Gas Stations, or....

SharkHunter wrote:The problem is that it takes more energy to hydrolyze the water than the burning of the hydrogen produces, ...

Fusion Reactors don't "burn" Hydrogen, they "fuse" hydrogen; it's a nuclear reaction, not a chemical reaction.

SharkHunter wrote:The problem is that it takes more energy to hydrolyze the water than the burning of the hydrogen produces, which is why I think that the idea of 'hydrogen mining' the gas giants as ubiquitous throughout the HonorVerse instead of specified.

That said, you are correct, I assumed that RFC's reactors, unless powered by handwavium, would probably use our "known fuels" (d / t) mined for their fuel as that's the only thing that made sense to me for "bomb pumped lasers" and contact nukes [see the wikipedia article on thermonuclear weapons]. I figured the ships would run on the same fuels, but if that is a bad assumption, I can live with it.

Palm in face alert: Heard of D-T FUSION???

Of course not...

Only an internet poster would continue posting as if they are correct where hydrogen is being burned instead of fused...

SharkHunter wrote:The problem is that it takes more energy to hydrolyze the water than the burning of the hydrogen produces, which is why I think that the idea of 'hydrogen mining' the gas giants as ubiquitous throughout the HonorVerse instead of specified.

Please provide a citation. My understanding is that fusing a certain volume of ordinary hydrogen (not deuterium) would produce several orders of magnitude more energy than hydrolyzing the hydrogen from water.

Relax wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:The problem is that it takes more energy to hydrolyze the water than the burning of the hydrogen produces, which is why I think that the idea of 'hydrogen mining' the gas giants as ubiquitous throughout the HonorVerse instead of specified.

That said, you are correct, I assumed that RFC's reactors, unless powered by handwavium, would probably use our "known fuels" (d / t) mined for their fuel as that's the only thing that made sense to me for "bomb pumped lasers" and contact nukes [see the wikipedia article on thermonuclear weapons]. I figured the ships would run on the same fuels, but if that is a bad assumption, I can live with it.

Palm in face alert: Heard of D-T FUSION???

Of course not...

Only an internet poster would continue posting as if they are correct where hydrogen is being burned instead of fused...

Relax, relax and take a deep breath. Deuterium and tritium are both forms of hydrogen, and you know that, yet you go on the attack as if I don't.

Read this link y'all, it's where I went before I posted my origin thought on WHICH form of hydrogen was being used. In general, I'd argue that the TED commentators are WAY smarter than I am in their given subject areas:

http://www.ted.com/conversations/16198/ ... on_wi.html

Honoverse wise, as far as I know there is no textev that ordinary hydrogen is being fused; the question brought up recently in this post was whether or not elemental hydrogen would be the fuel for the reactors, as it's a troublesome fuel. Most of us would agree that it would be, and water isn't a useful fuel because of the energy required to separate the molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. Which is why we assume they are mining for the hydrogen.

So for the sake of discussion, let's assume that you have a gas mining ship that can go zipping around a jovian planet and scoop up immense amounts of elemental hydrogen, etc. and store/convert it to "fuel A" for starships by "process X". Maybe it's only separating out the deuterium or tritium, maybe it's making something we don't know about with another storage medium, or WHATEVER.

The author has never specified how it is done, so we're all internet posters here, thinking aloud about a future universe that doesn't even exist. That's why it's called science FICTION and not science. It's a credit to David Weber/RFC that his universe has less hand-wavium than in it than any competing series I know of.

SharkHunter wrote:Most of us would agree that it would be, and water isn't a useful fuel because of the energy required to separate the molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. Which is why we assume they are mining for the hydrogen.

Would you like a drag line? That way you can dig a larger deeper hole faster.

I don't know, maybe look up the enthalpy energy of water bond as worst case scenario? Then look up the fusion energy of H to He... Or H to Fe... I don't know maybe compare the two numbers...

Relax wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Most of us would agree that it would be, and water isn't a useful fuel because of the energy required to separate the molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. Which is why we assume they are mining for the hydrogen.

Would you like a drag line? That way you can dig a larger deeper hole faster.

I don't know, maybe look up the enthalpy energy of water bond as worst case scenario? Then look up the fusion energy of H to He... Or H to Fe... I don't know maybe compare the two numbers...

No, I don't need a drag line, though maybe you ought to put out an anchor to slow things down.

Pardon me for mentioning burning hydrogen instead of fusing it -- what I meant to imply was that it's not a water to hydrogen to fusion fuel process. My original post on this thread about WHICH fuel is used was that deuterium and tritium are more likely fuels than H2. Now, Relax, despite my telling you offline that I am utterly correctable, should you choose to be polite, I'll offer one tiny bit of backup for my theory about which hydrogen fuel is in play. Here's my link for how well deuterium/tritium worked for energy production in 1961:

http://www.tsarbomba.org/Tsar-Bomba-Videos.html

Feel free to post any link you wish about how well ordinary hydrogen works as a fusion fuel, energy /enthalpy bonds notwithstanding. I'm done with this thread because of the hostility.

