Has anyone found a calculation in the specs of whether the power requirements given are sufficient to produce the required thrust, given the total mass of the ship? Here's what I come up with (rough numbers):
Ship mass: 85,000 metric tons, or 85 million kg.
Effective exhaust velocity: 150,000 m/s (1 g, or 10 m/s^2, times the quoted specific impulse of 15,000 s)
This implies a power requirement of 75,000 Watts per Newton of thrust--half the effective exhaust velocity, since we're in the non-relativistic regime. For details, see for example here:
Ship mass: 85,000 metric tons, or 85 million kg.
Effective exhaust velocity: 150,000 m/s (1 g, or 10 m/s^2, times the quoted specific impulse of 15,000 s)
This implies a power requirement of 75,000 Watts per Newton of thrust--half the effective exhaust velocity, since we're in the non-relativistic regime. For details, see for example here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_impulse
Thrust required: 1.7 million Newtons (quoted mass above times 0.002g, or 0.02 Newtons/kg)
Total power required for thrust: 130 billion Watts, or 130 Gigawatts, or more than 50 times the power quoted in the specs.
Am I missing something, or will this ship need 50 sets of reactors to power its engines?