Chapter 15 - Spaceship

I won't build a rocket. Although certainly cool to some extent, it does not suit my needs at all. The main purpose of a rocket is to escape the planet's gravitational pull and enter space. Not what I need at all, I won't have a problem getting into space simply by using mana. What I mainly need to do is maximize the mana harvest range when I cruise through space.

Relying on my own pickup radius is simply not enough. Also, the faster I fly through the less the range at which I can collect the mana before it exits my range again. Let's say my pickup range is about 500km when completely still. If I move through space at 10% the speed of light, which would be roughly be 100.000km/s, then I would have at most only 0.017 seconds to collect any mana that enters my range before exiting it again. A ridiculously short amount of time, even at 10% the speed of light.

Because of this, doing it like this is simply unfeasable. However, not all hope is lost. I thought up a hopefully viable plan that allows me to collect mana by circumventing this problem. What I need to do is basically construct a giant ever so slightly curved bowl that will later travel with the 'opening' of the bowl facing forwards.

Since the bowl will be made of 'solid' mana, st that no mana that is captured can escape. It's like a net fishing for mana. The curvature of the bowl not only prevents the mana from escaping outwards, but also directs it towards the center. Directly towards me. Through this principle I should be able to collect enormous amounts of mana, of course depending on how large I am able to get the bowl.

Problem is, this is going to take a lot of mana to construct. The 'solid' mana that the bowl has to be constructed from will need certain properties. First of all, the 'solid' mana needs to be able to prevent free mana from passing through. Not that hard of a task since cryztalized bound mana has that property to begin with. On the other hand, however, the structure will have to be increadibly sturdy as the incoming mana will be like a strong wind, epsecially so when moving at extremely high speeds.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Another problem that arises from this is the factor called stability. Have you ever thrown something like a plate or a bowl face first through the air? If you did, then it certainly did not remain in the position you threw it in. It probably started rotating towards facing a certain direction so that the air resistance it faces during it's flight will be minimal. This is the reason why something like a shuttlecock has feathers or a missile has fins, to stabilize it's flight.

Because of this, simply building a giant bowl shape is not viable at all. A second problem arising from this is the decceleration as a result of resistance. Because the structure traveling through space interacts with the free mana within, it faces the same problem as something like a car. Wind resistance, or rather mana resistance, will be a serious problem because it's makes us loose a great advantage that travelling through space normally has, namely no decceleration.

Forget about time dilation, we won't even come close to speed where that would even need consideration like this. The resistance will simply be way too great. To counteract this, I will basically have take a part of the collected mana and generate force through it so I can travel as fast as possible. I will have to find a balance between speed and mana usage for that speed though.

Because of all this, the final design I have chosen is a tructure that looks a bit like an earthworm from dune, just a bit shorter in comparison to the width. At the front of the spaceship will be the funnel that's responsible for catching the mana. Along it's long, linear body will be fins to stabilize its flight through the mana dense space. A certain structure at the end of the funnel will be responsible to convert part of the incoming mana to thrust, basically by combusting it.

The hopefully good thing is that combusting mana to generate thrust appears to be extremely efficient according to my smaller sample experiments I earlier. If that relates to the large scale spaceship as well, I may be able to slowly push the speed higher and higher as the increased amounts of mana flowing into the spaceship through the higher speed will be enough to increase the speed even further while also increasing the amount of mana funneled towards me. I just don't know until which speed this will apply before the increased mana wind resistance balances that out.

I won't be able to hold my promise though, the resemblance to a rocket is way to high with this design. Damn it.