SD Reactor Hypothosis

[Zwinmar]

I got to thinking (Im currently taking a course in Environmental Science), and I got and idea.

Using a fission (or fusion I get them confused) reactor, if the material were available to actual contain it during the high tempatures we associate with 'meltdown' would it be possible to account for the kind of power output required?

Say this reactor could run at 98% effeciency, with a system that was able to capture the degraded thermal heat and run it back into the system.

I of course, dont have the math experience to even remotely begin to get a formula.

What led me to this is that energy can be neither created or destroyed, so if they could contain and direct said energy into the power systems, would it be enough?

[nightmare]

Enough to continue to run the reaction? You have heard of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, right?

[Zwinmar]

I could be wrong on this, but, Its my understanding that SD's require fuel. Would that be enough to counter entropy?



**note: I am not even remotely proficient with these principles, a very basic knowledge is all.

[nightmare]

Well, uh, no. You're talking about perpetuum mobile. Avoiding entropy isn't possible.

I've tried to write the rest of this post five times now. Are you familiar with concepts like ZPE and complex mass?

[Zwinmar]

hate to say it, but no I'm not. Sorry if this annoys you, but I am rather new to these theories, sadly.

[nightmare]

I'm not annoyed, but I'm not sure I can explain ISD power generation without going into painstaking details. I'm sure someone's going to bash me for trying.

But hmm, I don't really care so here goes. Approaching the speed of light with any object of mass takes increasing amounts of energy - the faster you want to go, the more energy you have to spend. Easy right?

It works the same from the other way. A tachyon (theorized faster-than-light particles), would give off more and more energy as it is slowed down, towards the speed of light barrier, approaching infinite energy.

"hyperspace" is defined in canon as either another dimension full of energy, or just the normal universe seen from a faster-than-light perspective. In either case it contains infinite energy potential.

An ISD reactor requires fuel, correct. So part of this infinite energy potential (in other words... a finite amount of energy) is contained in manageable quantities of fuel (somehow), and used by ISD reactors. We don't know the exact limits to this process, but we do know that to produce large amounts of energy, the reactor has to be increasingly larger as well (Death Star much larger than ISDs, for example).

Did this help at all?

[wjs7744]

Zwinmar
How exactly are you on measuring efficiency? Fission reactors only convert a tiny, tiny percentage of their fuel mass into energy.

nightmare
That just sounds weird. How the hell do you keep a tank full of tachyonic fuel? Tachyons are defined as being FTL, wouldn't this mean that you can't hold them in one place by definition?

Given that ISD reactors are described as being fusion reactors, and also described as being able to run on everything from gasses to heavy metals, I always imagined them using a black hole to annihilate 100% of their mass to energy. This would satisfy both statements, as a black hole is the only kind of fusion I can think of happening in heavy metals. Hell, you could even argue that that is what the term hypermatter refers to as well.

[Zwinmar]

Lets so for the moment that ISD's use a hydrogen reactor (ie similar to how a star works), thus helium would be the fuel needed as it uses it up in massive quantities. Of course this assumes some sort of handwavium containment of some sort, this being the highest power source I can think of other than a black hole.

Is it even plausable for it to put out enough kcals of energy to make that kind of jump? The hard part it would seem is to get past the light barrier were the speed of light meets the tachyon, after that It may be much easier to go faster as mass decreases.


And yeah that does help, I'm just trying to get a graps on something that I probably dont have a chance of getting.

Edit cause we posted at same time:
To my understanding, the greater the effeciency the closer it comes to converting 100% of the matter into energy. Now I realize that nothing is 100% efficient, but what if something is close?

[wjs7744]

Well, neither nuclear fission or fusion come anywhere near 100% efficiency of conversion, while (for example) antimatter can theoretically convert 100%. The reactor will still give off waste heat, the second law of thermodynamics prevents 100% efficiency in that regard, but 100% conversion efficiency is possible. Just not with nuclear reactions. My black hole idea will likewise convert 100% of it's mass to energy.

