Destiny's Fuel, Question

[RafK2]

Yeah i like these thought experiments, and know that the creators probably havnt thought about it in that much detail but hey its still good wholesome geek fun.

I doubt its an ion drive, as the accelerations are tiny, the advantage of ion drives is they can burn for long periods of time, for example one of our modern rockets fueled by solid or liquids burn for a matter of minutes but have tremendous accelerations, an ion drive is little more than the gentlest of pushes... but when tried on one of NASA deep space probes could burn for 14 months or there abouts. and turn on and off which a solid rocket cant. Although an ion drive is advanced for us, it would be pretty useless for Destiny.

to my knowledge, which isnt quite up to ancient standards i cant see how super heated plasma can be used? any they collect would probably cool relatively quickly, and all propulsive techologies i can think of off hand that would be used on a space craft other then a solar sail rely on either rapidly expanding (eg heated or exploding in a controlled way which may well result in plasma being formed) (from newtons 2nd law of motion F=ma) or basically squirting something out of the back such as gas jets used on eva packs (newtons third law: every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction) and if theyre just squirting plasma out of the back then it would be a lot safer to squirt something a little less dangerous to keep on board.

[Deckker]

I have being thinking a lot about it, the star is a factory, creating all the elements we know. This is the most unique thing about a star over anything else.

Super hears Plasma is possible, since it is a product of the fusion process. But when it comes to heat, it would be lost "quickly".

Lets look at the facts...Destiny has unique FTL engine, unseen anywhere else. Why is this the case? what makes this a requirement, would it be something to do with fuel?

Going on a guess...we can say Destiny needs fuel in 2 parts. Trace gases can be collected via ram scope on destiny during travel, but the catalyst to keep say a fusion process running would have to come from the star...It would harvest Super Plasma, to keep the fusion engines going, and like all "stars" it would eventually exhaust itself, thus needing a new star to recharge it.

Now another possible, is that during the fusion process, a particular item is produced, but would be destroyed/decompose when outside the core magnetic field of a star. With Hydrogen fusing to form Helium, there are known by products, including small amounts of radioactive waste. Maybe we are "farming" the radioactive waste for power?

Theory 3....lol

Destiny actually uses a Subspace Tap to charge the ship, like we have seen on SGA. However in order to open a tear in subspace, it would need a massive power source to start the process...Hence a STAR!!! Using Super heated Plasma, or other products in the star, it is able to open a subspace tap to refuel destiny. With the stars gravity and Magnetic field keeping the Subspace bubble from going out of control.

[RafK2]

To my mind its clearly some kind of trace element that Destinys after, as i put on another post our sun weighs as much as 333000 times the mass of the Earth, therefore even trace elements , whilst relatively low in terms of the overall mass of a star are still present in what we consider abundent supply. Destony probably carefuly selects its altitude in a star to best gather whatever it wants.

Whilst were on the subject its also worth considering that this techology was ultimatly deemed none viable by the ancients as it was only used in the destiny program. Because of its clear technological success (powering destony for a such vast amounts of time sucessfully and across such huge ranges) I would suggest that its econimcally not viable. in other words whatever engine destiny uses is so expensive to create that its easier to make more 'conventional' types of ships and the ancients only bothered touse this type of engine for this kind of mission

[Crias]

If destiny used a subspace tap wouldn’t it be more prudent to design the tap to be self sustaining after an initial shove. While we are all looking for a power source found in stars maybe we should also restrict the power source to something that would be worth the risk to fly into a star. I mean it would be reckless to risk a ship and her crew gathering something you can get elsewhere with a less effort.

[morrismike]

I have being thinking a lot about it, the star is a factory, creating all the elements we know. This is the most unique thing about a star over anything else.

Super hears Plasma is possible, since it is a product of the fusion process. But when it comes to heat, it would be lost "quickly".

Lets look at the facts...Destiny has unique FTL engine, unseen anywhere else. Why is this the case? what makes this a requirement, would it be something to do with fuel?

