“As you can see from the model, this shows the optimal output for any specific configuration,” Lund pointed to the twisting hologram.
True to her word, the woman had returned a few days later with enough math to make Alexander’s head spin. It wasn’t until she converted it into the quad-helix model in front of him that he understood what she was getting at.
“Where do the Omni and Sinorus engines sit on that model?”
“How should I know? Do I look like I have the output specs of a specific model of engine handy?”
He sighed. “If I have them, could you model them for me?”
“Really? How did you get your hands on the output specs? It’s not like those are included in the standard repair and maintenance packages.”
It was true. While the repair manuals gave you enough information to print or rebuild an entire engine, they didn’t provide detailed specifications other than the general efficiency and output curve that the testing equipment was designed to look for. Alexander had figured this issue out halfway through his engine testing.
After his initial tests failed to produce the desired results, he knew he had been missing some critical piece of the puzzle. Once he figured out the issue and built additional testing equipment to provide more accurate data, he finally managed the engine design that was now on Shuttle 1. It just so happened to work out that the scaled-down engine was almost the perfect size for a shuttle. Some remodeling had to be done to get it to fit the airframe but it was minor.
“I’ve built some scale models and run tests on them.”
“That’s good. The numbers won’t match their full-sized counterparts perfectly, but we can model those engines and compare them on the optimization model I developed.”
Alexander let her take control of the holo since she had designed the model and knew far more about how to operate it than he likely ever would. When she mapped the first engine to the model, Alexander began to see how the math was designed to work. It was a bit like a 3D radar chart.
“Alright, now we can see all three engines on the model. No surprise that the Omni one is farther up the chain. But I am surprised that yours is below the Sinorus design considering what you told me.”
“How can that be?” Alexander asked in confusion. “My design is way more efficient than either of those engines and it has a better output than the Sinorus design.”
“It's too efficient for its output,” she stated simply. “You can see that the data point for your design is way outside the desired specification of the model. My model measures the ideal configuration for any given size of pulsed fusion engine. If you push beyond those boundaries, you give up something else. In this case power output. You may have a better overall output compared to the Sinorus thruster, but the math of my model shows that the Sinorus is more optimized. Trust me, the math is proven, otherwise you would see engines that were wildly more efficient or accelerated much faster. Nothing is stopping you from doing so other than that it is extremely inefficient. I’m going to take an educated guess that the shuttle tends to shake?”
“It does.”
Nova nodded. “That’s because you’ve burned off the energy from the previous pulse before the next pulse can begin. This starting and stopping, while efficient, will lead to much more wear and tear. My model shows the optimal point where efficiency and wear and tear are optimized.”
“I guess that makes sense. Why isn’t the Omni one optimized then?” He could see its peak power output was touching the line, but the efficiency was short.
“You have to remember, these numbers are based on your tests, not their actual performance data. If the data you collected is accurate to the full-sized design, either some bottleneck in manufacturing is causing them not to hit the peak efficiency at that scale, or they have deliberately decided to cap their efficiency. My guess is on the latter. The reason I believe that to be the case is due to the Sinorus design. As you can see, their model is not as powerful or efficient as Omni. Whoever is doing their modeling probably hasn’t discovered the real truth of the optimization formula that I developed.”
“And that is?” Alexander asked as he stared at the model.
The woman smiled. “That the model isn’t just a flat plane. It can be tweaked slightly if you know what you’re doing.” She manipulated the model so it curved into a circle, sort of like a twisted four-sided torus. When the specs for the three engines reset to match the new model’s configuration, he could see a clear difference between the Omni model, the Sinorus one, and his.
“You see it now?” Lund asked in delight.
“I do, but I don’t understand what exactly I’m looking at.”
“It’s a parametric curve. Do you see how Omni’s is a smooth curve and yours looks all jagged? Even the Sinorus one is sorta there but not quite. This is how Omni has kept ahead of its competition for decades. If they need to meet some performance goal, they can adjust a parameter up or down, so long as the power curve is kept within my data model’s parameters, they will outperform anything Sinorus could ever come up with. It also shows the upper limit for pulsed fusion.”
“Is that what that fourth data point is?” He had been wondering about that since all of the engines touched that point, but none went past it.
“Yes,” she said in annoyance, “And the bane of my theoretical existence. The upper limit of acceleration is caused by a cascade oscillation inside the reaction chamber. This oscillation caused the fuser to become unaligned, halting the fusion process. Ever since Pulsed Fusion has been around, people have tried every combination of materials and processes to try and mitigate this issue to no avail. The most they’ve managed to accomplish is to push that oscillation a few thousand kilometers down the line. That’s not even a .01c improvement in over two hundred years. It's infuriating.”
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“Why not just switch to compressed plasma ejection then if the technology has hit its limit?”
She gave him a pointed look. “Have you not been paying attention to my model? There are still ways to improve the technology. And if anyone ever figures out how to bypass the oscillation issue, that would make pulsed fusion viable for a long time to come. As for why people don’t switch? I’m sure you're aware of the issues when those types of thrusters enter an atmosphere?” Alexander nodded.
“That’s only one issue. The other is the expense. Plasma ejection requires not just the thrusters to be swapped out, you would have to remove the entire fuel system as well as the reactor and add one that is compatible, which isn’t always possible on smaller ships due to space. Compressed plasma ejection is also much more expensive to operate because it draws power from the reactor mass instead of a simple D2O and T2O reaction. Most companies don’t want to shoulder that additional expense when pulsed fusion is good enough.”
He sort of knew some of that from speaking with Matthews and Chief Engineer Sullivan. “Ok. Let's get back on track. How do I use this to compete with Omni?”
