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AndrewC wrote:I think that the answer as to how bad it would be if a ship crashed into a planet entire argument could be answered in the following statement;

Put your head between your legs and kiss your a**e goodbye.

That applies to living in the 41st millenium anyway.

Bearers of Salvation - nope, they are repeatedly stated to be Fusion reactors. Quite low tech from the sounds of it - tokamak style if they are using a super heated plasma (the compression wave and laser init ones dont need such uniformly high temps)

AS was pointed out: you can assume BL know that their fusion reaction provide 1E10^-10 the power their weapons and shileds require, so theyve decided to make them super dooper, OR, and here is the more likely option: BL Suck at maths, and dont realise what theyre writing.

Quoting from: http://www.factpile.com/retribution-class-battleship-vs-super-star-destroyer/

In “Grey Hunter”, we have a Retribution and some ancient Chaos ship going it out with each other. The Retribution class warship has to place bombs on the ship that are set to twelve minutes, while fighting off hordes of Chaos crew. Let’s use this calculation:
“Lance Batteries and Main Weapons:
Caves of Ice – Sandy Mitchell, Black Library , Page 141
122 Teratons per salvo per battleship ≈ 5.1e23 J per salvo ”

If the Weapons Batteries were equal to lances, then they would be firing 122 teratons every two seconds. Let’s say they the fight and boarding occurred in half an hour, we then have them taking hits for 1,800 seconds. I calculated the damage they caused each other to be 21,960 teratons or rather close to the Nova Cannon output, which in it of itself can heavily damage warships. You also have to add that the Retribution has 12 Weapons Batteries, with 3-4 on each side. If it’s 3, we have 65,880 teratons hurled at them, and if we have 4, we have a yield of 87,840 teratons overall. After that, one more massive laser hit would have destroyed them:

Space Wolf Omnibus Page 598:
“One of the largest turrets seemed to be pointing directly at the Fist of Russ. Was it his imagination or was there a hideous infernal glow visible deep within the barrel of the weapon? He felt the lurch of the ship as the Fist of Russ continued to accelerate away.
Two seconds.
It was not his imagination. The hellish weapon system really was activated, and it was pointing their way. He knew that there was no way the Space Wolf vessel could take a hit from such a thing at this close a range and in its crippled state.”

So, if lances are truly equal to Weapons Batteries (which they most likely aren’t), then a Retribution class warship can only take only around 88,000 teratons.

Ignoring inconsistencies between weapon yields within the 40k canon, and the associated inconsistiencies between weapon yields and shield output for sake of arguement...

Just using the novacannon calc from this post of 21,960TT... This converts to 9.19x10e25 Joules.

In comparison, the output of the ENTIRE SUN (per second) is: 3.86×10e26 Joules. Thus, a novacannon would has the same output as 24% of the sun's energy output/s. This doesn't account for any reactor power being diverted to major systems such as: Shields, Propulsion, artificial gravity, life support (minimal). That's how far out of whack the 40k numbers are.

Addeundum: according to Wikipedia: "In its core, the Sun fuses 430–600 million tons of hydrogen each second." Even if the Imperial ship had a method of fusion that is magnitudes (an understatement, to be sure) more efficient, the amount of sustained fuel burn during combat is staggering and somewhat beyond the carrying capacity of the ship's stated size.

-Edited for content and grammar. I'm bad at grammar.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Bearers of Salvation - nope, they are repeatedly stated to be Fusion reactors. Quite low tech from the sounds of it - tokamak style if they are using a super heated plasma (the compression wave and laser init ones dont need such uniformly high temps)

AndrewC wrote:The BFG rule book does say that they are fusion reactors though.

Nope, they are not stated to be fusion reactors in the BFG rule book as far as I can tell. It's downloadable from GW, tell me what page to look on where they even use the word 'fusion', then where to look for where the authors explicitly state that 40k ships are powered by drives that use only fusion and not any of their futuristic technologies. I just glanced through it (the rulebook isn't searchable) and didn't even see the word fusion used. "They are repeatedly stated" doesn't fly when I have the book in front of me and don't see the repeat; tell me what page to look at on my download.

Note that I asked for where they say 'fusion and not any futuristic technologies' - the authors or 40k characters saying 'fusion' can just means that it incorporates fusion, not that it uses nothing but fusion. Sloppy terminology is really common - for example, cordite was only used in rifle ammunition for about 25 years almost 100 years ago and has no advantages over more recent smokeless powders that would result in people using it again in the future. Yet many authors love to talk about 'the smell of cordite' after someone fires a WW2, modern, futuristic, or pre-1890 firearm because there's a quote about the 'smell of cordite' that people like.

