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RE: Steam Powered Starships?

From: tom.anderson@a...
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 17:45:18 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: RE: Steam Powered Starships?



 ---- Noah wrote: 
>	Well, I'd want electricity for life support, 

some of the life support - pumping air and fluids - could be done with
steam-powered pumps.

> jump engines

ah, but who says jump engines run off electricity? i have always
pictured them as doing something a bit more exotic. not that i'm
suggesting they're steam powered.

> navigation systems, running lights,

granted, you will need auxiliary generators to power a multitude of
critical electrical widgets.

however, who says computers in the future will be electronic? optical
computers will still need electricity to power the lasers, but
mechanical computers could be driven by steam pressure. don't laugh -
nanotechnology is essentially mechanics, and there are designs for a
turbine built from benzene rings ...

> interior cooling (more of a problem than heating - 
> ask the MIR crew),

cooling can be done with a mechanism as in a fridge - pumping a suitable
heat-transfer medium; this is done elctrically in fridges, but could be
done by stream turbine.

> water reclamation & reprocessing, 

if you have a steam engine, you tend to carry quite a bit of water
around with you, thus reducing the need to reclaim so much of it
(admittedly, reaction-mass water might not be of drinking quality, so
procesing would be needed).

> those multi-megajoule 
> particle beams we all know and love, etc. 

again, are these necessarily electric? what about ds2-style DFFGs, which
(IIRC) use self-contained rounds, or lasers based on disposable chemical
lasing cells, a bit like excimers. the cells might be semidisposable -
load them, fire them, collect the empties and return to an arms plant
for recharging (perhaps the recharging process needs complex chemical
processes not feasible on starships).

> When you take damage on a ship 
> with lots of electrics, you'll have shorts and hot wires occasionally.

>  With steam, you've got 300+ degree-Centigrade atmospheres of pressure
- 
> even if a compartment is not open to space, this guarantees
casualties. 

unless your crew are in vacc suits, which is a fairly sensible
precaution in deep-space combat: if you anticipate hull breaches, then
you will need vacc suits anyway. plus, you get cool damage effects
("sir! we have twelve hull breaches, eighteen pipe fractures and steam
on all decks!").

>  Yuck.  And if you're running a 100 million degree-Kelvin fusion
plant, 
> most other safety problems will pale by comparison. 
 
i remember reading that one of the reasons why (currently anticipated)
fusion plants are so safe is that the density of the plasma is so low
that it has a tiny thermal mass, so when it hits the reactor wall, it
cools down to ambient temperature and the wall hardly changes
temperature at all. not *quite* sure about that, though.

> Not to say that they 
> wouldn't be concerned, but other stuff (liquid hydrogen, and I think a

> carbon-diamond-type ultrafine dust) is apparently much better reaction

> mass.

gah! don't you believe it. ignore those other r-masses: buy Anderson's
Patent hydrogen oxide reaction mass! :-) (although that smiley is
somewhat redundant)

seriously, though, those are both going to be a lot more expensive and
harder to work with. i don;t think LH2 is going to be better at all,
although i can believe carbon might be (so we will need coalers after
all - but for reaction mass, not fuel! :-).

> The manuver drive in 'Footfall' was an Orion-type nuclear pulse drive
- 

yeah, yeah, i know how an orion works! i was flying those things when i
was in short trousers (i had a simulator for an orion-type starship on
an old mac though it always used to lock up when you hit 2/3 lightspeed
- this may have been relativity or just bad code ...)!

>  The attidtude drives were steam vents - there were large ice/water
tanks 
> in the ship, and heat from the thrust plate was collected and used to
heat 
> the water to provide thrust to change attitude.

that's what i meant by maneuver drive - sorry, i wasn't clear there;
think star trek - "ahead, maneuevering thrusters only, mr sulu"

all in all, even if steam-powered ships are decidely low-tech and a Bad
Idea (nobody tell the US procurement people! :-), they have a certain
appeal lost to backgrounds with neat and tidy ST:TNG-style neat-o-matic
technology.

> still waiting for 'Footfall' to be made into a movie - sort of
'Armageddon' 
> plus wierd alien invaders.

aren't we all!

Tom

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