[Damocles]

Originally Posted by Eric Paddon

As far as fuel goes, I took the view that battlestars didn't necessarily need a "conventional" fuel resource to keep going as far into deep space as they could. Nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers don't need to be refueled, so I always saw the top line warships having a self-generating source with tylium only needed for a kind of auxilary power.

Interesting notion, but the universe doesn't work that way. Even if you could use a zero point energy focal tap, you would need electromagnetism or some kind of [gravitational/dark energy?] influence to form and modulate the virtual spacetime field lens.

That means at the low end of the technology tree a fusion power reactor of 10e-8 solar core density outputting at a minimum 10e6 watts to power a zippy.

That is what we expect out of ITAR[20% efficiency] which will hopefully be our first fusion reactor.

It will use about ten grams of lithium per day as fuel to output, if it works at all.

Nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers use fission reactor heat sourced steam turbine machinery to produce either direct drive or electrical output step indirect drive propulsion. Those engines rely on fission and the isotope decay heat generated from that fission to produce that eneregy. Such powerplants generally are military rated, (which means unsafe) and output anywhere from 13% to 23% final mechanical efficiency. The range of output varies from 10e6 to 10e8 watts per reactor.

A military fission reactor can use up to 100-1000 kilograms of uranium to form its heat core and it will supposedly last from five to twenty-five years depending on the fuel rod or pebble bed half-life decay rate.

That watt output range is enough energy to power a city from the size of Junction City Kansas to maybe Cleveland, Ohio per second. [joule/second=watts.]

Now realistically the Alligator needs a powerplant to output at a minimum 10 e20 watts to do what she does. Try accelerating a 100,000,000 ton mass at 10 mps^2 at a lower output? Not possible. 10e20watts is the lower limit.

http://eed.llnl.gov/flow/images/USEnFlow02-exaj.gif

Now if you know what an exajoule is [10e18 joules], the US uses on an average 100 exajoules per year. The Galactica powerplant should output that amount at a minimum each second.

That is the minimum output.

So tylium to be functional has to be an energizer. The influence it must use because of the energy densities[watts/centimeter^2] and the smallness of the Alligator, plus the presence of rockets as the motive means, must be inflationary force exerted as a virtual particle lens to form that zippy.

I don't know why, if the Colonials have that kind of powerplant, why they need rockets, since the very ability to generate dark energy, and use the inflationary influence that goes with it, results in a reactionless thruster; but since they do use rockets, the reaction mass energized to do work, which is cheap, plentiful, and dense enough to be compact and storable at the sizes seen, is iron.

That is why I write that Vipers and the Alligator are tylium [virtual matter] energized stick iron rocket-propelled spacecraft.

As always;