40k plasma reactors don't have the characteristics of simple fusion reactors, therefore they're not simple fusion reactors regardless of some authors using the word fusion somewhere.

You're comparing one piece of science fiction to another, there is no baseline to compare the two.

Antimatter is not science fiction, it has been created and studied in labs. We don't have the capability to create enough now for an antimatter reactor, but describing one is well within the capabilities of actual science. A perfectly effecient antimatter reactor would combine matter and antimatter in equal quantities and collect all the energy from their annihilation for use, and since it's complete conversion of matter to energy you just need E=mc^2 to figure out how much energy a given mass of fuel produces. A perfectly efficient antimatter reactor is the theoretical limit for the best reactor we can come up with in theory from modern science, so it really does work as a baseline.

I never stated it was BFG, but they use the words "fusion" repeatedly in BL books.

Fact: IoM uses Fusion tech to power their ships. Nothing but. You can argue "fusion is just a component", but you would be talking nonsense given actual physics.

Even at perfect, 100% AM/M conversion an IoM, according to BL figures could not contain the fuel needed to fight. The most sensible conclusion, which you seem startlingly resistant to, is that BL authors suck, and I mean SUCK, at maths.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:Antimatter is not science fiction, it has been created and studied in labs. We don't have the capability to create enough now for an antimatter reactor, but describing one is well within the capabilities of actual science. A perfectly effecient antimatter reactor would combine matter and antimatter in equal quantities and collect all the energy from their annihilation for use, and since it's complete conversion of matter to energy you just need E=mc^2 to figure out how much energy a given mass of fuel produces. A perfectly efficient antimatter reactor is the theoretical limit for the best reactor we can come up with in theory from modern science, so it really does work as a baseline.

However do we have an actual antimatter reactor producing power? No. Do we have an actual fusion reactor producing power? No.

So we are comparing two demostrateably impossible power sources, therfor we are comparing two pieces of fiction.

You are stating, as Nos has pointed out, that fusion does not mean fusion, it could be super-duper fusion that breaks all the laws of physics as we know them producing the effects shown, but then disallow the exact same demanding hard scientific proof for an antimatter reactor.

To show how bad BL are at this, all IoM BFG ships use reaction drives. Well the good old laws of physics come in here for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. So where does all the reaction mass come from for a BFG ship to reach the, very dubious, speeds they do in the books?

Cheers

Andrew

Well they arent imPOSSIBLE power sources, just currently imPRACTICAL - they have gotten fusion reactions, but not exactly "sustained".....

@AndrewC: So basically, the Black Library writers have substituted hyperbole in lieu of actual science to hide the complete abscence of science in their "science" fiction.

I think we're all in agreement that the writers at the Black Library generally fail at creating any plausible processes for IoM tech. I can't give them a free pass with the "super fusion" arguement though. They should have just called it something arcane that can't be explained, like an "Archamedes Quantum Reactor" or something. "Fusion" is a defined process of smashing smaller atomic nucleii into bigger ones. Even if the yield is unknown due to IoM advances in process efficiency and through varying the fuel types - there is a limit to the amount of energy that can be gained through this process as the amount of energy contained within the fuel nucleii is finite. Therefore, to get to the energy output stated by the Black Library, the amount of fuel needed would appear to exceed the carrying capacity of the ship... Unless the ship contains a pocket dimension.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Well they arent imPOSSIBLE power sources, just currently imPRACTICAL - they have gotten fusion reactions, but not exactly "sustained".....

No I said that they were demonstrateably impossible, as in it is impossible to demonstrate just how much energy could be produced.

keezus wrote:Unless the ship contains a pocket dimension.

Which is only allowed if the ship is painted blue with a flashing blue light on top.

Andrew

Why are you saying they aren't Fusion?

True, Plasma is simply a state of matter and therefor doesn't mean a fusion reactor is present.

However

We know of no such way to use plasma in a reactor besides a Fusion reactor(although no efficient one has been built, we have had limited Fusion reactions inside reactors)

And the BL constantly uses Fusion and Plasma interchangably.


IMO: Fusion and Plasma mean the same reactor. BL uses Plasma simply because it sounds cool.



and as far as producing enough power.

a single Fusion power plant would produce many times the power of a Fission power plant and those can power whole cities.

A ship that is 4-8 Kilometers long could concievably have dozens of Fusion reactors with only a small amount of the power needing to be used for lighting and life support.

the rest can be used for weapons systems.


