Gas Stations, or....

kzt wrote:It all depends on the needs of the plot.

Hutch wrote:
To borrow from Lyonheart:

Always with the negative waves Moriarty, ALWAYS with the negative waves!

--Sgt. Oddbal, "Kelly's Heroes"

wastedfly wrote: Poor baby, he took the fiction out of science fiction and added a little science to the mix with his snarky comment. (Numbers accelerations, velocities, for 100% hydrogen ships have been bandied about on this forum for years) Boo Hoo.

Power of plot reigns supreme. Distance traveled between fuel ups is completely handwavium.

Just for the record,

1. When I add smilies (winks and sunglasses) they are for a purpose...and the purpose there is (I thought it clear) that I was poking a bit of fun at kzt (whom you know as well as I sends a lot of short posts when most of the rest of us are a bit...wordy.

2. I have had the pleasure of meeting kzt (and buying him a drink) at Honorcon. If he wishes to object to my posting, he is more than capable of doing so.

3. Of course the answer to the question is whatever the MWW decries it to be. That's the case for most of our speculations....which does not mean we can't have fun making them.

Still, I have no wish to cause and ruptures, so be well oh wastedfly and have nothing but positive waves from me....except when you're wrong, of course....

I think that the obvious question (to this non-techie, at least) is where is the hydrogen coming from? You are not mining it like coal or farming it like cabbage. Could it be drawn somehow from a star? I have never heard of an SDP running out of gas... So how does it happen?

Don

n7axw wrote:I think that the obvious question (to this non-techie, at least) is where is the hydrogen coming from? You are not mining it like coal or farming it like cabbage. Could it be drawn somehow from a star? I have never heard of an SDP running out of gas... So how does it happen?

Don

Not a star. Maybe a gas giant planet, or captured from solar wind, but not from the star itself.

Meyers had a hydrogen production facility out in the system. When Mike was having the conversation with the Prime Minister, that was one of the things touched on. He mentioned that ONE of the things he had to be doing when the OFS Gov. was using Meyers as his base of operations was to try and keep the population out where the hydorgen facility (and we would suspect other operations) from getting too independent in the dealings with the planet or, more specifically, OFS and FF. I picture him trying to keep them convinced that it was NOT A GOOD IDEA to act too much as if they really had some control when there was almost always some kind of FF ship in system and trying to operate as if there really was a free-market economy as between the Gov (who is in this for power and profit) and actual warships to back him up, they ran the risk of just getting taken over as a OFS/Fleet operation with a Transtellar being the new owners or at least managing the operation for the Gov.

Mike certainly wanted good relations with Meyers. Given her position and all the ships in or attached to 10th Fleet, my guess was that she would have discussed price and access to the hydrogen before she and the Prime Minister had a conversation with the miners/belters about buying fuel. She certainly would not have wanted to wait for lighters or in-system tankers to run the fuel into the planitary orbit. More practical to cycle her ships out to at least close to the facility and have the transfers done there. Much less time and other than her operationg costs for moving the ships, she would only be paying for the fuel.

That includes the rather large carrot of both paying for a LOT of product and setting up the Meyers system as a refueling point for both her own ships and others from Talbott Quadrant. The newly re-independnet Meyers could certainly use the trade (amoung other things, it would replace the lost customer that FF represented and she is probably paying a bit more that whatever FF was paying, she was not going to be putting a boot on their necks.

The system's existing internal political problems will remain but she doesn't have to act (overtly or covertly) as just a replacement of the OFS overloard position. She and the Prime Minister would probably also have had a discussion about what was likely to happen when word of Vareccio's fall gets back to OFS. SEM isn't going to want to capture the system for itself but it is going to need to be able to react to any returning FF forces when (or if) they are sent. For the short term, it is quite possible that there will be FF returning or at least cycling through Meyers with the beilef that it is the nice, comfortable and safe logistics node and they can resupply, run R&R and pick up thier next assignment. Meyers doesn't really have anything that can stop a FF squadron or even a few ships. Given that it a fairly industrialized planet/system, it has just become another chip in the tactics and having SEM (not really being seen as the GA yet) providing space-born defense is a good thing. She can even arrange to have any captured FF units turned over to Meyers. There is a large question about their capability to crew, operate and fight any such ships, but it does't cost her (she would want to kill or capture them in any case) but it does provide a lot of goodwill.
That she would use the Prime Minister to broker or at least provide some structure and introduction to the people producing the hydrogen makes sense. Along with general goodwill, it helps he and the Royal Family gather back some power and influence off planet.


Yeah, she would want to top off her bunkers and food and other consumables (and pay for it) before heading for Mesa where she knows she will probably jump right into combat operations. I would want to have full tanks.

You will remember that the hydrogen tank farm and production at Ceberus was automated and Honor didn't have to deal with a PRH force and staff running it. She just took the ships out to it, tanked, and ran her operation back in with the ambush.

Meyers would be a larger operation. It was servicing the FF operations based out of the system and would probably be shipping most of the hydrogen in by in-system tankers or lighters. It would sound, since there was a good sized (numbers not give) number of people which represented a faction in the system politics, it is going to be more than just a fuel mine.

n7axw wrote:I think that the obvious question (to this non-techie, at least) is where is the hydrogen coming from? You are not mining it like coal or farming it like cabbage. Could it be drawn somehow from a star? I have never heard of an SDP running out of gas... So how does it happen?

Don

One of the things that current astrophysists figure is that most star systems supporting life likely have nifty things like gas giants out-system that have enough gravitational pull to form the asteroid belts, etc. into stable orbits, and that the star in the center eventually catches the rest, leaving a habitable planetary area where the light gases would boil off, such as our inner 4 worlds in Sol Space. So we'd be mining at Jupiter, etc.

Although it's not mentioned in the main line books, in the short story about the Casimir , it refers to a "gas mining operation":

Before Manpower, Jessyk, and the others moved in on Casimir, when it really was just an industrial platform operating scoop ships in the jovian’s atmosphere

.

A thought: comets.

Comets are supposed to have a lot of water ice, which is a part of what boils off during a cometary approach to a star. I don't see why there couldn't be "comet catchers" that go out, snag a comet from a system's Oort Cloud, and bring it to a processing station for breaking down the water ice into O2 and H.

Ok, IIRC HMS Harvest Joy had a 8 T-month cruising range on impeller drive alone. IIRC Manticore to Terra 5.5 T-months and Haven to Terra 6.5 T-months

saber964 wrote:Ok, IIRC HMS Harvest Joy had a 8 T-month cruising range on impeller drive alone. IIRC Manticore to Terra 5.5 T-months and Haven to Terra 6.5 T-months

Harvest Joy was a converted military, special use craft, however. Fast and had long range stores including bunkerage. A warship won't have nearly as much fuel and way more ammunition.

wastedfly wrote:Otherwise, even with the pearl saying "up to" 60% of energy is from across the hyperwall to power the ships' impeller drive, the ship would still have to be 100% hydrogen to get anywhere in the time/velocity, let alone hundreds of light years distance. Reality would require 95% of the ships energy budget come from the impeller drive if not more just to reach Grayson from Manticore.

I don't know. What do you base that on?

We don't know how much energy impellers use, there's no real equivalent in our physics. Reactionless stuff leads to weird energy issues so you can't even directly calculate it via the kinetic energy added to the ship, IIRC (because that varies by reference frame).

(Most really long distance travel is probably in grav waves anyway ie no or nearly no fuel use.)