Reactionless Drives

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NoXion
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Reactionless Drives

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Reactionless Drives

Travel minus excess baggage


Graviton Drive

The Graviton Drive class manipulates gravity fields and creates gravitons and anti-gravitons in amounts large enough to severely distort space for the purposes of propulsion. In the first of it's class to be invented, the Fusion-Catalyzed Gravity Wave (FCGW), a pellet of deuterium-deuterium fusion fuel is fused in a high-energy reaction (usually by a system of crossed high-energy particle beams or lasers) that is contained and modulated in a combined electromagnetic field/forcefield.
The electromagnetic field/forcefield contains and focuses the fusion implosion to such a degree that it generates a type of black hole called a "kugelblitz" (German for "ball lightning"). These powerful but short-lived singularities are used to push or pull the ship in various directions. By "pulsing" the drive thousands or even millions of times a second, a ship can achieve insane accelerations. The Fusion-Catalysed Gravity Wave Drive constantly creates extremely short-lived or "virtual," microscopic kugelblitzes that evaporate after a few microseconds, living just long enough for the ship to use their gravitational influence. A ship equipped with such a drive can accelerate or decelerate without changing it orientation. FCGW Drives represent a sort of cross-over between reaction drives and reactionless drives - due to the large amount of fusion reactions happening in a short space of time, plasma build-up is inevitable and most FCGW Drives use this plasma as an additional source of thrust.
While the FCGW Drive was invented first, the Gravity Pulse Projectile Drive was more popular because it had considerably lower fuel requirements. This drive shoots a Gravity Pulse Projectile (also known as a Grav Bomb) which contains a custom-built particle accelerator designed to produce as many gravitons as possible in the direction of travel. After reaching a safe distance from the ship, the projectile activates, producing a strong gravity field that pulls the ship forwards. Depending on the strength of the gravity field and the distance needed to travel, the number of projectiles required to make a trip can vary from a few dozen on an interplanetary journey to several million on an interstellar trip. Some Gravity Pulse Projectile Drives can have their pulse units configured to produce anti-gravitons, thus obviating the need for curly paths that avoid the crushed remains of defunct pulse units. In many ways this is similar to the External Pulse class of reaction drives.
The Gravity Neutraliser emits anti-gravitons to counteract gravity and hover above a planet's surface. This is generally found as one function of a Combined Gravity Drive (more on that below), but can also be found on planetary vehicles on its own. The Anti-Gravity Drive is more useful, generally being the Graviton Drive of choice for intra-system vehicles to give them that extra edge. The Gravity Enhancer finds more use as a part of weapon systems designed to devastate planets and other massive objects, using the body's natural gravity field against it.
The Point Source Gravity Projector produces a powerful point source of gravity in the intended direction of travel, pulling the ship along like a donkey following a carrot on a stick tied to it's back.
Combined Gravity Drives have all of the above features, enabling stunning performance equalling that of Inertia Drives.


Negative Matter (NegaDrive)

This drive takes advantage of the inverse properties of negative matter with regard to gravity and inertia. There are three types of NegaDrive, which are as follows; the Type A NegaDrive uses a mass of negative matter equal to the positive mass of the ship, crew and cargo (including passengers), which is usually tethered to the ship using ultrastrong material, although sometimes electromagnetic fields, forcefields or even a swarm of small inertia drives is used. Bringing the negative mass closer to the ship induces an inverse gravitational and inertial reaction, the negative mass repulsing the ship and the ship dragging the negative mass along with it, resulting in forward motion. Type B NegaDrives use two equal masses of hyperdense positive and negative matter, with the ship placed in between in order to mitigate the vast tidal forces. Type C NegaDrives use a negative mass less than that of the ship, resulting in exponentially increasing acceleration.


Spacetime Traction Engine

This drive utilises a a fractal lacework of degenerate matter that folds and deforms in a cyclical fashion, like a bird beating it's wings or a jellyfish moving through water. This causes forward motion as space continuously attempts to revert back to its original shape, dragging the vessel along with it. This drive has a lot of torque, but a major disadvantage is it's slow speed and maneuvaribility.


