Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-38892234-20190402155751/@comment-39563968-20190619223436

In interstellar transit flight at sub-luminal speeds, it is conceivable that the greatest power use would be to whatever shielding/deflection keeps the ship from being catastrophically holed from end to end by a gram of rock floating in space. IF that is the case we suppose, then an explosion focused in in the bow of the ship among that power handling and projecting equipment is entirely believable. Similarly, if the interstellar drives, those that either take the ship super-luminal, or engage with phase gates to do so, or both, are in the forward part of the ship (to balance the loading perhaps?), then something to do with those devices may have led to the explosion. Recall that the warnings about the impending explosion at the Aurora do not speak of a nuclear explosion...they state that a quantum explosion is building (whatever THAT means.)

In other words, its SF. Use your imagination, don't try to hem the story assumptions in with the limitations of our 21st century understanding of what may be possible & reality in the 25th(?) century. After all, this is a civilization that can 3D print an entire submarine, hanging 10 m in the air, all parts, power systems, control electronics, etc, functional immediately, from essentially unprocessed raw materials...in about 20 minutes (uncompressed time.)

Remember Clarke's Law.