Molly's - Chapter 17 [Tankiverse Fanfic]

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

Molly’s - Chapter 17

Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii

 

Ted’s shop was like nothing I had seen before. It was large, the size of Molly’s entire bay section, but all for one tank. It was immaculate. Everything gleamed. Not a speck of dust, not a smear of grease, not a stain on the floor, not a discolored patch of wall. You could have performed surgery in that garage.

 

And the tools! The equipment! The latest, greatest, bestest of everything. He had a plasma cutter mounted on a seven-joint articulated arm with Touring-3 AI! Seven-joint! That machine alone could have sculpted a tank hull from a solid block titanium, and done it in an afternoon. Everything was properly organized; the layout and design of the space was brilliant. Tools that were specialized for like components were grouped, and the arrangement of groups within the shop followed a logical flow.

 

Centered in the bay, suspended from hoists that likely could have lifted a battleship, was his current project. The hull was mid-sized and sleek, floating over a largely-assembled drivetrain. The engine was on its own powered lift, sitting behind the chassis. And, higher up, hovered a turret with an obnoxiously large cannon. It looked to be a Thunder, but the largest I’d ever seen.

 

Ted saw my stare. “The rules place limits on the interior diameter, but those limits are multiples of the actual projectile size. What I’ve done is sacrificed quantity for velocity. Believe it or not, that canon only fires five projectiles per volley. Each projectile is only 30 millimeters in diameter, but they are cased in 90 millimeter sabots. Using the maximum allowed charge of fast-burning propellant, I can get velocities approaching 2,000 meters per second. Nothing’s going to stand up to that!”

 

I began to see what Shock and Elsie were talking about. Here, Ted had taken a gun that was designed to fire many projectiles at once, either hitting several targets, or distributing damage over a wider area on a single target, and converted it into a less-effective sniper weapon. His assertion was true; that gun would likely shred anything it hit, but less effectively than a real sniper gun, such as a Railgun or a Shaft. And certainly an unmodified Thunder would be better at engaging multiple targets.

 

Shock and Elsie went to work on installing the engine and tweaking its performance. Ted asked me to help him with the turret ring.

 

“What I’m working on here,” he explained, “is a kind of momentum bank.”

 

“Momentum bank?”

 

Ted looked at me. “What are the limiting factors on how fast a turret can traverse?”

 

I thought about it for a moment, then started lifting my fingers. “The bearings in the turret ring. The torque of the traverse motor, and its gearing. The mass of the turret. The length of the barrel.” I paused to think, but Ted nodded excitedly.

 

“Exactly! I mean, we could come up with some other minor variables, and we could argue about definitions, but it really boils down to a question of torque versus inertia, right?”

 

I thought about it. “Sure, you could say that. It’s not the only thing you could say, but you could say that.”

 

Ted beamed. “You’re quick! I like you.” He reached out to tussle my hair. Really? I’m fifteen!

 

“If we focus on that relationship, though, we find that we have a love/hate relationship with inertia. Do you see that?”

 

Ok, so Ted was playing teacher. I’m supposed to reach the conclusions he’s offering, or challenge him with my own. Clearly he’s excited by this, so I’ll start there. Thinking aloud, I started with “Inertia is clearly an enemy to getting the turret into motion from a stop. And it’s also an enemy of stopping the turret at a desired point. But while the turret is moving, inertia helps it along.”

 

Ted’s head was bobbing up and down. “And we need two solutions to the problems, yes?”

 

Well, duh! “Right. You need to apply energy to start the motion, and you need to apply brakes to stop it.”

 

“So what,” he was speaking so rapidly now that he could scarcely form the words, “if, instead of braking, we could somehow just store that inertia, and then use it later to help get the turret moving again?”

 

Woah. Would that work? Could that work? “If you could do that,” I began slowly, still thinking on my feet, “the turret would come up to speed more quickly, stop more quickly, and you would have more accurate control over the stopping point.” Can he do this?

 

Ted was vibrating. “And how can we capture inertia?”