The IoM doesn't use as much power to travel as you guys seem to think.

they don't use FTL travel(Which isn't practical due to the theory of relativity and the sheer scale of the Galaxy)

They cheat by crossing dimentional barriers


Can a ship use its weapons while in Warp travel? probably not, but it doesn't need to and no one ever said warp travel was safe.


as far as Fuel(assuming it uses what a modern Fusion reaction would) it only need to refuel the reactors every 20 years or so and i imagine they would have a couple Refuelings onboard(it is a ship the size of a large city)

@Grey,

If you are to go by the current figures thrown about by BL then a single lance shot seems to use 5000 times more energy than the entire global energy output of earth for 1995. The entire planets lithum reserves would only present sufficient fuel for 60% of the energy required. On top of which the void shields require, based on other threads, 1000 times more energy to run.

Our figures, for want of a better expression the 'anti BL' may be out, but not grossly so, shows up the sheer scale of the inconsistency.

Cheers

Andrew

Grey Templar wrote:A single Fusion power plant would produce many times the power of a Fission power plant and those can power whole cities... A ship that is 4-8 Kilometers long could concievably have dozens of Fusion reactors with only a small amount of the power needing to be used for lighting and life support. The rest can be used for weapons systems.

Did you read my earlier post on capital ship weapon energy requirements? Warhams fanboys usually gleefully point to calculations based on material damage described by the Black Library as placing the weapon yields of lances / novacannon into the high Gigaton/ low Petaton range.

Assuming an average output of a fission plant at say, 6000MW for ease of calculations (Candu is rated at 6232MW), and for sake of arguement, assuming an (unrealistic) increase in efficiency of 1000x, we'd have 6000000MW of generating power. Multiplying this by "dozens", say 36x, we'd have total generation of 4.67x10e19J/s... (Keep in mind that the yearly electricity consumption in the U.S. as of 2005 is 1.37×10e19 J. Per: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy))

The output of the Novacannon is 9.19x10e25 J. (In layman terms, the "optimized" 36 reactors, all powering the main gun is still around 2 million times too weak, going by the Black Library's described material damage.)

Don't try and make any sense of it. The Black Library is out to lunch.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Fact: IoM uses Fusion tech to power their ships. Nothing but.

Fact: That bit you wrote above isn't a fact supported by the BL books, much less rulebooks, but something that you just declared out of the blue. Rambling on about how 'ohh, they say it, they really do' doesn't cut it - tell me which BL book (and on which page) states explicitly and clearly that 40k ships use reactors that use only fusion not any sort of futuristic technology. An incidental description of them as 'fusion' doesn't cut it, since that just means that the drive involves fusion in some way. I really don't think you're going to be able to point me to any such passage in any of the books.

Even at perfect, 100% AM/M conversion an IoM, according to BL figures could not contain the fuel needed to fight. The most sensible conclusion, which you seem startlingly resistant to, is that BL authors suck, and I mean SUCK, at maths.

The most sensible conclusion, which you seem startlingly resistant to, is that some BL authors (or maybe just their characters) are sometimes sloppy with some scientific terminology like real people often are, and that the 'plasma engines' use some technology unkown to us. Why is it so hard for you to accept that 40k uses reactors that are some future technology that doesn't fit with current science when they have things like teleporters, warp drives, void shields, really fast non-warp drives, gauss weaponry, lasgun power packs, super-powerful armor materials, and so on that also don't actually fit in with modern science?

I don't know why you're hooked on the idea that although IoM have all kinds of magical technology that doesn't fit with known science, their power plants must be powered by fusion and fusion alone even though you admit that the characteristics described for them don't fit with them being fusion and fusion alone, but it's not a sensible conclusions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AndrewC wrote:However do we have an actual antimatter reactor producing power? No. Do we have an actual fusion reactor producing power? No.

So we are comparing two demostrateably impossible power sources, therfor we are comparing two pieces of fiction.

Neither fusion reactors or antimatter reactors are demonstrateably impossible, they're both theoretically possible. If you can actually demonstrate that a fusion rector is impossible, you should present your proof to congress right now so that they can stop funding research into fusion reactors.

You are stating, as Nos has pointed out, that fusion does not mean fusion, it could be super-duper fusion that breaks all the laws of physics as we know them producing the effects shown, but then disallow the exact same demanding hard scientific proof for an antimatter reactor.

No, I'm stating that 40k plasma reactors, which some characters in some books but never in the rulebooks might have on occasion (though no one can tell me where) called 'fusion reactors' are not what scientists would call fusion reactors today. They use some unknown technology like lots of other imperial hardware and most science fiction reactors and drives. We can see that they aren't what scientists today refer to as fusion reactors, because they output more power than a perfectly efficient fusion drive would. The rest of what you wrote is just incoherent, I'm not even sure what you're trying to say, and I have no idea what 'same demanding hard scientific proof' you're talking about.

To show how bad BL are at this, all IoM BFG ships use reaction drives. Well the good old laws of physics come in here for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. So where does all the reaction mass come from for a BFG ship to reach the, very dubious, speeds they do in the books?

