proposed model for human antimatter refinery

Thinking about improving the Artwork in Vega Strike, or making your own Mod? Submit your question and ideas in this forum.

Moderator: pyramid

Post Reply
GAlex
Mercenary
Mercenary
Posts: 126
Joined: Sun May 01, 2005 10:33 am
Location: Italia

proposed model for human antimatter refinery

Post by GAlex »

Here is my post for a human antimatter refinery.

it's only a model since I had only 1/2 hour of spare time to model it.
if You think it's worth i'll give it a texture.

it's made of a linear accelerator, a toroidal accelerator, a torus with both the function of collider and cooler, and a "silo" to produce Anti Hydrogen atoms.

there are various container for the AM, and a Hangar to dock ships (only small/medium ships I think).

comments wellcomed.

Image

Image

Image
"Eppur si muove ..."
(Galileo Galilei just after abjuring to the Inquisition)
light_gemini
Merchant
Merchant
Posts: 50
Joined: Thu Oct 05, 2006 9:50 am
Location: London

Post by light_gemini »

Im not familiar with the tech around antimatter, but the model looks very nice. Some more small detail like docking ports in the silos,antenas, etc. would be great but I suppose poly count is high for this extras.
Anyway right now a good texture will be enough as I see it. Great work :D
----------------------------------
High above the clouds,alone,in a beautyfull and deadly world, I found my problems on the ground would never be important no more!!!
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Post by klauss »

Not bad for a concept.
But if you want a final model, you'll have to do something with those dicombobulated cubes. I don't want to be blunt, but they don't get the job done.

The general layout is quite good, though. I'd say it's good if you replace each primitive (cylinder, the accelerator, the cubes) each by more detail structures.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
GAlex
Mercenary
Mercenary
Posts: 126
Joined: Sun May 01, 2005 10:33 am
Location: Italia

Post by GAlex »

it was a concept.
the discombobulator is a nice toy, but very far from usability.
i used it only to give an idea of what it should be.

again the cubes should be replaced with some other, more articolated, structure.

as for the primitives, actually, a toroidal particle accelerator is a plain torus, and a linear accelerator is a straight tube. but they both lack in magnets (some sort of structure near each junction, maybe octagonal prisms).

i know it's simple and quite boxy, but i think it should remain so (but more detailed). have a look at what LHC is (a tube, some boxy buildings, some silos).

will remove the weird and post an updated version soon.
"Eppur si muove ..."
(Galileo Galilei just after abjuring to the Inquisition)
Cordess
Trader
Trader
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:21 am

Post by Cordess »

Keep in mind, that a particle accelerator consumes a lot of energy.
Especially when creating antimatter in mass production.
So the refinery needs at last about 6-10 fusion reactors that are alltogether 10 times larger than the facility shown in the concept screenshots.

For the type of the fusion reactor i would suggest the Stellerator design.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Stellerator:

Image

If I may suggest, a circular path for particles is hard to achieve for large accelerators. They are usually polygonal. And this would be easier to model and might even lower the poly count. Say a circular polygon of 18 straight, six-sided tubes. At each of the 18 corners, rather than a bend, you could have a structure, which structure houses the superconducting coils that deflect the particles. The tubes could be a lot thinner than that. The injector lines could be thinner still, and straight, also, which should save poly counts that can then be spent on more greebling. And, overall, the particle circuit could be almost buried within other structures. Lots of 4-sided beams running like a grid above and below, facilities and buildings, particularly around the linear accelerators and the particle smashing point. Power generator plants, fuel tanks, radiators galore, and a spaceport, of course.
The idea of using a circular accelerator as a feeder is good. Well, I'm not a physicist, so I don't know; but I mean it's an interesting concept. The injector line from one into the other, though, would preferably be straight, though, I think.
You probably want to show curves on the model, though; but I'd reserve them for other things like cables, and flex pipes attaching to mobile or rotating parts, if there are any.
lee
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 322
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 2:17 pm

Post by lee »

Won´t they use linear accelerators? In space, you can build them as long and straight as you want ...
Debian testing
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Damn good point. DAMN good point. Probably we'd see a reversal: smaller annular accelerators injecting particles into larger, linear ones. But frankly I don't know much at all about this stuff, like, how much energy do we need to make antimatter. I think I remember a figure of around 1 MEV to produce an electron-positron pair, but you'd need to produce antiprotons and antineutrons, to combine into atoms and molecules of antimatter. Not sure if the energy needed would be terribly high. It's more the quantity of production that would be a concern, seems to me. And by the way, the image I linked for a stellerator may not be a stellerator at all, but a tokamak, if what someone in the know is telling me is correct, although the image is named "stelleratordetail.jpg". A stellerator for sure looks like this:

Image

or this:

Image

or this:

Image

Then again, I'm thinking, antimatter might be okay as an energy source, if properly tamed; but what about ftl? The only theory around that makes any sense would require dark matter; and to produce dark matter you might need a linear accelerator the size of the solar system. No chance of keeping such a huge linear structure from collapsing due to the non-linearities of a the gravity well of a star. It would have to be built as far as possible from any star.
Cordess
Trader
Trader
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:21 am

Post by Cordess »

lee wrote:Won´t they use linear accelerators? In space, you can build them as long and straight as you want ...
In space mass counts, so you will build them as small als possible but big enough to produce the required amount of antimatter.
In addition a ring-shaped linear accelerator is cheaper to build because you need a lot less material for it.
The reason is, that you need to accelerate the particles to a high speed.
And the amount of acceleration depends on the strengh of the field and the duration of the acceleration.
With a ring-shaped linear accelerator the strengh of the field is less imporant because the duration can as long as you want, because the particals are accelerated in a circle.

Furthermore you still need an energy source to power the linear accelerator, a group of fusion reactors might do the job.



The stellerator design has the advantage, that it allows a continuous plasma beam an so a continuous fusion reaction.
The tokamak design is a pulsed reactor, the fusion reaction needs to be started and stoped periodically.
Dark-Blood-Hound
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 372
Joined: Sun Oct 01, 2006 1:44 pm

Post by Dark-Blood-Hound »

Yeh I agree.
Post Reply