Full Speed Ahead

[Jessica Med-Beq]

When Jessica heard about the return of a Jedi to the Silvers, and that he wanted to retool himself to becoming a Jedi Technician, Jessica couldn't help but provide what expertise she had. She was first and foremost a gadgeteer. While he was a nearly complete unknown to Jessica, to other notorious Silvers he was a known quantity, especially to one Joza Perl by virtue of the latter having been his Padawan. His name: Dune Rhur. Perhaps he knows about Jessica's boss, Charzon, and how the business is headquartered on Ringo Vinda, somewhere in SJ space. Dune used to be a Jedi Healer back then... but there was one thing that Ringovinda StarYards hated about the Creveld-5s: they really were designed for Star Destroyers rather than for battlecruisers. If they want to capitalize on the preliminary design work done on what they currently codename the Lucrehulk Mk.II, back on Elom, with the same amount of primary engine sockets on a 3000-meter-long ship, they will need to field larger engines: too many small engines and maintenance can become a pain.

"Master Rhur, even though I'm currently unsure of my status with respect to Force-sensitivity, I think you've come to the right place to learn more about the craft of engineering. The other Jedi Technician I know about is mostly a computer programmer. And please don't mistake me for a Wookiee the way he did"

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

"You certainly aren't a Wookie, not enough hair, for one," he replied with his trademark deadpan. He'd never been mistaken for anything except that musician someone once saw at a cantina. You know, the one who plays the awesome solos? No?

"At any rate, I know the Lucrehulk project needs larger engines. My initial idea involved chaining smaller engines. I realize that might be a problem in terms of routine maintenance. But, it does offer the advantage of redundancy."

He drummed his long fingers on the work table as was his custom when in deep thought.

"You see, it offers backup options if a primary fails. In an engagement, you always count on something failing. The navy tends to redline their engines quite often."

"Also, supposing we do design larger engines, can the current reactor sustain the increased output?"

A larger reactor would of course mean redesigning the ship's engine room. All kinds of extra things to account for....

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"It's still at the early stages: we know that larger engines will require more power on an individual basis, but comparing the output of three of the larger engines vs. eight Creveld-5s It would be more effective to have more than one reactor regardless of the configuration. We can always fit some smaller engines for directional purposes"

Three or four reactors or main engines would probably be ideal in this context. But the smaller engines would probably be what would be used as main drives on frigates or light cruisers: if the Acclamator was any indication, they tend to have greater impact on maneuverability the further off-axis they are. Actually, they do. Torque is r x f = |r||f| sin y (but here y denotes the angle between the "lever arm" and the force) with r the lever arm vector, f the thrust vector. Speaking of thrust, for ion engines it's bvm, where b = (1-v2/c2), v the exhaust velocity and m the exhaust rate. Which means that what one needs to do to increase thrust is to increase v or m. And ion drives imply charge: this means electricity on some level. Which also means increasing the current in the coils, propelling said ions forward. It's really almost the same as a cathodic tube, which itself is a linear accelerator: electron guns can be magnetically collimated for thrust vectoring. Of course there are radiative losses...

"To be fair, in the Battle of Naboo, with the very Lucrehulk we wish to improve on, we have seen that the engine room being exposed from the inside was the main fatal flaw of the original: we would like some space between the cargo holds (or hangar bays) and the engine room so that a fighter would not have the opportunity to fire directly at the reactor"

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

"So, the hangar and cargo bays at one end, the reactor cores at the other," he remarked. "That would mean we'd need to place them relatively close together, if we're using something like the original Lucrehulk crescent shape. Not normally a problem, but, if there is a catastrophic failure in one it might cause a chain reaction."

