The "science" behind the fuel in Elite?

Arowx

Arowx
Is there any "scientific" explanation on what the fuels the ships in the Elite universe.

I know it's just fiction, but if the fuel and engine systems in Elite must have some pseud scientific basis. e.g.

Anti-matter, Exotic Matter, Quantum Energy, Dark Energy, Rare/Exotic Radioactive.

Anyone working on an Illustrated guide to the Elite Universe?

I love science fiction, but the more you look at the worlds they present the more you realize that most of them use some super energy source to power their vision.

Star Wars - Has Hypermatter, something to do with Hyperspace and Tachyons.

Star Trek - Have the Warp Core (Matter/Anti-Matter) and Dy-lithium Crystals.

Elite - ?
 

Erimus Kamzel

Erimus Kamzel
I don't think there's any science behind it (as in explaining the technicalities of it all), but there is a bit of lore explaining where it came from...


Quirium

A highly unstable chemical initially derived from research on captured Thargoid equipment, Quirium has formed a new generation of highly reliable space propulsion. The days of regular misjumps and subsequent marooning in witchspace are thankfully almost passed, with failure rates for well maintained witch drives approaching zero. Currently most hyperspace capable ships derive their power from Quirium based fuel, although there are still some ancient vessels powered by pre-Quirium fuels, and it is believed that the military are experimenting with a new generation of fuels.

Quirium fuel is normally measured in LY units, where each LY is the equivalent mass of Quirium fuel required to drive a typical hyperpace system one Light Year. Amount of Quirium in areas other than space propulsion, is sometimes expressed in non LY units, such as kilograms or megajoules; but this is not common, and most people will only encounter Qurium sold and consumed by the LY.

Quirium Production

Quirium is produced industrially in vast quantities and sold for a few Credits per LY. Due to the low cost, and almost universal availability, small scale production rarely makes sense, but it may also be produced on board a ship by harvesting plasma from the corona of a star with a fuel scoop either in emergency, or for far space research where normal supplies may not be available.

History

In late 2850 a damaged Thargoid ship was captured and made available to GalCop researchers who found a largely intact power system. Two teams were assigned to work on the new technology, one highly secret, from the military research arm, and another more public, led by Dr. Quirahn Falayn, a native of Diso.

Details of the military research group are scetchy, but have been pieced together from documents made public, and from papers the team presented to the scientific community. The military group had been asked to analyze the equipment and tasked with finding a way to interfere with the systems that could be weaponized. As a highly energetic fuel known to be highly unstable it was thought that causing a severe runaway reaction should be possible, resulting in the destruction of the power systems, thereby either crippling or destroying Thargoid ships. It was hoped that a death ray could be developed which would only cause damage to vessels using the Thargoid technology and could be used safely in the presence of Human ships. Dr Falayn and the second team were very open about their objectives, and vocal in their criticism of the choice to rush "new ways to turn science to kill". The intention of this team was to understand this highly dangerous and advanced fuel and to find non-offensive applications, providing GalCop ships with some of the advantages Thargoids ships had at the time.

Initial hopes for advanced weaponry were slow to be realized and were eventually handed directly to the military. Details are not known, but it is assumed that the project was eventually dropped without success. Dr Falayn continued to search for ways GalCop could benefit from the new technology, and in 2354, under intense pressure, Dr. Falayn published details of the synthesis of a new fuel, together with a prototype "engine" based on the captured reaction chamber. It is for this breakthrough that Dr Quirahn Falayn was immortalized in the naming of the new Fuel, Quirium. The new system was incredibly successful, and both commercial and military versions quickly spread and are now almost universal and all new built civilian ships fit Quirium systems.

Dreams of planetary defence grids based on Quirium weaponry were finally dashed as human usage of Quirium power took off and any credible large scale deployment of Quirium specific weaponry were gone. The only known Quirium based weaponry to see use is the Q-mine which is believed to have been entirely unrelated.

