It's something that's been on my mind lately, and Bob's off-hand reference to Asimov's The Martian Way helped my mind clue in at a
good time.
Simply put, the Midnight only seems to have F-HUGE engines. The fact of the matter is that at the time of the Midnight's retrofitting
high power engine-scale ion emiters are a piece of cake when working with the Wave - even to the point of the process being pretty much quirk free since the
emmiters can be easily built using handwaved tools instead of handwaving existing equipment into a working emitter. Ergo, the ion engines themselves on the
Midnight occupy a relatively small space in the engine nacells.
The rest is a device that is equal parts fiendishly complex and fiendishly simple and the reason why Midnight generates the shock-diamond pattern in
her exhaust-wake when it shouldn't happen in vacuum. This device is a focusing manifold that redirects the flow of the exhaust ions into a quadruple-helix
wave pattern. This not only provides the shock-diamond pattern, but forces the ion stream into a tight beam that provides far more power for acceleration -
enough that it rivals the Soviet Airforce's brute force answer in fusion torch designs.
This rather unique device is one of the few bits of proprietary technology that the Roughriders have - this is owing to the unusual nature of the device
itself; no one is willing to mess with it and those that have gave themselves migrains trying to figure out the product of Ben's mind. (This has led some
to question Ben's sanity and whether it's safe to leave him in command of a potent force such as the Roughriders. Ben's proponents claim that he
is merely a Mad Scientist that is able to keep his madness closely in check, letting it out in controlled quantities when he is working on a project.) During
the initial phases of the mass-production line of Blackbird Class ships, the 'propulsion units' were the only portions that the Roughriders
manufactured themselves. Fortunately, the build quality is exceptional and breakdowns of the system are rare and usually only occur from battle damage. In
these cases, the customers are more than happy to accept new or refurbished units in exchange for the damaged ones for the reasons mentioned above.
This propulsion unit is not only present in the Blackbird Class ships, but a somewhat scaled-down version is used in Firfox Class fighters as well, which
explains quite a bit about their unusual-even-for-a-fighter speed and acceleration.
good time.
Simply put, the Midnight only seems to have F-HUGE engines. The fact of the matter is that at the time of the Midnight's retrofitting
high power engine-scale ion emiters are a piece of cake when working with the Wave - even to the point of the process being pretty much quirk free since the
emmiters can be easily built using handwaved tools instead of handwaving existing equipment into a working emitter. Ergo, the ion engines themselves on the
Midnight occupy a relatively small space in the engine nacells.
The rest is a device that is equal parts fiendishly complex and fiendishly simple and the reason why Midnight generates the shock-diamond pattern in
her exhaust-wake when it shouldn't happen in vacuum. This device is a focusing manifold that redirects the flow of the exhaust ions into a quadruple-helix
wave pattern. This not only provides the shock-diamond pattern, but forces the ion stream into a tight beam that provides far more power for acceleration -
enough that it rivals the Soviet Airforce's brute force answer in fusion torch designs.
This rather unique device is one of the few bits of proprietary technology that the Roughriders have - this is owing to the unusual nature of the device
itself; no one is willing to mess with it and those that have gave themselves migrains trying to figure out the product of Ben's mind. (This has led some
to question Ben's sanity and whether it's safe to leave him in command of a potent force such as the Roughriders. Ben's proponents claim that he
is merely a Mad Scientist that is able to keep his madness closely in check, letting it out in controlled quantities when he is working on a project.) During
the initial phases of the mass-production line of Blackbird Class ships, the 'propulsion units' were the only portions that the Roughriders
manufactured themselves. Fortunately, the build quality is exceptional and breakdowns of the system are rare and usually only occur from battle damage. In
these cases, the customers are more than happy to accept new or refurbished units in exchange for the damaged ones for the reasons mentioned above.
This propulsion unit is not only present in the Blackbird Class ships, but a somewhat scaled-down version is used in Firfox Class fighters as well, which
explains quite a bit about their unusual-even-for-a-fighter speed and acceleration.