penny wrote:Question. Is the grav tech that the Manties currently employ a factor, or partly a factor, of an increased energy budget?
ThinksMarkedly wrote:We don't know for sure, and in some ways definitely not.
We know that they generate fusion with gravitic compression, whereas our current fusion power generation methods are either magnetic confinement (tokamaks) or inertial confinement (what the LLNL's NIF did). So if they have a better gravitic technology, they could probably produce fusion with more efficient reactors. But we've never been told that this can be done or is related, and RFC has never even hinted at how the relationship would work. If it does, then this could be the reason why the Manties have managed to put a fusion reactor aboard a missile.
There is some text in
Storm from the Shadows about improved gravitic lensing, but it does not mention energy budget. However; since both missiles discussed are fusion powered, it would seem to follow that any such improvement applied to the reactor would also improve fusion output:
Chapter 30 wrote:But now, thanks primarily to fallout from the Star Kingdom's ongoing emphasis on improving its grav-pulse FTL communications capability, BuWeaps had completed field testing and begun production of a new generation of substantially more powerful gravity generators for the cruiser-weight Mark 16. In fact, they'd almost doubled the grav lens amplification factor, and while they were at it, they'd increased the yield of the missile warhead, as well, which had actually required at least as much ingenuity as the new amplification generators, given the way warheads scaled. They'd had to shift quite a few of the original Mark 16's components around to find a way to shoehorn all of that in, which had included shifting several weapons bus components aft, but Helen didn't expect anyone to complain about the final result. With its fifteen megaton warhead, the Mark 16 had been capable of dealing with heavy cruiser or battlecruiser armor, although punching through to the interior of a battlecruiser had pushed it almost to the limit. Now, with the new Mod G's forty megaton warhead and improved grav lensing, the Mark 16 had very nearly as much punch as an all-up capital missile from as recently as five or six T-years ago.
Producing the Mod G had required what amounted to a complete redesign of the older Mark 16 weapons buses, however, and BuWeaps had decided that it neither wanted to discard all of the existing weapons nor forgo the improvements, so Admiral Hemphill's minions had come up with a kit to convert the previous Mod E to the Mod E-1. (Exactly what had become of the Mod F designation was more than Helen was prepared to guess. It was well known to every tactical officer that BuWeaps nomenclature worked in mysterious ways.) The Mod E-1 was basically the existing Mod E with its original gravity generators replaced by the new, improved model. That was the only change, which had required no adjustments to buses or shifting of internal components, and the new warheads could be fused seamlessly into the existing Mark 16 weapons queues and attack profiles. Of course, with its weaker, original warhead it would remain less effective than the Mod G, since its destructiveness was "only" doubled . . . while the Mod G laser heads' throughput had increased by a factor of over five.
Note that the change from mod E to mod E-1 did not include a change to the reactor.
PS: There are also fusion reactors in shuttles and pinnaces which use laser compression, because these can be smaller than gravity compression reactors. They do not generate enough power for a spaceship, but are safer to use with people aboard than the even smaller mini-reactors.
