MalMalumam Posted September 8, 2020 Posted September 8, 2020 ~ ~ Make Solars Great Again! ~ ~ I've been bouncing this around the discord for a while, but I thought I'd make a forum post to get more feedback. Basically, I wanted to buff solars. Not gonna lie. It seemed silly, given the phoron shortage, that we were relying on a source of power that was 100% phoron and also incredibly rare - the supermatter - with some sort of weird magic lightning ball (Tesla) as a backup (which might also be based on phoron), with solars as a puny last-ditch backup source. But the sun's rays are so weak way out in the Romanovich Cloud... to generate the same amount of power as the supermatter, you'd have to pave ten whole screens of the asteroid with them! ...But what if you could just get closer to the sun? You'd need less solar panels! ...What if you got, like, REALLY close? Enter the Bluespace Solar Shuttle! Using bleeding-edge advances in bluespace miniaturization, manipulation, and targeting, as well as advanced solar collection technology, this shuttle sidles right up next to your local star (relatively speaking - 2 million km at the nearest), and, thanks to the power of the inverse square law, taps some of the millions of watts per square meter of power that are otherwise just going to waste, and teleports it right back to the station! Sure, most of that power is used up to teleport the rest, but that leaves quite enough to rival the output of any supermatter engine. ahem... Anyway, here's a crappy diagram I made in Paint. The basic idea is: sunlight is focused by the big mirror onto the extended focusing prism and is routed through a many-layered prism. The prism separates out each wavelength of light, and directs each wavelength to its corresponding solar cell (technically, it's an "optical rectenna" - a different technology from the photovoltaic cell, which promises to replace them in today's world). The rectenna matrix makes electricity, which powers the shuttle's SMES, then the SMES for the personal teleporter, then the SMES for the power teleporter, and finally what's left over goes through the power teleporter to the station. The leftover light that couldn't be separated out or converted is reflected out through the exhausts. Since you'll be leaving the shuttle in orbit around the sun, you'll want to be able to teleport out of it (and back into, if needed). In terms of custom setups and tinkering, I have some ideas, but no idea which ones would work best. Distance to the sun, how extended the mirrors are, how finely tuned and targeted the bluespace power relay is to the station's receiving relay, which wavelengths you attune the separation prism to, how efficient you set the rectennas to, the SMESes themselves, what orbiting program you set the shuttle to, how you tune the station's receiving relay... there's a lot of options. Different parameters for different suns could be a thing, too, if the NBT folks think that's a good idea : ^ ) Catastrophic failure could be an option, consisting of perhaps maybe a malfunction in the teleporter causing a massive beam of light to tear the station in half, or mistargeting causing electrical storms to zap across the station, or random bluespace portals to start opening up and exposing parts of the station to vacuum... Of course, catastrophic failure could also just simply be "the shuttle blows up." Or maybe... no catastrophic failure, just failure to align...? Anyway! What do you think?
MalMalumam Posted September 8, 2020 Author Posted September 8, 2020 I should clarify, there would be a receiving relay on the station's side, which would tie into a grid SMES, which sends out to the rest of the station as normal. I'd be willing to try to code/sprite some/all of this out, though I'm a complete noob and it'd probably take me a long time. It's more of a personal project/idea/fantasy, if anything.
Carver Posted September 8, 2020 Posted September 8, 2020 May I request a tl;dr of what this would actually add or change?
MalMalumam Posted September 8, 2020 Author Posted September 8, 2020 Sure! ...well, it's still all a fuzzy undefined idea in my head. But basically: -Adds a Solar Shuttle dock. Contains a Solar Shuttle, shuttle control console, teleporter keyed to the Solar Shuttle, bluespace power receiver, and grid SMES. -Adds Solar Shuttle. Generates power by getting really close to the sun with some super high tech solar panels, then teleports it back to the station's bluespace power receiver. Shuttle has a personal teleporter for workers to leave and enter it without having to recall it from the sun.
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