Source: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Quirium

Its also mentioned in the Pilots Handbook that came in the original Elite box (1984).


If nothing else its a great money sink.

Would be nice to see it fleshed out so we get some technical info behind how it works though.
 
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Xssone

Xssone
Battlestar Galactica - have the ore tylium appears as yellow sand before being refined, it may be rendered inert when exposed to radioactivity.

I want to know also that there can be various kind of source ? Diesel, gasoline ?
Edit: thank Erimus.
 

Mephane

Mephane
Since we will be able to scoop up fuel from sources like gas planets, I suppose the standard fuel is hydrogen. Most likely the thrusters use nuclear fusion (i.e. the scoop somehow filters out deuterium and tritium) or maybe the engines operate NERVA-style, where the hydrogen is only inert propellant.

Edit: Never mind my speculation, listen to Erimus instead. :D
 

Norbert

Norbert
Scientifically speaking, nuclear fusion sounds like the best fuel humanity can find in a near future cause hydrogen is ubiquitous in space, everlasting source of energy.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Mephane said:
Most likely the thrusters use nuclear fusion (i.e. the scoop somehow filters out deuterium and tritium) or maybe the engines operate NERVA-style, where the hydrogen is only inert propellant.
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According to the Frontier manual, the hydrogen fuel is used as an energy source for hyperspace travel, and waste products of that are then used as reaction mass for thrusters. (Possibly helium and rarer heavier elements left over from a fusion reaction?)

Military fuel was "an engineered molecule with anti matter atoms suspended in it." so probably gained greater mass-efficiency than a fusion-based reaction by using antimatter annihilation.

In First Encounters, certain ships were able to transmit a signal that made civilian drives but not military drives explode. It's not clear what mechanism this used: it is unlikely to be directly related to the choice of fuel source since the fusion-based drive sounds like it has the far safer source...

Quirium seems to have been Elite I-only and isn't mentioned beyond its name in the manual (though that article Erimus found is an impressively detailed piece of extrapolation). It can be scooped from stars but not - unlike Frontier Hydrogen Fuel - from gas giants, which suggests it may contain some high-energy exotic matter only available in those environments. Or perhaps you can scoop it from gas giants, and it's just a trade name for a particular mix of Hydrogen isotopes - it's not like you ever found any gas giants in Elite to prove or disprove that...
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
I doubt controlled fusion will ever be achieved. Unfortunately, in my own view of the future, we will have to continue to use chemical energy sources.

Invest in solar power? Pah - will never happen, too inefficient.

Invest in geothermal power? Pah - it will always run out in the long term as humans can never control enough stable ground without bickering.

Invest in your Slaves? Not worth the cost!

Invest in nuclear power? Pah and pah! The weak ones see it as an precursor to war. And in that weakness they damn themselves to energy oblivion.

Invest in Slave Dung? Everybody wins! The nuclear weak ones see it as a way to make the slaves somehow contribute, the belligerents want more slaves so not to lose face in a Dung-Power war, the geothermals freeze in their pits, and the solars wish that clouds were never condensed by Slave Dung fumes ;)

Aaaahhh I can smell it now! A great society fuelled by the idiocy of the Empire, and the clemency of the Federation. Those Alliance non-runners need not run.

Slave Dung, fuel for all!
 

Susimetsa

Susimetsa
I don't think quirium's been on the menu since the original Elite and Oolite. FE2 and FFE used hydrogen and a special "military fuel" for more advanced engines.
 

Norbert

Norbert
Asp Explorer said:
I doubt controlled fusion will ever be achieved. Unfortunately, in my own view of the future, we will have to continue to use chemical energy sources.

Invest in solar power? Pah - will never happen, too inefficient.

Invest in geothermal power? Pah - it will always run out in the long term as humans can never control enough stable ground without bickering.

Invest in your Slaves? Not worth the cost!

Invest in nuclear power? Pah and pah! The weak ones see it as an precursor to war. And in that weakness they damn themselves to energy oblivion.

