After initiating first contact, human engineers were hoping for highly advanced technologies. Their hopes were not quite met

After initiating first contact, human engineers were hoping for highly advanced technologies. Their hopes were not quite met

Alan, Engineer 2nd class was worried. He had been given a job to work in the engine/power room of the newly arrived Jhortaph vessel ‘Mistress of the Firmament’ and he knew the Human technologies in their ships but he was worried about how far ahead the Jhortaph would be with their propulsion systems and the power generators required to make their ships go almost 4 times faster than the fastest Human ships of the same class.

He was met at the main passenger airlock by Chief Engineer Thash’w’k and he followed them as they lead him down into the guts of their ship towards the beating ‘heart’ of their vessel, the reactor cores. and their cooling systems power generation and distribution systems. He was excited to learn how they had advanced over the millennia and wondered how long it would take until he could understand it all.

As they entered the vast room containing the heart of the ship, Alan was startled to see a set of what he could swear were steam turbines. There were sets of video screens all around the room with lots of diagrams and flow layouts for massive amounts of some liquid and Alan was left in thought the more he looked.

On some screens he could see views of the outside of the ship and the vast radiators every ship was required to use to deal with heat build up inside the ship. They were important to keep the ship livable and not broil the crew as heat built up.

Chief Engineer Thash’w’k invited Alan to join him in a closer inspection of the main reactor.

Alan “This reactor is magnificent. It is at least four times as big as our biggest reactors in our largest ships. What is the power source that is inside?”

Thash’w’k “Ah human Alan, this is a stable singularity reactor. The majority of the mass is the control systems generating the magnetic fields that keep the singularity under control and stable. If they are damaged and lose control, the singularity will destabilize and vanish into the quantum flux of subspace releasing a damaging dose of radiation and other energy but our ships will survive.”

Alan “Okay, a artificially stable black hole, cool. So what do you use to convert the energy coming from it to generate power to power your ships?”

Thash’w’k “Well this is where we made some very technical advancements a long time ago and what we do is fire streams of H2O around the singularity and then capture the super hot steam into the collectors and then use that to spin the turbines and the steam is then directed through the radiators to cool down and be injected back into the system. The turbines spin at very high rotation and spin generators that produce electricity which power our engines, and our power distribution systems distribute around the ship to keep it working and protect it from the dangers of space.”

Alan “You mean to tell me that you have a steam powered electricity generating system in each one of your ships?”

Thash’w’k “Yes. It’s amazing isn’t it? No one else has anything even close to our technology.”

[Alan falls to the ground after he slaps his hands to his face.]

===End===