Ah, its hostility to ask for you to back up your "claim" by looking up 2 numbers? Since when does a chemical bond have more energy than fusion or fission, of even the closest element to Iron...?

I told you were being a fool out of the public eye so as not to humiliate ya, but ya brought it to the public forum. Ok. Be my guest, continue humiliating yourself.

I've done so before, doesn't taste very good.

The bonding energy of a water molecule is trivial compared to the energy released by fusing the hydrogen that is released. Liquid hydrogen is a huge pain to store and has a density of 14 cubic meters per ton.

SharkHunter wrote:Relax, relax and take a deep breath. Deuterium and tritium are both forms of hydrogen, and you know that, yet you go on the attack as if I don't.

Read this link y'all, it's where I went before I posted my origin thought on WHICH form of hydrogen was being used. In general, I'd argue that the TED commentators are WAY smarter than I am in their given subject areas:

http://www.ted.com/conversations/16198/ ... on_wi.html

Honoverse wise, as far as I know there is no textev that ordinary hydrogen is being fused; the question brought up recently in this post was whether or not elemental hydrogen would be the fuel for the reactors, as it's a troublesome fuel. Most of us would agree that it would be, and water isn't a useful fuel because of the energy required to separate the molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. Which is why we assume they are mining for the hydrogen.

So for the sake of discussion, let's assume that you have a gas mining ship that can go zipping around a jovian planet and scoop up immense amounts of elemental hydrogen, etc. and store/convert it to "fuel A" for starships by "process X". Maybe it's only separating out the deuterium or tritium, maybe it's making something we don't know about with another storage medium, or WHATEVER.

The author has never specified how it is done, so we're all internet posters here, thinking aloud about a future universe that doesn't even exist. That's why it's called science FICTION and not science. It's a credit to David Weber/RFC that his universe has less hand-wavium than in it than any competing series I know of.

Sharkhunter, that posting on TED is only discussing why current attempts at controlled fusion use deuterium or tritium instead of ordinary hydrogen. As that posting states, fusing hydrogen is more complicated.

What that post did not discuss was the fact that fusing ordinary hydrogen would produce several times more power than deuterium or tritium. It also did not say that it was impossible to have controlled fusion of hydrogen--it only said it was more difficult. In fact, the main problem is that it requires higher densities and temperatures than we can currently achieve.

With the grav-pinch technology of the Honorverse, it should not be that difficult to fuse hydrogen. They are able to achieve enormously greater densities and temperatures than we have the technology to produce in our fusion experiments. In principle, it makes more sense for the Honorverse to use ordinary hydrogen. It avoids the complexity of sorting deuterium from the hydrogen before use. For these reasons, it is generally assumed by most posters on this forum that the Honorverse routinely uses pure hydrogen for fusion.

As for splitting hydrogen from water molecules: the amount of energy produced by fusing hydrogen is many orders of magnitude greater than that necessary to split the hydrogen from water. In fact, the energy cost of splitting the water is inconsequential compared to the energy cost of the containment fields to induce fusion. Hydrogen could be extracted from water without any noticeable effect on the fusion energy budget.

SWM wrote:Sharkhunter, that posting on TED is only discussing why current attempts at controlled fusion use deuterium or tritium instead of ordinary hydrogen. As that posting states, fusing hydrogen is more complicated.

What that post did not discuss was the fact that fusing ordinary hydrogen would produce several times more power than deuterium or tritium. It also did not say that it was impossible to have controlled fusion of hydrogen--it only said it was more difficult. In fact, the main problem is that it requires higher densities and temperatures than we can currently achieve.

With the grav-pinch technology of the Honorverse, it should not be that difficult to fuse hydrogen. They are able to achieve enormously greater densities and temperatures than we have the technology to produce in our fusion experiments. In principle, it makes more sense for the Honorverse to use ordinary hydrogen. It avoids the complexity of sorting deuterium from the hydrogen before use. For these reasons, it is generally assumed by most posters on this forum that the Honorverse routinely uses pure hydrogen for fusion.

As for splitting hydrogen from water molecules: the amount of energy produced by fusing hydrogen is many orders of magnitude greater than that necessary to split the hydrogen from water. In fact, the energy cost of splitting the water is inconsequential compared to the energy cost of the containment fields to induce fusion. Hydrogen could be extracted from water without any noticeable effect on the fusion energy budget.

Although (as a complete layman) I'm a little surprised they're fusing hydrogen rather than trying for something closer to an aneutronic fusion reaction. But what do I know, maybe their "handwavium" rad shields screens can block neutrons and prevent neutron activation and embrittlement of the reactor enclosure and surroundings.