Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Reaction mass equations aren't always going to apply to fictional starship design. Very few (if any) iconic starships from popular fiction are carrying the kind of reaction mass they'd need for conventional propulsion - even if they could accelerate their reaction mass to light speed for maximum theoretical thrust.
I tend to assume what looks like thrusters on most spaceships in fiction are actually just heat sinks dumping waste heat out the back from their reactionless drives or something.
John Prins wrote: Reaction mass equations aren't always going to apply to fictional starship design. Very few (if any) iconic starships from popular fiction are carrying the kind of reaction mass they'd need for conventional propulsion - even if they could accelerate their reaction mass to light speed for maximum theoretical thrust.
I tend to assume what looks like thrusters on most spaceships in fiction are actually just heat sinks dumping waste heat out the back from their reactionless drives or something.
Science fiction tends to associate the far future represented in the novel/comics/animated series and even movies with real things. early 'Space Operas' were somehow written in 30-60s... with rockets being a standard prime mover of a spaceship (or at least a disposable medium to beat earth gravity, quite and irony that early space rockets were ICBMs aimed at deep space and with early space modules fitted at its payload rather than fission atomic warheads). by that time trusters (either rockets or jets) are actual prime movers... as with the introduction of Tachyon hypothesis in physics. thrusters are where tachyon particles pushed a ship forward.... even in Space Battleship Yamato (designed in 70s, tech profiles of the actual Space Yamato itself mentioned the use of Tachyon particles both as propelling agent, (at any speed), warping medium (through calculated ones, in this series, there's no human psykers, and only a few alien (usually women) is capable of such) turbine turning medium, and direct energy weapons... the particle itself came to manifest with a device called 'Wave Motion Engine' (in the rebooted versions, the said device did NOT 'generate' that particle, rather to 'convey' these from their in universe 'warpspace' (called 'subspace'). back then the preferred designs were that with one giant thrusters and streamlined (Leiji Matsumoto seems to obsessed with streamliners like these ones, )
Compared to Space Yamato (or any Leiji Matsumoto space warships like Arcadia or Death Shadow) ... is Halo design superior?