 

The literal answer was that we can’t, but that wasn’t really what he was after. We can capture and store energy. Springs do this, and an assembly of springs could be used to do what he suggested, but it would be terribly complex and inefficient. Brakes create heat when they steal momentum, but again, I didn’t see any way to use that heat productively. Engineers have been fighting heat waste since the dawn of engineering. Cars do use brakes to help recharge batteries, but a few extra ergs of electricity weren’t going to change what the motors could do. Oh! What about some form of compression?

 

“Compression?” I asked tentatively, after perhaps two minutes of pondering.

 

“Compression!” He roared, leaping up and down like gravity had gone out of style. “Compression! Yes! Come here!”

 

He ran over to a workbench. On it lay a small apparatus. “This is the unit in 1/10 scale. It’s mounted to the hull, but attaches to the turret ring here. When the turret brakes are engaged, the momentum drives this piston into a fluid reservoir, both damping the rotation and compressing the fluid. This assembly, here, locks the release valve as the turret stops completely. When the turret begins to move again, that valve is sprung, and the captured pressure drives the piston back out, which accelerates the turret’s movement.”

 

It was genius. Genius! A series of simple ideas, artfully integrated. And they attached to the tank in such a way that, even if they failed, they wouldn’t impair the turret’s normal function.

 

“How many...” I began.

 

“Six,” he crowed. “I can fit six of them in this tank. I think it may reduce my traverse times by nearly a full second!”

 

Walking me back to the tank, he showed me where his momentum banks were going to be placed. And as we began to install them, Ted kept pausing to show me the other tiny upgrades he had developed.

 

Ted’s shop actually had a guest suite attached. He brought in travelling mechanics regularly, so had included accomodations for them. It was the first time in a few months that I’d slept in a private room. It was tiny compared to my bedroom at home, but compared to hot bunking in a bus, it was palatial. Each room had its own shower. Luxury! And there was a comfortable kitchen/dining area combination where I met Shock and Elsie the next morning.

 

“Morning!” called Shock from the stove. It smelled like he was cooking his infamous huevos habeñeros. I loved them, but I’d regret it in a few hours.

 

“So, seems like you and Ted got along famously,” commented Elsie from behind her cup of coffee. Elsie had to be approached cautiously in the morning until she was properly caffeinated.

 

“He’s really got a lot of good ideas,” I said. “And this momentum bank he’s built, well, I can’t believe no one’s tried that before.”

 

Elsie snorted. “Hang onto that thought, Tadpole. Hang onto that thought.”

 

 

Mahalo (thank you) for reading; I hope you enjoyed! This story is part of a series. Information on the series, and links to the other stories, can be found here.

 

[kaisdf 3,320]

Article Approved.

 

Lovely piece, it manages to go into technical detail while keeping it simple enough that it will hopefully be understandable to all.

 

The idea of inertia also appears in the case of the underground/metro/subway. It uses energy to start a stopped train, and wears out the brakes to stop it. The solution was to raise stations higher than the regular track, so it was uphill into the station, slowing trains down, and downhill out for free acceleration.

 

This is, I believe, the first edit-less piece I have had the joy of proofreading! (It may be the second, after one of Tweemult's.) Fantastic.

 

Edits:

As I said, none, so idk why you opened this spoiler  <_< 

[TankiNoob2000 231]

Perfect Story! :D

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

 

As I said, none, so idk why you opened this spoiler  <_< 

LOL!   Oh, you got me! Well played!

[shafter9 156]

"When the turret brakes are engaged, the momentum drives this piston into a fluid reservoir, both damping the rotation and compressing the fluid. "

 

Fluids don't really compress. Such a mechanism might work with a gas, but not with a liquid. If liquids did compress like that, then hydraulics wouldn't work.

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

"When the turret brakes are engaged, the momentum drives this piston into a fluid reservoir, both damping the rotation and compressing the fluid. "

 

Fluids don't really compress. Such a mechanism might work with a gas, but not with a liquid. If liquids did compress like that, then hydraulics wouldn't work.

 

It's amazing the advances that get made in fluid tech between now and the 2160s!

[TankiNoob2000 231]

Muy bueno!;)

Edited January 27, 2019 by TankiNoob2000