Going on a guess...we can say Destiny needs fuel in 2 parts. Trace gases can be collected via ram scope on destiny during travel, but the catalyst to keep say a fusion process running would have to come from the star...It would harvest Super Plasma, to keep the fusion engines going, and like all "stars" it would eventually exhaust itself, thus needing a new star to recharge it.

Now another possible, is that during the fusion process, a particular item is produced, but would be destroyed/decompose when outside the core magnetic field of a star. With Hydrogen fusing to form Helium, there are known by products, including small amounts of radioactive waste. Maybe we are "farming" the radioactive waste for power?

Theory 3....lol

Destiny actually uses a Subspace Tap to charge the ship, like we have seen on SGA. However in order to open a tear in subspace, it would need a massive power source to start the process...Hence a STAR!!! Using Super heated Plasma, or other products in the star, it is able to open a subspace tap to refuel destiny. With the stars gravity and Magnetic field keeping the Subspace bubble from going out of control.

A star such as our contains only a few elements (hydrogen, helium, lithium, and whatever was captures along with the initial hydrogen. A dying star that is consuming itself is what creates most of the matter between Lithium and Iron. A star in the throes of death creates the stuff larger than iron.

[webxro]

And things like gold are made in a supernova . Maybe we should thing that Destiny get's it's power from the star itself not from any element or something .

[Mister Oragahn]

That's the problem of the show, because if it ran on fusion engines, it would be far safer and simpler to dip into a gas giant and get fuel there, instead of facing the greater gravities, magnetic fields, solar flares of a star and dropping into its photosphere.

If it used the radiated energy, it would need to cast some kind of draining net over a wide area of the star to gather energy, and not fuel. And that would warrant the question as to why this magical net can't be used as a shield, since shields don't provide energy from the weapons that hit it.

That's why I pointed out that the only thing a star has that a gas giant doesn't is a super mass. Now, mass alone can't do much, and gravity is a weak force, so that's why I went looking for hyperspace (another word for a layer of subspace after all). We know that great gravity has an influence on subspace. So that influence might -and I stress on might- be a way to gather more subspace energy.

There's a less complicated possibility, and one that sounds nice : it collects antimatter.
It would gather the very hot gases -energized atoms- and once collected, accelerate them to produce a wide variety of complicated plasmas, some containing forms of antimatter and heavy antimatter.
Eventually, the process of fusing hydrogen does produce some positrons, neutrinos and finally produces some helium after more hydrogen entered the reaction.
As I speculated with the Asgard ion neutrino generator, if one could syphon the neutrinos (with like, force fields or very dense matter), you'd collect a huge amount of energy that's generally wasted.
If you could collect the positrons before they'd react with electrons, you'd obtain a stock of antimatter. Those are not relevant to the continuation of the reaction so you could always get your helium at the end.

So, if we summarize this, assuming high technology, very advanced scooping rams and some filtering system down to the particle scale, you could, in theory, by going into the dense part of a photosphere and collect hydrogen, obtain:

- energy out of neutrinos
- helium (for further clean fusion)
- antimatter to be used later on
- plus all the other thermal radiations from ongoing reactions

[Trinary]

Based on destiny long journey through space and a long life power source that could be stored by destiny, I go for Helium3. There were abundance of Helium3 in a star. Probably, those big capacitors on the seed ship containing a liquid Helium3 to power the ship.

[RafK2]

Antimatter is a possiblity. antimatter farming is still very much in its infancy and reality created in places like the American LINAC and the LHC in minute quantities. Apparently it could be farmed in any area of space with a high electromagnetic field, the jupiter Io system being the main candidate in our solar system. But it comes straight back to the question that yeah Destiny could potentially farm it from a sun, but it could far more easily farm it from a gas giant

[beale947]

I think it may be something to do with the Destiny and it's occasional aerobrakes in Gas Giant Atmospheres. Perhaps it gathers the fusion ingrediants while it aerobrakes, hence why it does aerobrake. And when it sun dives, it uses the solar plasma to initiate the fusion reaction. Eventually the heat dissipates as the heavy elements build up and the fusion stops, leaving some of the fusion ingrediants behind, which is why it doesn't aero brake everytime: Because only some of the fuel has been used up.

