Fleet Tankers Or Oilers ...

Can somebody in great detail describe the size, shape, characteristics and bunker resupply techniques used in the Honor navy universe?

Do the navy ships use and store gaseous heavy hydrogen or tritium or do they use instead a super cold liquid version of the same? How do they bunker?

Would ship duty on a tanker be considered hazard duty or is it instead preferred duty compared to ship duty on the average navy ship? Curious.

Also no sure why the ships are not powered by matter-anti matter instead of fusion reactors. Seems the size and power of the GA capitol ships would be limited?

Or ... is matter annihilation a power source we might see used by the Mesans in their future war craft development or perhaps something saved for future books?

Anti-matter is not within the tech grasp of the honorverse per a comment by David Weber.

HB of CJ wrote:Can somebody in great detail describe the size, shape, characteristics and bunker resupply techniques used in the Honor navy universe?

Do the navy ships use and store gaseous heavy hydrogen or tritium or do they use instead a super cold liquid version of the same? How do they bunker?

Would ship duty on a tanker be considered hazard duty or is it instead preferred duty compared to ship duty on the average navy ship? Curious.

Also no sure why the ships are not powered by matter-anti matter instead of fusion reactors. Seems the size and power of the GA capitol ships would be limited?

Or ... is matter annihilation a power source we might see used by the Mesans in their future war craft development or perhaps something saved for future books?

IIRC, Starship fusion plants don't use heavy hydrogen for fuel. IIRC it was some sort of boron based compound that was a gas. Unfortunately, I don't remember where the reference was.

If fusion plants were powered by heavy hydrogen, bunkerage would be simple, just carry heavy water. 1 liter of heavy water would produce 11 liters of heavy hydrogen gas, 5.5 liters of oxygen gas and 1/2 liter of regular water after fusion.

darrell wrote:IIRC, Starship fusion plants don't use heavy hydrogen for fuel. IIRC it was some sort of boron based compound that was a gas. Unfortunately, I don't remember where the reference was.

If fusion plants were powered by heavy hydrogen, bunkerage would be simple, just carry heavy water. 1 liter of heavy water would produce 11 liters of heavy hydrogen gas, 5.5 liters of oxygen gas and 1/2 liter of regular water after fusion.

I seem to vaguely recall speculation from posters about use of aneutronic fusion fuels in the Honorverse; and boron is one possible candidate.

But in the books it talks about hydrogen bunkerage as fusion fuel.


Back to HB of CJ's original questions, I don't think we know much of anything about tankers that might resupply ships on prolonged trips away from bases. We do know RMN BCs, admittedly designed for deep raiding, hold almost 4 months worth of fuel while on the other end of the scale a tiny (old-style) LAC can barely hold 3 weeks worth.

But there are still been situations where you'd expect to need tankers along, like when Tourville deployed his fleet to Silesia right before the ceasefire ended. However I double checked War of Honor and couldn't find any mention.

I then went wide and did keyword searches for "tanker" and "tankers" through all my ebooks. Eliminating groundside tanker trucks that only left a couple mentions in the whole series.
(There were also mentions of short haul civilian tankers in one of the In Fire Forged short stories)

House of Steel, in the RMN Organic Support Functions section said:
"Organic Support Functions are those functions the fleet does for itself, such as providing tankers that are assigned to the fleet. Shore Infrastructure are those services that are not located with the fleet, such as shipyards and fleet depots."
and
"The Navy maintains an extensive Fleet Train, consisting of supply ships, fuel tankers, maintenance and repair vessels, mobile shipyard modules, personnel transports, etc. The majority of the Navy-crewed vessels belong to Fifth Fleet and the Joint Navy Military Transport Command, and are equipped with military-grade impellers, inertial compensators, hyper generators, and particle screens in order to permit them to maneuver freely with the fleet units they are tasked to support."

Then in Echoes of Honor, when the Peeps were briefed on Operation Icarus there was this:
""On the logistical side," he nodded at Citizen Lieutenant Challot, who looked less than delighted to be brought center stage, "we'll be getting very heavy support. In addition to tankers and medical and repair ships, HQ is assigning two complete service squadrons of fast freighters for the specific purpose of assuring us an adequate supply of the new missile pods.""

And that's the sum total I could find on tankers. They exist, and the RMN ones, at least, have mil-grade propulsion. But their SOPs, numbers, other specs, etc are left unaddressed.

IIRC there was something about a swimming pool being used as part of the overall bunkerage, so that could point to hydrogen gas being extracted through electrolysis.

And then there have been many statements regarding gas farms, (Cerebus comes to mind for one).

Which I think all points to hydrogen gas fusion plants.

George J. Smith wrote:IIRC there was something about a swimming pool being used as part of the overall bunkerage, so that could point to hydrogen gas being extracted through electrolysis.

It's a trivial amount of energy needed to break down water compared to the energy from fusion. Of course, the fact that a fission reactor is more effective than a fusion reactor at any scale suggests that honorverse fusion reactors are absurdly ineffectual.

George J. Smith wrote:IIRC there was something about a swimming pool being used as part of the overall bunkerage, so that could point to hydrogen gas being extracted through electrolysis.

And then there have been many statements regarding gas farms, (Cerebus comes to mind for one).

Which I think all points to hydrogen gas fusion plants.

If i recall correctly that the swimming pool water was consider part of the ships general water supply. Every drop of water is recycled multiple times.

pnakasone wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:IIRC there was something about a swimming pool being used as part of the overall bunkerage, so that could point to hydrogen gas being extracted through electrolysis.

And then there have been many statements regarding gas farms, (Cerebus comes to mind for one).

Which I think all points to hydrogen gas fusion plants.

If i recall correctly that the swimming pool water was consider part of the ships general water supply. Every drop of water is recycled multiple times.

You remember correctly:

The Short Victorious War, Chapter 7 wrote:"Oh, no you don't, Stinker. It's not time for frisbee yet," she told him, and he curled back down with a mournful sigh. She chuckled at him and stepped up onto the diving board, which was one thing she unequivocally approved of. Most spacers were perfectly happy "swimming" in a null-gee tank, but Honor preferred water, and Nike's designers, in a burst of no doubt misplaced zeal, had provided a pool for the admiral's use. The water in it formed part of the battlecruiser's consumables storage system, which probably explained how the architect had convinced BuShips to buy it, and it was on the small side, but it was deep enough for diving.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

kzt wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:IIRC there was something about a swimming pool being used as part of the overall bunkerage, so that could point to hydrogen gas being extracted through electrolysis.

It's a trivial amount of energy needed to break down water compared to the energy from fusion. Of course, the fact that a fission reactor is more effective than a fusion reactor at any scale suggests that honorverse fusion reactors are absurdly ineffectual.

Are you speaking RL or Honor world? Nuclear fusion produces more energy than fission which is why scientists are trying to get it to work on a self-sustaining basis.

From Wikipedia:

Fusion reactions have an energy density many times greater than nuclear fission; the reactions produce far greater energy per unit of mass even though individual fission reactions are generally much more energetic than individual fusion ones, which are themselves millions of times more energetic than chemical reactions. Only direct conversion of mass into energy, such as that caused by the annihilatory collision of matter and antimatter, is more energetic per unit of mass than nuclear fusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion

Keith, he did mention Honorverse fusion reactirs. You even quoted it.

Personally, for a Honorverse fusion reactor, I suspect it's the shielding and enabling equipment that is inefficient. The grav bottle containment and grav pinch and all that. At least at the 'small' plant size.




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