What is an aether generator made of?

[Fred]

I'd like to know. I'd like to understand the components that make an aether generator work and how it provides power to a ship, extensively, as far as Ketsurui Fleet Yard hardware is concerned.

Preferably, I don't want any links to a wiki page on the topic of aether power, scalar rays or zero-point-energy. Those, I never understand. I'd prefer a more in-dept explanation so to understand the anatomy of the system.

Please bear in mind that this is a very Wes centric question. I don't want guesses or assumptions - I want an answer on the topic. I'm hoping it'll be detailed in a fashion which will in turn help me portray the system for the Yamataian playerbase.

Thank you.

 

[Fred]

Most of what you said made no sense. ~_~;

This device is a cylinder, not a sphere.

Nothing I see forces aether generators to be cylindrical, that I know.

There is no limit to how much stuff you can cram around the device

Ship internal space dictates there's a limit.

Space is not a limiting factor for starships (see: Mass, there is plenty of space in space, no need to conserve it)

Again, ships have a limited amount of space in them.

The turbines basically use an axel made of gravity, which won’t work because of the gravity portion, but there is no limit on how many power generating devices can be attached to this axel, the axel merely has to be made longer to accommodate them.

This makes no sense to me. I don't even understand what you're trying to say.

Even if you made the device spherical, this is not a water powered system. Any number of power generating devices can be stacked around and on top of each other. The result is that they gain power from radiation passing out of the device that penetrates through the first layer of generators.

That's what heatrods are inside the reactor cooling system, typically. Those then distribute the heat, and stuff.

The equivalent in SARP for solar cells is going to be solar cells which aren’t very efficient at collecting energy anyways. Devices for collecting radiation have to be very, very big and bulky because you are trying to collect radiation which is a very penetrating. The modern day equivalent is giant pools filled with water (nuclear reactors)

Well, geez. So much for me trying to try and conform to the previous idea you asserted - the aether generators tapped electricity from the energy without any separate transferring medium. You never explained it. I'm trying to with the simpler analogs I have.

The problem with the ‘bunch of collectors around an aether sun’ device is that the radiation will certainly kill anyone trying to use it especially if it is fist sized.

That was figurative. Inside a ship's power supply, it could be bigger, in a lunchbox, smaller. Seeing how an aether blade is something like 3' long, I don't think a miniature fist-sized sun is such a big deal.

 

[Drakconus]

Okay give me a minute to type up a response lol

 

[Zack]

The device that Drakconus is describing is a cylindrical object. Scalar emitters and aether rift bit in the center with the turbine parts sticking off to either side.

There is also no limit to how much stuff you can cram around the device. You have assumed mistakenly that the energy, like water, is somehow completely blocked by the objects surrounding it. In this case it will easily penetrate through anything immediately around the device so you could stack radiation to electricity converting devices around the device in layers like an onion. This relates to the gravity turbine thing, which essentially works the same way. Energy is going to be transferred along the axel that Drakconus describes. Any number of devices could be connected to that axel.

Starships also have no limit on how much space they have. They can be made larger almost infinitely without any problems. This is not like an airplane, or a car, where size does matter and will affect the performance of the vehicle. For a spaceship there will be no difference between a 40 meter and a 1 meter aether generator if they have the same weight/mass. So basically there is no reason why an aether generator needs to be of a certain size or why there would be a problem in scaling it.

I also think you don’t understand how a reactor works. ‘Heatrods’ as you call them, absorb the radiation put out by the fuel pellets, slowing the nuclear reaction. They do not actually lower the temperature of the system. Radiation emits out from the bundle (the fuel rods and the control rods) and is slowed by the water generating heat. The water is what is controlling the temperature of the bundle, the control rods control the reaction rate of the fuel pellets.

I also did explain the transfer mediums, but to be more specific Drakconus’s device uses rotating magnetic fields and some sort of conductor (the turbine part). This is how most electrical power plants work.

I also did not claim that the aether blade is a well made submission. It has to put out some sort of high speed particles to work like it does. If it was configured in the ‘collectors around the rift’ manner it would have to be outputting a considerable amount of radiation to power those collectors. The collectors, due to your suggested size of about a fist, would be unable to contain the radiation, and that radiation would continue outward to kill things.

