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Incompatible System

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Neruz said:
Now you're trying to contain a fusion explosion, in which case you're better off going with a fusion reactor and skipping Project PACER entirely, because containing a fusion explosion inside a blast chamber without irreversibly damaging the chamber is going to require some genuinely implausible materials.

The whole point of the 1 kiloton fission bombs is that they are small enough that you can contain the blast without compromising your blast chamber, using megaton fusion bombs transforms the project from a difficult but conceptually plausible engineering problem into something that any sane engineer would laugh out of the room.
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It's literally a matter of scale, the pressure on the walls have to be the same for both a small explosion in a small chamber and a large explosion in a large chamber. The surface area of a sphere increases by the square of the radius so an explosion 1000 more massive would only require a chamber 32 times larger.

The neutron flux from a fusion reaction should be higher than from pure fission but water is a moderately good neutron absorber, which is why it's used in nuclear reactors as shielding, among other uses.

The absorbed neutrons carry a good percentage of the energy from the explosion but not enough to noticeably affect 50 million tons of water. In fact the entirety of the energy from the explosion would only be enough to heat that much water by around 19 degrees Kelvin.

After the first three or four devices were exploded you'd start getting a good amount of steam for the turbines with each explosion.

Of course I still don't think the bedrock behind the chamber walls would cope with more than a few explosions before they started fracturing and destroying the entire thing. Maybe if you lined the entire thing in a meter of steel but that would be a little expensive.

Edit: ok, some people have pointed out that this has derailed quite significantly so I'll just stop here.
 
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Jacen1 said:
So, which of the Citadel Races does everyone thing will experience a Close Encounter with the WIMP using races next? Excluding the Geth, of course, since they are actively looking for the new species already.

Will Batarians continue to be Batarians?

Will any Asari be detonated in the making of this story?

Will the derail about using atomic bombs to generate power ever end?

Inquiring Minds Want To Know.....
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Don't forget the migrant fleet also ordered one of their own to investigate the mysterious space blocked off by the missing relays.
 
..... Could we PLEASE move the damn debate about Fusion Power to someplace where it matters? A Science or Economics of Energy Production thread, for instance? Or at least to PMs? Real World Issues with Fusion Power have NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS STORY THREAD!!!

Seriously, I keep responding to updates looking for Mass Effect Fiction, just to see the same debate that has been running for literal DECADES on the subject, for longer then there has been an Internet, running without pause.

This is not the time nor the place for this derail. So Please, Drop the Fusion Crap and get the Thread back On Topic Already!

On. That. Note:

Now that both the Quarians and the Geth have solid evidence of a new faction, how long does everyone think it will be before the Council learns about the incident, and what conclusions do you think they will come to?
 
Jacen1 said:
Now that both the Quarians and the Geth have solid evidence of a new faction, how long does everyone think it will be before the Council learns about the incident, and what conclusions do you think they will come to?
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I don't think it will take more than a week for the Council to learn about the incident.

From there I assume that the Council, through the STG, are going to figure out that the Quarians ended up in a battle with some Batarian :turian:pirates:turian:. Next they'll look for any sign of those Batarian ships coming back to civilized space from the frontier region. When those ships don't show up it will indicate they were destroyed somehow. It won't take long for the STG analysts to figure out that there's no reasonable way the Quarian ship in question could have destroyed that many Batarians conventionally.

Beyond that the base conclusions I expect are either the Quarians have some new weapon or the Quarians got really, really lucky or the Batarians ran into another civilization out on the frontier that turned out to be hostile to Batarians. (Complete with snide assumptions that the Batarians obviously provoked the new civilization somehow - tried to raid for slaves most likely - and the Quarians continued the fine Quarian tradition of running away from anything threatening.)

Given that someone or something has been moving or removing the Relays from that region of space and I expect the Council will drop formly into the "Batarians ran into another civilization" category.
 
very fast pickle said:
I wonder what happens if ME races run into some dyson sphere? Will baterians still raid them for slaves?
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With a Dyson Sphere the question is whether the civilization that built it is still in business. Some would argue that the existence of the Reapers isn't compatible with one existing. The amount of tech needed to maintain one in working order is an interesting question, as there's lots of varieties, and the one that has a continuous solid shell is seriously into the uber-uber-tech (U2-tech) range.

Yes, I know, the assumption often made for a good story is the the builder civilization isn't still running, so you are dealing with it post-collapse, maybe millions of years ago, and/or one or more different alien races who've moved in, later. Again, how much U2-tech is still around, and usable, might answer your question.

If the Batarians are... unfortunate then the automatic maintenance system may regard them as a 'convenient resource' to use in keeping things going...
 
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Weren't the Geth building a Dyson sphere and was almost done in ME3 before it was sabotaged by the Quarians, somehow, and restarted the Geth-Quarian war?
 
Yama951 said:
Weren't the Geth building a Dyson sphere and was almost done in ME3 before it was sabotaged by the Quarians, somehow, and restarted the Geth-Quarian war?
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This construction job isn't very credible, for a number of reasons, including required mundane material resources and the amount of planium they'd need, just to even start on the work. Dyson spheres with solid shells need incredible resources, and you can make a good case that ME tech isn't up to it. Even a ring world would probably be beyond them. Difficult to see the Geth making the required tech advances. But, it's part of ME canon...
 
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A solid dyson sphere is probably more than anyone in MA can build solely on material requirements alone. They would need the technology to disesemble a small star for materials if they want more than a thin floor with a tone of material per square meter of shell.

Everyone in MA could build a classic dyson sphere (now called a dyson swarm to avoided confusion with the media version) composed of a bajilion (yes that's a technical term) of satellites with solar panels and computers/lasers and habitat stations scattered throughout. We could build one with no new science if we improved automation somthing the MA races have in there omni tools or used an unfathomable amount of man hours.
 
It's more likely that the Geth were building a Dyson Swarm (thousands of heliosats around a star) rather than an actual solid shell. They only need power (solar power works really well close to a star) to run their servers, after all, not needing silly squishy -organic- things like 'food' and 'water' and 'air'. ^^

Edit: ninja'd.
 
Vyrexuviel said:
It's more likely that the Geth were building a Dyson Swarm (thousands of heliosats around a star) rather than an actual solid shell. They only need power (solar power works really well close to a star) to run their servers, after all, not needing silly squishy -organic- things like 'food' and 'water' and 'air'. ^^
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Even better for them - solar power easily converts to electricity with allows them to use a Mass Effect field for thrust on the satellites. Without magic space rocks one has to use reaction mass which is a pain when you're talking about something the size of a Dyson swarm.
 
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