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deuterium storage

It's been a while since I viewed Maso's work - still looks good! The only oddity I had (and still have) is the storage of deuterium in the dorsal section. It's certainly more original that the conventional "lounges" usually assigned there but it still looks a bit...strange.

And there's the limited volume of storage @zDarby mentions, of course.
 
First off, I should reiterate that the internal layouts were not done by Masaro Okazaki, the creator of the site, but by Allen Rolfes, though Allen credits Masaro with a great deal of helpful suggestions. It's all in his notes.

Next, I feel it's fair to be more specific about my criticisms.

When I said "The [deuterium] volumes are demonstrably wrong in several cases," I was not necessarily speaking of the Constitution class, of which 1701 is a member. Any of the M/AM powered vessels have so many unknowns that well formed criticisms are hard to construct: Too many assumptions are needed to make conclusions. However, there are a few things that can be said about the deuterium storage of Mr. Rolfes Constitution design.

In his notes on the Constitution class, Rolfes speaks of 924 metric tonnes of deuterium for 6 months of operation. That deuterium is spread between three storage tanks: one in the dorsal Engineering Section and two Starboard and Port aft quarters of the saucer section, deck 7.

Calculating with 30 days per month, that's 59.4 grams of deuterium per second. Used in a simple D+D fusion cycle, where 0.0973% of the mass is turned into energy, that's 5.2 terawatts (10^12 watts) of power available for conversion, on average. (Remember, 1 terawatt = 1 terajoule per second.) There would be some conversion inefficiency, but even using a terrible thermal conversion efficiency of a third, that's still well over a terawatt of useful power. For comparison, the US average power use in 2004 averaged around 3.3 terawatts.

The above calculation is the lower bound. If you use a catalyzed D+D fusion cycle, where 0.384% is turned into energy, you get over 20 terawatts of convertible power. And if you go full M/AM, it's 5,340 terawatts. It's clear from the design and the notes, however, that M/AM reactor is not meant as the main power provider. Even so, since we can't know what percentage of power is taken from the warp reactor, we can use the M/AM number as an upper bound.

Again, there's nothing wrong with any of these numbers being perfectly workable for a 23rd century starship. Indeed, it doesn't seem likely she needs a terawatt to run her systems at idle. Far more likely, she needs huge bursts of power during combat and emergency maneuvers. So I have to conclude there's nothing at all wrong with the amount of deuterium stored in Rolfes Constitution design.

It's a handful of the pure fusion designs that have me shaking my head a little. The clearest example is the Romulan Clavicle cruiser, from the Earth Romular war. He gave her 5,154 metric tonnes of deuterium and a cruising speed of warp 3.0 and a supercruise of 4.1wf. Now, using the TNG:TM warp chart as a guide (because it's the only thing I can go on) those two speeds require 739 gigawatts and 18.7 terawatts, respectively. Plugging in those numbers and assuming a D+D reaction, that's 19.3 years and 9.3 months of flight power, respectively. In order to get the 0.6 months of flight he stipulates, you need so much inefficiency that the ship would melt from thermal loads.

There are other pure fusion designs (I don't remember which at the moment) that have the opposite problem: way too little power for the stated time if you assume D+D but go back to being melted slag if you assume catalyzed D+D.

However, I feel the need to reiterate that I have to cherry-pick examples that don't fit the curve. The preponderance of Rolfes' designs are quite good, technically. And, in general, I would suggest studying them as an example of excellent internal design work.

Sorry for the length of the post. I sorta warmed to the topic.
 
Thanks for the clarification - your calculations about fusion are always great!

I still think tankage in the connie neck is odd though ;-)
 
Calculating with 30 days per month, that's 59.4 grams of deuterium per second.
That assumes continuious use of the impulse engines over that time period, The Doomsday Machine implies that extensive use of the impulse engines is rare.

Deuterium probably isn't used in the m/am reactor, sems to me that hydrogen would be fine. A counter-part to the antimatter, assuming they are using anti-hydrogen.
 
In what form is the Deuterium stored as? I could use the information in A talk.

Most likely stored as a liquid at very cold temperatures, which is much more dense than its gaseous state, allowing more deuterium to be stored. The solid state ("deuterium ice") is more dense still, but then I would imagine a solid would be difficult to pipe around the ship.
 
Yes.

TNG:TM suggests deuteron slush, which is at the transition temp between solid and liquid. In normal circumstances, slush is as dense as you can Ger and still pump it. Somewhere I have this temp but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

However, I was able to find the density I use to calculate with: 165.6 kg/m^3. I recommend double checking that if you can. Remember that deuterium is more massive than hydrogen by almost twice, so be aware.

Also, antimatter would interact with deuterium and hydrogen equally energetically. The extra neutron in deuterium will make a difference but I've not given it much thought. However, if I remember correctly, TNG:TM says the antimatter is also deuterium. Not sure how much sense that makes, though.
 
Antideuterium will react with deuterium snd in.principle, annihilate the protons, neutrons and electrons. Antideuterium and hydrogen will have leave the antineutron. A waste of energy to produce them and not use them.
 
Antideuterium will react with deuterium snd in.principle, annihilate the protons, neutrons and electrons. Antideuterium and hydrogen will have leave the antineutron. A waste of energy to produce them and not use them.
Though potentially you could use those spare neutrons to trigger fission reactions in chambers wrapped around the m/am core (that's if it was deuterium/anti-hydrogen). But that seems inefficient and unhealthy compared with a straightforward one-to-one annihilation.
 
I would be very surprised if any planet would prefer antimatter over a fusion rector, given how much energy you have to expend to create it in the first place!

Makes sense as a concentrated fuel source for starships, but that's it.
 
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