mizunoyoroko
Inactive Member
I will be honest, I used them in the Bakeru. I can't seem to find information on how it works. I have checked the few ships that seem to have them, but alas...my search fu is weak. Anyone know anything?
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Gravimetric Drives, how do they work?
- Thread starter mizunoyoroko
- Start date
Derran Tyler
Inactive Member
Gravimetric drives manipulate superstrings and zero-point field to maneuver and accelerate a vessel to a far higher degree than other ships. By manipulating and bending these superstrings, the drive is able to create distortions in space-time that can be used to push and pull a ship in any given direction very rapidly. An important byproduct of this movement is that the effect of inertia is also negated, allowing the ship to accelerate, stop, and maneuver at velocities that would crush a person using conventional propulsion methods.
Primitive Polygon
🎖️ Game Master
I've actually been thinking about this a lot because it's important for my upcoming new race, so if you wanna get technical I can share a few theories of how it could work with you.
The first is technically cheating, but low radiation-reppelent pannels could be used to make things quite nicely wizz about like something out of Eureka Seven. The only problem is it needs background radiation to work properly, and wouldn't provide too much acceleration, so would be useless beyond adding manoeuvrability.
The idea of projecting a gravity well (fake mass) infront of the ship is the only way I can think of getting a proper main gravity engine to work. Presumably this would use intense electromagnetic radiation and perhaps an artifical magnetosphere. The main problem with this is that the entire ship would need to be based around projecting energy to one point, so manoeuvrability would need to come from other sources.
Alas, there is one massive problem with both the above idea and Darran Tyler's- I can't find any reason why the crew would be uneffected by the new gravity sources, so accelerating too quickly would kill them via G force...
The first is technically cheating, but low radiation-reppelent pannels could be used to make things quite nicely wizz about like something out of Eureka Seven. The only problem is it needs background radiation to work properly, and wouldn't provide too much acceleration, so would be useless beyond adding manoeuvrability.
The idea of projecting a gravity well (fake mass) infront of the ship is the only way I can think of getting a proper main gravity engine to work. Presumably this would use intense electromagnetic radiation and perhaps an artifical magnetosphere. The main problem with this is that the entire ship would need to be based around projecting energy to one point, so manoeuvrability would need to come from other sources.
Alas, there is one massive problem with both the above idea and Darran Tyler's- I can't find any reason why the crew would be uneffected by the new gravity sources, so accelerating too quickly would kill them via G force...
Fred said:
I think there is a minor difference between the two but I will have to get back to you on that....
Also to clarify a point Derrick made, I believe the interia for a system undergoing gravitric drive is negliblie. By negible we mean that due to the system "special" non-uniform gravity the inertia approaches zero as the speed of the object increases.
Um...
Gravity is an attractor force. You're not being propelled or pushed in the traditional sense but instead pulled.
This seems unimportant for in terms of combat, the implications are vast.
For example...
In the case of a propulsive force:
When a booster fires off a burst, you are thrown precisely in a direction and the acceleration is almost instant unless you're canceling your velocity along a given vector (under the assumption that the thrust does not carry more than the necessary force to stop you. If it did, you'd instantaneously change your vector of velocity and the forces incurred on the user and parts would be immense).
In the case of an attractor force:
You gain velocity by being pulled along. The force not only takes your craft but also any surrounding particles and objects with it, which would seriously affect weapon accuracy unless they had the necessary kinetic energy or low enough mass to achieve an escape velocity (or the attractor force was not active during the firing phase).
In terms of changing direction, an attractor force needs to apply itself in a different direction but in applying itself to multiple directions simultaneously or switching at great speed, the forces involved effect every component in the system, not just those which are normally vunerable to inertia.
As such, the unit is either less maneuverable so it doesn't rip itself in half or it's more maneuverable and the number of pilot caused fatalities rises immensely.
In terms of the science involved, gravity is not a precise thing and likes to "osmosis" into areas either with a great mass or when there is little mass, across a large area, gravity being space warped by the presence of mass.
Within an atmosphere, warping space to create a shift in air-pressure for propulsion is ideal but due to the un-precise nature, you also end up tugging the gases with you which creates drag, seriously slowing you down and building up heat as you enter velocities post mach 1 (hence why most gravimetric systems are clumsy and accelerate poorly within an atmosphere).
