Propulsion technology

Try an inertial drive... very useful for "non momentum" transport, so it is excellent for docking, landing etc. This drive manipulates (within known physical laws) a bodies inertia.

A 'momentum gaining" drive is necessary for space travel. I expect this will be electromagnetic.

 

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its not going to be turning...cause something needs to counterbalance the force. Anyways...just have many moons circling an object creating tides...which can be used to generate electricity from water tides. Norway does that.

 

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Here are some ideas for you:

Solar Sails, while not exactly edge of your seat propulsion. It is cheap, and if you have the time, it can get you around over short distances.

Energy output drives. Did you know that if you put and older (cathode ray tube) TV up into space and pointed the cathode in a direction and fed it power it would give you thrust? Not allot, but it would be there. There are a range of engines all firing different electro-magnetic waves that can give you thrust. All of which give an amount of thrust that is hard to perceive. The up side is that the power can come from solar power panels or any other power generator thus making it very easy keep it going until makes a difference.

Chemical Engines involve something we know a bit about. A substance (liquid or solid) is expanded often with heat for a chemical reaction. This is a very very low grade engine as it's thrust to mass ratio is very poor. It is however better than sailing as you can go faster than sailing and better control your direction.

Ion Engines is a good one to add. Gas is super heated to get large amounts of expansion. Often employing a DC charge as the exciter. This type is useless when high trust output is needed. But it can makeup for it's lack of thrust with very high thrust to mass ratio and over time. This high ratio comes when the gas and exciting charge can be highly condensed for long thrust periods.

Atomic Drives are basically a constant warhead going off. Very violent but very powerful. This is not recommendable for small time use. However larger objects needing lots of push just to get moving have been thought impossible to move except with something like this. It would also not be feasible unless done on a very large scale.

High Energy Nuclear Reaction, it has been theorized that radiation applied to some masses could cause a nuclear reaction in controlled amounts. This is a little like the Atomic Drives and Ion drives but far more advanced. It is much more controllable and can yield thrust greater than any other listed above in theory. Anti-matter drives also fit here as it often involves anti-matter when theorizing how it works.

Warp Time Drives. This is pure theory right up there with Warp and Hyperspace. But seeing that they are on the list, I decided to add it as a variation. Note that this is very similar to the more popular Warp drives. In part, "Time" is added to make it different. It comes from the idea that all objects have a location in space and something like the "fabric of space" has an orienting three dimensional signature for it. It works by a "Warp Bubble" opening up at the back of the ship. This "bubble" is given a "locating signature" that matches the signature of space at the front of the ship. Then a synthetic mass is placed into the "Warp bubble". As the object appears in the "Warp Bubble", it appears that it should not be at the back of the ship but in front based on the signature of where it belongs in space. The synthetic object is then thrust forward to compensate. The ship holds onto the synthetic mass as it is pushed. This "bubble" is then constantly updated with a new signature so that the mass can never get to where it is being pushed to. The term "Time" has been added to the name because some people have theorized that time is the factor that dictates an objects location. In theory, this type of drive just about always tops all lists as very powerful and very power hungry.

 

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"Ion Engines is a good one to add. Gas is super heated to get large amounts of expansion. Often employing a DC charge as the exciter. This type is useless when high trust output is needed. But it can makeup for it's lack of thrust with very high thrust to mass ratio and over time. This high ratio comes when the gas and exciting charge can be highly condensed for long thrust periods."

Actually, ion drives are so low thurst because they're very power dependent, and since the best thing we can power ion driven craft with today are solar panels that trickle a few kilowatts at most, they're very low-thrust engines. However, jack a fusion powerplant to an ion drive designed to handle that power, and you can have an efficient, high-thrust engine. Of course, that's basically an indirect fusion propulsion system. Theoredically not as efficient as a direct fusion propulsion system (a sustained fusion reaction ejects superheated gas in one direction making thrust), but if one were to build a combat ship, it might be nice to have a fusion powerplant that could both power an engine AND some sort of energy weapon at any time.

"Atomic Drives are basically a constant warhead going off. Very violent but very powerful. This is not recommendable for small time use. However larger objects needing lots of push just to get moving have been thought impossible to move except with something like this. It would also not be feasible unless done on a very large scale."

You sort of overgeneralized this type of drive. This is an Orion drive you've described, but look up the NERVA project, you'll find research has been done into nuclear thermal rockets, which are basically nuclear reactors where the coolant is propellent, and the hot propellent is ejected out the back of the rocket with much more velocity than any normal chemical rocket could perform. ISPs for these engines (ISP is basically a fuel economy for rockets) reach around 1000, as opposed to the shuttle solid-fuel booster's 280ish and main LH2-LOX engines with about 400. Problem with these rockets is nobody likes the idea of nuclear fuel flying over their homes, and these rockets are extremely heavy if you shield them completely. note that I said completely, you could, if you were far enough into space (i'd guess 1000 km off earth's surface) only shield part of the reactor facing the rest of the ship, and let radiation go off into space from the unshielded parts. but yeah, nuclear thermal rockets are very cool, and go from solid core, liquid core, to even gas core, where uranium is heated to the described state. yes.... vaporized uranium, we're talking VERY hot exhaust, and thus VERY efficient engine performance.

anti-matter's a fun sci-fi engine, because such an engine would be fundamentally simple. anti-matter + matter = lots of energy! problem is that the antimatter must be either manufactured using power from, say, a fusion power plant, or it must be extracted from the universe, if it even exists naturally (which would be pretty freaky).

but yeah, that's basically the drill. ultimately, more power = more energy per unit of propellent mass = more thrust and more efficiency, at least with propulsion systems that work by newton's laws.

 

the paddle wheel is genius.... but it requires alot of research.

it is my belief.. that it is the motion of space... in 4D.. which causes photon motion at light speed....

in which case.... if we could ride that wave front... it would yield unlimited power.

the power of space itelf.


making it work... is the problem.

-MT

 

I get the feeling you said what I said. Ion drives have a lot of potential. However you won't see it until you can cram large amounts of fuel so that they can shine by long hours of use.

Again, (well, in a few places) you said what I said. I was not trying to get into details as (at this time) we can't, we are not that good. Also keep in mind that Atomic Drives are not understood well enough to get into details so much so that I ONLY said what I was confident about. I think the final blue prints of this kind of drive (if we ever see it) will not look like anything we have imagined today.

Anti-matter has a solution coming. It would appear that scientist do not talk to each other enough or I would not have to say that as you would have heard of it. As I am no authority and have no link, I will say no more.

Glad to see some one that sees what he wants and not what science tells him is possible (it may seem wrong, but it should never be any other way) as science will come to a crashing halt if that happens. There is always a way even if the method will need to change. Never confuse a dreamer with a real engineer, but dreaming is indispensable, as is the engineer.

 

Some of the best things we've done as humans start as dreams, right?

And as for the atomic rocket being such that we don't understand it, I beg to differ just a bit. Apparently, Pratt & Whitney has given it some thought.

http://www.nuclearspace.com/A_PWrussview_FINX.htm

I just wish I could find a better source, but that's what I've got.