Regarding your idea of nuclear fusion, it will never approach 100% efficiency of conversion, it won't even come close.

[nightmare]

That just sounds weird. How the hell do you keep a tank full of tachyonic fuel? Tachyons are defined as being FTL, wouldn't this mean that you can't hold them in one place by definition?

Light goes 300 000 km/s, does that mean it can't be stopped by a wall?

Given that ISD reactors are described as being fusion reactors, and also described as being able to run on everything from gasses to heavy metals, I always imagined them using a black hole to annihilate 100% of their mass to energy. This would satisfy both statements, as a black hole is the only kind of fusion I can think of happening in heavy metals. Hell, you could even argue that that is what the term hypermatter refers to as well.

The problem is that an ISD would consume more mass in fuel than it could carry. That's even more obvious with the Death Star. Enter complex mass fuel.

Now I realize that nothing is 100% efficient, but what if something is close?

It's still not enough. Even if the reactor can use 100% effciency, a ship can't carry enough mass of fuel. Consider this page on the main site.

I'll quote the relevant part. Read the fourth theory as well.

1.

"The DS has fuel tanks- they're just small and out of the way." This theory is poor because SWICS cuts away one full quadrant of the Death Star for inspection, revealing every other important major system. Furthermore, the Death Star must consume more than 1E21 kg of fuel with each full-power shot, even with perfect mass/energy conversion. If the Death Star has any fuel tanks at all, they must be huge. If it carries matter/antimatter fuel at the density of uranium, it would drain a spherical fuel tank with a diameter of nearly five hundred kilometres, just to fire one shot! This is several times the size of the entire battle station!
2.

"The DS is refueled on the fly." This would require a constant flow of huge transport vessels to and from the Death Star, which was never observed in the films or described in the novelizations. Another serious problem with this theory concerns logistics: if the Death Star was dependent upon huge fuel supply convoys, storage facilities, and refineries, then the Rebels would have logically attacked them instead making suicidal attacks upon the Death Star itself.
3.

"The fuel is ultra-dense." This would explain the apparent absence of fuel tanks, but it would require an exotic type of matter such as neutronium or perhaps even a black hole. It should be noted that this is a distinct possibility, and in fact, one might surmise that since matter, antimatter, and energy become indistinguishable inside a black hole, a black hole could potentially be referred to as "hypermatter".
4.

"The Death Star requires no onboard fuel." This theory would require that it can somehow draw mass/energy from a source outside of itself, such as the theoretical vacuum zero-point energy of the universe, a source of mass/energy in hyperspace, or a distant source such as a quasar or black hole (presumably connected to the Death Star's hypermatter reactor through some kind of wormhole).

The first and second theories are unacceptable. The first theory replaces nonexistent fuel tanks with miniscule hidden fuel tanks, which is improbable and would hardly solve the problem even if it were true. The second theory opens up so many logistical vulnerabilities for the Death Star that it would been easily disabled through attacks on its support structure. A direct assault on the Death Star would never have been necessary.

The third theory holds more promise. A singularity or other form of ultra-dense mass would explain the following:

* The Death Star's vast supply of energy

* The Death Star's lack of fuel tanks

[wjs7744]

Light goes 300 000 km/s, does that mean it can't be stopped by a wall?

Yes. Light is absorbed by a wall, and ceases to be light, or is reflected in another direction. It isn't "stopped" in the sense of becoming stationary. In other words, it doesn't equate to the ability to fill a fuel tank with it. If something is inside a fuel tank on board a stationary ISD, then it is not travelling faster than light.

[nightmare]

Light goes 300 000 km/s, does that mean it can't be stopped by a wall?

Yes. Light is absorbed by a wall, and ceases to be light, or is reflected in another direction. It isn't "stopped" in the sense of becoming stationary. In other words, it doesn't equate to the ability to fill a fuel tank with it. If something is inside a fuel tank on board a stationary ISD, then it is not travelling faster than light.

