Obviously propellant is the fuel used by every space and airborne vehicle in the books, but what is it? Both Tanna and Stennis have refineries to make it. Does that mean it's made from elements easily found on planets or does it component elements have to be mined on something like a gas giant and shipped to the planetside refineries?
The books never identify what the propellant is, or where it is from, only where it is made. There is a moment where Vladimir discusses differences between their usual propellant and that being provided by the Tannans.
Since the Aurora was designed to travel by FTL, and to be away for long periods of time, her engines were designed to use a variety of gases as propellant. Since they are being electrically accelerated and not burned, there is greater leeway. The only thing it doesn't have is a way to collect and refine its own propellant.
Hi I'm new, have read all 14 books, some many times. They had some kind of impulse drive in the Startrek series, based on electric ion propulsion, but more massive than ion drive.
tomy
The experts say that nuetrenoes may have mass, not sure how much, but they travel at close to the speed of light. So could some future mass swapping generator cause a reaction between the propellant and the nuetrenoes, liberating a reactionary kick across the field as the nuetrenoes degrade in velocity?
tomy
We have see mass negating fields for FTL but could the mass negating fields be used internally also, maybe to reduce the mass of cargo or maybe the propellant stores and thereby make a ship more maneuverable.
Can that technology be flipped on its head to add mass? Such a technology be used to add mass to the propellant gasses as they are driven through the engines thereby generating more thrust. Obviously this would require a more robust engine as the gases would be particularly heavy and may damage the exhaust manifolds.
If the range of this technology could be extended, it could help in combat with solid ammo attacks, by projecting the field toward the surface of an enemy ship the projectiles would hit the ship with more mass... although it may only strengthen the hull of the ship being attacked - New plan project mass adding fields onto the surface of a ship when shields go down to protect the hull!
This technology could possibly be used to catch/damage/destroy FTL ships by over-stressing the FTL mass negating fields.
I accidently skipped book 7 and started book 8 and saw them talking about propellant; I'm confused. Didn't they talk about reactor based propulsion since book 1? Why would they now need a propellant?
Electrical power is used to "push" the propellant gasses through the engines & out the back of the ship. Its Physics, if you stand on ice and blow really hard you move backwards, pushing out propellant forces the ship to move the opposite direction.
The ship has a Jump drive and doesn't need to use much propellant / you'll read more about that soon enough. Because they are jumping about they haven't used much fuel, thats why you haven't heard about it much.
Welcome to the Frontiers, and when you get a chance read book 7, having skip it you might have spoilt some of it, but its a good read all the same.
