Voyager & Fuel

[Borgholio]

Unless those bioneural gel packs and other junk have completely done away with electron-based circuitry by the 24th century.

They have. Most everything is powered by plasma conduits now.

[Baffalo]

Unless those bioneural gel packs and other junk have completely done away with electron-based circuitry by the 24th century.

They have. Most everything is powered by plasma conduits now.

Damn. Ok nevermind.

Anyway, I was also thinking... what about liquid helium as matter, antiprotons as the anti-matter? I ask because thinking about the breakdown, when Helium-4 is bombarded with antiprotons. You'd either get Helium-3 and a burst of energy, or tritium, which would still be stable for 12.32 years. Further bombardment would lead to, at most, beta radiation, which is still a particle that could easily be used further. You'd still need a lot of antimatter, but unlike the earlier elements I suggested, what little radiation you have could be broken down further.

I know I know I'm trying to fix something that's ultimately broken. I guess part of me is wondering what the most efficient mixture is. Anyway, ignore me while I plot in my head.

*listens to techno and gets distracted by the flooded email inbox*

[Borgholio]

I guess part of me is wondering what the most efficient mixture is.

Deuterium / Tritium is the easiest mixture to sustain but Deuterium / Deuterium is not that much harder, especially with 24th century tech. Those two mixtures also provide the greatest amount of net power output compared to other elements. Sure you can fuse helium, carbon, oxygen, and all sorts of stuff, but the amount of energy you have to put in to mash those elements together and heat them increases greater than the amount of energy they generate. So fusing hydrogen or it's isotopes is always going to be easier than anything else in the galaxy, give the greatest amount of power for the least amount of input, and be abundantly available.

[Simon_Jester]

DAMN IT!

Sorry, I had an idea on the drive home from work. Alright, so we know that the Enterprise or Voyager is pulling stray hydrogen through her ramscoops. The fusion process requires heating the hydrogen such that it naturally strips it of its electrons... wouldn't they do that anyway? If they pull the electrons as they take in hydrogen, it's safe to assume that it can be used for some electricity generation, which would be useful in producing power. I mean, waste not want not, right?

Even if it's a small amount of power, that would still contribute in some small way. Unless those bioneural gel packs and other junk have completely done away with electron-based circuitry by the 24th century.

The challenge in running electrical systems is not in somehow finding enough electrons to move. It's in pushing them hard enough. I mean, the actual mean velocity of electrons in a wire is surprisingly low- what moves quickly is not the electrons themselves, it's the electric fields generated by pushing on them.

Sort of like how you can turn on a hose and water immediately starts flowing out the other end, even if it takes several seconds or even minutes for a drop of water passing through the faucet to actually reach the end of the hose.

So... this really isn't going to change much.

Unless those bioneural gel packs and other junk have completely done away with electron-based circuitry by the 24th century.

They have. Most everything is powered by plasma conduits now.

A "plasma conduit" presumably contains a "plasma," that is, some kind of gas-like substance in which charged particles are separated rather than bound together as neutral atoms.

In which case, the only obvious reason to use a plasma is to somehow use it as an electrical conductor, taking advantage of its loosely bound structure and the freedom of motion of charged particles within the plasma.

In which case yes, they still use electricity. Plasma conduits are (at least if the name isn't gibberish) a more refined version of ordinary wires. The effect is that of a faster car replacing a slower and older one, rather than of the car replacing the horse and buggy.