Luceno Confinement Drive: Difference between revisions
(Created page with "{{Rough Pass}} The '''Luceno Confinement Drive''' is the class-name of a general design of Inertial Confinement Fusion Rocket Engine, originally designed by the Cydonia Institute of the Martian Union and named for the lead engineer of the project, Aretta Luceno. While initially pursued as a state secret, parallel developments on Earth and general espionage during the Earth-Mars Cold War lead to the near-simultaneous adoption of the design's broadest...") |
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The Luceno Confinement Drive design has several advantages: it requires no [[reaction mass]] other than its fuel, and that fuel consumption is much lower per unit [[delta-V]] than with a chemical rocket. This allows ships equipped with an LCD-based design to operate under constant burn if desired, dramatically shortening the wall-clock length of journeys between locations in the solar system, and providing an illusion of gravity (if sometimes partial gravity) for the duration of the journey. However, the Luceno Confinement Drive design offers disadvantages as well, chiefly in the form of a dangerous drive plume full of high-energy neutrons, heat, and bremstrallung radiation. For this reason, most stations, planets, and moons forbid the use of such drives along certain angles of approach, divergence, or below certain altitudes, requiring most ships to have some additional forms of drive system installed. | The Luceno Confinement Drive design has several advantages: it requires no [[reaction mass]] other than its fuel, and that fuel consumption is much lower per unit [[delta-V]] than with a chemical rocket. This allows ships equipped with an LCD-based design to operate under constant burn if desired, dramatically shortening the wall-clock length of journeys between locations in the solar system, and providing an illusion of gravity (if sometimes partial gravity) for the duration of the journey. However, the Luceno Confinement Drive design offers disadvantages as well, chiefly in the form of a dangerous drive plume full of high-energy neutrons, heat, and bremstrallung radiation. For this reason, most stations, planets, and moons forbid the use of such drives along certain angles of approach, divergence, or below certain altitudes, requiring most ships to have some additional forms of drive system installed. | ||
Because of these constraints, the Luceno Confinement Drive is popular mostly among vessels that need to prioritize speed (or otherwise benefit from constant acceleration) or which strongly require that level of mass-efficiency, but by no means is the drive technology a monopoly. Critically, a Luceno Confinement Drive has a large start-up power cost and also cannot generate power without also generating thrust - for this reason, ships which will spend a long time at a steady velocity, or which otherwise can't afford a separate power plant, may choose a different drive design. | |||
== Design Overview == | == Design Overview == | ||
== Drive Physics == | |||
Latest revision as of 13:38, 11 September 2025
"It's accurate to within maybe a thousand kilometers. So, depending on what you're doing, it's 'close enough'."
Cassandra Higgs, Life Support Engineer
This article or section of an article is a rough pass at itself and will be subject to further refinement in later revisions.
The Luceno Confinement Drive is the class-name of a general design of Inertial Confinement Fusion Rocket Engine, originally designed by the Cydonia Institute of the Martian Union and named for the lead engineer of the project, Aretta Luceno. While initially pursued as a state secret, parallel developments on Earth and general espionage during the Earth-Mars Cold War lead to the near-simultaneous adoption of the design's broadest strokes by both sides.
The Luceno Confinement Drive design has several advantages: it requires no reaction mass other than its fuel, and that fuel consumption is much lower per unit delta-V than with a chemical rocket. This allows ships equipped with an LCD-based design to operate under constant burn if desired, dramatically shortening the wall-clock length of journeys between locations in the solar system, and providing an illusion of gravity (if sometimes partial gravity) for the duration of the journey. However, the Luceno Confinement Drive design offers disadvantages as well, chiefly in the form of a dangerous drive plume full of high-energy neutrons, heat, and bremstrallung radiation. For this reason, most stations, planets, and moons forbid the use of such drives along certain angles of approach, divergence, or below certain altitudes, requiring most ships to have some additional forms of drive system installed.
Because of these constraints, the Luceno Confinement Drive is popular mostly among vessels that need to prioritize speed (or otherwise benefit from constant acceleration) or which strongly require that level of mass-efficiency, but by no means is the drive technology a monopoly. Critically, a Luceno Confinement Drive has a large start-up power cost and also cannot generate power without also generating thrust - for this reason, ships which will spend a long time at a steady velocity, or which otherwise can't afford a separate power plant, may choose a different drive design.