Refueling question

[Darth Wong]

But relativistic effects means that 1 gram isn't 1 gram anymore for the purposes of mass penalties, is it? I suppose that the relativistic effects DON'T effect the density issues though.

Mass equivalence affects inertia, and it can also cause gravitational effects. But it still means that you don't need to "annihilate" matter in order to get energy. You might just be bleeding off energy from this little 1 gram piece of circulating matter. It doesn't even have to be antimatter.

You just "spin-up" the hypermatter to close to c and then let it accelerate to infinity to release all its energy.

Exactly. And since it's moving at absurd velocities, the energy release from a catastrophic failure could be spread over a huge area, thus reducing its apparent effect on the local environment.

[Ender]

Big post coming in

my mistake, should have written 2.7e9 tons total at 150,000 tons/sec

I used 10e6 m^3 for the volume in fuel silos in a 129e6 m^3 vessel, so less than 10% (about 7.7%) I also was extrapolating from practical run time rather than mass for this.

Well the mass available dictates the practical run time, as mass divided by mass flow rate of the engines will give you the time the engines operate at max power. And also I find percentages to be easier to wield because they easily translate over to generate rough numbers on ships with more unknowns.

The 100K ly was in the OP, I was addressing that regardless if it was well sourced.

I suspect it is fanon.

I haven't seen a quantification of fuel burn in HS vs realspace(would like to) other than it is less energy than the jump itself consumes (thus less than maximum output/s), but it would make sense if the hyperdrive function in hyperspace was partly of regulation rather than persistence (the hyperdrive prevents the vessel from superluminally accelerating when it impacts the realspace minute parts of the interstellar medium, which goes a long way towards explaining hyperspace lanes and routes for commercial traffic)

The existance of lanes has more to do with the existance of matter in the path, as confirmed by the Dark Nest series. Whether it takes energy to maintain the hyperdrive field is of contention, the EU contradicts itself on it and the movies provide no guidance. But the linked chart would indicate some kind of exponential relationship.

now about that 150,000 tons/s This one I really need an explaination on to nail down(to be honest I think it is more like 300,000).

Yes, by scaling you get ~2.5*10^25 watts. THe thing is that if you look beyond just the scaling, 1*10^25 seems to be the mean power.

If you go by pure reactor volume the venstar is an utter piece of retarded shit, at best it has multiple reactors totaling to 1e6 m^3 (and maybe as low as .6 e6) so any direct reactor volume scaling to an ISD is a joke to begin with.

Different make and models will have different efficiencies and such. Also, design trade offs occur. Out of universe, it follows the cube law, which makes a certain sort of sense. Recall that the Acclamator was initially ~420 meters long and it makes even more sense.

The maximum reactor an ISD could support with subsidiaries is 10e6 so right away it could be nearly 10-20x more powerful (which could come up to a max of around 750,000 tons/s if directly multiplied)

But also doesn't mesh with other observed instances eg peak acceleration, jumping to lightspeed, BDZ.

now this is where I need some guidance, is surface area of a reactor more important than volume?

No. Volume is the key factor. For a given fuel, you are limited by a peak energy density of the fuel 5e13 j/kg for U-235, 1e15 j/kg for H2, 9e16 j/kg for AM, etc. Thus your volume limits the total fuel in the reactor and the peak energy it can have.

(I haven't seen anything specific on SWTC that would indicate that volume isn't important, but also nothing that explicitly rules out internal surface area, which given that thermal dissipation in the hull uses neutrino radiators it is pretty easy to imagine the same tech being used in reverse to capture neutrinos) The reason I say this is that when you make surface area the important energy capture dimension almost all of the physical dimensional ratios work out to stated capabilities of vessels. In the venstar vs ISD case, the ISD comes out to around 5x more powerful, mon cals are 67% output of an ISD, dreadnaughts would be about 1/6th the output of an ISD, even all the way down to smaller frigates etc, it's almost uncanny how it works out... in fact it even explains why star cruisers and star dreadnaughts mount cylindrical reactors (and is backed up by the Hoth generator shape)

You say it works, yet you also give the Dreadnaught a power 1/6th that of an ISD and state that Mon Cal star cruisers are weaker then star destroyers. And that just doesn't track. A dreadnaughts would have about half the power of an Acclamator by my figures (though capable of an Alpha strike of ~1/10th the peak power of an ISD), and Mon Cal cruisers surpass ISDs in most cases, and match in a few.

for the acclamator that makes a good point, the N-1's could simply be fuel limited (Afaik HS capable combat fighters only carry a few hours worth of fuel) To get anything useful out of the range would require a much better number for fuel burn in HS.