 

[Drakconus]

Alright now we're getting somewhere

* Gravity is a very weak force; you’d need a metric shit-ton to contain anything aether based. Remember that one earth’s worth of gravity can be overcome simply by jumping. Consider using electromagnetism at least and a solid chunk of Zesuium at best.

Okay well I thought that a civilization that has such a great control over gravity (anti-grav, artificial grav, graviton beam projectors, etc...) would be able to generate enough gravity to focus the aether in to the aether torrent. I will add something to address this problem.

I'd note that I don't think you really need to go much further than a durandium composition to be able to build a unit that would be sufficiently heat resistant. You can't use a material that's as good as zesuaium to perform that since zesuaium is kinda iffy as far as heat conduction goes - and you seem to need that for the concept you suggest.

Also, if you want to hold in scalar ray radiation, you definitely would need to add in xiulurium - according to Wes, it stops scalar emissions/radiation.

Umm... well Wes says the generators are made of Zesu and I didn't want to go against this (though I thought of using durandium) and I thought xiulurium was a stealth material that only masks the vessel's presence to scalar wave and quintessence differentialometer type sensors.

Effectively, this turns it into a glorified fusion reactor. That's not such a bad thing, though - an anti-matter reactor is essentially the same thing (a glorified fusion reactor) with a different method of generating thermal energy.

Okay Fred I did use part of the concept a toroidal fusion reactor to get the right shape for the aether torrent but that is where the similarities end (only the aether torrent is doughnut shaped).

* The high speed electrical generators are attached where? It would make sense that they are just built around the aether generator itself as the rotating motion of the ‘aether’ would be sufficient to generate an electrical current in copper(or whatever) wires around the thing itself.

A mechanical axle/shaft transfers the motion from the gravity turbines to the electricity generators.

* Also, your aether seems to just disappear after the generators get powered. I should probably also add aether is not a thing but a place so the ‘aether’ in this device will probably take the form of really hot matter. In that case, where does the aether go once it has been used? You would need some sort of exhaust port to get rid of the unwanted material and you can’t just send it back to the aether because that would cost the same amount of power as it took to bring stuff out of the aether. Alternatively if the ‘aether’ is just photons and the like then you’ll have to change the mechanism away from the spiny bits or spin the aether rift itself so you can use its rotating magnetic field to generate a current.

Well what I gathered was that the aether deteriorated quickly into exotic then common particles (which is why you can't store it). Now I thought that the pulling of energy from the energy from the aether dramatically accelerates this process so that new aether constantly needed to be pulled through the rift. One reason that I haven't done anything with the resulting particles is because I'm not sure if they could be shunted to the engines for extra drive mass or if they could be used in aether weapon systems.

* Keep in mind that Scalar fiends can also generate electrical current in other devices. You’ll need to shield your generator to prevent the scalar fields from getting out and damaging other things.

Note the extra radiation shielding on the exterior of the Zesu panels, don't know what to use yet.

There seem to be two points of view to the issue so far: one suggests that a system is in place in the generator that directly taps electricity out of the 'event', the other seems to indicate that aether is used as a thermal energy source to have electricity be produced via a method not too dissimilar to a pressurized water reactor.

It first used the motion of the aether torrent to generate electrcity then it used the heat from the cooling system to generate bonus electricity.

I am also under the impression that this is going to be one type of aether generator. After all there are plenty of types of generators for every power method (rotary vs wankel for example) so the small aether generators could be using some other method and probably should go undefined because you don’t want to screw them up and have to redo the power armors because power armors can’t run on batteries (no battery could ever have the power density required to run power armors with FTL drives, shields, and teleporters in this setting. )

This is correct, this design is for star ship use only.

Those collectors in turn would have their heat level regulated by a cooling system that could get additional energy out via the water pressure turbines too if the vessel has the space for it.

This is what the coolant system does to generate that bonus energy.

The turbines basically use an axel made of gravity, which won’t work because of the gravity portion, but there is no limit on how many power generating devices can be attached to this axel, the axel merely has to be made longer to accommodate them.

Okay well I thought that a civilization that has such a great control over gravity (anti-grav, artificial grav, graviton beam projectors, etc...) would be able to generate enough gravity to focus the aether in to the aether torrent. I will add something to address this problem.

