Energy and Fuel

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-03-03 06:38pm

On any warship there are always two components. Fuel, to drive a ship forward. And ammo to fed weapons.

On a Modern warship, many have nuclear reactors that drive power. These use Uranium as fuel. The weapons are guns and missiles. These use bullets and rockets as Ammo.

On a Starship, say, a Carrack cruiser. A hypermatter reactor provides energy for the Engines. It uses Hypermater for fuel. Its weapons are Turbo lasers...

Does they same system that provides power for the Engines also provide power for Weapons? If this is so, how can it work on very small ships? If a X-wing has guns that are armed at kiloton rated energy blasts, what provides that Energy? If the Engines use a "fuel" ((and it is show in ICS to be a liquid)) How can a fuel/reactant that is burned in an engine, also provide such tremendous power that a fighter can shoot kiloton rated blasts "Almost Indefinably"

Further more, if the liquid reactant fuel of an X-wing does not provide the immense power to the 'lasers' of a fighter, what does? How is it able to sustain this power for so long?

Problematic questions that have puzzled me all day, I give them to you for contemplation.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-03-03 07:21pm

Aren't turbolasers fed by tibanna and similar gases, rather than hypermatter?

I'm not sure if I understand your question. What makes you think weapons and engines are directly tied together? Hypermatter anniliation powers everything on the ship (larger weapons emplacements have limited independant power as well), and feeds it's engines.

Cos Dashit · Post by **Cos Dashit** » 2006-03-03 07:21pm

I am fairly certain that the larger starships (let's say an ISD) have a main hypermatter reactor that power the engines, and then about two smaller reactors to supply power to the weapons and shields.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-03-03 07:26pm

Noble Ire wrote:Aren't turbolasers fed by tibanna and similar gases, rather than hypermatter?

I'm not sure if I understand your question. What makes you think weapons and engines are directly tied together? Hypermatter anniliation powers everything on the ship (larger weapons emplacements have limited independant power as well), and feeds it's engines.

A modern Fighter consumes two main things,

It consumes Fuel for it's engine, and Electricty for it's computers. The liquid fuel drives it's engines, and batteries drives it's Electicity for computers.

I am wondering where the vast amount of energy for turbolasers come from. I am simply trying to wrap my head around the idea of liquid fuel providing energy to an Engine as well as too it's weapons, and shields, which consume energy as well.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-03-03 07:40pm

I am wondering where the vast amount of energy for turbolasers come from. I am simply trying to wrap my head around the idea of liquid fuel providing energy to an Engine as well as too it's weapons, and shields, which consume energy as well.

Hypermatter is... highly energetic. An ISD has tetraton level shields, hundreds of weapons ranging from low megatons to nearly a tetraton, uses more energy than an entire planetary civilization to jump to hyperspace, and has to sustain hundreds of thousands of subsidiary systems, including life support for 32,000+ humans. And it can do this all for about a year, IIRC.

Gunhead · Post by **Gunhead** » 2006-03-03 07:40pm

Batteries are recharged by the engine. At least they are on AFVs and such and I think this is the case with fighterplanes as well.

With starships the powerplant is the heart. It provides energy for all components. Maybe turbolasers also draw directly on the hypermatter as well to form the bolt, but if the main reactor isn't running the guns won't fire.
In sense the main reactor "charges" the hypermatter and it is then propelled forward by the gun. At least that's the way I've always thought how a TL works.

-Gunhead

Spice Runner · Post by **Spice Runner** » 2006-03-03 07:41pm

Would not turbolasers need to be powered up by the hypermatter reactor in order to charge up the tibanna gas and convert it to a plasma state?

edit:
Gunhead you beat me to it.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2006-03-03 07:44pm

Tibanna gas is a coolant for the TLs, nothing more.

Hypermatter is annihilated in the reactor to provide energy per e=mc^2 to provide power for weapons, shields, and engines.

The engines use regular matter for ejecta mass.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-03-03 07:57pm

OK, that is what I am wondering out.

So a small fighter would have two 'engines' A reactor that uses Hypermatter for shields and turbolasers. And a seperate liquid fuel for propelant for the Engines.

Yes?

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2006-03-03 08:00pm

Crossroads Inc. wrote:OK, that is what I am wondering out.