Invest in Slave Dung? Everybody wins! The nuclear weak ones see it as a way to make the slaves somehow contribute, the belligerents want more slaves so not to lose face in a Dung-Power war, the geothermals freeze in their pits, and the solars wish that clouds were never condensed by Slave Dung fumes ;)

Aaaahhh I can smell it now! A great society fuelled by the idiocy of the Empire, and the clemency of the Federation. Those Alliance non-runners need not run.

Slave Dung, fuel for all!
Click to expand...

Nuclear fusion is already experimented in the states and other parts of the world. With the use of appropriate magnetic fields to control heat coming from the processed plasma, it sounds like our children will see it happening.
 

Arowx

Arowx
Norbert said:
Nuclear fusion is already experimented in the states and other parts of the world. With the use of appropriate magnetic fields to control heat coming from the processed plasma, it sounds like our children will see it happening.
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a pamphlet from the 1970s printed by General Atomic stated that "Several commercial fusion reactors are expected to be online by the year 2000."
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

Always seems just a couple of decades away, if they get more funding. ;)

Good career move for physicists.
 

Mephane

Mephane
Arowx said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

Always seems just a couple of decades away, if they get more funding. ;)

Good career move for physicists.
Click to expand...

Why the time estimates have been so bad is debatable (I think it has to do with politics not accepting a "we don't know how long it will take" when deciding about funding), but the fact remains that scientifically, with the research that is going on we are indeed getting closer to a functional fusion power plant.
 

Tacheel

Tacheel
There was an article about a month ago reported by BBC news that a nuclear fusion facility using lasers to superheat the plasma had passed the point where the energy produced was greater than the energy cost to create the reaction. As the process gets more efficient due to increased technology it becomes far more feasable.
 

Flavio

F
Zak Gordon said:
We've had fuel scoops since the original game, so Hydrogen seems to be the main component?
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Hydrogen for the main engines but not the military engines as they produce radioactives unless they continue to fuse the nucleii until they get to a radioactive element rather than just stopping at helium and the military fuel had antimatter additives.
What I dont understand is why the military engines couldnt run on hydrogen as a backup.
 

Darren Grey

Darren Grey
Erimus said:
I don't think there's any science behind it (as in explaining the technicalities of it all), but there is a bit of lore explaining where it came from...

Source: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Quirium
Click to expand...

This is fan fiction for Oolite, not Elite lore. Its notion of a fuel being measured in light years is more stupid than I can be bothered explaining :-/

Hydrogen is the fuel used in Frontier and FFE, scoopable both from stars and gas giants. What other rare elements are used in the hyperdrive engine itself aren't known. The implication is fusion power, but the actual amount of energy released would require something much greater and exotic.
 

Capt. Hook

Capt. Hook
I recall growing up on speculation of using ramjets to scoop hydrogen as interstellar fuel (late 70s/early 80s); I vaguely recall a Sky at Night piece about it. Always assumed that this was the basis of the original Elite game which allowed scooping of fuel from a sun. Something like this:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=8145
 

Norbert

Norbert
Flavio said:
Hydrogen for the main engines but not the military engines as they produce radioactives unless they continue to fuse the nucleii until they get to a radioactive element rather than just stopping at helium and the military fuel had antimatter additives.
What I dont understand is why the military engines couldnt run on hydrogen as a backup.
Click to expand...

No, hydrogen fusion is safe as long as you can canalize the heat. And depends what kind of fusion you do, cause H2 + H1 = He + y is not exactly the ideal combination. But if you use the H3+ such as in H2+ + H2 = H3+ + H, you get a very stable H3+ with an H you can use again combining it with another H and go through the process again until the solution burns all its energy.

You can as well use Deuterium. So the solutions are multiple and open lots of possibilities.
 

Perseus

Perseus
I thought we were going to be using the solar wind for our ships, or have I got the wrong end of the lanyard again? :D
 
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