cthia wrote:swm wrote:What's wrong with water, ammonia, and methane? All of those contain hydrogen. Hydrogen can be extracted from those planets quite easily.
Wrong with it? Absolutely nothing SWM. But I don't see extracting hydrogen from these elements to be any more efficient than collecting from surrounding space as opposed to collecting from appropriately seeded nebulas and gas giants. In the former case, I see production, like the US, but limited production as opposed to Iran, Kuwait, Russia where the process eliminates so many steps. So I see some systems with vast reserves because of a much simpler, efficient process.
I loosely liken it to the environmental department of my company. Hydrocarbon removal from pipeline leaks across the country. Collecting hydrocarbons embedded within soil strata isn't any more difficult than collecting from groundwater, just a much slower process. *Years as opposed to months. The difference being some systems producing fifty million barrels a day of liquid hydrogen as opposed to five million.
I could be wrong of course, with advanced Honorverse tech, but that's how I see it.
Put away your calculator and reholster your slide rule. Those are not needed to entertain my initial gedanken.
Cthia wrote:It is also conceivable, that some systems may be akin to the Saudi, Irani, and Kuwaits of the Honorverse, sitting atop enormous hydrogen reserves via location to natural phenomena currying favor with hydrogen.
Unless you think Creation is a considerate process, that fairly and evenly distributes our natural resources throughout the universe and doesn't favor particular regions - like Russia, Kuwait, Iran, because those hydrocarbon rich regions are special only unto Terra, the Sol system and us humans?
The arrogance of humanity. Surely you don't buy into that.
SWM wrote:Gathering hydrogen from space or from a nebula is far far harder than breaking up the hydrogen from cometary or planetary ices.
Of course it is, I said that same thing. Go back and reread my appropriate post. I did
not place hydrogen collection from surrounding space into the same category of "*appropriately seeded" planetary sources. (We'll get to nebulas momentarily.) In fact, I always imagined that these (planetary ices) to be among the
normal, usual and most numerous of the hydrogen sources. But for sake of what I posited, I can
conceive of vast reserves of hydrogen deposits whose collection and production would be much more efficient for a myriad of reasons - even besides being less labor intensive. Eliminating the middle man of a conversion, extraction process.
A nebula is extremely low density--and the interplanetary medium is ten thousand times less dense than a molecular cloud. If you tried collecting 1 ton of hydrogen from the very densest molecular cloud in the galaxy, you would have to collect 670 million cubic kilometers of nebula--a cube 875 kilometers wide. In contrast, to get 1 ton of hydrogen from the 1-bar level of Neptune, for instance, you would need to collect 3500 cubic meters of atmosphere. And to get 1 ton of hydrogen from cometary ice, you would only have to mine less than two cubic meters!
Now just hold on. Our galaxy? I never mentioned our galaxy. Do you really think you know what the densest nebula is, that the
universe has to offer? Based on what, exactly? The very limited observation, of your very much more limited galactic region of space? Have we become that much of an arrogant species? The Star Trek episode that I mentioned, featured a nebula so thick with gasses that the Enterprise had to considerably slow to safe impulse speeds. It was that thick. Star Trek's physics has always been within the realm of possible.
Oh, I initially misread the
proposed figures of Neptune. I was under the impression that it was only around 13 % hydrogen. But my thought stands. Deriving hydrogen from planetary ices that are 10 % hydrogen isn't going to be as yielding as planetary sources that are 90 % hydrogen. And current methods use up a significant portion of the hydrogen in the total conversion/extraction process. The bigger the operation, the more labor intensive, greater the hydrogen consumption, not to mention complicated (hydrogen productivity isn't the safest venture) and less efficient (possibly, depending on the method employed.)
You guys are always harping ...
Space is really really big ...
and it is ...
But the universe is really really muuuuuuuuch muuuch muuuuch more immense!
The wonders of the universe are hidden.
You can't guess what they are. Can't even imagine.
That's why they're called ... wonders.
I wonder what's in store for us, way the heaven out ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... there.
NGC-604 is a giant region of ionized hydrogen. This is what we can see. Again, even my limited faculties can conceive of many NGC registries whose size and denseness boggles (apparently) compared to 604.
Which would lead me to my initial thought. Why melt ice to get water when you're standing in it?
There are many processes of producing hydrogen. Some instant, as in biohydrogen production of algae. And it is a total process that doesn't use hydrogen itself to fuel the operation as in most other conversion, extraction processes. It would take about 25,000 square kilometres to be sufficient to displace our hydrocarbon use in the US. To put this in perspective, this area represents approximately 10% of the area devoted to growing beans in the US. Now imagine a planet in your system that is of total green algaeic composition. Slime worlds! And they just happen to be sitting in your neck of the woods.
I remember this coming across my desk. (Because the environmental department of my company uses its fair share of hydrogen.)
In 2014 a low-temperature 50 °C (122 °F), atmospheric-pressure enzyme-driven process to convert xylose into hydrogen with nearly 100% of the theoretical yield was announced. The process employs 13 enzymes, including a novel polyphosphate xylulokinase (XK).[84][85]
Promising! But let's not forget the total process of collecting the materials and producing the Xylos.
Let's turn my proposition on its ear.
I'm a Civil Engineer. I worked five years in a municipality straight out of college. Water treatment. H2O, our good old water. Delicious stuff in my neck of the woods. It's plentiful on the planet. The Earth's surface is over 70 % water. But over 95 % of that is in our oceans. Yet, there are water shortages all over the world. And in areas, LA, that are right on the ocean. Cities that are right on the ocean experience water shortages! Why is that, how hard can it be to pump water to businesses and homes? Ah, but sea water isn't potable water. It has to be processed. The process isn't difficult, but the extraction process of sea water to potable water carries an important penalty of
time! Consumption overwhelms production! Conversion and extraction processes take time. It would be stupid and, possibly, criminally negligent for a municipality to forego extremely abundant fresh water sources of underground aquifers or nearby lakes in lieu of time consuming desalination processes.
Desalination has been around for thousands of years. The Egyptians were doing it essentially the same way we are doing it today, called thermal distillation whereby we evaporate water and recondense it, leaving the salt behind.
Actually, the process mimicks nature, which evaporates water from our oceans surfaces, leaving the salt behind. Rain! The planet's natural process produces, more efficiently - and without the intermediate process of boiling, much more potable water than we ever will. It'd be crazy not to use this - already processed water in favor of time consuming desalination processes. Technology that, although I'm thankful for, is hampered by the important constraints of time per unit consumption rates. Now, before I move on to the next item, consider if it should rain non-stop on our planet. *Bracketing the result of worldwide flooding (unless rainfull accumulation perfectly matches an areas consumption rate) it would be senseless to seek other water sources that require collection, extraction, shipping and conversion. No brainer.
*Unless, of course, your particular city's water table is so low such that it adversely affects yield and cost (cost incurred from expensive pumping wells, electricity to run them, maintenance, etc.)
Consider an oil or natural gas well. Most of them yield nine times as much dirty water per barrel of oil. They are called dirty wells. The filtration process is an added
time consuming stage inherent in oil production. As opposed to some distant galaxy's region having produced it in vast pools of
clean deposits, virtually foregoing the time consuming conversion/extraction process.. All of which is groundwork for this ...
Consider our good old H20 example from above. Hydrogen + Oxygen. Let's say our needs in space are for pure O2. While we're at it, let's simultaneously imagine some distant solar system in space, in someone's neck of the woods, other than Manticore (Manticore can't have everything, they've got the wormhole junctions) containing a phenomena whose natural processes does for the consumption of hydrogen as this phenomena would do for the collection of O2 ... "Abiotic oxygen-dominated atmospheres on terrestrial habitable zone planets." (Available on
Arxiv.)
Water vapor in the upper atmosphere of a young planet could break into hydrogen and oxygen by incoming ultraviolet and extreme ultraviolet rays from the parent star.
"Atomic hydrogen is so light that it can escape to space and lead to the oxidization of the planet," said Robin Wordsworth, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago. "It will just keep continuing and oxidizing the atmosphere. That's what we try and investigate in the paper."
The researchers investigated water photolysis, which happens when a water molecule is torn apart by high-energy photons from the sun. Usually the water (two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom) is broken into two parts, OH and H. The H escapes to space because it is so light. Over time, more oxygen molecules build up until eventually O2 (molecular oxygen) form as well.
Imagine some rare planets, in some neck of the woods, that has a final, more distant outer zone that captures this hydrogen. Or consider vast planetary or cometary reservoirs of frozen hydrogen or planets with vast lakes of liquid hydrogen! Production of hydrogen near these (hydrogen-currying favorable) sources would create vast stockpiles of hydrogen, from the less labor intensive collection stage, and the enormous time saved in conversion and or extraction processes. No middle man, no backlog, no bottleneck, no muss, no fuss. Hydrogen, literally growing on trees. Or, coming out of the faucets at least. Hence, the Kuwaits of the Honorverse.
You ever seen a big tank farm? Not just a large one, but a huge farm, like the one in Cushing, Oklahoma which is the world's largest tank farm. It features 13 different companies, 13 different pipelines. One company alone has 93 storage tanks! Cushing is over 7.5 square miles, totally surrounded by tank farms
and throughout the city. It's something to see.
I can envision, extremely dense, hydrogen rich NGC-604's parents, in some neck of the universe, where a 'space-faring' species has enormous tank farms seeded within, running continuously, collecting raw hydrogen, without the need to convert. As a result, enormous stockpiles of hydrogen.
I can conceive of it, even if there's only several thousand such locations in all the known universes.
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