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I just watched a rerun of an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica series. They attacked a Cylon tillium refinery on an asteroid. Dr. Gaius Baltar said unrefined tillium is very unstable, with an enthalpy of half a billion megajoules per kilogram. That's a hell of a lot of energy, and would explain why their Viper fighters can take off from the surface of a planet like Earth, engage in combat and land on a carrier spacecraft.
As a comparison I looked up the enthalpy of some real materials. These are expressed in megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg):
TNT = 5.4 MJ/kg
Octanitrocubane = 7.32 MJ/kg
coal = 22.38 MJ/kg
diesel = 45.41 MJ/kg
fuel oil = 40.30 MJ/l = 40.7 MJ/kg
liquefied petrolium gas (liquefied natural gas) = 26.54 MJ/l = 53.08 MJ/kg
regular gasoline = 44.4 MJ/kg
wood = 12 MJ/kg (or 16 to 21 by another reference)
peat = 23 MJ/kg
hydrogen = 283.75 MJ/kg
fission of plutonium is about 3 million times the specific energy of coal
The first two appear poor because they are actually explosives. Mass of oxygen is not factored in, with the exception of TNT. Octanitrocubane does not require any oxygen for explosion, TNT requires 5.25 oxygens per TNT molecule. The weight of oxygen is included with TNT to represent its total weight as used.
The TV show claimed they couldn't use a nuke because the radiation would destroy the tillium ore. So their fictional fuel releases more energy than fission of plutonium, but doesn't release radiation. Ah, huh; would be nice. That really solves their rapid interplanetary travel problems, and surface launch.
So, anybody have an idea how this could be achieved with real-life physics without neutron or gamma radiation?
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1 kilogram of antimatter produces 179,751,035,700 MJ/kg assuming there is also 1 kg of matter to annhilate with or if you assume an equal amounts of matter and antimatter it is 89,875,517,870 MJ/kg, that would put Tillium in about the range of nuclear fusion as I believe that liberates about 1% of rest mass energy.
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Speaking of Science Fiction technology, there is a discussion going on at the Sci Fi channel boards about a Space 1999 miniseries. Aside from moving the Moon from Star System to Star System which is the greatest suspension of disbelief, there are those Eagles, which can land anywhere and fly anywhere in a typical solar system. I think a Space 1999 Eagle would have to be powered by antimatter to do what they've been seen to do on that series. I think the Moon might be a good place to produce antimatter since the location is remote and presumably unpopulated, and if we ever were to test out new technologies for the mass production of antimatter, the far side of the Moon would be a good location for it, due to its proximity to Earth and the fact that any antimatter explosion would be shielded by the Moon from reaching Earth. I'd say the time period for this would be at meast from the Mid to late 21st century, assuming a series of breakthrough that vastly increases our ability to manufacture antimatter in bulk amounts.
Moving the moon without distroying it is orders of magnitude more difficult, my candidate for that would be some sort of alien technology buried deep within the Moon's crust and left there about 100,000 years ago. As improbably as it seems, thats the most likely explaination, it would probably employ some sort of Warp drive, that is somehow activated by some human activity in its immediate proximity. The warp drive defies the light barrier and sends the Moon on multiple planetary encounters across interstellar distances, or more belivably it could be a sublight drive that pushes the moon gravitationally with minimum tides through space at near light speeds. Since the Moon doesn't seem to return to Earth, you really don't need FTL as it would only visit each planet once.
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what are you talking about? a serie or tv program? cause i think i've missed it.
Reyra
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what are you talking about? a serie or tv program? cause i think i've missed it.
Probably a TV program. The original was called Space 1999 and aired in the late 1970s. The idea is actually rather preposterous, that a accident involving nuclear waste stored on the far side of the Moon could know the Moon out of its orbit and send it on an interstellar journey with Moonbase in tow encountering planets weekly, It did have a realistic "2001" look to it though. If you were to take these assumptions and give it more convincing explainations, what would they be?
You can not accelerate the Moon to a significant fraction of the speed of light without destroying it, if you tried to do so in the conventional manner, such as pushing it like you would any other object.
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If you were to take these assumptions and give it more convincing explainations, what would they be?
I don't think you could.
But, if you were going to try it anyway, then I would try the rich mad sciencetist rout. He up up towers all over the moon to encase the moon in a field so going at light speed isn't problem, but the mad sciencetist dies and no one has access to the codes to stop the moon from jumping to warp speed and nor can they turn the moon around either. So the moon make intermittent jumps and warps to the next star system.
I told you it couldn't done, but that my best shot at it.
Larry,
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Sort of the equivalent of Leonardo Da Vinci building the Internet. and then presenting it to the public as a fait accompli.
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