> On Feb 11, 2016, at 1:13 PM, tmr0195@comcast.net wrote:
>
>
> Pulling all the material from 1979 to 1985 together my idea is now that the jump drive is not a specialized fusion power plant, but I have no clue other than the guts have capacitors, coils, and other stuff not described.
>
> Of course my idea is probably out to lunch, but it is my best shot to date.
>

All of this is strong support for the ‘jump fuel is used to create a protective bubble of H2 around the ship in J-Space’ rather than ‘We fuse enough hydrogen for 77 exa-jigga-google-watts’ model of the ‘it’s all burned’ school of jump drive theory.

A bit of back of the envelope calc:

Note that 1 kg of H2 fused into He results in ~63 x10^12 joules of energy. (converting H2 to He results in a loss of mass of ~0.7%, so via E=mc^2 we get 63x10^12 joules. see https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080223194641AAT5acE )

lets be real generous and say that Traveller Jump Drive fusion plants are only 1% efficient, and 99% of that H2 is used as ‘coolant’ (which STILL doesn’t make sense; since water would be much more efficient, but fine, lets use H2), that means when the J-drive of a scout courier is fusing 100 dt of H2, it is generating 980 kg (h2 is REALLY light! one liter of liquid H2 weighs just 70 g) x .63 10^12, or just over 6.17 x10^14 of energy; or roughly equivalent to a 120KT nuclear weapon.

Then storing it, however briefly, in jump capacitors.

(Imagine what would happen if one was to do it in port, then short out the caps in a blaze of glory).

And that’s the MINIMUM sized ship for jumping.

Using H2 as a shield is SO much more sensible, imo.

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs