it is always a steam turbine :)
this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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I don't know why we don't do this with internal combustion engines (Gasoline or Diesel) all that heat generated by the motor, wasted, it could be used to generate more electricity...
There were some cars that used Stirling engine (Czech wiki cuz better picture) instead of internal combustion ones.
So we figured out the most efficient way to generate electricity 100 years ago, and you guys just whinge and want something new.
Gawd I love this meme.
Go to 8:56 here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38
There's still hope we can move past steam generation.
You'd think with all the mice and rats used for labratory testing, we'd have power generated by rodents running on wheels.
Still kinda using water to turn a turbine, if you squint really hard.
most FTL in scifi surpassed the use of fusion to power thier ships and only used a supplemental power, they went with anti-matter, and vacumn energy
Pssh, you guys are still on gravity-fusion? My ship has magnetically-bottled antihydrogen, which is carefully fed into a specialized reaction vessel that annihilates it with ordinary hydrogen to produce unbelievable amounts of heat...
...which is then used to boil water and force the steam through a turbine.
I just put some saddles on this bacteria that eats photons.
Discworld ftl tech right here
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I invented a new power generation method!
Amazing, is it actually new, or is it steam again
... it's steam again.
"It's a good power generation method, sir"
looks inside
boiling water
> ask if new generator is spooky or wet
> they don't understand
> show the diagram
> "it's a good generator mx"
> go inside
> it's wet
I really wanna know what spooky is. lol
spooky action at a distance! like solar panels
It's like how evolution's perfect form is a crab. Energy's perfect form is spicy water bois
Fun fact: crabs are only the underwater peak of evolution. Land mammals seem to converge into anteaters, and plants into trees.
If mammals want to survive the next 100 million years we need to see the writing on the wall and evolve into crabeaters
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I mean theres been like 15 things that are dolphin shaped throughout history.
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Do solar panels operate in this way?
Yes, inside of every solar panel is water and tiny turbines. The sun heats the water, when it turns to steam it spins the turbines to generate electricity.
It's always a relief when someone doesn't take everything so literally
just like wind turbine right?
You’ll never believe where wind comes from…
Wind turbines use whales and birds, I think it is like in Norse mythology where the wolves Sköll and Hati chase the Sun and moon. But with wind you have whales chasing birds while they are strapped to the blades, this causes them to spin and that generates wind, which fans the flames of fires to boil water and that creates steam.
technically pv panels are also heat engines. this is why they need cooling
Depends on the type of solar panel. PV, no. Otherwise, yes.
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ok i can see the steam turbine powering onboard electrical but explain me how the fuck you're doing space propulsion and/or warp travel with steam
unless you mean literally just blasting steam like a propellant, Wall-E With the Fire Extinguisher style. in which case you're gonna run outta steam pretty fast
Ion thrusters are an example of electricity used for space propulsion.
In ion thrusters electricity is used to create a magnetic field that accelerate the propellant particles at very high speed. This way the propellant of used much more efficiently.
Edit: I forgot to mention that it's not a concept, it's actively used in a lot of satellites
So skimming through the wiki article, it sounds like it it's still "throw something out the back" to generate thrust, which is largely the same problem as the Wall-E with a fire extinguisher problem another commenter made.
Ion Thrusters sound significantly more efficient (in terms of velocity change vs fuel), but do I have the right idea on that?
Yes, ion thrusters still use conservation of momentum to generate thrust. They aren't limited by how fast or how hot we can make something explode though, so we can shove way more energy into the stuff they're throwing out the back. They're basically tiny coil/railguns, using electricity to move individual ions really fast.
In terms of efficiency, Ion thrusters are 4 to 40 times better than liquid fueled rockets. The draw back is that ion engines make very little thrust for the mass of the engine.
Yes, just like every new electrical generation method is steam, every new method of propulsion in space is throw something at the back as fast as we can.
The exception being Project Orion. The idea behind project Orion is to constantly drop and explode nuclear bombs behind the spaceship at a rate of 1 bomb per second. The explosion of the bomb would then push the spaceship forward.
ooooooh
well that's pretty neat.
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