It can be contained, which was my point.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Given that ISD reactors are described as being fusion reactors, and also described as being able to run on everything from gasses to heavy metals, I always imagined them using a black hole to annihilate 100% of their mass to energy. This would satisfy both statements, as a black hole is the only kind of fusion I can think of happening in heavy metals. Hell, you could even argue that that is what the term hypermatter refers to as well.

Fusion reactors has been superceded by hypermatter annhiliation reactors in contemporary sources; hypermatter is consistently described as inherently faster-than-light particles, harnessed for both its potential energy and a power source and as a complex mass-fixing "ballast" for hyperjumps (AOTC ICS, ROTS ICS, etc.). Black hole evaporation as fed by heavy metals is no more fusion than the acceleration of tachyonic particles. Moreover, black hole catalyzed annhiliation of mass is not a suitable model because SW reactors can dial-an-output, whereas the output via Hawking evaporation of black holes is a function of their mass and cannot be altered at will. The output of acceleration of tachyons is not limited by any inherent reaction process and is limited only by the ability of the reactor to accelerate tachyons to infinite speed.

Light goes 300 000 km/s, does that mean it can't be stopped by a wall?

Yes. Light is absorbed by a wall, and ceases to be light, or is reflected in another direction. It isn't "stopped" in the sense of becoming stationary. In other words, it doesn't equate to the ability to fill a fuel tank with it. If something is inside a fuel tank on board a stationary ISD, then it is not travelling faster than light.

What if the "flowing" hypermatter was confined to a torus or something of a similar shape, such that it circulated greater than c? By your claim a particle in a particle accelerator cannot be moving objectively very fast because its confinement is stationary.

Dr. Saxton disagrees with you:

acceleration of tachyons

If “hypermatter” consists of intrinsically faster-than-light particles (tachyons) in some harnessed (perhaps gyrating) form then they could in principle be used as a power source. The act of accelerating a tachyon from c up to infinite speed (considering the complex, supra-light Lorentz-transformations) unleashes all of the particle's mass-energy. This is analogous to the deceleration of ordinary sub-light particles, which however have a lower energy limit mc². A tachyon accelerated to infinite speed and zero energy becomes less like matter and more effectively an omnipresent wave of zero intensity — intangible to the ordinary world. Such a process would achieve complete mass-energy conversion without needing to react this exotic fuel with any antiparticle. The power output would depend on the rate at which the “reactor” can decelerate available fuel, and not upon any reaction process. [underlined emphasis mine]

The hyperdrive ring on the Actis interceptor as shown in ROTS ICS is described as possessing just such "harnessed" hypermatter, accelerating through the ring at a speed greater than c. Hypermatter reactors must operate on such a principle of stored "harnessed" hypermatter (again, probably in some gyrating form, spinning in a tank) which is then accelerated to infinite speed to release all of its potential energy.

[FA Xerrik]

This sounds like the most ridiculously complicated energy-harnessing means ever conceived of by anyone. Ever. It's pretty cool, though, that you can figure all this stuff out from watching a few movies which never had this level of thought put into them. Like, without trying, Lucas created such an immense source of power in his work so that it could kick the crap out of lesser franchises in future VS debates. The man was a prophet of things to come, truly.

[Darth Wong]

This sounds like the most ridiculously complicated energy-harnessing means ever conceived of by anyone. Ever. It's pretty cool, though, that you can figure all this stuff out from watching a few movies which never had this level of thought put into them. Like, without trying, Lucas created such an immense source of power in his work so that it could kick the crap out of lesser franchises in future VS debates. The man was a prophet of things to come, truly.

If someone makes a drawing of a ridiculously huge castle and you try to figure out how someone could have possibly built it with medieval technology, is your argument invalidated if the artist never thought of that? What if it's more complicated than anything the artist would have thought of? That makes it stupid too, right?

Were you born with this mental deficiency, or were you exposed to harmful chemicals as a child?

[Patrick Degan]

This sounds like the most ridiculously complicated energy-harnessing means ever conceived of by anyone. Ever. It's pretty cool, though, that you can figure all this stuff out from watching a few movies which never had this level of thought put into them. Like, without trying, Lucas created such an immense source of power in his work so that it could kick the crap out of lesser franchises in future VS debates. The man was a prophet of things to come, truly.

Let's see your explanation for the power source behind the Death Star superlaser, then.

[wjs7744]

Fusion reactors has been superceded by hypermatter annhiliation reactors in contemporary sources; hypermatter is consistently described as inherently faster-than-light particles, harnessed for both its potential energy and a power source and as a complex mass-fixing "ballast" for hyperjumps (AOTC ICS, ROTS ICS, etc.).

OK, well I hadn't heard any of that before. But don't the ICS books also mention annihilating however many thousand tonnes of fuel per second? I didn't know tachyons were annihilated when you use them for energy.

Black hole evaporation as fed by heavy metals is no more fusion than the acceleration of tachyonic particles.

Oh really?

2. The act of joining together

I suppose you are going to say that when you feed matter into a black hole, it doesn't join together with it now?

Moreover, black hole catalyzed annhiliation of mass is not a suitable model because SW reactors can dial-an-output, whereas the output via Hawking evaporation of black holes is a function of their mass and cannot be altered at will.

It never occurs to you that one might be able to vary the output by, say, varying the mass of the black holes?

The output of acceleration of tachyons is not limited by any inherent reaction process and is limited only by the ability of the reactor to accelerate tachyons to infinite speed.

Well, I don't know much about Tachyons so I won't comment, but wouldn't this violate conservation of energy?

Light is absorbed by a wall, and ceases to be light, or is reflected in another direction. It isn't "stopped" in the sense of becoming stationary. In other words, it doesn't equate to the ability to fill a fuel tank with it. If something is inside a fuel tank on board a stationary ISD, then it is not travelling faster than light.

What if the "flowing" hypermatter was confined to a torus or something of a similar shape, such that it circulated greater than c? By your claim a particle in a particle accelerator cannot be moving objectively very fast because its confinement is stationary.

Possible, but wouldn't it be rather dangerous? One breach to a torus with a substantial mass in it and what then? Not to mention the power required to bind such fast-moving stuff to begin with, or the incredible gyroscopic forces that you would get inhibiting moving the thing. This kind of confinement on an ISD would not be stationary.

Dr. Saxton disagrees with you:

acceleration of tachyons

If “hypermatter” consists of intrinsically faster-than-light particles (tachyons) in some harnessed (perhaps gyrating) form then they could in principle be used as a power source. The act of accelerating a tachyon from c up to infinite speed (considering the complex, supra-light Lorentz-transformations) unleashes all of the particle's mass-energy. This is analogous to the deceleration of ordinary sub-light particles, which however have a lower energy limit mc². A tachyon accelerated to infinite speed and zero energy becomes less like matter and more effectively an omnipresent wave of zero intensity — intangible to the ordinary world. Such a process would achieve complete mass-energy conversion without needing to react this exotic fuel with any antiparticle. The power output would depend on the rate at which the “reactor” can decelerate available fuel, and not upon any reaction process. [underlined emphasis mine]

No he doesn't.

μ-blackhole catalysed annihilation

Consider a hypothetical reactor containing a lattice of mini-black holes held in a constant heat-bath. In normal operation they radiate away mass-energy [by “ Hawking radiation”], which can be replenished by a continuous fuel mass injection. Such a system could in principle provide total mass annihilation without the potential hazzards of antimatter.