Where do you get that they use reaction drives from? Like a lot of stuff you guys are saying, I'm not aware of anywhere where this is established, and I certainly don't see it in the BFG rulebooks. It's pretty obvious that their drives use some future tech that's outside of modern science, like the drives in around 99% of science fiction universes, since, LIKE YOU SAID the drives they use do not have the properties of what scientists today call reaction drives. I'm not sure why this is complicated, if I'm trying to determine if the object in front of me is what we would call a desk today, I look and see if it has the characteristics that we say a 'desk' has. If it runs around the room barking and licking me, it's clearly not what we would call a desk today, so I'd say that it's not a desk.

@Bearers:

The BL may be inconsistant in what they call the power sources that the IoM uses, BUT...

there is no way to tell if there is a difference between the so-called "plasma drives" that the IoM uses and the Fusion drives the IoM uses.


in "Titanicus" Dan Abnett repeatedly calls the Titan reactors Fusion reactors.

in HH "Flight of the Esinstein" a dreadnoughts detonates his Fusion reactor rather then die the slow death of the virus bombs.

Other authors call them Plasma drives, but it is safer to assume that they are one and the same because A) Plasma is a state of matter, B) Fusion reactors have Plasma inside them, C) the same application(Power sources for large machines) is sometimes called the 2 different names.

Plasma could be seen as a slang name for a Fusion reactor and in a technologically backwards society Plasma is likely easier to explain to an uneducated populace then "well, the Dietrium and the Lithium, when superheated, combine and release masses of energy as well as helium"

i can hear some menial going "WTF is this techpriest saying?"


I would imagine Titan reactors would use the same technology as a star ship(albiet on a smaller scale)

BearersOfSalvation wrote:No, I'm stating that 40k plasma reactors, which some characters in some books but never in the rulebooks might have on occasion (though no one can tell me where) called 'fusion reactors' are not what scientists would call fusion reactors today. They use some unknown technology like lots of other imperial hardware and most science fiction reactors and drives. We can see that they aren't what scientists today refer to as fusion reactors, because they output more power than a perfectly efficient fusion drive would. The rest of what you wrote is just incoherent, I'm not even sure what you're trying to say, and I have no idea what 'same demanding hard scientific proof' you're talking about.

Per: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Navy - Emphasis mine.

Every Imperial starship is equipped with a fusion-based plasma drive for normal propulsion through the depths of space. Running up to a third of the ship's length, the aft section is a mass of drive tubes, engine compartments and plasma reactors.

Torpedoes are long-range missiles carried by many Imperial Navy vessels. From ~60 feet (on destroyers) to ~200 feet (on cruisers) to ~300 feet (on battleships) in length, these weapons are powered by a fusion-based plasma reactor which also doubles as its warhead.

While I don't have the books to verify, this seems to suggest that plasma/fusion is interchangable in GW canon.

City big.

Bearers -will the quotes provided above, finally convince you that BL really, really, REALLY dont know what theyre talking about?

YOu are ascribing perfection to them when their track record suggests otherwise. You fail when confronted by Occam, repeatedly and utterly.

What IS super advanced is that they have smal scale Fusion reactors - small enough to put in scout titans.

GT - the point wasnt the amount of energy used to move the ships, just that the stated weapons output really, really doesnt make any kind of sense.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:
Neither fusion reactors or antimatter reactors are demonstrateably impossible, they're both theoretically possible. If you can actually demonstrate that a fusion rector is impossible, you should present your proof to congress right now so that they can stop funding research into fusion reactors.

Please read my rewording of that statement in response to Nos.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:No, I'm stating that 40k plasma reactors, which some characters in some books but never in the rulebooks might have on occasion (though no one can tell me where) called 'fusion reactors' are not what scientists would call fusion reactors today. They use some unknown technology like lots of other imperial hardware and most science fiction reactors and drives. We can see that they aren't what scientists today refer to as fusion reactors, because they output more power than a perfectly efficient fusion drive would. The rest of what you wrote is just incoherent, I'm not even sure what you're trying to say, and I have no idea what 'same demanding hard scientific proof' you're talking about.

Sorry, you're picking up only half of a long running arguement, which has absolutely nothing to do with this thread and is illustrative of my frustrations when the usual 'vs' threads appear on the boards. Best to just ignore it.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:Where do you get that they use reaction drives from? Like a lot of stuff you guys are saying, I'm not aware of anywhere where this is established

I think its in the Damocles series, where the IoM fleet fire their engines to melt the Tau approaching from aft.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:LIKE YOU SAID the drives they use do not have the properties of what scientists today call reaction drives

I did when did I say that?

Cheers

Andrew