Within space, however, a gravimetric drive comes into its own with no objects to create drag. However, the forces involved still mean that a unit with a gravimetric drive has trouble changing direction and is limited in terms of maneuverability: It cannot "throw" itself to evade a round or place itself in a better position and instead relies on a steady gradient of acceleration. Moving independently from the vector of velocity means shifting the gravimetric's drive in an independent direction and then applying force, pulling it.
Then there's the fact that cancellation devices technically cannot exist because of the imprecise nature of gravity and they would be ineffective because inertia is a function of mass, not of weight and gravity has no effect on mass.
This makes gravimetric systems far more ideal for larger slower units which are expected to accelerate to an extremely high speed over a long period (within SARP realism, reaching one's top sub-light speed within about 10 to 20 minutes) though to continue accelerating, the power of the force applied by the gravimetric drive needs to continue to rise.
As such, unless the force is amazingly high (and I mean well over 100 times what a propulsive device uses) acceleration will be hampered unless it's a standing start because it has to work against inertia and gravity is a slow-acting force. This is why you won't see fighter-like maneuverability or star-fighter maneuverability from a system using gravimetrics unless they're used in conjunction with maneuvering thrusters.
Hope I haven't killed any fairies.
Gravity is an attractor force. You're not being propelled or pushed in the traditional sense but instead pulled.
This seems unimportant for in terms of combat, the implications are vast.
For example...
In the case of a propulsive force:
When a booster fires off a burst, you are thrown precisely in a direction and the acceleration is almost instant unless you're canceling your velocity along a given vector (under the assumption that the thrust does not carry more than the necessary force to stop you. If it did, you'd instantaneously change your vector of velocity and the forces incurred on the user and parts would be immense).
In the case of an attractor force:
You gain velocity by being pulled along. The force not only takes your craft but also any surrounding particles and objects with it, which would seriously affect weapon accuracy unless they had the necessary kinetic energy or low enough mass to achieve an escape velocity (or the attractor force was not active during the firing phase).
In terms of changing direction, an attractor force needs to apply itself in a different direction but in applying itself to multiple directions simultaneously or switching at great speed, the forces involved effect every component in the system, not just those which are normally vunerable to inertia.
As such, the unit is either less maneuverable so it doesn't rip itself in half or it's more maneuverable and the number of pilot caused fatalities rises immensely.
In terms of the science involved, gravity is not a precise thing and likes to "osmosis" into areas either with a great mass or when there is little mass, across a large area, gravity being space warped by the presence of mass.
Within an atmosphere, warping space to create a shift in air-pressure for propulsion is ideal but due to the un-precise nature, you also end up tugging the gases with you which creates drag, seriously slowing you down and building up heat as you enter velocities post mach 1 (hence why most gravimetric systems are clumsy and accelerate poorly within an atmosphere).
Within space, however, a gravimetric drive comes into its own with no objects to create drag. However, the forces involved still mean that a unit with a gravimetric drive has trouble changing direction and is limited in terms of maneuverability: It cannot "throw" itself to evade a round or place itself in a better position and instead relies on a steady gradient of acceleration. Moving independently from the vector of velocity means shifting the gravimetric's drive in an independent direction and then applying force, pulling it.
Then there's the fact that cancellation devices technically cannot exist because of the imprecise nature of gravity and they would be ineffective because inertia is a function of mass, not of weight and gravity has no effect on mass.
This makes gravimetric systems far more ideal for larger slower units which are expected to accelerate to an extremely high speed over a long period (within SARP realism, reaching one's top sub-light speed within about 10 to 20 minutes) though to continue accelerating, the power of the force applied by the gravimetric drive needs to continue to rise.
As such, unless the force is amazingly high (and I mean well over 100 times what a propulsive device uses) acceleration will be hampered unless it's a standing start because it has to work against inertia and gravity is a slow-acting force. This is why you won't see fighter-like maneuverability or star-fighter maneuverability from a system using gravimetrics unless they're used in conjunction with maneuvering thrusters.
Hope I haven't killed any fairies.
I believe it would be a good and helpful thing if we wrote a Wiki article and had a standard definition of what gravimetric drives are. I'm suprised and apalled that so many articles make use of them, and yet nowhere is there a definition. Not only do I need to know what they are for a ship i'm designing, i'm sure several others wish to know, as well.