So a small fighter would have two 'engines' A reactor that uses Hypermatter for shields and turbolasers. And a seperate liquid fuel for propelant for the Engines.

Yes?

We are a bit unclear on that part. So "yes" is the safe assumption, even through there are ways, using established SW tech, that they could run off the same fuel (use a variation on Gree hyerspace gates to send regular matter tachyonic & collide it with reguklar matter rather then requiing a special different kind of matter)

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2006-03-03 08:06pm

Crossroads Inc. wrote:
Noble Ire wrote:Aren't turbolasers fed by tibanna and similar gases, rather than hypermatter?

I'm not sure if I understand your question. What makes you think weapons and engines are directly tied together? Hypermatter anniliation powers everything on the ship (larger weapons emplacements have limited independant power as well), and feeds it's engines.
A modern Fighter consumes two main things,

It consumes Fuel for it's engine, and Electricty for it's computers. The liquid fuel drives it's engines, and batteries drives it's Electicity for computers.

I am wondering where the vast amount of energy for turbolasers come from. I am simply trying to wrap my head around the idea of liquid fuel providing energy to an Engine as well as too it's weapons, and shields, which consume energy as well.

A jet fighter gets its electricity from a turbine. As long as the jet engine is running, the fighter will have electricity for it's systems. When on the ground, they have external power sources to start up (plus, I'm sure, a battery).

So for a modern fighter (to be simplistic) needs it's jet engines to make electricity to run it's other systems like radar and guns and missiles.

For SW, just flip it. A SD has a powerplant that creates 'energy'. That energy is then channeled to the engines (where they inject matter for ejecta) and to the weapons (where they use the mind boggleing power) for their directed energy weapons, and to the shields.

The powerplant can produce X amount of energy. Theoretically, you can then channel all of X to the shields or weapons or engines (the three main ones.) Which is why the total ass whoopness of a SD has more to do with it's power supply than the actual amount of turreted weapons. I have no idea if a SD can channel total reactor output through one gun or battery though. The same with shields or weapons.

This is why one SD really can't whoop up on another. If SD 'A' pours all of it's energy into shields and SD 'B' put it all into weapons, then because both ships have the same power plant, you have X energy blocking an equal X energy.

Does this help?

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-03-03 08:14pm

Quite so

It satisfys the "How" of my question, how energy is produced and distributed. Now I need the 'Why', Why can a small amount of hypermatter ((small enough that it fits into an X-Wing)) able to provide massive amounts of power for hours or even days without refueling.

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2006-03-03 08:20pm

Crossroads Inc. wrote:Quite so

It satisfys the "How" of my question, how energy is produced and distributed. Now I need the 'Why', Why can a small amount of hypermatter ((small enough that it fits into an X-Wing)) able to provide massive amounts of power for hours or even days without refueling.

I'm not entirely sure that small craft use hypermatter annilation for power, but they certainly do for hyperdrive.

Gunhead · Post by **Gunhead** » 2006-03-03 08:22pm

They get more bang for their buck. i.e they have highly efficient powerplants.
If we could get say 70% of the energy to be had from fossil fuels we have today, our vehicled would have tremendous endurance.
Same applies in SW. They can use the energy stored in hyper matter very efficiently, so they get an endurance of weeks/months for their craft. Energy wise that is.

-Gunhead

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2006-03-03 09:05pm

Gunhead wrote:They get more bang for their buck. i.e they have highly efficient powerplants.
If we could get say 70% of the energy to be had from fossil fuels we have today, our vehicled would have tremendous endurance.
Same applies in SW. They can use the energy stored in hyper matter very efficiently, so they get an endurance of weeks/months for their craft. Energy wise that is.

-Gunhead

Problem being is weight. On a huge craft with a large amount of fuel, running the grav drive while parked on a planet would be easier than a short ranged craft like a fighter, with limited fuel source.

Gunhead · Post by **Gunhead** » 2006-03-03 09:15pm

I'd say efficiency is the key. Bigger craft have more room for auxliary systems that can be run on "waste" power the reactor produces, but on smaller craft this isn't so. Small craft waste more power, so their technically massive energy supply of hyper matter is used more quickly.
I don't think I can be anymore precise than this without more technical data on how SW craft really work.

-Gunhead