"The turbines basically use an axle made of gravity, which won’t work because of the gravity portion, but there is no limit on how many power generating devices can be attached to this axle, the axle merely has to be made longer to accommodate them."

This makes no sense to me. I don't even understand what you're trying to say.

Okay... do you know how in current steam generators (coal, oil, fission) steam is sent through a turbine which spins the turbine. this spinning creates mechanical energy which is transferred to the electricity generator through the use of a axle. Turbine spins causing the axle to spin causing the electricity generating components of the electricity generator to spin generating electricity.

Well in the current incarnation the metal turbine is replaced with one of gravity (though its only called a 'turbine' because its function is similar) down a axle/shaft to a electricity generator where the mechanical motion is turned into electricity.




Well I did leave somethings out to keep it simple for the beginning, like what to do with the aether particles and such. I will now re-write certain parts of it mainly the gravity turbine concept, I will add some electromagnetic/electrostatic and possibly some mechanical features found in current experimental fusion reactors.

Also no one answered my time-line questions.

 

[Zack]

While groups in this setting can build gravity generators of this power scale, there are other serious problems that just creating the gravity.
-For one, it will cost a lot of power to produce this much gravity, vastly reducing the effectiveness of the aether generator.
-Gravity also makes a terrible axel, as it pulls things evenly and dosen’t really transfer circular motion that well. While a rotating torus of energy will have a lot of power in it, it will still have a stable center of mass. If gravity is transferring the energy then that center of mass would have to move around. (As a side note, anyone who has used an unbalanced washing machine will know what that is like)
- There is also the issue of the effect this gravity will have on other things. After all you would need a lot of power to contain it to the reactor, even then the gravity is going to be pulling lose everything inside of the generator and trying to crush it into a ball which is not going to be fun to maintain.

To clarify: There is really no problem with the turbine/axel configuration, I just think that gravity is not exactly the best method to go about it.

As for history: Making things for KFY (they made the yuumi and ect.) is something you have to ask Wes about. I think it might be easier if you made this a generic aether generator design and didn’t focus to much on the history until you get to talk with him.

As a side note: We don’t normally go into this much depth for individual components and you might want to give some consideration to which organization you want to produce this device as almost certainly there will be differences between devices depending on who produced them. KFY isn’t your only option as there is also Origin and NAM. The latter of which I write a lot of stuff for and does tend to focus a bit more in depth on the inner workings of smaller pieces of equipment. Building something new for a non-KFY group would allow you to bypass some of the history questions entirely.

 

[Drakconus]

Okay then, questions

1) What star nation first developed the AG, do other star nations beside the Yamatai Star Empire use the AG?

2) When is a good time frame for them to have been developed?

3) Can I create the group that developed the AG and produce it?

 

[Zack]

Yamatai first developed the Aether Generator, and I have to assume the Elysians got it next (they were really the only other faction around at the time).

The UOC and SMX use Aether generators as well, as does Origin industries. I'm not sure what other groups use Aether generators but anyone can discover how to build them.

NAM can build aether generators, but generally uses the hyperspace tap instead.

Timeline wise, I really would just have this be a new aether generator and not deal with writing history for generators in general. The whole aether power thing has been around for at least 10 or so years game time (YE 21?) but I am unsure about this.

And yes, you can create your own organization to develop and produce items for sale in the setting, thought you would have to get that approved as well.

 

[Drakconus]

didn't see that Uso posted before me.

The device that Drakconus is describing is a cylindrical object. Scalar emitters and aether rift bit in the center with the turbine parts sticking off to either side.

Ok you are both wrong.... the AG that I'm describing is cylindrical but the "aether core" is made up of 16 flat triangular panels, 8 top and 8 bottom (there is nothing in the center of the core). They are arranged in a diamond like pattern with 2 turbine/generator assemblies, 1 located Above and 1 below. There is 1 Scalar emitter in the center of each of the 16 panels and the gravity turbines projecting through the top and bottem of the diamond shaped aether core.

I will go into more detail when the pics are done!

 

[Drakconus]

Okay I am going to push back the release of my aether generator design. There is a purpose behind this but it will be released.