Random Thoughts

Traveller on Fusion:

On page 83 of the Referee's Manual it refers to hydrogen fuel and
hydrogen gas (unrefined fuel).  Hydrogen gas is skimmed from gas giants
which we all know are not pure hydrogen but rather hydrogen compounds.
Therefore it seems reasonable to assume that the fusion plants use plain
hydrogen as fuel.  Burning unrefined fuel means injecting hydrogen
compounds (such as water or methane) into the reaction chamber and letting
the ultra-high temperatures break down the molecule and fuse the hydrogen.
The problem with unrefined fuel then is that you have less hydrogen per unit
volume and more non-fuel particles in the way.

Assuming then a p-p chain like reaction (or a related reaction such as the
C-N-O catalytic fusion cycle) neutrinos will be emitted and be detectable
as moving neutrino "hot spots" in the otherwise stationary neutrino
background.  Triangulation will allow estimates of range for reasonably
close targets.  Flux will allow estimates of energy generation.

About Refineries:

I can find no place that says 1 ton of skimmed material will be processed
into 1 ton of refined fuel, therefore since this makes no sense it must not
be the case.  Refineries are rated in kiloliters/6 hours.  I take this to
mean, given raw material, the refinery can produce x kl/6 hours.  How much
raw material depends on the gas giant (or more generally the source).
Remember 1 ton actually means 13.5 kl (a volume).  So the referee needs to
assign a percentage yeild to the material being processed.  One way to
estimate the percentage yeild of a material would be to estimate the number
of molecules present in 1 kl.  Then multiply by the number of hydrogen atoms
in each molecule (ie 2 for water).  Then see what volume that much hydrogen
would occupy.  The ratios of the volumes is the percentage yeild.  You
could say that the purification times are for some averagy yeild and high
yeild gas giants would take less time while low yeild gas giants would
take longer.  For mixed material simply use ratios ie if water yeilds 25%
hydrogen and methane yeilds 40% hydrogen then something thats half water
and half methane would yeild (25/2 + 40/2) 32.5% hydrogen.  This can get
very messy very quickly so an alternative is to simply classify the gas
giants as average, high, and low yeild and then adjust processing times
accordingly. (Note the numbers for water and methane are made up.)

Speaking of Volume:

Has anyone considered compressing the hydrogen?  That is putting the same
amount of fuel into a smaller space thus allowing more room for other things?
What I like to do is design the ship as normal but then when I draw it I
don't put in the fuel storage until last.  This allows some "artistic"
flare when laying out the ship.  i can put in hallways and common areas and
the like (within reason) then when I am finished I take the left over space
and put the fuel in there.  If there isn't enough left over space, then the
fuel is compressed!  I usually end up with about a 2 or 3 compression ratio
at most.  The actual weight of the ship would be higher than calculated
from the books but not alot because the extra space is not used for additional
equipment (cargo space or staterooms or the like) but rather for open spaces
like hallways.  Comments?

TLH

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T.L.Hayes                  |
MIT/Lincoln Laboratory     |
Lexington, MA              |