You couldn't ever fix every potential problem in a ship. Not if you wanted a larger scale production. That would prove far too expensive and credits were always a factor. You simply had to decide what you were going to prioritize.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]'s worries about the proximity of hangar and cargo bays being too close were bigger potential problems. A chain reaction in the reactors was far less likely to occur than a rogue starfighter getting into one of the bays.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Now that Jessica understood that separating cargo holds and hangar bays (in the original Lucrehulk there was no separation between the two, no more than there was separation between the cargo holds and the engine room) by the command-and-control systems of the fighters in the hangars, as you would separate the cargo holds and the engine room by living quarters: a tad dangerous but if the proper wall construction was made, they had little to fear so long as there was no catastrophic failures involved.

"Back to the topic of the engines themselves: there is only so much current you could put through accelerator coils for a given size. Bigger engines mean bigger accelerator coils because you need to accelerate more ions at once: even superconductors can only carry so much current in a wire. If you feed ions at a certain rate, given the speed of the exhaust, you'll get a certain thrust"

Valence electrons were those involved in the conduction of electrons in a wire. That much she knew. If the intensity of the current I is limited by the size of the wire, and the number of valence electrons in the wire that mean that there was only so many ions that this thing could accelerate. And hence a maximum thrust achievable by a given coil size. A hollow vacuum pipe chamber was at the center of any ion engine, make no mistake. One needed to know both exhaust rate and how fast the ions would get out of the linac to know how much thrust you could get out of the engine. You would probably hope for 20G's worth of acceleration out of fighters or interceptors, in which case you would be looking at about 3-6,000 kN. But for battlecruisers, whose masses are in the hundreds of millions of tons very easily, you'd probably not even get one G of acceleration out of it. You're talking about engines a million times more powerful than starfighter engines. Even if you could get 1 TN (1 trillion newtons) out of one of the larger engines, out of an engine whose exhaust velocity was 250,000 km/s, said engine would need to propel four tons of ionic fuel per second (but that's after accounting for the resulting relativistic effects of relativistic exhaust speeds).

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

"So you eventually hit a kind of wall," he commented "But then, you could increase speed and handling by reducing the overall weight."

He tapped his digits more slowly and shrugged.

"I doubt the navy will go for less shielding, but then, I wouldn't either. Perhaps we could limit cargo capacity or even the number of starfighters. They aren't going to like that either."

He looked at her and asked frankly.

"The Creveld-5s, can they actually handle something so big?," he continued "If we don't have the engines to handle it, why build something so large. There's, as you pointed out with the accelerator coils, a point of diminishing returns even in overall size."

"For example, if we can't generate sufficient speed, a massive capital ship will just be a slow moving target. Even the finest hull plating can only take so much abuse. A number of smaller ships in concert with starfighters could generate enough damage over time even though their individual damage capacity is dwarfed by most capital ships."

The Bith's intention wasn't to question Med-Beq's capabilities. He was just pointing out practical realities navies faced. The trouble with geniuses, he found, was that they could be touchy with regard to their work. It was like their baby to them.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"As far as reducing weight is concerned, alusteel is the main way we do it: about half the density of durasteel, and still the same structural strength as you would expect out of the durasteel hull plating commonly used, perhaps a little better"

Touchy? All right, she was touchy about her work, and she knew how touchy she felt about several things she personally had a hand in designing: the variable-geometry landing gear named after her, the AI (that's where her whole incomfort started, and she feels touchy on a whole lot of Force-related levels since) and the 380mm hypervelocity cannon, the last two all by herself until the prototypes were built. Ion engines were mostly big linacs. Then again the Proton 2 or Proton 12 were named as such because their source of ions were plain old-fashioned protons. Probably some reactor waste or some other such thing. Turadium was used for reactor cores, quadranium for fuel power lines (and probably to feed protons) So what Jessica codenames the Creveld-6 engine would, like all other ion drives, draw its ions from the engine. And yet, she knows that hypermatter reactors are pretty inefficient: one could usually get 10-12% of the annihilation energy content in actual usable energy, the remaining 90% is actually waste material. One kilogram of hypermatter would net you 1x1016 joules from a fusion reactor, whereas annihilation would net you nine times as much. And also, with ion drives, knowing the protons' energy at the exit of the ion drive is the same as knowing their speed, given that, at rest, the proton has 938.27 MeV of energy. Ions would have to come from somewhere: for hypermatter reactors the fusion products are just plain old protons.

