Goonhub
03-14-2014, 06:08 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_mirror
What you've drawn there is a magnetic mirror setup, right? Where plasma is reflected off magnetic mirrors in a "bottle" of magnetic field in a linear fashion.
In setups like this, the most common way to collect the energy is using the high-energy particle capturing protective shielding, which then dumps off the excess heat caused by the high-energy neutron collisions into a coolant loop.
I think it'd be cool if the current engine got to play its original role by acting as the cooling system. You could set up modified radiation-collection arrays like from the singularity engine to collect the high-energy particles using plasma(which is a really dense molecule that's also a great coolant with weird magical properties) to feed directly into the heat differential engine. Obviously, the entire area around the beam is hilariously under-shielded and working around the machine when it's on will irradiate you to death if you're not wearing a radiation suit (heck, technically speaking, high-energy neutrons wouldn't even care about a radiation suit but I'll just assume those things work on space-magic)
The radiation-collectors connected to the current heat engine would be the most true to real life with what resources we have available.
I'm excited for this engine because I can already imagine what might happen if the magnetic bottle were to run out of power!
What you've drawn there is a magnetic mirror setup, right? Where plasma is reflected off magnetic mirrors in a "bottle" of magnetic field in a linear fashion.
In setups like this, the most common way to collect the energy is using the high-energy particle capturing protective shielding, which then dumps off the excess heat caused by the high-energy neutron collisions into a coolant loop.
I think it'd be cool if the current engine got to play its original role by acting as the cooling system. You could set up modified radiation-collection arrays like from the singularity engine to collect the high-energy particles using plasma(which is a really dense molecule that's also a great coolant with weird magical properties) to feed directly into the heat differential engine. Obviously, the entire area around the beam is hilariously under-shielded and working around the machine when it's on will irradiate you to death if you're not wearing a radiation suit (heck, technically speaking, high-energy neutrons wouldn't even care about a radiation suit but I'll just assume those things work on space-magic)
The radiation-collectors connected to the current heat engine would be the most true to real life with what resources we have available.
I'm excited for this engine because I can already imagine what might happen if the magnetic bottle were to run out of power!