I would really like to see an explaination for that chart in more ways than one...

Thank Hodge for us not getting one.

Comparing to the 'warships of the empire notes' on SWTC and the AOTC notes it works out fine to be surface area, in fact it may be necessary for the reactors of larger vessels to be cylindrical to fit in the physical dimensions of the vessels.

True, but from the BTS info I can get we would see spherical ones anyway. Art directors have certain favorite ideas, and spherical reactors are one of them. IIRC, only the X-wing features a non-spherical reactor, and then you could claim that it only looks like a cylinder due to the cooling systems and shielding around it.

if there was more accuracy on the outputs other than order of magnitude it would make a difference for getting ratios of 1x thru 10x. the split between e23 and e24 vessels is the same, between a carrack and a vindicator cruiser, the e24 to e25 split occurs between a victory and some of the new republic star destroyer redesigns, the e26 is home to both home one and giel's battle ship and the eclipse and executor remain e27 (though the executor is very low e27 in area based measurements and high e27 in volume based. (however lacking any great knowledge of the SSD internals its a guess anyway as to what type and count of reactors it has)[/list]

I'll clean up my notes sometime in the future and put them on rapidshare for you. I get ~7.7e25 for Home one, 3e27 for the Executor (though 1e27 may slip in due to volume constraints limiting fuel and requiring a lower burn), and a few other notes.

if I scale from the venator reactor volume to the ISD. I get an ISD that is 760,000 tons/s, and e25 at a 135 m radius. calculating volume for a radius of 8km in the DSI I get barely e31 (which the SWTC power commentary puts the DSI at e33 and it is strongly suggested by superluminally scattering alderaan that the number may be higher.) SWTC says that 'The superlaser has a power source that is denser than ordinary matter or antimatter, or else it has a physical basis or energy source which is beyond mass-annihilation energy.' so I am willing to concede that an area reactor would be insufficient by far, but also point out that a volume based reactor would not be sufficient either using pure mass-energy conversion.

You are doing it the wrong way. Start with the DS and work down from there. Its funny, this is the stuff I was talking about hear 4-5 years ago

Link, I'm pretty sure that DS and other ships are modeled on basic mass-to-energy hypermatter annhiliation.

last paragraph of the section

Unless I am missing some data points or am misinterpreting things on SWTC, what I am trying to show is that there is a non-linearity of the scaling between small vessels and large battlestations using 4/3*PI*r^3 at equivalent fuel density, annihilation efficiency and energy capture efficiency.

Yes. It is log-log for most.

All of saxtons work seems to be based on orders of magnitude which is not precise enough to be meaningful on comparisons involving vessels that are inside the same magnitude.

Technically it is logarithmic rather then OOM, but yes it gets fuzzy. Blame the source material. Besides, it makes a bit more snese for beyond a genral OOM estimate on ships for them to vary wildly as they fill different roles. The Venator can burn hotter them most because its role means it will already need to frequently return to port ot refuel and ream its starfighters and take on supplies. SO designers would have a more powerful reactor with lower EFPH so it can hit harder while deployed since it will come home sooner anyways. Meanwhile the Invisible Hand was originally a freighter, so it will be designed to longer operations so its reactor will not be as powerful. The Acclamator is not meant to do frontline combat, so it is grossly underpowered for its size, and does fine.

Most of it works out in the end. I expect that will change when Traviss writes her next EG, or if Sarli gets to keep going with his vendetta, but for not it works out.

