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Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by ivalm on Thursday October 22, 2020 @03:37AM (#24855730)
I am not sure how unreasonable is prolonged 1g. You can’t do it for months (since if it’s all in one direction you will start getting relativistic, one month of 1g gets you to almost 0.1c) but at medium speeds it isn’t too bad. Suppose you have a megaton ship moving at 100km/s with 10 m/s^2 acceleration

Power = m v a = 1e9 x 1e5 x 1e1 = 1e15 W

While petawatt is a lot, a megaton ship is also huge. Epstein drive is a fusion drive of sort, the easiest aneutronic reaction would be

B+p -> C + 16 MeV

So 2.5e-12 Joules per fusion

Which means you need to burn

1e15 J/s /(2.5e-12 J/atom)*(2e-26 kg/atom) = 8 kg/s

Suppose your engine runs at 10% efficiency, it means you are powering a megaton ship on less than a 100kg/s of material. So if your megaton ship starts as 10% fuel you have ~115 days of continuous thrust.

Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by garmaine on Thursday October 22, 2020 @03:43AM (#24855765)
You're assuming way too high an efficiency. A real fusion rocket would fall far, far short of that. 2% efficiency would be generous. Googling fusion rocket mass efficiencies shows estimates of around 1 ton / MW, so you're not too far from the mark.

But that gets to what the Epstein drive basically is, in-universe: a 100% efficient fusion drive. No physical laws being broken, technically, just the nuclear rocket equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.

They do in fact go around at 1G (or 1/3 G) thrust for months at a time in the books and show, accelerating full speed for half the trip, then turn around and decelerate for the other half, for trips to/from the outer solar system. In the inner solar system it's only a few days to weeks to get anywhere. This lets them operate in artificial gravity without spinning the spacecraft, which is convenient for filming (although it's in the source novels too).

Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by TwoBit on Thursday October 22, 2020 @04:26AM (#24855929)
I think comparing future technologies with today's Googke searches is unrealistic.
Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by garmaine on Thursday October 22, 2020 @05:19AM (#24856195)
Exploratory engineering does put firm limits on future capabilities. There are many possible steam engine designs, and I'm sure those we use today were unimagined in the 1820's. Yet none are more efficient than an ideal Carnot steam engine. The same principle applies here.
Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by Symmetry on Thursday October 22, 2020 @06:47AM (#24856645)
Yes, and for aneutronic fusion reactions the maximum drive efficiency is really high. Bremsstrahlung x-rays are still a problem in terms of heat dissipation but shouldn't cut into efficiency too much.

EDIT: Well, I should say that the propellant mass/delta-v is really high and that most of the fusion energy will can end up as kinetic energy of the propellant and ship. But the vast majority of that kinetic energy will be the propellant rather than the ship. To maximize ship kinetic energy over fuel energy you want the propellant to exit the ship at the same velocity the ship is traveling which is very far from what you see in an Epstein drive. But fusion provides tons of energy so that isn't going to be a figure of merit we care about.

Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by garmaine on Thursday October 22, 2020 @06:56AM (#24856707)
True, I didn't consider aneutronic fusion reactions. I don't think the sources I'm thinking of do, either.
Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by DennisP on Thursday October 22, 2020 @10:19AM (#24858287)
Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by Symmetry on Thursday October 22, 2020 @02:06PM (#24861143)
I think I was underestimating how much energy could be lost to x-rays on some of those. D2-He3, the aneutronic fusion everyone likes to talk about is still over 80% efficient but H1-B looks really bad if you're not driving a heat engine with it.
Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by DennisP on Thursday October 22, 2020 @03:31PM (#24862391)
Yes, though the H1-B reaction itself emits no electromagnetic radiation at all. The x-rays are from bremsstrahlung radiation. Some boron fusion projects think they have ways to avoid that (which is necessary to avoid the plasma cooling too fast to achieve net power).
Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by ivalm on Thursday October 22, 2020 @05:04AM (#24856106)
My point is that even if it is 10% efficient, which is only 5 times more than your estimate, you have 4 months. Even if it is 2% efficient, you get ALMOST a month.

Re: accelerating for many months at 1G is definitely bad physics, not only are you relativistic, you start getting into the kind of speeds where a minor meteorites will wipeout your ship. 1 gram meteorite with a relative velocity of 0.5c has 1.4e13 J of kinetic energy = 3.5 kton of TNT, so a small nuke.

Re:The Physics of Space War: How Orbital Dynamics Constrain ... by garmaine on Thursday October 22, 2020 @05:24AM (#24856229)
yeah the speed they travel through the inner solar system is pretty ludicrous, especially when you consider how much space junk is generated by all that activity.