Solid fuel thrusters are actually overpowered!

[DonDegow]

... for heat generation purpose.

Hello everyone, I present you the biggest and most expensive hamster wheel that duplicants ever encountered.

The whole idea is based on the fact that solid fuel thrusters don't have to be filled to produce their heat and CO2 output during a rocket launch.

Launched as a payload, they will still ignite and heat things up just like any engine and they have a low dry mass, low enough that you can launch 30 of these on a single rocket but the sweet spot of fuel spent/thruster is 17 thrusters on a petroleum rocket (well and it's already big enough with 17 of those).

Witness the power of the thrusters, producing about 18t of scorching CO2 on lift-off only.

Spoiler

Next to this 105 tiles high rocket, there are 9 turbine + heat sink that break contact with the launch tube when temperature reaches 187°C (more like 200 in the room when sensor is at 187) : 

Spoiler

Out of that single first launch and landing, 43 000kJ (that's a hamster wheel running non-stop for 180 cycles) were extracted from the heat; subsequent launches would have generated more as the obsidian is now heated up and the whole system stabilized at 125°C (it took 20 cycles to extract everything using 9 turbines). The cooling of turbines needed less than 2 000kJ of the total power produced and was assured by one aquatuner in a steam room.

Repeatable every 3 cycles at the cost of 300kg of Petroleum and LOX.

Some stats for the build requirements :

Spoiler

 

-1 full-time astronaut for 3 cycles (hence the comparison to a hamster wheel)

-5.5t of steel

-9t of water

-4.5t of ethanol

-36t of diamonds (can easily be cut down to "only" 21.6t)

-190.4t of Obsidian (yay, this build is making use of boulders, also, it can be reduced to 40t)

-34.4t of igneous rock (maybe more if you're using it as insulation)

-10.8t of insulating material (Igneous rock most likely, ceramic can be used at some key places)

-16.7t of a metal of your choice, most likely iron

-1.8t of plastic

-1.4t of supercoolant (can be replaced with PWater)

-9t of granite or any other conductive mineral

Oh yeah and 306kg of petroleum + liquid oxygen as we're going to need to launch a rocket.

 

 

Important note : if you really want to push this system, use one of the proportional pumps designed by @mathmanican and make use of the 35t of 125°C CO2 after it has been cooled by the turbines to feed slicksters. You can generate about 20MJ more. However, not trying to pump the CO2 allows the use of a Hydrogen engine where it can get crazier, temperature wise (36 thrusters max).

Almost everything can be scaled down to 1 or up to 30 thrusters, it simply uses more petrolox per thruster.

[Steve Raptor]

Nice gravestones you got there.

[DonDegow]

They store a great amount of DTU =)

[0xFADE]

They used to not have to be re-filled either.

There is quite a bit of automation you can do with launches.  You should be able to set it up on a delay to close those door automatically when the rocket is leaving

[BLACKBERREST3]

There is a lot of potential for heat/matter generation using rockets. Combine it with your favorite type of pump and an infinite slickster farm and there you go.

Just now, 0xFADE said:

They used to not have to be re-filled either.

Didn't know if that exploit was still in the game or not, I hardly use solid-fuel boosters.

[0xFADE]

1 minute ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

Didn't know if that exploit was still in the game or not, I hardly use solid-fuel boosters.

I had used them last map since I researched in the wrong order so I had a TON of time between getting to petroleum rockets.  I have not used them on my current map so I can't say for sure but I do remember it being in a patch note.

[DonDegow]

They aren't filled at all, just empty cases putting out high energy CO2.

As for automation, yes closing the doors can be easily automated, I just didn't bother for easier demonstration purpose.

[mathmanican]

On 9/14/2019 at 12:05 PM, DonDegow said:

for heat generation purpose.

Here I am trying to squeeze 1.5K worth of 0.128 DTU/g/K lead from 500kg/s (so a whopping 96kDTU/s). 

On 9/14/2019 at 12:05 PM, DonDegow said:

Out of that single first launch and landing, 43 000kJ

I think I'm missing a few zeros on my end... I may need to reconsider (or find a way to pump 500000kg/s of liquid - working on it). 

Nice post @DonDegow.  

[cpy]

Can you passively cool steam engine just by ethanol evaporating and condensing? SHC magic trick?

[DonDegow]

It's not enough to cool a turbine running constantly, maybe there is a way with a system dedicated to force phase change of ethanol as much as possible but I suspect it would take too much space.

However, 1 AT with piped supercoolant + condensing ethanol is well enough to cool the 9 turbines running.

@mathmanican do you know if the liquid-gas bypass pump you made allows for teleporting Pwater direclty falling off of a petroleum gen ? (Pwater falling on top of liquid #2 swapping place with gas on adjacent tile of this liquid)

Planning on using molten slicksters and petro gen but as I want to extract the CO2 when it falls under 200°C, it will boil off the PWater and I'd prefer to extract the liquid water.

[mathmanican]

5 hours ago, DonDegow said:

do you know if

Haven't tried yet. However once you create the required liquid gas configuration it works. If you are playing with 200c stuff then you'll most likely get steam before you get to that configuration.

[SkunkMaster]

It's possible to do it the other way around, use hydrogen engine with 1 or 2 boosters

[Nebbie]

On 9/14/2019 at 3:58 PM, DonDegow said:

They aren't filled at all, just empty cases putting out high energy CO2.

As for automation, yes closing the doors can be easily automated, I just didn't bother for easier demonstration purpose.

BIt of an exploit that a thruster would emit anything when not fueled. Klei!

[DonDegow]

@Nebbie It's probably easy to fix so I assume it will be at some point but yeah, only way to obtain a fix is to prove how easy it can be exploited

@SkunkMaster I'm not sure I understand what you say. With a hydrogen engine you could stack up to 36 empty boosters if you really want to.

[SkunkMaster]

On 20.9.2019 at 11:41 PM, DonDegow said:

@Nebbie It's probably easy to fix so I assume it will be at some point but yeah, only way to obtain a fix is to prove how easy it can be exploited

@SkunkMaster I'm not sure I understand what you say. With a hydrogen engine you could stack up to 36 empty boosters if you really want to.

or you could fill one booster and run a empty hydrogen engine. - free steam

[FutureJohny]

22 hours ago, SkunkMaster said:

or you could fill one booster and run a empty hydrogen engine. - free steam

Or you can remove the engine and tanks entirely, build new floor a bit higher and leave only the boosters. Although, you will need to fill at least one them.

[DonDegow]

Oh yeah you can totally do that but it's really hard to partially fill boosters, you need to use compactor with a dupe locked in or some shenanigans like that, very inconvenient so better fully fuel boosters; with one fully fueled you can only lift 2 total boosters.

With 2 fully fueled boosters it gets more interesting and goes way up to 18 liftable boosters (IIRC) I found it more convenient to use Petrolox as tons and tons of CO2 are generated, easily convertible to Petrolox via slicksters (CO2 > slicksters > Petroleum > PWater > Water > Oxygen > LOX).