Even he posits that the deathstar is of greater efficiency than normal annihilation. Add to this the fact that the Venator is about the worst yard stick in existence due to its wankery, saxton should have given us the reactor output of the ISD which is a yard stick for so many other calculations (which if it was 120,000 tons would still be insufficient to scale to the dimensional limits of the DSI at 160km, the ratio even with an ISD at 9.99999 e25 with a reactor volume minimized as much as possible and a maximum visually determined size for the DSI reactor would still yield high e31 very very low e32, you'd be min maxing beyond evidence to barely get e33 as a absolute maximum)

He does give us the ISD estimate he worked with on his catalogue. And we will have to compare numbers, as the DS works fine with me.

the reason I still support the argument for surface area scaling on normal vessels is two fold.

The physical dimensioning of the vessels to maximum contained sphere or cylindrical reactor (in some cases multiple spheres, but you lose too much volume to fit the fuel this way so cylindrical is optimal in most cases)

A scaling on surface area would allow for the same efficiency of energy capture per square meter which would be consistent with other neutrino manipulation devices. If the surface area was not the scaling factor for normal vessels then large vessels with their higher volume to surface area ratios would have to be significantly less efficient at capturing the energy and smaller vessels would have to be more efficient(unless you can convert the raw energy to usable energy in open space somehow). if you argue that neutrino capture of the material is 100% regardless of dimension, then you only need to base the calculations off of fuel density because the reactor dimensions drop out of the equation and you could develop nonsense uberships by just making denser fuel (which we are well under the limit for theoretical fuel density in SW technology)

I'm curious where you gt Reactor sizes for many vessels like you state, most of the stuff I've seen we don't know anything about.

Mass equivalence affects inertia, and it can also cause gravitational effects. But it still means that you don't need to "annihilate" matter in order to get energy. You might just be bleeding off energy from this little 1 gram piece of circulating matter. It doesn't even have to be antimatter.

But the inertia is the problem. If I double the inertia, the engines need to be 2x as powerful, which means the reactor power has to jump up, etc...

This is why I with reactor fuel and propellent were initially the same and they just had to balance between the two. We know there exists tech that converts matter to tachyonic matter with a minimal expenditure of energy (Gree Hyperspace Gates), applying the same idea to matter you take from the fuel tanks would work. Fusion to power the converter, converter to feed the main reactor.

[Illuminatus Primus]

You're missing the point, Ender, and that's the whole idea of tachyonic energy sources is that you're getting energy from tachyons without many of the density penalties and with less volatile fuel. What is the point of turning dense matter into tachyons? That's going to have an energy cost, and you're just converting the tachyons back into nonexistence. Not to mention the hypermatter ballast implies you need to "fix" the net complex mass in any transition, and I don't see how arbitrarily accelerating propellant mass into hyperspace is going to do that.

I thought you said you got it to work with separate propellant and fuel.

[Ender]

You're missing the point, Ender, and that's the whole idea of tachyonic energy sources is that you're getting energy from tachyons without many of the density penalties and with less volatile fuel.

The density penalties are a negligible point as stasis fields can presumably prevent the matter from fusing, and the high density means it will remain volatile. Figure an ideal gas subjected to isothermal compression with the given figures, it work out to ~185 MT of work to compress it down. If you aren't gentle with that you are fucked.

What is the point of turning dense matter into tachyons?

You don't deal with the cascading effects of increasing the ships mass.

That's going to have an energy cost, and you're just converting the tachyons back into nonexistence.

Yes, but energy efficient tech already exists for that.

Not to mention the hypermatter ballast implies you need to "fix" the net complex mass in any transition, and I don't see how arbitrarily accelerating propellant mass into hyperspace is going to do that.

You do realize you just technobabbled as a rebuttal, right?

I thought you said you got it to work with separate propellant and fuel.

Yes, if we assume that the tachyonic matter has zero mass or adds no inertia. More I try to look into tachyonic matter, the more questionable that becomes.

[Illuminatus Primus]

You don't deal with the cascading effects of increasing the ships mass.