"Oh, Creveld-5s were mostly used for Star Destroyer-sized ships, but again what laymen don't understand about ion drives and, for that matter, ion cannons, is that you need an source of ions. You must expect a set of hypermatter reactors to burn at least as much hypermatter as there is a need for propulsive power, that is, thrust times speed, and since battlecruisers generally cannot land on planets, there is no need for them to reach escape velocity, usually 1-2 km/s is sufficient"

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

"Fair enough."

Alusteel could indeed provide a more than adequate solution for weight problems. But there were other considerations.

"All alusteel construction would be quite ideal," he agreed "The problem comes back to credits. Naturally, it's more and an appropriations committee never likes hearing that it will cost more."

"Still, perhaps we could use plastoid and other composites internally for non-essential systems if at all possible. Every kilogram does count, as they say. Although it's a small scale example, I've found replacing rifle stocks, rails and the like with composites lightens the firearms without comprimising their durability to any significant degree."

"With the alusteel, I believe we might have to compromise to a degree with cost being a factor. Hull plating and other essentials naturally should receive the priority of best materials."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"That would reduce our thrust requirements all right: on battlecruisers, the mass of the ship is the main thing that determines the thrust necessary because most parties operating battlecruisers acknowledge that they are not going to accelerate that well. Plastoids and composites would probably line the crew quarters and other living areas"

As Dune said, every kilogram counts when it comes to the thrust requirements. If everyone and their dog accepted that a total of 1 TN thrust was necessary for the Lucrehulk as they intend to rebuild it, split into three engines, that still left them with roughly 350 giganewtons for each engine. (Better have some room for redlining, so perhaps 500 GN of thrust would be called for) Yet they know that the propulsive power required to operate a ship at 1.5 TN thrust using 20 GeV protons (you may as well treat 20 GeV protons as travelling at the speed of light, so beta = 21.3 here) requires 5 tons of protons to be expelled every second, but the rest mass of said protons need to be about a quarter-ton. No problem, proton pumps capable of pumping out 80 kg of protons per second as an array will not prevent her from building the engines. With three reactors like those mounted on the Ultima that won't be much of a problem: they will then have 150 meters in diameter each.

"You know, hypermatter leaves protons behind when fused in a reactor. Plus in the world of ion drive design, one often talks about the voltage between each endpoint of the accelerator tube. We may get 20 GV out of the linac at that engine size. I wonder whether any one of Joza, Sor-Jan et al told you this, but violating the second law of thermodynamics requires the use of the Force, so it cannot have perpetual-motion engines onboard unless you want Force-users in the engine room at all times"

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

Dune let out a chuckle of amusement. Yes, his old student had proven to be surprisingly adept with science. Not just a pretty face, so the saying went among humans.

"Oh yes, I'm very aware of that. Just as I'm aware of your concerns regarding the maintenance of multiple engines."

He held up his hands with a smile.

"We Bith have evolved in such a way where fine motor skills are practically an art form."

He wiggled long fingers.

"I realize that humans and other humanoids are not nearly so adept. Their brains and visual senses are also not especially fine-tuned for such close-up work."

"I could find a great deal of enjoyment from that sort of task, but then, I don't sleep. So, suffice it to say, I know I'm not exactly the same."

Bith had been space-faring as a species for tens of thousands of years before even the far-travelling humans. They'd both literally and figuratively evolved around such high technology. Not all were engineering masterminds, but they understood the practicalities well-enough. A Bith would even find a technical manual a fascinating read.

