TL breakthroughs.

[Timerover51]

Originally Posted by mike wightman
Bottom line is the Annic Nova array collects something from stars over several weeks, it then uses this stored something to jump.

And this mysterious something is also used to power the electrical equipment. Which means it is nothing more mysterious than electric power.

Note that there has never been a mention of fission based power plants being able to be used to power jump drives - so its not just electricity.

Either that or fission power plants are the inferior choice to fusion power plants by the time jump drives are invented. And since the power stored in the Annic Nova's accumulators is plain old-fashioned electric power, that explanation would seem to be the one to go with.

Hans

Interesting, something that we appear to agree on, with respect to the Annic Nova's power supply. As I see it, the Annic Nova solar array is a limited area "black globe" field generated by the array, with the array deployed when the power in the batteries/capacitors/accumulators drops to a certain level. If needed, the power plants of the pinnaces can be cross-connected to the ship's electrical system to supply power for the ship. I go with the jump drives as functioning totally differently from the standard drive. They generate a "pocket universe" connecting two points in space, and as such, also avoid the problem of having to go to the 100 diameter limit to jump, as they are not generating an artificial "worm hole".

 

[mike wightman]

And this mysterious something is also used to power the electrical equipment. Which means it is nothing more mysterious than electric power.

Not necessarily.

Electrical power can be generated from the accumulators, that's not the same as saying electricity is stored in the accumulators.

Either that or fission power plants are the inferior choice to fusion power plants by the time jump drives are invented. And since the power stored in the Annic Nova's accumulators is plain old-fashioned electric power, that explanation would seem to be the one to go with.


Hans

Except that the accumulator doesn't store electricity. The array collects radiated stellar power and the accumulator stores something. It could be storing heat, it could be storing captured protons, it could be storing gravitons, it could be storing dark energy.

 

[warwizard]

A snip from T5: A Fission Plant cannot supply power in bursts intense
enough to support Jump or Hop drive (although it can support
Skip Drive).

So it's just a matter of storing the power over a longer period of time and using the accumulator to provide the intensity, then you get into how big the accumulator needs to be, well the Core T5 rules do not go to that level of detail, perhaps we'll be able to calcualte the pump for jump time using a fission plant (perhaps it takes a week to pump for jump) once we have the fire fusion and steel version for T5.

 

[DangerousThing]

A snip from T5: A Fission Plant cannot supply power in bursts intense
enough to support Jump or Hop drive (although it can support
Skip Drive).

So it's just a matter of storing the power over a longer period of time and using the accumulator to provide the intensity, then you get into how big the accumulator needs to be, well the Core T5 rules do not go to that level of detail, perhaps we'll be able to calcualte the pump for jump time using a fission plant (perhaps it takes a week to pump for jump) once we have the fire fusion and steel version for T5.

The way I see it IMTU,

A fission plant produces the same power as a normally running fusion plant.

If a jump takes 20t of H2 delivered in twenty minutes, this is 20 EPW (ER Weeks) of power.

So it takes a fission plant producing 20 EP constantly one week to produce that's assuming that the batteries were filled linearly. I don't believe that they are, but to simplify things I fill by halves.
Let's say we have a 100 EPW battery.

The first half charge takes 50 EPW to charge.
The next 25 EPW also takes 50 EPW to charge.
Each extra half charge takes another 50 EPW to fill.
When you get down to 1 EPW, then it just takes another 50 EPW to fill.

Rather than have to fill the batteries up that much it's better to have a bit more battery than you need. At a starport they can quick charge the batteries which are normally good for a few jumps.

 

[warwizard]

I'm an engineer at heart, tell me something can't be done and that's just a challenge to see if I can figgure out a way to make it happen. Fusion plants can support jump through this "overclocking" but a Fission can't do the overclocking, (melt the fuel rods or some other some such foolishiness). Aparently the overclocking is 100X the power output for 10 times as much fuel used per M/W, so if a Fusion plant pumps for jump in an hour then the fission would do so in 100 hours for Jump, and 10 hours for Hop.

Some other thoughts on how this can be done.

1) Design the dang fission plant from the get go to be able to overclock. Have a tank of water on board 10% of hull volume per JN, 1% of hull volume for HN, as emergency coolant to boil off while overclocking.
2) Make the Fission plant bigger, 10X bigger and it can support a Hop drive without overclocking.
3) Have accumulator 10% of hull volume per JN, 1% of hull volume per HN, to store and play back the energy into the jump/hop drive.

We're getting a bit far afield from the OP question of what core technologies we see as markers for a society to advance to higher tech levels.

Obviously on space transport it's the Jump distance they can obtain. on the energy scale is it animal power, chemical, electrical, fission, fusion, antimater, gravitation. and so it goes on about 10 different scales as have been published is previous versions of traveller. A given society does not have to be 9's across the board to get jump 1, there is good evidence that Fusion power is a good marker for being able to do jump but as we have argued it is not an absoloute requirement.