[SGSargon]

What does a star has in large quantities and other planets have very little?
Light elements. Especially the first ones from the periodic table: H, He, Li, Be, B.
What do theese elements have in common? They're good for nuclear fusion.
Now in a nuclear fusion, hydrogen-1 is not very good, neither is helium-4.
But deuterium, tritium and helium-3 are very good.
As for the rest of the other elements, lithium, beryllium and boron these too can be used in nuclear fusion. The boron-hydrogen fusion is being investigated as a potential source of energy mainly because its neutron-free. Lithium deuteride is being used in hydrogen bombs.
While the gas giants have plenty of hydrogen and helium, I do not know how much deuterium or helium-3 is there and even if there is a lot, they are present as gas. If you want to make nuclear fusion, you must first turn them into plasma which takes energy. But in a star they are already as plasma, so all you need to do is collect them.
Basically, all the ingredients for the fusion are already there. All you need to do is collect them (Destiny's ram scoops) and separate them from the rest of the other elements.
Also, to my knowledge lithium, beryllium and boron are quite rare in our star system because they are easily consumed in the Sun's nuclear fusion.

[beale947]

Well Gas Giants do have large supplies of both He3 and Deuterium, accessibility is another thing. But surely it should be easier to fly into a gas giant than into a star...

[escyos]

I do believe it was only said that Destiny was refueling once, in Blockade. All the other times they called it recharging which one would assume that it doesnt necessarily collect anything but uses something that only occurs in the star (heat, radiation etc?) to store in its batteries as opposed to gathering fuel to burn.

[morrismike]

Yes but class O stars don’t contain much Hydrogen at all, they’re mostly Helium. Destiny filled its reserves from the star and therefore does not run on hydrogen, Well not entirely anyway.

Good point, He fusion would be wimpy compared to He fusion. My guess is they are tapping into energy fluxes and not collecting that plasma for anything but a reserve. I see the Destiny plunges as battery charging operations.

[morrismike]

That's the problem of the show, because if it ran on fusion engines, it would be far safer and simpler to dip into a gas giant and get fuel there, instead of facing the greater gravities, magnetic fields, solar flares of a star and dropping into its photosphere.

If it used the radiated energy, it would need to cast some kind of draining net over a wide area of the star to gather energy, and not fuel. And that would warrant the question as to why this magical net can't be used as a shield, since shields don't provide energy from the weapons that hit it.

That's why I pointed out that the only thing a star has that a gas giant doesn't is a super mass. Now, mass alone can't do much, and gravity is a weak force, so that's why I went looking for hyperspace (another word for a layer of subspace after all). We know that great gravity has an influence on subspace. So that influence might -and I stress on might- be a way to gather more subspace energy.

There's a less complicated possibility, and one that sounds nice : it collects antimatter.
It would gather the very hot gases -energized atoms- and once collected, accelerate them to produce a wide variety of complicated plasmas, some containing forms of antimatter and heavy antimatter.
Eventually, the process of fusing hydrogen does produce some positrons, neutrinos and finally produces some helium after more hydrogen entered the reaction.
As I speculated with the Asgard ion neutrino generator, if one could syphon the neutrinos (with like, force fields or very dense matter), you'd collect a huge amount of energy that's generally wasted.
If you could collect the positrons before they'd react with electrons, you'd obtain a stock of antimatter. Those are not relevant to the continuation of the reaction so you could always get your helium at the end.

So, if we summarize this, assuming high technology, very advanced scooping rams and some filtering system down to the particle scale, you could, in theory, by going into the dense part of a photosphere and collect hydrogen, obtain:

- energy out of neutrinos
- helium (for further clean fusion)
- antimatter to be used later on
- plus all the other thermal radiations from ongoing reactions

The creation of antimatter requires two things:
1. 1+ MeV gamma (abundant in stars)
2. Massive nucleus (not present in most stars)

It is possible the ship taps into gamma and cosmic energy flux in the star and uses some sort of "tech" to simulate massive nucleus. This sort of process is probably what ST universe uses to create their Antimatter.