"At any rate, building in a generous buffer into the engine capacity is an excellent idea. Even the most conservative captain would rest easier knowing they could call upon a fair sized reserve."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Buffering engine capacity is partially a question of engine control unit programming but such a buffer would usually require a reactor buffer, too"

What that means: a pretty standard 50% extra thrust when emergency mode is triggered, so that meant 120kg of protons rather than 80. Sometimes the problem was one of practicality: sometimes geniuses of her kind were vain, proud people. Jessica knew that it would require an extra 50% current through an accelerator coil but as long as the superconducting accelerator coils held (and somewhat beyond, too, for good measure), she couldn't see why it wouldn't work. But that was mostly an emergency mode.

"For sure one of the Jedi I consulted in relation to my problem left me the impression that she was just as smart as I am, just that she is better versed in biomedical sciences. I like her as a person, just that she removed what well-being I had left because of some medical treatment. I do not blame her: sometimes there is no painless solution to a problem. You probably know her better than I do, however"

Ouch, she let those words about her incomfort slip: why is it that she just can't get that one name out of her mind? To an intellectually normal Force-user, both Jessica and that administrator were geniuses, or so she thought. If Jessica was used as a computer in the Force, that person would also be used as such, at least if Jessica wasn't victim of a Force-illusion or a mental illness. Would other people just turn the knife in the wound the way that administrator did? Did Jessica truly know too much about the Force not to be able to use it, as her Force-sensitive lover suggested?

"What would that tell about a person if that person was to design a cutting-edge AI, or a 380mm-caliber hypervelocity gun, all by itself, over a few days apiece, while needing help only for the construction of the prototype?"

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

"The laws of physics can be troublesome," he said with a sigh "If only the Rakatan Empire hadn't been evil."

"As you probably know, they used the Force itself in all of their technology. I had many occasions to study them in my capacity as an archivist."

"For example, the Star Forge. But such things usually court megalomaniacs. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

He listened to the woman's last query and he knew he had to tread lightly. Dune thought for a long moment before he made a reply.

"Your native intelligence is a gift, Jessica. Some, especially the Jedi, would say you should use to it benefit the beings of the galaxy. I feel as if you should make the choice for yourself. Provided that you don't seek to harm others, I see no harm in only working for yourself."

"I've learned humans are complex in ways a Bith could never be. It's a challenge to comprehend but, as I said, I don't sleep."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"A gift that I've begun now to realize its cost. I'm grateful for my native intellectual makeup but there's no free lunch. It's not as easy as people make it out to be as smart as I am, the same way that life as a FU is not as easy as NFUs think it is. I have always lived out my life with a high level of smarts, I couldn't imagine what life would be like if my intellect was at a more normal level"

When NFUs think of godawans, they usually think of people who were already overpowered in some way before their training began. To Jessica's eyes, it is even easier to become a godawan if you weren't trained from childhood age. Especially people who achieved something in a particular area prior to undertaking Force-training. But the scientific literature about godawans always talk about how the most dangerous of them are those who were elite in a given area, and her native level of intellect would allow her to learn Force-powers orders of magnitude faster than the average FU, or so she thought. But she got side-tracked quite a bit after hearing about her brains being a gift: she always thought of intelligence as being a multidimensional attribute, and the intellectual makeup as being the layout of its components, in some sort of algebraic space with semi-positive-definite components. That is, the components were either zero or positive real numbers. She knew that several people could be, as a magnitude of a multidimensional vector, nearly as smart one another, and that people often talked about their intelligence as if it was the magnitude that counted. By that train of thought, that administrator and her could have been nearly equally bright, just that they used it for things that were quite different.

"Back to the engines. A fighter engine needs just to be able of propelling a few milligrams of ions per second each. They can achieve higher voltages in the vacuum tube because, while the accelerator coils are, in absolute terms, smaller, they take up a larger share of the overall cross-section of the engine. Attempting to achieve the same in a battlecruiser engine would hit another wall: you can only build accelerator coils so big"

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

He watched her carefully without appearing to do so. Dune had gotten very good at that. It was cheating in a sense that humanoids usually had trouble reading Bith faces. But he'd had humanoid apprentices who had read his expression like a book.