How? The rest-mass-energy of your propellant is just becoming the equivalent complex-mass-energy of tachyons and then being annihilated into energy. Conservation dictates all the original energy came out of the rest mass of the propellant. So how is that not a completely unnecessary step (why not just black hole it?). How is turning it into tachyons magically going to let you get over fuel mass penalties? Where's the magic extra energy coming from that lets you not worry about increasing the fuel mass?

Yes, but energy efficient tech already exists for that.

Over black-hole evaporation? I don't see how this makes any sense.

You do realize you just technobabbled as a rebuttal, right?

So we get to wave away official data because its stated simplistically? You decided Saxton did not mean for it to have any value? You can't arbitrarily turn real mass-energy into complex mass-energy; you have to conserve values, and that's what the complex "ballast" aspect the hypermatter is for. Conservation of mass-energy means you can't have magic imaginary values appear on one side of an equation for no reason. Otherwise, its not conserved, is it?

HYPERSPACE
Hyperdrives allow voyages through an eerie realm called hyperspace--i.e., the ordinary universe viewed from a ship traveling faster than the speed of light. Hyperdrives adjust faster-than-light "hypermatter" particles to allow a jump to light-speed without changing the complex mass and energy of the ship.

HYPERDRIVE BOOSTER
Many Jedi starfighters are too small to safely contain a hyperdrive, so the ships must connect to an external booster ring. Usually powered by twin reactors and ion drives, the ring contains "hypermatter," providing ballast for the attached starfighter during the jumps to hyperspace.

[Figure detail; short script directed toward the ring structure, upper left:]Dense hypermatter spins through ring

Yes, if we assume that the tachyonic matter has zero mass or adds no inertia. More I try to look into tachyonic matter, the more questionable that becomes.

Dude, its PURELY theoretical. Treat it like a black box. Especially when you're not conserving complex values - and therefore violating Conservation of Mass-Energy - on either side of your "converters". This level of scrutiny is not called for when we are dealing with tachyons, where any interaction of which with the bradyonic universe is causality violation. What matters is that the numbers add up from fuel weight to energy output; that the thermodynamics is valid and there's conservation.

[evillejedi]

No. Volume is the key factor. For a given fuel, you are limited by a peak energy density of the fuel 5e13 j/kg for U-235, 1e15 j/kg for H2, 9e16 j/kg for AM, etc. Thus your volume limits the total fuel in the reactor and the peak energy it can have.

I'm looking for clarification on if/how the geometry impacts the energy capture from annihilation of a mass of fuel. A larger volume would allow more fuel to enter the chamber, but unless it is converted to usable energy volumetrically in some fashion, then I'd assume energy capture occurs on the reactor wall. This would not follow the cube law if the same capture efficiency is used (unless energy capture/conversion is exactly 100%) and thus not give a peak output especially for larger and larger reactors (unless the capture efficiency scaled with the cube increase)

You say it works, yet you also give the Dreadnaught a power 1/6th that of an ISD and state that Mon Cal star cruisers are weaker then star destroyers. And that just doesn't track. A dreadnaughts would have about half the power of an Acclamator by my figures (though capable of an Alpha strike of ~1/10th the peak power of an ISD), and Mon Cal cruisers surpass ISDs in most cases, and match in a few.

I'm curious where you gt Reactor sizes for many vessels like you state, most of the stuff I've seen we don't know anything about.

vessel reactor sizes are being upper bounded by 3d models of the vessels (though some guess work is involved as to positioning, but usually the thickest part of the vessel in a practical arrangement, given an armor and containment reduction) certianly they can be less, but it would be difficult to claim larger.

For purposes of comparison the MC80 liberty I am using at 1500m has a total volume of 35e6 m^3 and a single maximum spherical reactor of 1.2 e6 m^3 (but could easily contain 3 of these along its length)

the dreadnaught I am using is 2.6e6 m^3 total volume and has a .55e6 m^3 reactor

when comparing surface area they do work out to the described ratios (roughly take the ISD as a 130 m radius sphere, the MC80 as 3
x 65 m spheres and the dreadnaught as a 50 m sphere)

I'll clean up my notes sometime in the future and put them on rapidshare for you. I get ~7.7e25 for Home one, 3e27 for the Executor (though 1e27 may slip in due to volume constraints limiting fuel and requiring a lower burn), and a few other notes.

this would help my understanding tremendously, especially of the established work that has been done.

