Scott 2G Kellogg:
>At atmospheric pressures Liquid Hydrogen is somewhere around 7 degrees
>Kelvin isn't it? (Don't have my CRC handy) To get down to a temperature
>where it would remain liquid at say 10 to the minus 5 torr is gonna be
>HORRENDOUSLY Low. I would say the storing it at such a low temperature
>is gonna be impractical at any TL *I* care to work with. Remember, the
only
>time it would help would be in battle. At any other time it would mean
>added weight and LOTS of additional maintainace.
Scott, we can already make "slush hydrogen". We expect to be able to make
it with 50% solid hydrogen in a few more years. It's not THAT big a deal
to get the temperature down that far.
>There is also the question of the additional energy projected into the
fuel
>tank by whatever punched the hole in it. That's gonna stir up yer liquid
>hydrogen pretty good!
True. Unless H2 is a really good heat conductor, it won't make much
difference to most of the contents of the tank, unless it's a small tnak.
>Not evaporate! *VAPORIZE!* (I know, I know, I couldn't resist the
pun...)
>Quite true. Liquid Ammonia has a greater atomic density of hydrogen than
>pure liquid hydrogen. Maybe the Traveller TNE folks should take note?
They should. Wanna bet whether they do?
Paul Baughman (Captain Sir Michael Talmoth, UPP: BA5A8B):
>Here's a question for you...If you carry your fuel as ammonia, what do
>you do with the nitrogen after processing? Vent it to space? Store
>it for those times when you use wilderness refuelling and recombine it
>with the H2 so you can store it as ammonia again?
Well, the obvious thing is to vent it with the waste hydrogen (you're only
fusing about four atoms per 7000 present).
Or there's my new alternative (to keep Cynthia on her toes, and annoy
purists): Since most of the hydrogen used is actually used as a coolant,
let's use the nitrogen waste as coolant, too. You have to redesign the
heat exchangers, but that's not a big deal even now. Assuming nitrogen
makes about half as good a coolant as Hydrogen (and there really isn't a
good reason why it should be worse at all), then you can run your ship on
twice the MASS of fuel, which takes up about 23% of the VOLUME. Then
design a ship that can do 6G, agility-6, and 4 jump-6 without refueling.
(I'm going to call her "Vanguard").
>If you vent it, would it be possible to detect a ship by the cloud of
>nitrogen it leaves behind it? Or would it be a trail of N? Would it
>leave enough N to detect, perhaps by the wavelengths of light it absorbs
>from the local sun? How much N would be contained in a tankful of
>ammonia?
100,000 Kl of ammonia has about 53,364,000 Kg of Nitrogen. A 100GW plant
should emit about 4Kg per second. How detectable that is I have no idea
at all.
Later...
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I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
--W. von Braun