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Originally posted by Drostie:
On a plus note, I'd be optimistic and identify the two side engines of Serenity as ion drives. In 500 years, we might manage to make them practical. Probably, the engine involves a contained fusion reaction -- and "core containment" refers to the inevitably large amount of radiation that needs to be kept away from the crew manning the ship.

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Again, the "nuclear explosion" tail-end drive is highly unrealistic, because people are on a scale where Newtonian mechanics holds very well, and human bodies don't take kindly to being accelerated at rates greater than a couple g's. Possibly, genetic engineering will improve those accelerations in the intervening years, but not to the level that they're talking about. In any case, we see people habitually stand when the acceleration is done (e.g. Jayne's "Let's moon 'em" comment), when the accelerations involved would probably toss them off of their feet.

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Originally posted by citizen:
...an Inertial Confinement Fusion Drive.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by Drostie:
On a plus note, I'd be optimistic and identify the two side engines of Serenity as ion drives. In 500 years, we might manage to make them practical. Probably, the engine involves a contained fusion reaction -- and "core containment" refers to the inevitably large amount of radiation that needs to be kept away from the crew manning the ship.

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It appears to operate as an air breathing Jet engine in an atmosphere, there's a number of explanations but I wonder if it runs as a Jet engine at low velocity atmospheric flight and can reconfigure it self in flight to operate as a Ramjet or Scramjet at higher speeds before switching to rocketry for non-atmospheric flight.

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Originally posted by DonCoat:
The great advantage of that type of engine, of course, is that you don't have to carry any oxidizer for operation in atmo. But we do know that the thrusters can operate in space... I forget which episode shows it, but at least one does. Of course, that could simply have been a mistake by Zoic... but now it's canon, so the game continues.

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Originally posted by DonCoat:
As for the fuel tanks, the extenders could hold a lot....

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Originally posted by cozen:
Still, I'm curious about what kind of fuel might be considered as usable to facilitate containable fusion of the variety that can propel a spaceship, such that the cost and space required to carry said fuel in the first place is not an insurmountable obstacle?

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Also, I wonder where onboard Serenity is the "gas tank"?

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In any case, it appears to me that gravity may or may not be considered to be a "weak" force, but it is certainly phenominally persistent and consistently measurable. And that gravity is symbiotically tied to the mass of objects. Which is why it bothers me that a tiny craft such as Serenity can be (heh!) configured to consistently maintain a 1g gravity for those onboard without somehow burning a huge amount fuel to preserve her passengers' structural integrity, whether or not the ship itself is accelerating.

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I have one question, though. Where did you get the idea that the main engine was some sort of nuclear explosion? I don't recall that being suggested in any of the canon or even in the RPG. Is it just something you assumed based on its appearance?

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