Science ISV Venture Star Discussion thead

MaverickSawyer

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It's still an interesting thought exercise. It may help someone making their own own addon of the Venture Star. :shrug: I find it fascinating.
 

MaverickSawyer

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OK, flash of inspiration for the Venture Star's engines came while rollerblading door to door at work, specifically how to cool them.
Use regenreative cooling!
Now, this may seem like a bogus concept when dealing with antimatter, but bear with me. this may take a bit to go through.
1. Antiprotons and protons are contained in a magnetic bottle in the engines. However, the mixture of matter to antimatter is very matter-rich, ensuring complete usage of antiprotons.
2. The violent reaction of the matter-antimatter collisions results in a flood of energy entering the reaction chamber, massively raising the temperature, and generating plasma. this is then directed out the back of the nozzle as the working fluid.
3. Additional liquid hydrogen is continually flowing around the chamber to provide cooling. Hydrogen is an excellent coolant, because of its high heat capacity. This is also raised to extreme temperatures, and is ejected into the exhaust stream to add thrust.
This ensures that you only need the radiators during the coasting after shutdown, as we see the Venture Star on arrival at the start of the movie.

The radiators are still wrong, though. No argument from me.
 
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MaverickSawyer

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Nowhere nearly as much as would be required for a round trip on internal fuel, though. Just enough for braking. They carry the propellant anyways, why not use it for cooling? SSME did. Besides, they already dump extra hyrdogen into the exhaust to boost thrust. Gimme a few minutes to find the reference.

---------- Post added at 08:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:09 PM ----------

AHA! here it is, from Pandorapedia.
Additional thrust is obtained by injecting hydrogen atoms into the plasma before it leaves the engines. The exhaust flare is an incandescent plasma a million times brighter than a welding arc, and over thirty kilometers long. The plume is considered to be one of the most spectacular man-made sights in history.
 
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