Scott 2G Kellogg:
>Hydrogen Fuel Leaks:
>Now consider: When we talk about fuel leaks in Trav, we are not
>talking about leaking gasoline in air. We are talking about leaking
>Liquid *HYDROGEN* into *VACCUM*.
Even hydrogen has a heat of vaporization. If kept cold enough,
it won't instantly vaporize, even into vacuum. And hydrogen CAN be
kept liquid at very close to vacuum pressure. So it may not VOOM!
into vacuum.
Note also that liquid ammonia stores more Hydrogen per kiloliter
than liquid hydrogen does (120Kg per Kl, as opposed to 70.6 Kg per
Kl). So warships may (should!) be carrying fuel in the form of
ammonia, and processing it into H2 as needed. Then the problem tends
to evaporate.
>I rather doubt that self sealing stuff would work. Certainly not at
>TL 8 or 9.
I doubt it, too. I also suspect that space battles at TL8 and 9 are
pretty silly affairs, at best.
>About Armor Maximums:
>Yes Steve, they do say max add-on armor is TL*5, but they never
>define add on armor. They have never explained weither we are to add
>that number to 40 or to 4. The table seems to indicate that it is
>added on to 4, but I could be mistaken. If it is added on to 4 then
>the Apollo capsule could *Almost* make it. (Armor=39)
I always assumed 40. Be that as it may, the Apollo capsule is a silly
example. The apollo capsule (about two MT tons) did NOT mass 25+ tons
metric. It also did not have a hull stronger than that on most MBTs.
Estimated armour value of an Apollo is only 10 (at MOST).
>If we are to say that max armor is TL*5+40 then a TL 3 ironclad could
>have Armor 55? That doesn't sound right to me.
Nor to me. Though that is only 5 feet of soft steel. But then I
don't believe that maximum armour that can be fabricated is an
exponential function of TL, either. And +5 per TL is exponential
(effective armour thickness increases by 57.3% per TL.
This is but a part of why I said the vehicle design system falls apart
at the limits - TL low vehicles are miracles of capability compared to
the real world, and TL high ones are, well, magic. Consider that the
maximum armour value at TL15 is 115 (maybe), which translates to about
224 meters of hard steel. Sure it's using bonded superdense, and is
thinner - (from Striker) it's actually only 16 meters thick. A
hundred ton ship would have 100,000+ tons of armour, which SHOULD have
a volume of 6690 Kl, or 495 displacement tons. Pretty amazing stuff,
eh?
Later...
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I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
--W. von Braun