy to create a warp field), so it stands to reason their shuttlepods (were they to have such a craft) would be quite different as well.

We've never (in anything that I know of) seen a Romulan shuttlepod though.


Oh and fuel sources for fusion could be... deuterium... you could make it some deuterium-tritium isotope mix, something like that. But a fusion reactor would need more than just deuterium to operate (we know this much today) that it will most likely also need its own supply of antimatter to catalyze the fusion reaction... soo... yeah.

I like when they use terminology like "fusion overburn" in Similitude and we get to play with what we think it means.

For example... assuming they use an antimatter catalyst to start the fusion reaction, one could imagine that a fusion overburn is perhaps (like nitrous oxide injection to an internal combustion engine) that if you jacked up the antimatter reactant in proportion to the deuterium, you'd start to get one WICKED hot reaction going on, one that would at one point, eventually break down the engine and start exploding shit (like nitrous does to engines). So... there ya go

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It might be deuterium, or possibly it scoops up interstellar hydrogen ala a bussard ramjet by using a magnetic ramscoop to sweep up hydrogen atoms as it goes along.

*runs quickly from thread*

This bussard thing... I never liked the idea. I think they'd have to be sooo friggin huge to collect enough hydrogen in the vacuum of space, especially given that they'd only collect it at impulse speed, not at warp. I mean the *concept* of collecting hydrogen from empty space is all well and good, but they collectors would have to be like 50 football fields in size to get any appreciable amount.

They could probably make deuterium from hydrogen by bombarding it with something... I coudln't find online how they actually *MAKE* deuterium or tritium... that could have something to do with the substances being the primary core of a thermonuclear warhead

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What fuel does an ion drive engine run on?

Elecricity. Ion drives are basically like the tube from an old TV set, but without the screen. Ion drives are pretty great for sending probes off to distant locations in our day in age, especially because eventually they can propel said probes to nearly the speed of light because it is essentially always accellerating. The drawback is that payload has to be extremely limited because they aren't all that strong, and that it takes them a very, very long time to accelerate. At least that's my understanding of them, but keep in mind that I'm only an engineering student with a fascination in aerospace, and not the real thing.

An ion drive DOES require actual fuel though, CX, usually heavy, super-ionized nuclei of Xenon (is what I've heard of used)... those are the ions accelerated out of the EM fields. But yeah, the most important thing for an ion drive is electrical current at your disposal... that's why NASA's looking at (in the next 30 years , friggin bureaucrats) using a conventional nuclear fission reactor to power an ion drive, since batters put out like 100 Watts max and fission reactors are more like 100 MW

Xenon is just used today though -- D, I seriously doubt that anything in Star Trek would be using Ion drives (because it's so low thrust) but IF they were, they'd no doubt be using a newer propellant. Unless of course, you're planning on writing about them finding a decripit old ship from the mid 21st century

[chrisis1033]

I would add my 2 cents but I am shaking so hard from laughing at Rigil that I can't type (this took me 3 tries)

"....... an engine....."
"...........a shuttlepod engine......."

[CX]

And deuterium is basically hydrogen with an extra proton, right? Can you make deuterium on the fly from regular hydrogen, or does it have to be produced by a massive particle accellerator that won't fit on a starship?

Typically, lik anti-matter, it is produced at designated facilities in Federation space. So in the 22nd Century, I'm guessing that Earth, Mars, and Jupiter station are likely production points.

The bussard collectors can collect small amounts of hydrogen from space, and starships that have them also have a kind of dueterium generator on board to turn this hydrogen into slush dueterium in emergancy situations. The TNG TM indicates that it isn't good to use that stuff i nthe long term though, like it isn't as refined or something.

[Bookworm]

This isn't excactly my own field of experties, but here is what I know about the subject and some links to find info is someone is interested.

Deuterium is a stable isotope of hydrogen. From all hydrogen found about 0.015% is deuterium. Ordinary hydrogen has only a proton and deuterium has a proton and a neutron, those are the only stable isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium can be obtained from water relatively easily. Even on earth, there is enough deuterium to use in fusion reactions to generate present levels of energy consumption for billions of years. Water doesn't seem to be that hard to find elsewhere in the universe either. So I don't see why they would have to make deuterium from ordinary hydrogen. To make deuterium from ordinary hydrogen you would need to make the nuclei of hydrogen to capture a free neutron. I don't know what it would require to achieve that, but I know that light nuclei like hydrogen don't easily capture a neutron and even if one could make it to capture one how would one prevent it from capturing more than one thus producing the unstable isotopes of hydrogen. Here is a link about fusion: http://www.fusion.org.uk/

I guess impulse drive could be some kind of nuclear propulsion system. There are several different types: nuclear explosive propulsion, nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric propulsion. Here are few links about that.
http://www.inspi.ufl.edu/index.html
http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/prometheus/NTD/NEP/
http://www.redcolony.com/art.php?id=0303050

[Distracted]

Whoa! Thanks, Bookworm! Thanks to all of you for putting in your two cents (and to Rigil for the comic relief ). Looks like I've got some research to do.