[Darth Wong]

Mass equivalence affects inertia, and it can also cause gravitational effects. But it still means that you don't need to "annihilate" matter in order to get energy. You might just be bleeding off energy from this little 1 gram piece of circulating matter. It doesn't even have to be antimatter.

But the inertia is the problem. If I double the inertia, the engines need to be 2x as powerful, which means the reactor power has to jump up, etc...

That affects everything, which is why the use of tachyonic mass/energy might help solve the problem. There is no reason why it has to be tachyonic antimatter.

This is why I with reactor fuel and propellent were initially the same and they just had to balance between the two. We know there exists tech that converts matter to tachyonic matter with a minimal expenditure of energy (Gree Hyperspace Gates), applying the same idea to matter you take from the fuel tanks would work. Fusion to power the converter, converter to feed the main reactor.

If you have that much mass/energy in your ship to begin with, the inertia problem exists anyway. The only way to solve it is to have the initial mass/energy start largely in the complex number realm, rather than taking mass from fuel tanks and converting it to tachyons. Remember that the magnitude of the mass/energy of the fuel cannot change even after tachyon conversion anyway, due to thermodynamics and the fact (as stated by yourself) that the device has low power requirements.

If we start with mass/energy ballast which is largely in the complex number realm, then we can assume that all of the hard work was done at the refueling station.

[TC Pilot]

We get glimpses of a refueling process in Dark Forces II, with Kyle Katarn running around through gigantic fuel pipes, tanks, and even the fuel itself at times. Suffice to say, the entire complex is quite enormous, implying that the galactic infrastructure demands for sustaining the Imperial fleet are absolutely mind-boggling.

It's possible, though, that the Sulon Star, the cargo ship seen being prepared for launch and the hyperspace jump to Ruusan, is acting as the fleet tender that would keep the Imperial fleet of several Star Destroyers and the Vengeance fueled.

[Ender]

How? The rest-mass-energy of your propellant is just becoming the equivalent complex-mass-energy of tachyons and then being annihilated into energy. Conservation dictates all the original energy came out of the rest mass of the propellant. So how is that not a completely unnecessary step (why not just black hole it?). How is turning it into tachyons magically going to let you get over fuel mass penalties? Where's the magic extra energy coming from that lets you not worry about increasing the fuel mass?

You don't black hole it because of starfighters. With the black hole the bigger it is the lower the output. Thus for starfighters you would need to be carrying a small mountain the size of an electron. That just doesn't work, which is why I suspect the idea was rejected. As for how you don't add to it, it is because you don't have the extra fuel on board. The idea is you have big tanks filled with fuel that can either be used for propellant or for fuel. Annihilate it all, you can run at peak power for ~3 hours. Or balance between powering the ship or moving the ship.

I don't like it, but unless you grant tachyonic matter the ability to effectively have no mass, you get the issue of how they fit it all in teh ship.

Over black-hole evaporation? I don't see how this makes any sense.

Where are you getting black hole evaporation from? We have no idea about hypermatter - Death Star reads almost like they have an extra dimensional tachyonic ramscoop. If you want to know what efficient process I was talking about to create tachyonic matter it is the hyperdrive. An ISD burns one ten millionth of its total mass to send the rest tachyonic. That is pretty good.

So we get to wave away official data because its stated simplistically? You decided Saxton did not mean for it to have any value? You can't arbitrarily turn real mass-energy into complex mass-energy; you have to conserve values, and that's what the complex "ballast" aspect the hypermatter is for. Conservation of mass-energy means you can't have magic imaginary values appear on one side of an equation for no reason. Otherwise, its not conserved, is it?

