[Aquila Defense Systems/OR&D] Report: CORINTHIAN

[Thexare]

V, here's the file you wanted. I can't comment too much on the specifics, this is way outside my field. I just keep Aquila running.

- Jones

---

Report: CORINTHIAN

Technician Darren Wilson, reporting.

The Installation Formerly Known As PILLAR is wildly different than anything else in the Houses, but it still follows logical engineering principles. Its round structure deflects asteroids and debris easier than standard Sirian squared modules, the reactor is an amazing - and reproducible - antimatter-fusion system, That's probably the real prize of Canberra.

---

Structural Analysis

As said earlier, Canberra Star City has a far more rounded structure than most Sirian installations. The primary purpose of this appears to be deflecting asteroid and debris impacts while retaining maximum internal volume. Combined with its electric reactive armor, it's also quite resistant to the same kinetic weapons the Cult of Technology are so fond of employing.

The external structure beneath the reactive armor system appears to be made with largely standard materials. The internal structure of most levels is arranged like a wheel, with four hallways radiating out from the central elevator shaft. The outermost ring is lined with various rooms, with a circular hallway along the interior side of them.

In the levels between what is now Residential and the reactor, there are a number of rooms that appear to have been designed as a laboratory or foundry. While we removed the old equipment due to contamination concerns, it would probably be a good place for Aquila to begin small-scale manufacturing. This would allow us to dedicate ADSV Fort Resolution entirely to small-craft production. This would be slow and somewhat inefficient, but better than our current arrangement. A good temporary stopgap until we get a decent shipyard rolling. Unfortunately, this level is too far from the docking bay and the elevator is too small to support ship production on Canberra without expansion.

---

The Reactor

Most Sirian reactors use plentiful Helium-3 for deuterium-³He fusion. This process is limited by the availability of Helium-3, which is predominantly controlled by the Gas Miners Guild along with a few Samura operations.

The Cultists managed to crack Proton-Boron fusion.

Now, this ain't my field, but I can summarize well enough. Proton-Boron fusion involves superheating boron into a plasma. The benefit is that your fuel - boron - is really cheap and really common. The drawback is, that takes a shitload of heat. Peak fusion is achieved at a temperature of 6.6 billion degrees celsius. That's a lot of heat.

The Cultists managed to work out how to use a tiny amount of antimatter to rapidly induce the necessary heating for plasma conversion and sustained peak fusion. The details are beyond me, ask our nuclear techs for that. Point is, we know what they did and we know how they did it.

---

Further Uses

That reactor isn't magic. There's limits. Namely, size - it'll be a long time before we can scale this down. We can build them at station scale, but not ships - we'll have to stick with known D-³He reactors for those.

The electric reactive armor and external structure, on the other hand, are things we can use. Some of our ship engineers are already looking at possible designs incorporating both.