So he'd evolved past his rudimentary 'sabacc face'. He'd also taken on certain mannerisms and expressions distinctly non-native. It was obvious [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] was probing to see his reaction. She was after more than help for her project.

Dune Rhur had learned patience over the last thirty-four years of his life spent in the Order. He wouldn't press her because it would simply put her off the subject of the Force. He'd also let her lead the conversation. Better that she was comfortable.

"So, yet again, it falls to the engines and their respective reactors. The accelerator coils are just a supplement."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Reactors. Better have more than one on a ship that big so that, if one reactor fails, the ship can still maintain functionality. What's power-hungry on a ship: shields, weapons, engines. Life support, communications, crew quarters, sensors, ship-wide neural net, these only take a tiny percentage of the total power. Here the ship-wide neural net replaces a computer mainframe"

Jessica knew that Bith would want peace and harmony so she knew there was something Dune would not do. Now not even these technical considerations were enough to keep her from ranting about her personal well-being, no reassurance about how, no knowledge as to the exact cost of her intellect in terms of personal life was going to regain her happiness for long so long as she didn't have a definitive answer as to whether or not she was Force-sensitive. But she knew that, regardless of how powerful her cognitive functions are, Force-sensitivity is a life-changing attribute. And that so many, FU or not, would go to great lengths to be as smart as she is.

"I've never felt so... uncomfortable in my shoes in my lifetime. The suspicion of being a latent Force-sensitive has removed all comfort I could have in my lifestyle - this means that everything I held dear in my life may be compromised. Not that this Jedi healer I last saw had anything to do, I'm sure she had the best intentions, but my functionality took a pretty big hit lately" Jessica continued, crying.

There isn't a whole lot of people like her, and yet she otherwise was the incarnation of a classic vision of what so many parents wished for, regardless of whether Force-using or not. Two months ago, she thrived, and life was good. Her finances were in order, and she was finally able to get back at Kuat Drive Yards in a way other than a commercial one (she nearly drove KDY, and Rendili StarDrive, out of the bulk freight market) She was as happy as she could possibly be back then. Last week was the breaking point, where her functionality took a massive hit. And yet, even as dysfunctional as she is now, she was still a formidable woman: she showed it right in front of Dune. It took a lot of effort for her to maintain what functionality she has left.

"Why do I have the impression that some Force-user, somewhere (most likely on this planet; off-worlders would probably prioritize people in their own vicinity) is using me as it would a computer in the Force? Is it a Force-illusion? A sign of latent Force-sensitivity? Or some mental illness? Or just some trick my brain plays with me? But I think no FU would use me as a computer in the Force if I wasn't smart enough - it's not your everyday Force-related incomfort"

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"It can be a traumatic thing, discovering Force abilities later in your life," he said "I was lucky, sent to become a Jedi while still a toddler."

"I've always had the Force, always been around it. Not all Jedi now have had that luxury."

"Some of our number were like you. Successful and happy with their life only to have it interrupted."

He drew back his hand and gestured reassuringly.

"The Force is something we can never fully grasp, so great in magnitude as to dwarf whole galaxies. Make no mistake, Jessica, your life will change should you have the ability. It doesn't have to be for the worst."

"What you think of as a being controlling you," he paused to consider how to explain "It's not a being and it doesn't dictate. It's the Light guiding you. A being gifted with the Force should follow it's guidance in an effort to stay in harmony with it."

"It can be hard at first to surrender. Our ego tells us it is ourselves that drives the universe. That is vanity, pride and desire. Clinging to these and fighting the will of the Light throws you out of balance. It leads ultimately down a dark path few can ever return from."