Ok, given what a sketchy subject tachyons, complex matter, and the rest of the really out there sci-fi stuff is, start giving me sources to back how you say this stuff works. And I don't mean more book quotes, I know the god damned book. I mean start showing me peer reviewed papers. Now do you understand why I called your bit technobabble? Fuck, for all we know the sentence "without changing the complex mass and energy of the ship." means that jumping FTL doesn't fuck with the intricate inner workings of a starship. That is certainly a valid look at it - R2 got thrown around when the hyperdrive was activated in ESB, which could easily trash more delicate pieces of equipment.

Dude, its PURELY theoretical. Treat it like a black box. Especially when you're not conserving complex values - and therefore violating Conservation of Mass-Energy - on either side of your "converters". This level of scrutiny is not called for when we are dealing with tachyons, where any interaction of which with the bradyonic universe is causality violation. What matters is that the numbers add up from fuel weight to energy output; that the thermodynamics is valid and there's conservation.

The problem is that they don't add up. If you try to do it, then based off the assumptions of the dry mass of the ship, it can only full burn for about 6.8 minutes. And that is not counting the fact that the ship is more then structure, fuel, and propellant.

[Ender]

Mass equivalence affects inertia, and it can also cause gravitational effects. But it still means that you don't need to "annihilate" matter in order to get energy. You might just be bleeding off energy from this little 1 gram piece of circulating matter. It doesn't even have to be antimatter.

But the inertia is the problem. If I double the inertia, the engines need to be 2x as powerful, which means the reactor power has to jump up, etc...

That affects everything, which is why the use of tachyonic mass/energy might help solve the problem. There is no reason why it has to be tachyonic antimatter.

This is why I with reactor fuel and propellent were initially the same and they just had to balance between the two. We know there exists tech that converts matter to tachyonic matter with a minimal expenditure of energy (Gree Hyperspace Gates), applying the same idea to matter you take from the fuel tanks would work. Fusion to power the converter, converter to feed the main reactor.

If you have that much mass/energy in your ship to begin with, the inertia problem exists anyway. The only way to solve it is to have the initial mass/energy start largely in the complex number realm, rather than taking mass from fuel tanks and converting it to tachyons. Remember that the magnitude of the mass/energy of the fuel cannot change even after tachyon conversion anyway, due to thermodynamics and the fact (as stated by yourself) that the device has low power requirements.

If we start with mass/energy ballast which is largely in the complex number realm, then we can assume that all of the hard work was done at the refueling station.

I'll be quite honest - in the literal years I've spent slamming my head into the problem, I've made about no headway. I can't find anyplace that offers it as a course even if I were willing and able to scrape together the cash for it, I can't get a hold of more knowledgeable people to ask, can't find textbooks to read, and christ almighty knows that there is no way to google teach yourself this subject. And there is even less about complex matter then there is tachyons. S can you have the mass-energy stored in a way where you don't have to deal with its inertia, and if so, how would you go about figuring the limits of it?

[Ender]

I'm looking for clarification on if/how the geometry impacts the energy capture from annihilation of a mass of fuel. A larger volume would allow more fuel to enter the chamber, but unless it is converted to usable energy volumetrically in some fashion, then I'd assume energy capture occurs on the reactor wall. This would not follow the cube law if the same capture efficiency is used (unless energy capture/conversion is exactly 100%) and thus not give a peak output especially for larger and larger reactors (unless the capture efficiency scaled with the cube increase)

Figure that the energy capture is always X% and that the fuel inside the reactor can have a maximum density of Y, and releases Z energy per unit mass. Thus it scales proportional to the volume of the reactor. As for the cube law, I was talking ship length. Compare the Venator at 1137 m and a reactor output of 3.6e24 with the Imperial at 1600 m and a reactor output of 1e25.

vessel reactor sizes are being upper bounded by 3d models of the vessels (though some guess work is involved as to positioning, but usually the thickest part of the vessel in a practical arrangement, given an armor and containment reduction) certianly they can be less, but it would be difficult to claim larger.

Might want to look at engine placement as well - Reactor and fuel cells will be the most massive part of the ship, they should be the center of mass, in line with the thrusters.

