G-Lift Engine
The G-lift engine is a device for lifting mass out of the gravitational well of planets in a way which greatly improves on the efficiency of previous methods. A traditional solid fuel rocket booster provides the thrust, but at the core of the device is a G field suppression unit, consisting of a magnetic field pulse distributor enclosing a cobalt nickel alloy fuel core. G field suppression weakens the local gravitational field, allowing the rocket to use much less force than would otherwise be required to achieve orbital escape velocities.
Manufacturing
The G-lift engine needs to combine the ability to manage the high temperature operations of the rocket with the low temperature cooling required for the G field suppression effect to work and the ability to generate the powerful magnetic fields to induce it. High power capacitors are required to supply the electric potential and delivering the correct phase patterns known to trigger G suppression is not simple, even in a static environment, much less next to a rocket engine. In the early days of the technology, failure was common, mainly with the G field effect breaking down and leaving the rocket doomed to crash back to Earth. It wasn't until the mid 23rd century that engineering techniques improved sufficiently to make the G-lift engine reliable.
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Complexity
G field suppression draws the energy required to negate gravitational potential from the mass enclosed within the magnetic field. As the field pulses, multiple gravito-nuclear transitions are triggered in the cooled metallic core which cause the nuclei of the cobalt and nickel to transition to iron via the net loss of protons. Rather than being emitted (with neutrons) in alpha particles in the fashion observed in the radioactive decay of high mass nuclei, gravito-nuclear decay is a mechanism that couples the gravitational field with the nuclear binding fields and releases the energy from the mass loss of a coupled proton and an electron directly into the gravitational field. The result is a stimulated form of elemental transition to the lowest nuclear energy (iron) which works best on the elements immediately more massive in the periodic table. Even a small amount of mass converted in this way, reduces the local gravitational forces to such an extent that the escape velocity of mass within a spherical region of several metres in diameter is is substantially reduced.
Discovery
By the end of the 22nd century, most of Earth's energy production came from a variety of renewable sources, but these were not always adequate to meet demand and research continued into the viability of nuclear fusion. Somewhat unexpectedly, the G field suppression effect, which had been predicted in an obscure theoretical paper turned out to be a demonstrable side effect of one form of magnetic pulse confinement applied to high mass atomic nuclei. In 2195 this was developed into the first G-Lift Engine.
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