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To an explanation

 

 

NANITE HULL SYSTEMS

            For the most part the hull is made from thick slabs of massless neutronium, a material outstanding physical properties that make it ideal for hull material, as well as a host of other applications, but amongst this brute engineering, the seeming solid material is honeycombed with sensors, conduits and nanites, these tiny machines run through their labyrinthine passageways in the hull and are responsible in maintaining its integrity and adapting its systems.

            A Nanite is a microscopic machine, smaller than a bacterium, designed to perform tasks in environments and volumes that more traditional tools simply can not, each individual machine at one moment may be able to do a few tasks, and process a few commands, but these machines work in coordinated billions, this is where their true power is shown. Such powerful and adaptable tools have been used everywhere from medicine to manufacture, but one of there key uses on starships it is to circulate through the hull material, like a machine blood, repairing damage, and adjusting the sensors deployed across it.

            Nanites circulate through specially cut conduits, these like the analogous biological blood vessels vary in size to broad arteries, machined into the hull while it was being first cast, to minuscule capillaries only just wider than a nanite itself, that were cut into the hull by the nanites themselves, so extensive are these networks that every square millimeter is patrolled and guarded by these machines.

            The nanites not only provide protective services, that allow for hull repair, it also provides a host of information on the environment in the hull, temperature, stress and other physical properties can be supplied with sub millimeter accuracy to ship computers. The nanites themselves act as a network of computers, each hardly more powerful than the first computers, but together they form a living network sensing the millions of pathways through the hull, the precise conditions, and the foci of repair work. This network for the most part is independent of others, the sheer amount of information that would have to be conveyed make it impractical to tie up dedicated computers to the task, or to provide the communications infrastructure, but concise information on hull status and detailed telemetry on repair is routinely communicated.

            Nanites are also responsible for the actual repair of the hull, there ability to manipulate matter on the atomic scales means that they are quite capable to performing repairs that are indistinguishable from undamaged areas of the hull. Hull material can be relayed to the damaged site from caches stored throughout the hull, and also the matter reserves elsewhere in the ship. Pathways to the damages site are enlarged to enable increased traffic, power-lines that lines the nanite conduits are expanded to allow for increased power supply and for increased information transfer. After repair these changes are reversed, it this kind of dynamic remodeling that make this system invaluable.

            Nanites are also responsible for the deployment of small sensors throughout the hull and on its surface, and also for their upkeep and repair. When new sensors are deployed nanites remove material in front of the object and replace it behind it, in this way a sensor can migrate to its desired position, trailing behind it any leads or instrumentation. Not only are sensors regularly repositioned or replace through this nanite system, but whole scale changes to hull design can also be implemented, this enables ships to adapt to specific missions.

            Though the nanite systems that run through the hull are complex, and have a combined computing power equal to some of the dedicated computing elements else where in the ship, this is not a power hungry system, a lot of the power for its running is generated from thermopiles attached to the waste heat systems, and a fine filigree of superconductor lying across their passageways supplies continuous power (and also a means of communication to dedicated nanite computer elements) to nanites wherever they lie in the network.
 

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