Which is easier to produce, ballistic ammo or energy ammo? (lorewise)

[TheOriginalEvilD]

Thank you for all the answers.

I guess it's okay to think the fission cell has some kind of component that is stronger than lithium and that component can be made just like the gunpowder can be made.

 

I don't think such a thing exists or ever will exist. If it were so common that it could simply be found and made, we would already be living in that reality.

 

A much more likely case, for this game reality, is that this component has been so widely used in all sorts of things that it can easily be scavenged from just about anywhere.

[Raycheetah]

There are also some implications within the overall lore that some tech, especially weapons tech, is backwards-engineered from alien (presumably Zeta) tech. It helps enable one to suspend one's disbelief a tad more willingly. =^[.]^=

[Moraelin]

Thank you for all the answers.

I guess it's okay to think the fission cell has some kind of component that is stronger than lithium and that component can be made just like the gunpowder can be made.

It's a bit, you know, physically impossible. The energy binding the nucleus together is the strongest around Iron-56. That's the most stable elements, so to speak. So as an inexact rule of thumb, the farther BELOW iron your element is, the more energy per gram you get from FUSING it, and the less energy you need to start it fusing. (It's FAR easier to get Helium from Hydrogen, than to get Carbon from Helium, and you get more bang per kilo from the former than from the latter.) The farther you are above iron, the more it's prone to FISSION.

 

Well, each element has isotopes, so that's not very exact, but if we're talking the stable enough elements, that's the general gist of it.

 

Essentially you want to start from some isotope of hydrogen if you can. Or possibly Helium-3, but that's in rather short supply on Earth. Anything else, well, is not as good.

 

Lithium is only interesting because you can get Tritium from it when bombarded with neutrons, which beats the hell out of storing Tritium long term. It decays very quickly. And deuterium+tritium fuse quite nicely.

 

It was also quite perfect for thermonuclear nukes, because a fission explosion is used to start the fusion, and that initial fission blast creates a metric buttload of fast neutrons anyway. Essentially, in addition to providing the pressuer and temperature to ignite the fusion, all those neutrons also create the tritium to fuse.

 

It also has the advantage that, while deuterium-deuterium fusion yields a little more energy, Deuterium2 is a gas. Lithium deuteride on the other hand, is a solid. Difference in density means you can pack more of it in a warhead, basically. Lithium deuteride has a density of about 780 kg/m2, while deuterium gas is 0.18 kg/m3. So, you know, even if you compressed it to 1000 atmospheres, you're still nowhere NEAR as dense and now you need some kind of container that can take that pressure too.

 

In any case, personally I'd bet on some kind of solid or possibly liquid fuel, for such small batteries.