She smirked, “That’s the easy part.” Lund shifted Alexander’s data so it overlapped the Omni data. Then she stretched out the data points so they touched all four lines in the model. Instead of showing a rather jagged appearance, his set of data took on a smooth curve, much like Omni’s “You simply cheat.”
“So maximize your model to my benefit, forcing them to do the same?”
“Exactly. They will be forced to match you or move their model up to the next peak.” She adjusted the Omni model so it was now ahead of Alexander’s on the model, in a section that sort of ballooned out.
“Wouldn’t that just mean they have faster acceleration and less efficiency if I’m reading this curve right?”
She chuckled. “Exactly. But if you keep pushing them along this path,” she rotated the model until the area started to shrink again, “you hit the theoretical limit of the technology.”
“Why don’t I just go for broke and hit the highest point I can?” He would prefer that over playing hopscotch with Omni for the next decade.
“First off, you don’t even have the infrastructure to compete with Omni right now. If you did,” she reset his original specs and pushed his design so the efficiency curve was now touching the line. It was much further ahead on the model than Omni or even Sinorus. “you would be here. But your bottleneck is manufacturing. Omni will eventually run into the same bottleneck, resulting in them having to come up with new manufacturing methods to continue improving. But I doubt that will happen to them for some time.”
Alexander was beginning to understand the challenge ahead of him. If Omni wanted to, they could simply bury his flagship design with a model so far past it that it would take him years if not decades to catch up. He somehow doubted they would do that though, because they knew the end of that technology was on the horizon. The longer they could milk it, the better.
“What about compressed plasma ejection drives?” He hadn’t bothered looking into them yet because of the technological constraints to even getting started. Depending on her answer, he may need to reconsider his approach.
“Other than what we just spoke of, my model doesn’t include that technology because it came around after the Coalition war. As far as I know, the upper limit on those types of drives is .99c. Although the power requirements to do that would be absurd and beyond anything human technology is capable of. .6c is the fastest I’ve ever heard of anyone pushing them. And that was in a military application. At that point, you are hitting the bounds of what a static field is capable of deflecting. Without major improvements in that field of science, I doubt anyone will push past that limit in my lifetime.”
“Isn’t that what you’re trying to do?”
She shook her head. “I’m trying to find alternatives around the lightspeed issue. Something like the warp drive that’s capable of operating safely in gravity wells and doesn’t require increasingly higher amounts of energy to do so. But that’s enough questions for today. Unless you plan on building a zero-g manufacturing center in the next few months, you should focus on what you have now. I’ve included the tolerance specifications you need to reach in order to manufacture the engine components capable of hitting all four peaks on the model. It’s up to you to design and build the equipment necessary to do it. It will also be a good test to see if you can handle some of the things I might ask you to build in the future for my theoretical work.”
After Dr. Lund left, Alexander looked over the information she gave him. He groaned when he read it. His printers would need to see a tenfold increase in accuracy to meet the criteria she laid out. Printing at the one hundred nanometer scale would certainly be an improvement over his current capabilities but he suspected he wouldn’t be getting there in one leap. The large industrial printers capable of that were far outside his budget so he wouldn’t be buying them from STO space to save time especially since he earmarked all the credits from taking down the pirates for another project.
He looked around the workshop. All of the machines were busily pumping out components for repairs to the facility complex, as well as components meant for the space station. That second part had slowed considerably since they had a backlog of items that needed to get to space after the attack and only one shuttle to do it.
Since this space would be needed for his new machines, he was pondering what to do with the others. He had already traded a few to Damien and his security people so they could manufacture their own gear. After finding out about how resistant his body was and the defense field, he wasn’t nearly as worried about arming the locals anymore.
That didn’t mean he was stupidly giving them free access to more powerful weapons. The flechette guns that he had provided designs for were as far as he went small arms-wise. And the explosives he provided were very limited.
He had only agreed to provide the new explosives for the grenade launchers because he knew he couldn’t be everywhere at once. If another attack of that magnitude happened again, he wanted someone else with the ability to go toe to toe with an augmented attacker. What he hadn’t bothered to tell Damien, is that the trigger mechanism for the grenades had a sort of deadman switch inside them.
So far the angry little man and the people here – barring one asshole – had been accepting. But he preferred to take no chances.
Since Damien’s brother, Lucas was so much better at programming than Alexander, he couldn’t add any sort of electronic override to the grenade launcher and hope it would remain undetected. So he made a micro switch inside the proximity trigger. If that little switch got energized by a certain frequency, it would render the grenades inert.
They could still be fired, and it would hurt like hell to get hit by one, but they wouldn’t explode. It was unfortunately the best he could do without exposing the deliberate vulnerability.
When he had originally arrived at Eden’s End, his goal was to just work on his own stuff and let the locals do whatever. He now realized that was a rather naïve outlook. Even if his goals hadn’t been as grand, he would have still needed to work closely with the locals, like he was doing already. At some point, Blue Star Enterprises would expand to encompass this entire complex simply for the sake of continued growth. And everyone here, or the vast majority of them would work for him in some way, shape, or form. That meant taking a more proactive approach to running Eden’s End while not stripping away their autonomy overnight.
Some would always shun his presence, and that was fine. He wasn’t here to make friends with everyone.
He suspected there would be some unhappy people when they realized he was slowly but surely absorbing everyone into Blue Star Enterprises but that was expected. Alexander knew that would cause friction, so he was hedging his bets early. If it turned out to be pointless preparations, then there was no harm. If it wasn’t then he would be prepared.