In a mishap, disruption of the reactor vessel starves the holes of fuel. At worst, they subsequently decay and vanish in a flash of radiation. Although this is destructive to the surrounding ship and immediate environs, this explosion is merely equivalent to the holes' present mass-energy, which is much less than the ship's fuel reserves. The reservoir fuels are dispersed in the fireball along with the ship's ordinary structure and contents.

It is not yet known whether such technologies are possible [in STAR WARS], nor whether they form part of hypermatter reactors. Nonetheless the idea is an encouraging analogy or thought-experiment, illustrating how destructive chain reactions could limit their final yields to a minority of the fuel present.

Did you really think you could appeal to Dr. Saxton's authority without me even checking the fucking link you sent me? He proposes something almost identical to my idea on the same fucking page!

The hyperdrive ring on the Actis interceptor as shown in ROTS ICS is described as possessing just such "harnessed" hypermatter, accelerating through the ring at a speed greater than c. Hypermatter reactors must operate on such a principle of stored "harnessed" hypermatter (again, probably in some gyrating form, spinning in a tank) which is then accelerated to infinite speed to release all of its potential energy.

Like I said, I don't have the ICS books, so I didn't know this. It seems Dr. Saxton does favour the tachyon theory after all, although he doesn't say so on his page and your selctive quoting of it was just low.

I guess it's canon that they use tachyons after all. I didn't really consider them myself because I don't know much about them, and last time I heard there was no evidence they even exist, unlike black holes.

[Darth Wong]

This sounds like the most ridiculously complicated energy-harnessing means ever conceived of by anyone. Ever. It's pretty cool, though, that you can figure all this stuff out from watching a few movies which never had this level of thought put into them. Like, without trying, Lucas created such an immense source of power in his work so that it could kick the crap out of lesser franchises in future VS debates. The man was a prophet of things to come, truly.

Let's see your explanation for the power source behind the Death Star superlaser, then.

He won't provide one. His oh-so-intelligent thesis is that if an author creates a fictional construct which requires X logical support in order to work but didn't think of that logical support when he wrote it, then it doesn't count and therefore it does not require that logical support in order to work.

[Connor MacLeod]

Let's just clarify something here. ISDs "traditionally" (as in "the WEG stuff") had a solar ionization reactor, which by itself is meaningless. It doesn't tell us how the reactor works or what its properties are. Its a meaningless name. For all we know it just requires a little solar energy to kickstart it and prouces more energy (like alot of "external power taps" you see in supposedly more "serious" sci fi.)

If you get really wacky, there was some WEG adventure where it made Star Destroyer (for the Victory class) some funky magic crystal laser light show type setup which is pretty meaningless but clearly NOT a fusion reactor.

The only sources I can think of suggesting fusion reactors of any kinds on ISDs or other vessels involved the hyperdrive entry for the SW encylcopedia or the Illustrated g uide to the SW universe books (which were basically different versions of the SWE.) - and those were directly for hyperdrive use. The Black fleet crisis mentioned slave-rigged signals on ISDs powering hyperdrives. But it doesn't say they were the main/only reactors on the ships at all - we know warships can have secondary/tertiary reactors which include fusion, after all, and its quite possible that some forms of hyperdrive can run on fusion (if at lower performance for a tradeoff, perhaps.)

Hypermatter reactors, as I recall, run on ultra dense (sci fi unobtanium style "Dense", although how they maintain it is anyone's guess) fuel. The ship's "fuel mass" is in fact orders of magnitude greater than the ship's dry mass, IIRC the EP2ICS and Curtis' own commentary on the subject (from some time in the past admittedly.) correctly.

[Illuminatus Primus]

OK, well I hadn't heard any of that before. But don't the ICS books also mention annihilating however many thousand tonnes of fuel per second? I didn't know tachyons were annihilated when you use them for energy.

They cease to be like matter, and liberate all of their mass-energy; this is what is commonly understood by "annhiliation." The ROTS and AOTC ICS call intrinsically faster-than-light particles hypermatter, and intrinsically faster-than-light particles are tachyons. So does the new novel Death Star claim that hypermatter is tachyonic fuel.

