V.O.R.E. Station

Dr. Richard D'angelo posted

So, today I am being trained in the handle of the new engine, It's... you know, I am pretty sure somewhere among the design lines for station engines there is a design order that things must be insanely dangerous. Anyways. New engine setup is faster and smes come preconfigured, but, boy, it makes me nervous while I write this that it will explode.

First, forget about plasma, wich, yes, it's viable to smoke again while setting up the engine. but, we still use the antimatter engine, no rad collectos, no plasma canisters, but, we get the Crystal chamber to 3-4k C°, remember, the melting point is at 5k C°, so we are tiptoeing right near the limit...

Second, remember the freezers? gone. we now use an space cooling pipe circuit, power is made with two thermoelectrical engines, we pass the 3500 C° Nitrogen through one part of the engine, and the other part goes to the loop, coming back with 500 C°, mind you, and that produces around an stable 1 mil of potency.

I hope to see you guys once the training ends, and this doesn't blow up.

Kayleen Pyroph Posted:

The new engine is pretty impressive, and should work well for us. I have yet to stress-test it, especially over a long shift, but it should stay stable. In fact, it's actually got more safety features than the current electrically cooled engine; in addition to the core eject, you can activate a set of digital valves to directly connect the hot and cold loops. It'll tank the power generation, but does wonders for an overloaded core.

Plus, it's way simpler to start up. Zero risk of plasma spills.

Dr. Richard D'angelo posted:

Here is my report on the training.

-CentCom engineers are asses.
-No, really, they are.
-The guy who wrote the manual, bigger ass.

After three emergency procedures and one critical explosion, I can tell you what's wrong with the system, and what we should be careful.

First, the manual says twelve shots from the emmiter. No, nine, ten at most, eleven is risky, and twelve makes it go unstable after half an hour or so.

The emergency cooling procedure is quite easy to use, two valves, fix everything, quite useful, and the engine can be used again for power in three minutes after it, so, top notch that part..

Now, the Ejection. You need to first open the hatch and then eject it, from the CE office... you don't have a way to see if you did opened it or not. or if it's already open. So when you eject the crystal, it hits the shutters... That was my explosion.

Second thing on the emitter, it must be used from the control room, with the shutters closed, otherwise you get a lot of radiation, like, one hundred rads lot, with the antirad suit on, I can't imagine how much without it. and remember, you have to manage to give it between nine and eleven shoots, best aim for ten... good luck with that.

Jeremiah 'Ace' Acacius posted:

I see the training simulations are going swell, then. </sarcasm>

Our last SME had a shit user's manual and it was updated. So I guess it needs another update? Must be a new type of supermatter.

Scree posted:

Oh great. So the morons that can't even get the setup we got RIGHT NOW not to splode has an even tougher run? Might as well order some extra solar kits in, jeez. Does hard storage at least have a stack of collectors so the folks what don't wanna babysit the engine forever can set it up the old way?

Reason I brings it up is a lot of the time, especially when I decides to sign up cargo instead, we might get one guy show up as an engie, set the engine, then bugger off to cryo. Or the engie gets ate. Having an engine we can't trust NOT to just go chain-reaction-explodey if it ain't watched like a hawk is a really BAD idea for a station out inna sticks like ours.

Mebbe those fancy folks over in Tau Ceti can afford ta pay a guy ta do nothing but sit inna control room all day and press the any key every couple of hours but we bloody can't.

Harmony Pretchl posted:

Pretty sure we do have extra collectors in engineering, but that's been a month since I've looked.

This engine does have me quite a bit curious, though it just seems too impractical for our station. Richard, have you tried doping the SME crystal with any different elements to give it some stability yet?

Scree posted:

Well the other way would be to just toss the supermatter into space and use a plain old plasma fire to heat the hot side, but that'll take a LOT of plasma.

Dr. Richard D'angelo Posted

I actually tried with different emmiters shots, and a bit with different nitrogen temperatures...

12 shots make it to eventually heat too much, so, again, 10 shoots and you are golden.

Giving it a very cold nitrogen only makes it so that you cancel out the heat buildup, lossing power until it eventually scales out back to shape.

You could theorically set the four collectors they have on reserves, and they might even work on the outside chamber since the radiation from the crystal is really impresive.