OHM Higgs Field Controller MFD

[OrbitHangar]

Author: wizard1073

This MFD is designed to modify the mass of any vessel via a simple mechanism of changing the ratio of virtual mass to actual mass.  The MFD is written in LUA and implemented through the ScriptMFD.  The motivation for this MFD is to make the Arrow Freighter able to liftoff from Earth using its own hover thrusters.  It has far more applications than this, which will be evident to anyone who has been looking for this functionality.
 

REASON FOR UPDATE
Do not use this MFD with any other fully functional Script MFD.  The update, setup, prestep, poststep, etc. functions are shared in the interpreter because MFD persistence is set for "vessel".  The next major release of this MFD will use a DLL to overcome this limitation.  Until then, make sure this is the only fully-function MFD in the list in the ScriptMFD.cfg file in Config\MFD\ScriptMFD.cfg.


POSSIBLE USES
o  Allow vessels with normally insufficient hover thrusters to liftoff vertically.
o  Modify effectiveness of drag on aerobraking/aerocapture by increasing/reducing mass.
o  Reduce amount of thrust required to complete an orbital maneuver.
o  Turn any vessel into one capable of constant thrust trips (see AGMFD on OrbitHangar).
o  Test a vessel's aerodynamic configuration for stability under differing mass scenarios.


CREDITS
1) To my father-in-law for the name.  It helps having a nuclear engineer at hand.
2) Star Trek: The Next Generation, Episode 61 "Deja Q".  Want to move a moon that is in a decaying orbit around a heavily populated planet?  Change the gravitational constant of the universe!  What?  You can't?  Then expand the warp field around it in order to reduce its effective mass, then tractor it into a higher, circular orbit.
3) Artlav, developer of WarpDriveMFD Mk2 R1.  The anti-gravity feature is what I had in mind when writing this MFD, but this was the only way I could think of to do it with a variable effect.  I know better now!  So that's my next MFD.  (It will also allow variable effect.)
4) Willy88, developer of the Experimental Antigravity Device payload for the DeltaGlider-IV.  This spawned the idea of using negative mass to reduce total vessel mass. 5) Martin Schweiger, developer of Orbiter.  I've been having fun since Orbiter 2006, and the LUA interface has been a real window of opportunity to tailor the simulator even further.


REVISION HISTORY
1.0, 17 March 2011, Initial Release
1.1, 1 April 2011, Moved prestep code to do_MassModification() for readability.  Documentation revision due to script interpreter limitations, and added mathematical background.
 


DOWNLOAD

 

[deltawing777]

Humm may have to test this with OMP where there is no time accell

 

[Rtyh-12]

Cool! I'm going to try it out right now!

 

[LorenzoVargas]

Leonardo's Air Screw could have really used this!

 

[Aldrasio]

The readme mentions accelerating past what the crew can handle. If their virtual mass is being lowered with the ship's, wouldn't that mean that, despite the very high acceleration, they'd be feeling the same force? Like, take the Arrow, which accelerates at about 1 gee. If you reduced the Arrow's mass 1000-fold, it would accelerate at 1000 gees, as would the crew. Since the crew is now 1/1000 as massive, they would feel 1 gee of force.

 

[wizard1073]

@Aldrasio, Crew Safety

I asked myself this question during development of the MFD, but did not go through the process of answering it in a real-world sense. The short answer for Orbiter, however, is that I don't know how ship designers calculate the vulnerability of their crews. Perhaps we can get DanSteph to comment on the DeltaGliderIV and the Arrow Freighter crews.

For a real world answer, I had to ask my office neighbor, a PhD physicist, and my wife, a doctor. Unfortunately, none of us know a whole lot about bio-mechanics *and* quantum mechanics (myself included), so this is rather conjectural. The short answer here is that we agree with you concerning the identical force and that it should have a similar effect on the crew as before the mass is altered.

The reason for this conclusion rests on the following assumptions: that the reduction in particle mass does not reduce the number or arrangement of particles, and does not affect the fundamental nuclear forces binding them together. We believe that the strength of bones and tissues would remain the same, and therefore able to accept the same acceleration force, regardless of how many meters per second squared result from that force.

The ability of the body to pump blood and other fluids, we believe, would be the same. The heart compresses to push a unit of blood into the circulatory system. To do so, it imparts momentum during compression, increasing the fluid pressure in the blood vessels. With reduced mass, the momentum is less, but the fluid is lighter too, so it seems like it should net out to normal.

The outstanding question we have is whether the heart would have to work less hard to pump blood (just as the engine burns less fuel for the same force when the MFD is active), and whether the heart can adapt to this situation.

Thanks for raising such an intruiging question! I don't know that anyone will answer it with certainty until someone builds a real mass controller. Until then, we are left with the fun of conjecture.

 

[Icarus at home]

Hi icarus at home here, i have made a MFD which i have called Mass Drive Control.
I have used your Higgs MFD script and added three new buttons. Would you mind if i release it? I am happy to give you all the credit if thats OK.
Cheers Jim:thumbup: