Starship Power Systems

Archaic

Chemical, fission, fusion, antimatter.

Antimatter Reactor

An antimatter reactor simply combines antimatter and matter, causing a reaction which annihilates both, producing output energy equivalent to the mass of the fuel. The energy is then harnessed in various ways.

The theoretical energy output of a matter annihilation reaction is 9*10¹⁶ joules per kilogram of fuel. This is roughly 100 times more than the theoretical efficiency of fusion; and even better, matter annihilation always produces the full theoretical amount, regardless of size, whereas fusion reactors cannot come close to the full, theoretical efficiency, even before the losses incurred in actually harnessing the output.

Methods of harnessing the energy of matter annihilation vary, but in general, using the reaction to directly produce thrust is much more efficient than using it to produce power. Thus, typical reactors will be housed very near drive systems which will vector the output products to produce thrust; the throttle would therefore directly control the reactor output by varying fuel input. This setup is inconvenient for power generation, leading many implementations to use an alternate power source for systems besides main drive, or separate antimatter systems of various sizes, each tied to a specific system.

The greatest disadvantage of an antimatter reactor is the need to store antimatter fuel. The use of magnetic containment to confine charged antiparticles is well-understood, but the power required to maintain confinement is vast; at the peak of this technology, overall loss of efficiency to containment had been lowered to "merely" 75% of the net power of the reactor itself at reasonable compression levels. Said "reasonable levels" usually required ships to refuel frequently; a single battle, or several days of hyperspace cruise (which in those days would only mean crossing a few parsecs), would drain the fuel reserves of most ships.

Stored antimatter is, of course, extremely dangerous; any loss of power to the containment system would allow the antimatter to contact the rest of the ship, leading to a reaction which would undoubtedly destroy it, and any other ships that might be nearby. This necessitated backup power systems, which were themselves quite bulky, and were a major contributor to the range issues noted above. In a tactical situation, antimatter reserves became a major liability, as breaching the storage tank with weapons could yield instant victory over virtually ship that wasn't out of fuel.

Hypermatter Annihilator

The mainstay of reactors, hypermatter reactors are highly scaleable and extremely

Random Notes

The reactor of the Acclamator I (hypermatter annihilator) has the following stats:

• Peak (reactor): 2 × 10²³ watts
• Peak (shields): 7 × 10²² watts