Photon Sails

Photon Sails consist of ultra-thin sheets of programmable matter, which produce thrust by absorbing ambient photons on the leading faces of the sails, moving the excited electrons from that absorption to the other sides, and emitting the photons from those sides. The efficiency of Photon Sails is such that they can use the Cosmic Background Radiation, meaning that it can be deployed anywhere. In addition to it's primary method of producing thrust as mentioned above, Photon Sails can also catch the solar wind and propulsion lasers. Most ships equipped with Photon Sails also have a electromagnetic ramscoop fitted, which can take advantage of the Insterstellar Medium by it into energy which is then used by the smart matter to produce photons all along the trailing surface of the sail, providing thrust equal to a Laser Drive.


Inertia Drive

The inertia of the ship is altered in one of two ways; the older and most energy intensive, the Class 1 Inertia Drive, employs a "brute force" technique whereby the inertia of the vessel is altered in the desired direction of travel. Stunning performance can be had, especially if the ship has a powerful energy source. The more advanced Class 2 Inertia Drive instead reduces inertia, enabling a vessel to be accelerated by thousands of gravities to 0.999C by the photon pressure of a small star. the drive is deactivated once the desired velocity is achieved to prevent interstellar dust and gas from prematurely decelerating the vessel, and is activated again to use the destination star's photon pressure to brake. Small secondary drives are included on vessels using a Class 2 Inertia Drive to enable acceleration and deceleration in interstellar space and other areas lacking handy photons. Both types of Inertia Drive are commonly used, because despite requiring a high technology base they lack the disadvantages of other reactionless drives.


Cloak Drive

The Cloak Drive is a sublight reactionless drive that has the unique side effect of rendering any ship using it completely invisible to standard scanners. The Cloak Drive generates a spatial distortion bubble around the vessel which is at right angles to, but still in contact with, normal space. The skin of the bubble is enmeshed with normal space, but the contents, including the vessel generating it and said vessel's emissions, are contained within it seperate from the rest of normal space. In order to move relative to normal space, the bubble is "rolled", with the enmeshment providing "grip". The result is a drive that allows for the closest possible thing to stealth in space, but with the following caveats - as emissions are contained within the bubble, so energy and matter outside the bubble cannot effect the vessel inside. This means that although the vessel is immune to conventional attack while the Cloak Drive is activated, it is effectively flying blind - in order to navigate, a vessel using a Cloak Drive must rely on telemetry recieved before activating said drive.
The aforementioned vessel must also deactivate its Cloak Drive in order to launch attacks or interact with the rest of the universe generally. A vessel using a Cloak Drive is not totally immune to detection or attack - a sensitive enough gravity wave detector can detect the subtle ripples in spacetime that a moving vessel using a Cloak Drive generates, although a stationary vessel with an activated Cloak Drive will remain undetected. For this reason vessels with Cloak Drives like to advance from directions that will mask any gravitational ripples they give off, e.g. with a pair of closely orbiting massive bodies at their back (analagous to ancient atmospheric fighter planes attacking "out of the sun"). Cloak Drive vessels are also vulnerable to spatial distortion based weapons fire, as such weapons propagate through more than the standard three spatial dimensions. If a distortion bubble is hit by spatial distortion weapons fire with an energy output exceeding that of the Cloak Drive, the distortion bubble collapses and the vessel is dropped back into normal space where it can be attacked.


Hyperfluid Drive

The Hyperfluid Drive takes advantage of the frame-dragging effects of rapidly rotating hyperdense fluids such as liquid neutronium, quark fluid or preon hyperfluid. A common design includes a torus of ultrastrong material which contains a set of smaller torii of hyperdense fluid, arranged so that when rotated in the same direction at high speeds, spacetime in the centre of the larger torus is forced "forwards" dragging the vessel and the drive attached to it with ultrastrong material along. This is one of the most powerful reactionless drives known.
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Ford Prefect
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Re: Reactionless Drives

Post by Ford Prefect »

While this is quite interesting in itself, you could probably have the three different classes of drives in a single article to reduce clutter.
FEEL THESE GUNS ARCHWIND THESE ARE THE GUNS OF THE FLESHY MESSIAH THE TOOLS OF CREATION AND DESTRUCTION THAT WILL ENACT THE LAW OF MAN ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
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