2. The act of joining together

I suppose you are going to say that when you feed matter into a black hole, it doesn't join together with it now?

Feeding matter into a black hole can be described by "fusion" in the barest sense of the word. Linguistic backflips. Furthermore, Dr. Saxton addressed the former description of main reactors as "fusion" in the AOTC ICS by stating that fusion reactors power the confinement of more powerful hypermatter annhiliation reactors.

The fact is that available sources describe hypermatter as tachyonic in nature, and sources describing black holes as power sources do not identify them as hypermatter, but rather distinct and special reactors, i.e., the World Devestators.

It never occurs to you that one might be able to vary the output by, say, varying the mass of the black holes?

How can you do that arbitrarily? Where does the mass go? Mass-energy enters a black hole by feeding it, and extracting it occurs via the Hawking evaporation mechanism which is a fixed function depending on the hole's mass. If you could magically wave a wand and extract mass-energy from a black hole arbitrarily, its not Hawking evaporation and you're not talking about real black holes and any realism advantage you might claim for a black hole model is gone. You're just talking about magic mass annhiliation at will.

Well, I don't know much about Tachyons so I won't comment, but wouldn't this violate conservation of energy?

The rate at which tachyons are accelerated is physically unlimited, and limited only by whatever technological constraints of the reactor exist. That means power output is arbitrary; the energy output per tachyon is determined by its mass-energy which is totally liberated when accelerated to infinite speed. The ship is not a perpetual motion machine, tachyons must be created in the first place and this presumably supplied all the potential energy which is later lost in acceleration.

Possible, but wouldn't it be rather dangerous? One breach to a torus with a substantial mass in it and what then? Not to mention the power required to bind such fast-moving stuff to begin with, or the incredible gyroscopic forces that you would get inhibiting moving the thing. This kind of confinement on an ISD would not be stationary.

You're assuming tachyons are highly interactive by nature; which is a leap in logic. Imagine successive counter-rotating hypermatter tori which have equivalent but opposite rotational momentum, like twin rotors on a helicopter.

No he doesn't.

μ-blackhole catalysed annihilation

Consider a hypothetical reactor containing a lattice of mini-black holes held in a constant heat-bath. In normal operation they radiate away mass-energy [by “ Hawking radiation”], which can be replenished by a continuous fuel mass injection. Such a system could in principle provide total mass annihilation without the potential hazzards of antimatter.

In a mishap, disruption of the reactor vessel starves the holes of fuel. At worst, they subsequently decay and vanish in a flash of radiation. Although this is destructive to the surrounding ship and immediate environs, this explosion is merely equivalent to the holes' present mass-energy, which is much less than the ship's fuel reserves. The reservoir fuels are dispersed in the fireball along with the ship's ordinary structure and contents.

It is not yet known whether such technologies are possible [in STAR WARS], nor whether they form part of hypermatter reactors. Nonetheless the idea is an encouraging analogy or thought-experiment, illustrating how destructive chain reactions could limit their final yields to a minority of the fuel present.

Did you really think you could appeal to Dr. Saxton's authority without me even checking the fucking link you sent me? He proposes something almost identical to my idea on the same fucking page!

But I was not claiming Dr. Saxton disagreed with your black hole concept in principle; I replied to your off-hand dismissal regarding the ridiculousness of tachyonic hypermatter by quoting Dr. Saxton as showing the idea had merit. Therefore, your previous claim - to which I was actually replying - that it was intrinsically without merit and ridiculous on it's face is fatuous.

I was replying to this:

Yes. Light is absorbed by a wall, and ceases to be light, or is reflected in another direction. It isn't "stopped" in the sense of becoming stationary. In other words, it doesn't equate to the ability to fill a fuel tank with it. If something is inside a fuel tank on board a stationary ISD, then it is not travelling faster than light. [bold emphasis mine]

So it was perfectly appropriate to show that Dr. Saxton felt "harnessed" tachyons were plausible and acceptable in reply; you tried to change the goalposts into me claiming that black holes were absurd on their face as a model on Dr. Saxton's authority when I said no such thing.

