Captain Picard's Hair wrote:One problem does occur to me though: any residual antimatter in the core at the time the ejection is taking place will react and cause plasma to be vented by the core into the open space of the core assembly! There necessarily must be antimatter left in the core for there to be a danger of explosion, after all.
I think this is what Coalition was referring to. There's far more antimatter in the core than is actually reacting at any one time. This allows virtually instantaneous dial-an-output for the core, but also means there's excess reactivity, and so a much greater chance of the whole ship going up if the core's damaged. That, I suspect is what a breach is - the un-reacted antimatter in the core all reacting at once (probably with the walls of the core).
The solution is to make sure that there's only just enough antimatter in the core to sustain the reaction. Then if something goes wrong the result is more likely to be the fire going out than the entire ship going up.
Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe: Albert Einstein.
Is it possible to surround the Antimatter Reactor in a manner similar to European Nuclear Power plants, making a sort of...bunker made out of some exotic material to surround the core. In the event of a core breach, the bunker (within reason) dampens the explosion? This would only be a what if all of those safety systems fail (which is either a catastrophic design flaw, or one hellova bad day).
Hell, at the very least weld some sheet metal over it to prevent anyone with a crowbar from being able to breach the core.
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The fact remains, anyone with a gun can damage it. Hell, wasn't there one TNG episode where someone threatened to do just that?
Seriously, there's no reason at all for it to be out in plain view where anyone can fuck it up.
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Captain Picard's Hair wrote:One problem does occur to me though: any residual antimatter in the core at the time the ejection is taking place will react and cause plasma to be vented by the core into the open space of the core assembly! There necessarily must be antimatter left in the core for there to be a danger of explosion, after all.
I think this is what Coalition was referring to. There's far more antimatter in the core than is actually reacting at any one time. This allows virtually instantaneous dial-an-output for the core, but also means there's excess reactivity, and so a much greater chance of the whole ship going up if the core's damaged. That, I suspect is what a breach is - the un-reacted antimatter in the core all reacting at once (probably with the walls of the core).
The solution is to make sure that there's only just enough antimatter in the core to sustain the reaction. Then if something goes wrong the result is more likely to be the fire going out than the entire ship going up.
If you're referring to the antimatter flowing though the core yet to be annihilated, that's the residual antimatter I was referring to. Otherwise, "far more antimatter" in the core would have to be stored on-hand in the core assembly. Excess reactivity, though, would necessarily mean excess power output (a waste of fuel if not used productively). This was my whole point: the ship should produce just as much power as it needs (the need for instant scalability in output still needs to be balanced against the very high cost of producing antimatter, after all!) and this sets the rate of antimatter to be reacted given the 1:1 correspondence dictated by the laws of physics. I was saying that it's not a design parameter so much as a law of physics that you have just as much antimatter in the core as you need - either it must be stored or it WILL annihilate and produce power which MUST be used for something. The idea of "excess" antimatter is therefore nonsensical to me from the start.
Just what do you picture happening to "un-reacted" antimatter in the core? Either it's in a magnetic bottle inside the core itself or it'll find matter. If the former was what coalition and yourself were referring to, I'll concede that as a source of danger that requires core ejection (though this is speculation) in which case I'll apologize for the misunderstanding.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wonderous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross... but it's not for the timid." Q, Q Who
Captain Picard's Hair wrote:Just what do you picture happening to "un-reacted" antimatter in the core? Either it's in a magnetic bottle inside the core itself
That's exactly it - probably in the magnetic segments above and below the core itself. The concept of excess reactivity should be confused with the reaction occurring during normal operation - it refers to the fact that there's enough reactive material present for the core to run out of control, and in the worst case blow up, if something went wrong. In a well-designed reactor an accelerating reaction would rapidly use up all the fuel available to it and stop before it became a danger.
Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe: Albert Einstein.
Understood. I just think about such things in a rather precise way and I guess in this instance the meaning wasn't clear to me. Thanks.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wonderous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross... but it's not for the timid." Q, Q Who
