It had been a few days since my apprentices initial failure, the numerous prototypes that were sitting around all in various states of disarray were a testament to how much progress she had made.
Before all of the models that Rhea had made all failed, none of them were even improving. They were all just different variations but now, whatever idea that she had came up with when I had pressured her was truly growing.
Each and every failure that had been made on the previous prototypes was addressed and fixed and if they weren't she would try any solution that came to mind. It was different compared to when my apprentice had just been throwing random ideas and hoping one would stick.
Now she was making educated guesses, and with each failure, with each success, more data was gathered which allowed even more accurate guesses to be made.
Looking down at the failures it seemed that she was on the verge of success, there was only one more problem that I could identify until it would start to work properly, the materials.
All this time Rhea was using subpar materials and fixing the mistakes that had come from the design. But now that it had been fixed all that was left was to switch the materials for something more durable.
Though even that was a problem, the materials had to be light as the thrust generated by this, when extrapolated to full size, would need to be as light as possible otherwise it would be going even slower than the initial estimate.
"guh…"
A slight groan broke me from my thoughts as Rhea, sleeping, turned over on the mattress, the blanket falling off of her.
I walked over to her and picked up the blankets tucking her in. Though when I had tucked Rhea in I was not expecting her to immediately bunch the blankets and grab them like some hug pillow.
A small smirk played on my lips as I took a photo of Rhea doing that, I would have put a sticker on her but I did not want to wake her.
After I was done with that I exited the room where Rhea was sleeping and went to my own experiment room.
I thought back to earlier when I was running experiments to find out if it was even possible, to even know if it was possible I had to come up with a solution that would use the idea and even then I would have to experiment with that idea.
What I had come up with is that using electricity I would charge a material with an opposite charge which would then be powerful enough to repel an ion. (AN: an ion is an atom with a charge) That ion would then be accelerated with more charges that would then ultimately propel it out of the back.
How much thrust that would give was still unknown but the amount was most likely so tiny that it might do nothing. However with how small this would have to be I could densely back billions, even trillions into one engine allowing a truly ludicrous amount of thrust.
Say that a hundred of them could lift a pound then a billion of them could lift 10 million pounds or over 5000 tons.
With how light I wanted the ship to weigh in the end that would allow us to accelerate to ludicrous amounts of speed.
Though that was assuming a lot, it was still up in the air if it would even work let alone lift that much.
Though to even start innovating this I had started to research how to use charge to accelerate something through a tube. That was a lot more challenging than I would have thought.
To even begin with doing that I had had to go to the matter generator and create the anti-matter reactor, which had taken almost half of the day to build. I had to go off of blueprints that I had only seen once and memorized.
Even though the blueprint was in my mind it still was a challenge to build, the inherent principles of how it converted energy were understandable and easily built but the actual core, the part that generated energy, that was a challenge.
Multiple times I had part of my skin flayed as the anti-matter that had not been contained well got out and touched me. Luckily there was not much of it otherwise I would have been damaged more.
Eventually I was able to build it but that had already taken up so much time. The next thing that I had to do was create the tube that I was going to be testing. I didn't know if I wanted something that had high, neutral, or low conductivity, so instead of choosing one I made three tubes each with a material that I would place in one of the categories.
With those done I needed something that could create a strong negative and positive charge. Those were easy being done within moments.
With all of the components being built I brought them to the room that I was going to experiment in.
Assembling them together, the basic idea was that the one with the opposite charge would sit at the end of the tube, where I wanted the projectile to shoot out of and the one with the same charge would be placed around the whole tube so that it is both attracted and repelled to the end of the tube.
At just the right time the opposite one would turn into the same charge which would give it a final boost out of the tube.
With the prototype done I was ready to test it. Placing in a material of the right charge in the right place I started up the process.
BOOOOM
"Shit" I yelled out, the shrapnel narrowly missing me as I dodged out of the way.
I went to inspect the mess and saw a giant hole in the wall.
All of my other tubes were destroyed but I would call this a success. When I had analyzed it, it had seemed as if the force of the material leaving the tube was so high that it had destroyed both the tube and the surrounding ones with the shrapnel that the tube had sent after exploding.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