The basis for hypermatter as tachyonic - my actual claim, not a strawman - is that it is described as tachyonic in AOTC ICS, ROTS ICS, and Death Star; black hole-catalyzed annhiliation is proposed only in reference to the World Devestators, and it is portrayed as distinct and peculiar in nature.

Like I said, I don't have the ICS books, so I didn't know this. It seems Dr. Saxton does favour the tachyon theory after all, although he doesn't say so on his page and your selctive quoting of it was just low.

No, your ability to understand what is being refuted is poor; black hole-catalyzation was never said by me to be a completely poor theory or that Saxton personally disagreed with it. Simply that it is unsuited to do the job described by main ship reactors in canon and its citation in canon is not identified with common ship reactors - whereas tachyonic hypermatter is on several occasions.

I guess it's canon that they use tachyons after all. I didn't really consider them myself because I don't know much about them, and last time I heard there was no evidence they even exist, unlike black holes.

They obviously exist in SW, since ships traveling in hyperspace are obviously tachyonic - they move faster than the speed of light; check out the Tech Commentaries on hyperspace. Dr. Saxton also canonized that in AOTC ICS and ROTS ICS.

[Zwinmar]

Hypermatter reactors, as I recall, run on ultra dense (sci fi unobtanium style "Dense", although how they maintain it is anyone's guess) fuel. The ship's "fuel mass" is in fact orders of magnitude greater than the ship's dry mass, IIRC the EP2ICS and Curtis' own commentary on the subject (from some time in the past admittedly.) correctly.

That would make sense to me, in my very limit experience. If you take a highly volitile gas, or even plasma?, and apply the right pressure and tempature it can become a solid, more pressure and it becomes ultra-dense (please forigve the lack of proper scientific terminology). If thats the case, couldn't the Star Wars universe theoretically have, or be able to produce such a substance which could be used for fuel? A liquid version being used in Starfighters.

[Illuminatus Primus]

One must also distinguish between fuel as in the annhiliation reactant: that is, the source of energy that provides for the power requirements of accelerating the ship, firing weapons, etc.; and the propellant: that is, the medium which is accelerated out of the ship to create a reaction force to propell it. Both must be contained in ultra-dense configuration compared to the "dry mass" of the starship, but the propellant is likely to be a more mundane form of matter.

[Zwinmar]

agreed, in the form of propellent it has to be some form of particle, anything that will provide friction to push to ship. Other than Tibanna gas I can't recall any other 'special' gasses in universe however.

[FA Xerrik]

Yowch, I probably deserved all that. I was attempting to complement you guys for coming up with this stuff, since it's all way the fuck over my head. I'm impressed that you can get so much detail out of so little to work with, given that the films weren't made with this level of thought in them originally. I realize my wording was pretty clumsy the first time around. I wasn't calling any of this stupid, I was trying to emphasize what an incredible means of harnessing energy the Empire developed. So my apologies if anyone was insulted.

[bz249]

AFAIK the main problem is, that energy output is so huge, that the mass of the fuel should be a whole lot greater than the mass of the ship itself. Maybe it is possible to explain in the following way:

1.) Particles accelerated to near-light speed, so they gain quite a mass/energy
2.) Those particles are kicked into the tachionic levels, so they loose their real mass (imaginary mass is not an issue when dealing with maneuverability) and only the mass storage ring/medium is needed...
3.) The weakest point: the particles in tachyonic have a 'memory' of their bradyonic state, thus when they pulled back they 'conserve' their mass, momentum...etc
4.) The particles decelerated in normal medium and such they dissipate the stored heat

I haven't read all the stuff about hyperspace/tachionic hypothesys so this can contradict some of the sources.