Gas Stations, or....

Hutch wrote:Still, there might be Core planets that specialize in 'drilling' for hydrogen and sell that expertise to other, less developed planets in the Verge..with modest charges, of course...

cthia wrote:

Hutch wrote:Still, there might be Core planets that specialize in 'drilling' for hydrogen and sell that expertise to other, less developed planets in the Verge..with modest charges, of course...

Thanks for the modification. Spot on. I wrestled with editing it myself after a proof read but, house full of company thru New Years said otherwise.

Yes, but all gas giants aren't composed of the right stuff (currying favor with hydrogen) like Saturn, as in water, ammonia and methane in the case of Uranus and Neptune, which are instead ice giants.

SWM wrote:What's wrong with water, ammonia, and methane? All of those contain hydrogen. Hydrogen can be extracted from those planets quite easily.

cthia wrote:Still, there might be Core planets that specialize in 'drilling' for hydrogen and sell that expertise to other, less developed planets in the Verge..with modest charges, of course...

cthia wrote:Thanks for the modification. Spot on. I wrestled with editing it myself after a proof read but, house full of company thru New Years said otherwise.

Yes, but all gas giants aren't composed of the right stuff (currying favor with hydrogen) like Saturn, as in water, ammonia and methane in the case of Uranus and Neptune, which are instead ice giants.

SWM wrote:What's wrong with water, ammonia, and methane? All of those contain hydrogen. Hydrogen can be extracted from those planets quite easily.

Hutch wrote: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.

SharkHunter wrote:

cthia wrote:Of course, an author can create his sci-fi world out of any colored lego blocks he chooses.

Having said that, I cannot see any star system surviving without the benefit of a local hydrogen production plant. You simply cannot rely on tankered in hydrogen. Wars, blockades, accidents, pirates, Murphy, distance would kill a star system. Personally, I can only see tankered hydrogen in emergency situations, such as stranded ships, or part of a fleet train, etc.

I wonder if some of the whole system infrastructure wipeouts that Eighth Fleet, et. al were executing were knocking the fuel extraction facilities offline, or similarly, if some of the systems that we read going extremely hardscrabble for generations would be because of the loss of some critical bit of technology that keeps the hydrogen mining operations workable.

wiki wrote:The Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by Iraqi military forces setting fire to a reported 605 to 732 oil wells along with an unspecified number[quantify] of oil filled low-lying areas, such as "oil lakes" and "fire trenches", as part of a scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991 due to the advances of Coalition military forces in the Persian Gulf War. The fires were started in January and February 1991, and the first well fires were extinguished in early April 1991, with the last well capped on November 6, 1991.[3]

fallsfromtrees wrote:

cthia wrote:Of course, an author can create his sci-fi world out of any colored lego blocks he chooses.

Having said that, I cannot see any star system surviving without the benefit of a local hydrogen production plant. You simply cannot rely on tankered in hydrogen. Wars, blockades, accidents, pirates, Murphy, distance would kill a star system. Personally, I can only see tankered hydrogen in emergency situations, such as stranded ships, or part of a fleet train, etc.

Current theories of planetary system formation almost require the development of gas giant planets during the formation of the system. It is entirely possible that survey teams would consider a system without a gas giant to be uncolonizable, and move onto the next.

In fact, thinking about it, such a system would make a good hiding place for Darius, since everyone would know that you couldn't have colony there, and there are enough systems with only gas giants that you could use tankers to keep it supplied.

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:Of course, an author can create his sci-fi world out of any colored lego blocks he chooses.

Having said that, I cannot see any star system surviving without the benefit of a local hydrogen production plant. You simply cannot rely on tankered in hydrogen. Wars, blockades, accidents, pirates, Murphy, distance would kill a star system. Personally, I can only see tankered hydrogen in emergency situations, such as stranded ships, or part of a fleet train, etc.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Current theories of planetary system formation almost require the development of gas giant planets during the formation of the system. It is entirely possible that survey teams would consider a system without a gas giant to be uncolonizable, and move onto the next.

In fact, thinking about it, such a system would make a good hiding place for Darius, since everyone would know that you couldn't have colony there, and there are enough systems with only gas giants that you could use tankers to keep it supplied.

I'd hesitate to buy into this 'trees (though it is to be considered) simply because another thing to consider might be that hydrogen production may be all too common an undertaking, and not dependent on gas giants or nebula, for at least nominal operations, or, it, intuitively, would place too many specifics of requirements in a suitable Peep or MAlignment bolthole.

And you wouldn't want to have a steady consignment of hydrogen en route to your secretive base.

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:Of course, an author can create his sci-fi world out of any colored lego blocks he chooses.

Having said that, I cannot see any star system surviving without the benefit of a local hydrogen production plant. You simply cannot rely on tankered in hydrogen. Wars, blockades, accidents, pirates, Murphy, distance would kill a star system. Personally, I can only see tankered hydrogen in emergency situations, such as stranded ships, or part of a fleet train, etc.

fallsfromtrees wrote:
Current theories of planetary system formation almost require the development of gas giant planets during the formation of the system. It is entirely possible that survey teams would consider a system without a gas giant to be uncolonizable, and move onto the next.

In fact, thinking about it, such a system would make a good hiding place for Darius, since everyone would know that you couldn't have colony there, and there are enough systems with only gas giants that you could use tankers to keep it supplied.

I'd hesitate to buy into this 'trees (though it is to be considered) simply because another thing to consider might be that hydrogen production may be all too common an undertaking, and not dependent on gas giants or nebula, for at least nominal operations, or, it, intuitively, would place too many specifics of requirements in a suitable Peep or MAlignment bolthole.

And you wouldn't want to have a steady consignment of hydrogen en route to your secretive base.

fallsfromtrees wrote:As far as it placing too specific a requirement on a MAlign bolthole, it might well be that finding such an oddity caused the MAlign to decide to put Darius there, simply because of its obvious unsuitability. Now as the location of Bolthole, no gas mine would be a detriment, as they are building large numbers of ships there which are going to have to be fueled. I concede that the continuous train of hydrogen freighters running into your hidden place is a good way for it not to remain hidden very long.

fallsfromtrees wrote:[quote="cthia]

I don't mean detriment in that sense. What I mean is this, your imperative is ...

"Scout for a system way off the beaten path."
That's going to lower the available choices.

"The system must also be off the beaten path where no one goes."
That lowers the possibilities even further.

"By the way, it also has to be near a gas giant."


In addition to whatever other stipulations a feasible bolthole make, finding one to suit so many natural parameters and factor in an added necessity to be local to a gas giant, and that suitable location to have been found twice, by two separate entities, strikes me as falling under a very rare umbrella.

And if it is specified that that gas giant be a certain type, well ...

And I'm assuming the MAlign needs hydrogen too, for whatever reasons. They don't take their classified Mercedes out of local space for a spin.[/quote]
The point I was attempting to make was that if you happened across such a system by accident, then the probabilities of finding such a system are irrelevant. This might well be what happened with the MAlign. My point was that hiding in a system every KNOWS is uninhabitable is a great way to hide, since everyone KNOWS that they couldn't be there.[/quote][/quote]