Since Raptors are nearly infinitely re-ignitable and cheap we strap some to the back of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Need a speed boost? fire em up. Plenty of onboard electricity for making O2 and Methane. 'splain me why that wouldn't work and that I'm stupid, lol
Posted Nov 18, 2022, 6:58 PM UTC
Nuclear power basically does the same thing. The enterprise actually made too much power for example.
Also assuming a standard aircraft carrier is 92 Mkg and a raptor produces 1.8MN thrust a single raptor would cause about 0.002 g accelleration. Not much. 10 raptor maybe get 0.02g.; 500 raptor for 1g, now we're talking. Unfortunately the tanks, structure, fuel and piping needed to run 100 to 500 raptors would also add mass thus requiring more engines and fuel and you'd end up with the tyrany of the ship- rocket equation.
edit: forgot to divide by 9.8 in the original. it will take 500 raptors to accelerate at 1g.
Mkg
Why are people so averse to using gigagrams as a unit? It's much less awkward than mega-kilograms or kilotonnes, can be written as "Gg", and sounds way cooler!
As an American SI units are imaginary anyway so I suppose it doesn't really matter. Net time I will use number of houses mass unit and jumbo jet thrust as the force units.
Well for some reason kilogram is a SI unit. So you could say kilo kilogram and it would perfectly ok to do so. Nobody’s does so because it sound fucking stupid
See, I've been thinking about this. In ye olden days, what's known today as "kilogram" was called "grave" (pronounced [grahv], not like the English [grayv]) in France. The actual mass of a grave may have been not exactly 1000 grams but close enough. Now, it's non-trivial to just define the gram as the SI base unit for mass because many formulae might get messed up, but what if we just call the SI base unit for mass "grave" and define its mass as 1 kg? Then we would have a unit which scales properly with prefixes (1 milligrave is one gram, one kilograve is one metric ton) and the unit symbol could be a capital G because as far as I can see, that letter isn't really taken by any unit that's commonly used. Maybe Gauss, but who cares about that. I know this will never happen but I like it.
That's a good idea. It will never happen, but I like the idea. While we're at it, could we redefine lengths and volumes as well? It never made sense to me why a cubic decimeter of water would have a volume of 1 liter and weigh 1 kilogram. It would make much more sense for a cubic meter of water to have a volume of 1 liter and weigh 1 gram.
Gg?
Well played.
There it is! Lol 50 needed for any meaningful acceleration. I think you nailed it
Your acceleration values are off by a factor 10.
1.8 MN/(92E6 kg) = 0.02 m/s^(2) = 0.002 g.
A flying aircraft carrier needs 500 raptors (/u/collegefurtrader, u/ackermann).
I fell prey to the classic forget to divide by 9.8, thanks.
Are you trying to tell me 51 raptors could lift an aircraft carrier?
Yes, provided fuel and added structure needed had zero mass and provided I didn't screw up the math I did quickly in my head with shitposting rigor.
And who even cares about the water, amirite?
Hmm, so a 33 engine Superheavy would produce “only” around 0.6g 0.06g of acceleration for an aircraft carrier.
Aircraft carriers are really heavy
This is the most SXMR idea in history.
Other than the whole catch the booster with chopsticks so you don't have to use landing legs.
It wouldn't really be out of place on NCD either.
I think this calls for a white paper, OP. Your concept is hereby approved for submission.
Well there's the part where they can blow up
The corrosion from being exposed to salt water all the time would render them useless or dangerous too quickly, plus you would have to completely redesign the ships to handle the forces from the engines and traveling through water at those speeds isn’t really feasible, so you would have to design the ship to fly above the water.
Since naval ships are essentially weapons platforms with hundreds to thousands of miles range and ship to ship fights do not occur anymore (the USS Constitution is the only commissioned USNavy ship which has sunk an enemy ship) a short speed burst conveys no discernible tactical advantage.
ship to ship fights do not occur anymore (the USS Constitution is the only commissioned USNavy ship which has sunk an enemy ship)
When was the last time we sunk an enemy ship? Maybe an odd case In Vietnam? Or not since WWII?
US Airplane sinks enemy ship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bubiyan
US Ship sinks enemy ship
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/last-us-navy-vessel-to-sink-a-ship.html?chrome=1
The Battle of Bubiyan (Also known as the Bubiyan Turkey Shoot) was a naval engagement of the Gulf War that occurred in the waters between Bubiyan Island and the Shatt al-Arab marshlands, where the bulk of the Iraqi Navy, while attempting to flee to Iran, much like the Iraqi Air Force, was engaged and destroyed by Coalition warships and aircraft.
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somehow i pictured a flying aircraft carrier. now in comparison to that, your proposal is bad, because it is boooring.
Not as Boring as Musk's tunnel company.
The holy grail of rocketry is nuclear powered engines. And now you want to power a nuclear powered ship with chemical reactions…
But it would be cool
i love this idea its briljant
You would need a turbine that can spin at mach 10 and an awefully big gearbox to turn all that power into torque.
Unless that ship is designed for a cruising speed of mach 10?
who said thay are powering the props just bolt them to the back a few to lift the nose so it wont go down
But it's not efficient at all, the exhaust is moving at 3.5 km/s while the ship is moving at 13 m/s so it's only about 0.7% efficient.
Hmmm intresting but at liftoff of a roket the rocket is not moving at all but the force of the rocket is still exerted by your calculations at liftof efficiently shoud be zero but thats cleary not the case sinse it takes of anyway
I agree its not the most efficient but that low ?
I am curious to your calculations
I love it. Post it on r/shittySpaceXIdeas
Why not just using the O2 and methane to power the propellers then?
This is almost a jet-ski but with extra steps they both intake water then accelerate it out the back using energy
True story