SMV Photon

The SMV Photon is an experimental multi-engine, single-seat, hypersonic air-space-craft, developed in an attempt to attain faster-than-light (FTL) travel speeds, that is speeds exceeding 300,000,000 metres per second. The Photon is 23,900 times faster than SMV Shockwave, the White Wolves' previous speed record, at Mach 36.4.

Propulsion studies
The underlying difficulty in increasing the speed of the SMV Shockwave platform was propulsion, the current pairing of SSE-H25-PLUS was incredibly powerful and efficient, and could propel the platform past Mach 35, it would not be sufficient to get anywhere near the target speed.

Anna Fox decided that her best people needed to be on the team, so she temporarily combined the Research & Development Divisions for SMV Horizon, SMV Shockwave and SMV Wipeout.

When the newly-created Photon Division began struggling to devise a powerplant for the vessel, Anna began to look outside of the White Wolves for technical support, a move they preferred to not do. Anna contacted the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and SpaceX of the United States, and the European Space Agency. This new team convened at Motherbase, where they agreed that the engines already on the Shockwave platform should remain in place, alongside it's HDS-Super30 hyperdrive system, but they would work together with other engines.

NASA and ESA proposed the idea of a quadruple ion engine setup, with each SSE-H25-PLUS engine being flanked on both sides by new ion engines. These ion engines would have to be on a low power from take-off to allow plenty of time for them to charge up. They would also use the same Hydrogen fuel source as the current engines, while also gathering power from the electromagnetic field within the Quantum Bridge.

SpaceX then proposed the idea of a methane engine, which had proved very useful on their own spacecraft and launch platforms. This engine would be the final stage in propulsion, which aimed to push Photon to it's target speed. These engine ideas were approved by Anna and heads of the Research & Development Unit, which were then developed by all four parties working in conjunction.

Airframe studies
The addition of these new engines meant more weight and more fuel, therefore the Propulsion Research Laboratory took their plans and went to the Airframe Research Laboratory, who instructed them to keep Photon as light as possible, while also leaving a lot of space for fuel.

The airframe (including its engines and hyperdrive system) weighed 6,400 kg, the ion engines weighed a total of 3,600 kg and the methane engine weighed 1,500 kg. The total weight of the vessel, without fuel, measured in at 11,500 kilograms. The ARL managed to save some weight by removing unnecessary avionics from the SMV Photon

Another issue faced by the ARL was the temperatures that would be imposed on the body panels. While Photon is in the Quantum Bridge, its unaffected by air resistance and therefore will self thermoregulate, however, when it exits, it will be opposed by wind resistance. The ARL responded to this by applying the same heat resistant metals used on the Alpha Suit.

Circumventing physical limits
Even after the PRL and ARL had concluded their research and planning, the scientific restrictions imposed on speed had to be discussed. In physics, nothing with mass can surpass the speed of light. Photons, light particles, are considered massless, and are one of very few things that travel at the speed of light in the observed universe.

At this point, the PRL and ARL, along with more of the R&D Unit, merged together again, and looked at what the SMV Shockwave already had onboard - quantum particle cannons. Within the Quantum Bridge, the cannons could produce a field around the vessel. If these quantum particles could be inverted, it would shrink everything inside the field, creating a micro-dimension.

SMV Photon creates a micro-dimension around it, scaled down by 0.5, meaning that it only has to travel at half the speed of light, outside of this scaled dimension, the SMV Photon would be travelling at light speed.

Test Run
In 2058, the final test run for the SMV Photon began. Years of planning had culminated in a ten phase plan, which lay out the simple steps of the run. Throughout the run, SMV Photon had used all of its liquid methane fuel, and 87% of it's hydrogen fuel supplies, shortly before Phase 10, IRIS prepared the emergency reserve fuel cell in case they were required. During the run, the vessel attained a speed of 158,000,000 metres per second within the scaled dimension, equivalent to 316,000,000 metres per second outside the dimension, considerably higher than the speed of light. Upon leaving the vacuum of the Quantum Bridge, the surface temperature of Photon reached 2,100 oC (3,812 oF or 2,373 oK).

Specifications
General characteristics
 * Crew: 1 (pilot)
 * Length: 19 m (62 ft 3 in)
 * Height: 2.4 m (7 ft 8 in)
 * Empty weight: 11,500 kg (25,353.16 lbs)
 * Gross weight: 16,156 kg (35,617.88 lbs)
 * Max. takeoff weight: 18,000 kg (39,683.21 lbs)
 * Fuel capacity: 4,000 kg Hydrogen amalgamated-fuel-cell (shared); 100,000 litres (656 kg) of liquid methane gas
 * Powerplant: 2 x SSE-H25-PLUS after-burning ramjet engine, 84.1 kN (18,906.43 lbf) thrust; 4 x electrical Ion Engines, 30kN (26,977 lbf) thrust; 1 x methane-powered after-burning engine, 2000 kN (449,617.88).

Performance


 * Cruise speed: Mach 15 (10,001 kn, 11,509 mph, 18,522 km/h)
 * Maximum speed: Mach 852,189.245 (563,763,608 kn, 648,769,575 mph, 1,044,000,000 km/h) (in scaled dimension)
 * Range: 75,000 miles (120,700 km)
 * Service ceiling: 32,000 m (104,986.9 ft)
 * Rate of climb: 127 m/s (25,000 ft/min)

Special Avionics


 * Hyperdrive System: Shockwave HDS-Super30

Avionics


 * White Wolves "Omnivident" Radar & Sonar System Mk. III (ORSS)
 * White Wolves IRIS Flight Control System, which includes:
 * White Wolves AM, VHF, UHF AM, and UHF FM "Siren" Radio
 * White Wolves GUARD survival radio
 * White Wolves Radar Altimeter

Trivia

 * SMV Photon's final test run was completed one hundred years after Jack's birth