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Project N.i.k.e: Negative Ionized Kinetic Engine Research

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Project Nike is a sub-scale skunkworks applied research program led by the Battlegroup’s Fleet Support Directive (FSD), bankrolled by the Auxesian Air Phalanx (AAPHA), in an attempt to create an indigenous propulsion systems distinct from external supply requirements beyond constituent construction materials, and consumables used in the operation of said drives. Nike is currently led by Quartermaster Paladin Khan, sharing use of the Eidolon’s Machine Shop with more conventional main fleet manufacturing programs.

Nike’s primary emphasis is upon dilithium deuterium reaction engines, taking their technological base from the mechanically unique AXI-A-577 engines found aboard the Eidolon Wraith. The AXI series impulse engines represent an 8th century zenith of a millennium old concept, the ion drive and the magnetic plasma rocket. Whilst the AXI series drives have proven to be an extremely effective at extending the Eidolon’s performance range, the AXI drive system has been proven inflexible when scaled inversely - below cruiser scale, the AXI drive appears to suffer from disturbingly diminishing returns as the mass requirements begin to exceed immediate thrust response within simulation environments - a concerning data point in the light of Auxesia’s considerable burn-through rate of irreplaceable conventional drive systems. Limited resources and a general lack of focus on Nike during the Libertonian Civil War has prevented Auxesia from constructing anything more meaningful than the most rudimentary of fighter scale test articles, whilst the scramble to rebuild the temple Ataraxia and replace the Arktos’s ordinance with APM imitations has reduced build capability for the fledgling Tartarus’s gigantic Archlight and Lastlight propulsion plants. For the time being, Nike appears unlikely to succeed in their ultimate objectives, instead working on limited production concepts for fighter class, ZETA squadron ships - that is, if they can fix the thermal problem.

Bulletin Author: Nesrin Khan.

Our early tests with EIDO presumed best and ratified the worst; there's no way we can downsize the current Lightrider engine model into the hull of a Very Heavy Figher, Prosecutor or Sabre design, without cooking most of the systems and presenting an unacceptable health risk to the pilot. A bigger craft, with heftier engine shielding, could take our working prototype, but the larger the vessel gets, the muter the point of having a fighter scale magnetic drive if you're not attaching it to a fighter.

Deliberating hijacking the Archangel Fighters Club's hotrodding project to give the Lightrider a few fitting experiments. Their objective isn't remarkably different to ours and it would give me an opportunity to work in a different environment, with a different manufacturing team. The technology we are utilizing here has ostensibly low-tech inspirations. If we're going to make this a work of low-art, then what better way than to learn from the best? Tricky.

I've put the team on stand-down whilst we wait for Jenkin's funeral processional - it's going to take a few days. The Fuji taking him out messed most of us up pretty bad, nobody's focused. Whilst they're on down-time, I'm attempting to obtain access to an Osprey Mk II from our good friend Thalia Thorn up in IRG. One, I know the guts of an Osprey better than I do Prosecutors, two, the craft is bulky enough to take the necessary electronics shielding without everything taking the hand basket as a mode of post-mortem transportation. Only time will tell if the the idea's good enough.

The cause never stops. Not even for death.

Bulletin Author: Nesrin Khan.

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We’ve managed to obtain an Osprey Mk 2 from Miss Thorn - for free, I might add. There may be no such thing as a free lunch? But a free ship? Sometimes a little radiation sickness can get you places.

I’ve brought the bird back aboard the Eidolon, she’s being carted back to machining bay piece by piece. Unfortunately she’s a little too large for the logistics gangway so I’ve had to de-bolt the aerosurfaces and strip back most of the thermal spoilers - she’s about a third less massive with all of her flight components chopped and she still looks huge. If I can’t make Lightrider fit inside this bird, I don’t deserve to be figureheading the project. On that front I’ve pulled few strings with Kadego - nobody knows part optimisation like our favourite plucky little Maltese.

I’m currently slicing into her guts and seeing what can be pulled readily, and what can’t. The advantage of Zoner technology is that it’s all fairly modular and heavily hand-crafted. Welds are obvious, magnetic bolts are easy to pop, and you don’t have to chop apart the entire airframe to get at the crucial mechanics - the Osprey exceptionally so, since it has no small amount of border-worlds ethos in its structuring. It’s a kit-basher’s assumption as to what a superheavy fighter should be.

I’ve managed to coax some of the engineering crew away from their candlelit vigils for long enough to get some peripheral work done on chopping in extra insulation material and holding a few mounts. I’m going to need plastic - a lot of plastic. Might be worth contacting a friend to see about the recovery of said plastic. Mounting the Lightrider in such a sub scale airframe might earn the fighter a few stretch marks - we’re going to have to carve in a bigger propulsion hatch and cram everything a little tighter together in the avionics bay, but for the most part it’ll be a walk in the park.

If it all goes well, I might request with Raven that I’m the first to fly the prototype for ZETA. There’s going to be a lot of shakedown testing that’s going to have to be done and I'm the most familiar individual with the airframe. I'm the reasonable choice.

Bulletin Author: Nesrin Khan.

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Success. Victory. Hell yeah.

Collectively, we’ve managed to reorient the electromagnetic gradient to flush most of the neutrons out the exhaust flue - it’s taken some wonky physics, but we’re at the bending metal phase. She’s going to be a snake charmer of a drive, with enough venom in her sting to take out a township. I wouldn’t seat unshielded vessels aft of her stern, not unless you want to sinter the organs of a few hapless spacers.

The drive appears to be difficult to track - the muon plasma flashes into conventional energy states fast enough to make the vessel acceptably murky before signal intelligence warfare. Thrust response is still mediocre, but it’s a mediocrity made in paradise; we’re still aeons ahead of any photon thruster pioneered by man - which presents me a classification problem.

Are we flying a chemical reaction engine, a photon thruster, a VASIMIR rocket, a thermal fusion drive? How do you classify a specific machine that has the physical properties of at least four other system types? Small wonder our progress is arrested when nobody, me included, has an cryptographer’s ruse as to what we are working on. I keep turfing otherwise exceptionally competent propulsion engineers back into theory refreshers who risk undoing most of the test article’s dev readiness because they’ve memorised the manual and still can’t slide the drive into their frame of reference. A conventional drive playing with unconventional universal laws. A Newtonian drive that’d send Einstein back to the patent office.

There’s an aesthetic plus. Tapering the muon gradient has had an aesthetically pleasing result - at desperately high energy states, the outgas particles charging through the slower plasma vortex creates an anti solar point at their convergence. You see reflection, refraction and dispersion instances in the muon vapour as it passes through the photon stream. I’ve tried to change the focal length of magnetic bottle to create visual phenomena that hits a more sober note, but it leaves us with performance inefficiencies up the wazoo. In short, we’re building a rainbow engine. Don’t dock my pay for this.

A/)- The Inner Phalanx

Enkidu

Enkidu

Enkidu