Narsil wrote:You're missing the basic point, and moving the goalpost, but we'll get to that later... harnessing the grid for a power source and using it as a weapon are two completely different things. The grid isn't a process, it's a source... harnessing the grid for a power source requires a radically different implementation.
As per your say so and newsflash, SO DOES FISSION. In a fission reactor you definitely do NOT want a critical/supercritical mass and try your level best to SUPRESS a runaway fission reaction. In a fission bomb,
you do your level best to CREATE a critical/supercritical mass and a runaway fission reaction.
'Exact opposite' DOES sound radically different to me.
Using the grid as a weapon is essentially just opening a small portal to an infinite energy field right on top of your enemy, basic brute force at its best.
Fission bomb, anybody?
As a logical move: using the grid to power your ship would need a completely different process than anything even close to that because you'd just blow your ship up.
Fission reactor, anybody?
Similar in the beginning phases, certainly, but there's no difference between collecting water to drink it or collecting it to power your steam turbine at the end of the day. Source is the same, implementation is completely different.
Yes, because the steam engine requires the introduction of
another 'source'. Namely, heat. The Grid (from what I gathered at least) does NOT.
You tap the Grid for Gridfire, you do so for the Grid-based power plant. Unless you have to
also tap the Warp to heat the Grid for power production?
As for your moving of the goalposts: you're changing your example, nukes to nuclear reactors requires that we make a reaction
As I noted. Doesn't change the base similarities between harnessing fission and harnessing the Grid.
(and you later changed to the sun, so please make up your mind on that point; since the sun very well suits my point, not yours)
Like hell it does. Frigid mentioned the sun to show that fusion is NOT something that mankind has to create, it happens naturally. Yes, it is something that has to be triggered unlike the Grid which apparently is always there but once it HAS been triggered I fail to see why HARNESSING the energy (or not bothering to in the weaponized implementation) should be fundamentally different from modern day nukes/thermonukes.
, the grid just reacts as a weapon when it's summoned into realspace or hyperspace or wherever the Culture decides to attack;
With I very much suspect limited (if immense) effects. IOW the energy released is somehow controlled.
you need to actually do something with it in order to use it to power a ship.
Yeah. Control the energy realeased. Same as with the weapon, only with more strict margins.
I said going from fire and water to the steam engine; which was a much more effective analogy.
No it wasn't because if the Grid represents water, fire is represented by...?