"I will not lie that there lies a danger to those with the Force," but then he smiled "However, we will always be here to help you. Just as the Light will always be there."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"And thrust vectoring: these are usually made by using magnetic deflection. With about as much as 20 teslas in variance in a magnetic field you can still direct ions to provide turning. The idea of azimuth thruster pods has once been tried: they may increase maneuverability but the main problems with those is that, while you can get increased maneuverability out of them, they are exceedingly vulnerable to enemy fire"

Jessica keeps going back and forth between her own incomfort and the whole business of designing the Zak ion drive because using the original codename of Creveld-6 would cause some issues with Aurora Industries, which, in turn, owned Nubia Star Drives. At times her incomfort takes over, at other times, her functionality comes back. Better get as much out of it when her functionality does come back. Plus she wasn't thinking of the Force as an entity controlling sentients: she instead thought that Force-users used it to use her brain in place of their own. The main reason why she wanted to be comfortable once more was that she knew how much she could get out of her smarts (quite a bit, really) and she knew that inhibitions like this recurring incomfort would reduce her intellectual functionality, and she viewed such inhibitions as a nuisance. Even if her cognitive functions were far from operating at full power, she could still overpower the commoner all too easily; at that level not many could tell the difference.

"Essentially the focusing magnetic fields are turned off in the direction where you want to turn, and the magnets in that direction are turned off. Because the array of magnets is found at the trailing edge of the engine, you can put superconducting magnets and have them cooled by outer space; they will still remain cold enough for superconducting magnets to operate. For ships capable of operating in low atmosphere, however, cooling systems are also required for the directional vanes"

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

Dune felt a bit of confusion at the rapid change between subjects. He had no idea how to proceed either way. Speaking of her discomfort about the Force could cause her to totally clam up. Yet speaking of the project when she wanted to speak of other things might be seen as callous.

"As you said, a battlecruiser cannot enter atmosphere. I know that a Star Destroyer certainly can't without crashing."

He pondered the problem of the Tesla coils.

"I suppose they could be placed strategically behind the heaviest hull plating. Also, perhaps we can move the auto-cannons and other weapons away from them. Being as guns and launchers are often targeted."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Placing directional Tesla coils behind heavy hull plating would mean that the whole length of the engine would be inside the hull, with no protrusion. Engines on many ships have out-of-hull protrusions which made them easier to target; here there are implications on cooling systems if you put the whole engine inside the hull - the waste heat could be used for life support, to keep the whole ship interior at more pleasant temperatures"

Most ships refrained from placing weapons directly next to the engines: the ion trails would fry the targeting computers, the missiles would be jammed if missile launchers were used, but most importantly a Tesla coil would need to have a metallic core made of a remanence-free material, what was called in the magnetism world as a soft material, a material whose magnetic domains could move fast enough not to have any lasting effects on the material. It took her a lot of effort to remain functional by now, and her brain was burning her from the inside. Then again, she was used to pushing her brain so hard that it could give her headaches: that was the physiological downside of being a mentally (hyper-)active genius. Her brain takes up a lot of her body's energy, and intense neural activity meant Joule effects while neurons fire, and the same could be said of any material with electric currents in it so long as there is a resistivity: superconductors had no resistance whatsoever so long as they weren't quenched.

"As for Star Destroyers being unable to enter atmosphere, it's because they couldn't be fitted with the repulsorlift generators. Too many weapons to power up a set of repulsorlift generators"

[member="Dune Rhur"]

 

[Dune Rhur]

"Thermal waste energy could, as you say, reduce total energy expenditure. So, we can expend less energy on various non-essential systems."

He rubbed his hands together and nodded absently.

"A very neat and tidy way to solve multiple problems. More energy from the reactors available for actual engines and weapons."

Dune resumed his tattoo on the tabletop as he thought. The Bith was making a mental checklist of secondary and tertiary systems they could funnel thermal energy into. Besides climate control you could heat the sonic showers. Cleanliness was next to godliness!

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]