For purposes of comparison the MC80 liberty I am using at 1500m has a total volume of 35e6 m^3 and a single maximum spherical reactor of 1.2 e6 m^3 (but could easily contain 3 of these along its length)

So you think the ISD has a greater volume and thus outmasses the Liberty class? Given general geometries I am rather skeptical, though I admit I have never gone into great detail on it. BTW, volume scaling with that and assuming 3 of them means it has about double the power of an ISD.

the dreadnaught I am using is 2.6e6 m^3 total volume and has a .55e6 m^3 reactor

Dreadnaught I look at more performance to gauge it. I figure it does 1.5e22 watts, peak, with its massive guns being similar to those on a Munificent, having a huge charge time.

when comparing surface area they do work out to the described ratios (roughly take the ISD as a 130 m radius sphere, the MC80 as 3
x 65 m spheres and the dreadnaught as a 50 m sphere)

Where are you getting a 260 m diameter reactor for the ISD? I scaled and got 160.

this would help my understanding tremendously, especially of the established work that has been done.

I'll get to work on it.

[Darth Wong]

I'll be quite honest - in the literal years I've spent slamming my head into the problem, I've made about no headway. I can't find anyplace that offers it as a course even if I were willing and able to scrape together the cash for it, I can't get a hold of more knowledgeable people to ask, can't find textbooks to read, and christ almighty knows that there is no way to google teach yourself this subject. And there is even less about complex matter then there is tachyons.

Since the science surrounding this subject is at a level where "unsubstantiated" would be a generous way to describe it, I doubt that situation is going to improve. To be honest, what little I know of the issue is mostly based on conversations with Dr. Saxton. It's not as if my education dealt with this subject any more than yours did.

S can you have the mass-energy stored in a way where you don't have to deal with its inertia, and if so, how would you go about figuring the limits of it?

Honestly, I don't know if the math can be made to work. All I do know is that if the mass is a complex number, such as "3 + 5i" kg, then we don't really know how the "5i" part of the mass will behave. So in a sense, a lot of this speculation takes advantage of the fact that the science does not yet exist to disprove it. One could speculate that the "5i" part of the mass, existing at 90 degrees to reality, will not require energy to accelerate in any of the 3 dimensions of reality, and rely on the fact that nobody can really say you're wrong because nobody has the foggiest idea how 5i kg would behave, or if it is even possible for 5i kg of mass to exist at all. It's a mathematical abstraction, which sadly still puts it well above a lot of bullshit you see in sci-fi.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Fuck, for all we know the sentence "without changing the complex mass and energy of the ship." means that jumping FTL doesn't fuck with the intricate inner workings of a starship. That is certainly a valid look at it - R2 got thrown around when the hyperdrive was activated in ESB, which could easily trash more delicate pieces of equipment.

You know what "ballast" means roughly, you know what "change" means, what "mass" means, and what "complex" means. It means that mass must be conserved. The quote says point-blank that the hyperdrive uses on-board hypermatter to fix (i.e., remain constant) the total complex mass-energy. They transit some hypermatter back and forth to conserve for the transition of the ship's dry bulk to tachyonic. At least that's my take, and the one I got from Saxton's few hints and the book and Mike's discussions and essay on Nathan F's old site.

The problem is that they don't add up. If you try to do it, then based off the assumptions of the dry mass of the ship, it can only full burn for about 6.8 minutes. And that is not counting the fact that the ship is more then structure, fuel, and propellant.

Is this based on the fact that if you pack it denser, the tachyons will fuse with themselves or the alike? Like I've said before, I don't see any reason to assume hypermatter can fuse with itself or what have you. If you must, just go with it having reduced or no inertial mass. Why can't we pack it in to neutral degenerate matter density or the like? It claims its ORDERS of magnitude more dense, so the ship without any fuel or propellant could weigh 1% of the total mass. Or assume Mike's idea it can be circulated in a diffuse cloud around the ship not really interactive with real space, and leave the silos only to propellant?

I do agree this would be a lot easier if Dr. Saxton was still participating in fan analysis/discussions (it seems that his experience with publishing soured him from the whole community), or at the very least updated his site or posted his incomplete notes to Mike or you or someone.