Skimming Fuel (was: Just add water)

>Dan Corrin [email removed] writes:
>
>First: Are there any astophysicsts out there who can describe the
>strucutre of a gas giant. i.e. what gasses are found at the top of the
>atmosphere, how far down do you have to go to get ammonia, or methane?

That's what the Galileo mission is for.  It will drop a probe into
the Jovian atmosphere and we will (hopefully) get our first "cross
section" of a gas giant's upper atmosphere.

But I don't think you guys want to wait until 1996 (or whenever it's
supposed to get to Jupiter) so here's what I dug up in back-issues
of magazines.  Remember, it's all theoretical right now.

Jupiter:     ammonia crystals (white)              Top
             ammonium hydrosulfide crystals (brown)
             water ice crystals ?
             liquid Helium/Hydrogen

Neptune:     Diacetylene clouds                   Top
             Acetylene clouds (CHCH)              20 km down
             Ethane clouds (CH3CH3)               50 km down (from top)
             Methane ice cloud (CH4)              150-200 km down
             Hydrogen Sulfide cloud (H2S)         20 more km down

I suspect the really high atmosphere stuff is determined from the
radio-occultation of Voyager II behind Neptune, so it is probably
valid.  The rest (100 km+) is probably a good guess from spectro-
scopic analysis of sunlight reflected from the atmosphere.

My magazines don't go back to the Voyager-Jupiter/Saturn encounters
(heck, I was only 12 back then) so if you really want to get into
this stuff, dig up some good science mags (esp. Sky & Telescope,
Astronomy) of the Voyager encounters.
Jupiter:'79-'80  Saturn:'81-'82  Uranus:'86-'87  Neptune:'89

I think I'll ask the guys on sci.astro

>Second: If a load of mixed gasses come in to the tank, can the
>refinery eliminate the unwanted material, and leave ammonia water or
>methane. They are designed to extract hydrogen, and dump everything else.
>Would two purifiers be necessary? One to sort the incoming wilderness
>fuel, and the second to provide hydrogen for the holding tank.

Separation of all this gobbledygook shouldn't be a problem.  Most
of the stuff seems to be in solid or liquid phase so all you do is
raise the temperature and each material boils off at its respective
boiling point.  (It isn't really this simple but it'll do for most
game purposes.)

What I don't know is how you go about separating ammonia into
nitrogen and hydrogen gas (or methane into graphite and H gas).
Hydrolysis works with water, but I don't know about the other two.
(I am not a chemist.  I've been looking up these numbers in a CRC.
I hate chemistry.  No, I'm not an astrophysicist either.  Just an
engineer-in-training who had to learn this separation stuff.)

Hey, just had a thought to add realism to the game.  In real life,
separation/refining takes lots of time (like using a still to make
alcohol) unless you use really big machinery.  This is a physical
constraint, so higher tech levels will only help a little.  (Maybe
I'll run that program my school has that simulates chemical processing
and separating systems.)

So... why not add a time penalty to refine this stuff after you get
it from a gas giant.  That way, if you regularly skim fuel, not only
are you risking a misjump, but you're going to have to wait a few
hours before you can jump away from that patrol cruiser on your tail.

And since only 5%-25% of the stuff you skim is really hydrogen,
make 'em go back into that gas giant where they know three system
defense ships are lurking!  Then make 'em go back five more times
before their tanks have enough hydrogen to make a jump.

I think this would cut down on players skimming fuel.  I always
hated how players would say "What?  500Cr/ton for fuel?  No thanks,
I'll just hop over to a GG and skim it."
- --
John H. Kim
[email removed]
[email removed]      <--Yes, it's changed.  muddcs is gone.