[Elessar]

Tritium does occur naturally, so it's pseudo-stable... but it's very very rare.

**Just notes on the above: Impulse could possibly be nuclear-electric (that's an ion drive powered by a nuclear reactor of some sort, even possibly fusion) but they never refer to needing fuel for the impulse drive do they? Except maybe deuterium? But the actual propellant in ion drives is some kind of ion reserve, like Xenon as I mentioned.

They couldn't be nuclear-thermal because I've done a little research on that and that's basically a conventional rocket engine - it just uses a nuclear reactor to heat the working fluid (hydrogen) to more extreme temperatures and pressures than conventionally achievable with a rocket engine, and we know they don't use chemical propulsion in basically any form but manuevering thrusters (I think) in star trek.

Nuclear-detonation propulsion is too unhealthy and dangerous, but... I suppose it's possible. Normally I would say, it'd be impossible because nuclear-pulse propulsion (like Project Orion, Medusa, and Longshot) all are all...well... pulsed. They're not really constant forms of acceleration, and there's no way to (currently, I suppose in 150 yrs there could be) to vector that thrust so that you could stop, hehe.

But then I realized that, this doesn't solve the vectoring problem, BUT, antimatter catalzed fusion is being researched today as a way to manufacture thermonuclear warheads that are microscopically sized, evading the "critical mass" issue with other nuclear warheads. Basically it uses anti-muons or anti-protons or something to catalyze nuclear fusion without having as much mass, so you can have picograms of plutonium instead of kilograms. IN SHORT, this kind of much more precise pulse-propulsion could be done so quickly it feels like constant acceleration, and probably even be used for course-correction (like impulse does).

That... could use deuterium as a primary fuel, but I tend to think tritium WOULD be needed as well. It's hella volatile.

[Mitchell]

Considering they did a whole episode in Season 2 about shoppin for fuel at a Deuterium drillin colony, Id imagine that in the 22nd century it isnt to easy to make their own.

Dude, ignore that episode. Deuterium is a not oil. You cannot extract it from the ground. That episode should be immediately thrown out of canon (along with far too much of season 2) because of the level of stupidity involved in it.

I know that.

Cant remember where I saw it, but it was probably something like NOVA. ANy whos I saw that some one drilled through the layers of ice I guess in a galcier an at a certin level they found Deuterium.

God My memories foggy on that.

But anywhos the narator also mentioned that Deuterium/heavy Hydrogin is pretty dang rare in the world.

[Bookworm]

Tritium does occur naturally, so it's pseudo-stable... but it's very very rare.

Do you know where Tritium can be found. I only know it's radioactive isotope that decays into helium.
I'm a scientist, but nuclear physics isn't my own field, but I'm always happy to learn new things. Maybe I should go and look wikipedia.
I'm very very hopelessly nerdy

[Bether6074]

^^You're nerdy? I don't even have a clue. I just read this stuff and feel increasingly like Charlie Brown by the minute. On second thought, Charlie Brown would probably understand more. I just hope I can follow the story when it's written.

[CX]

Impulse could possibly be nuclear-electric (that's an ion drive powered by a nuclear reactor of some sort, even possibly fusion) but they never refer to needing fuel for the impulse drive do they? Except maybe deuterium

Already said that dude. Yes, the impulse reactors use deuterium as their fuel.

[hth2k]

We know in later versions of Trek they use technology to disassemble and reassemble things as they wish. Given that, what is wrong with using a more basic form of that technology to generate atoms or ions as they wish from any convenient source? Given a dense enough material one would not need the volume required for liquid fuels such as hydrogen. There are no large fuel storage tanks visible in any of the shots I have seen of any Ster Trek shuttles. Look at the size of the fuel tanks for the space shuttle, which is exhausted in a few minutes, and you can tell that is not the technology Trek is using.

Ion drives and chemical rockets are both reaction engines. Both throw something out the back to make the vehicle move forward. A platform in free space would move forward if you threw rocks off the back end though that may not be practicle. All you need is a source for particles (ions) and a way to modify them into useful form and eject them in a somewhat efficient fashon.

I read somewhere the warp enging creates a fold or warp in space that the vessle slides on something like a surfer on a wave.

HtH

[CX]

Sort of. It "warps" space and time by creating a subspace field around it, which as I understand it reduces the mass of the ship, which is how they cheat to get around the infinate energy requirement to travel at the speed of light, let alone faster than it.

As for the impulse drives, all my information comes directly from the TNG TM, as well as some on-screen referances. Deuterium and anti-deuterium are the primary starship fuels used by starships, and both warp and impulse reactions produce an energized plasma. Some of it is used for propulsion, and some of it is used to provide power for the ship via conduits that run through the ship.

[dark_rain]

from what I heard, warp engines warp the space in front of them and pull it closer making the distance smaller at the same time(by compressing the space) so that means they dont travel at the speed of light at all. They just make the distance they have to travel smaller.

[CX]

That's the theory they're playing with at NASA from my understanding. Is Rocket Girl registered here? Should ask her about it.