I like your concept. We agree on the observed nature of tanks and what cannot be done with the fuel and your answer is much clsoer to a complete description.

Questions:
a) Would the hydrogen become a plasma somewhere? (I am not master of plasma physics)
b) Would the hot plasma not cool over a week in jump space? (or does this follow the 'no place to radiate it to' concept?)
c) How significant of a gravity wave would you get? How far away could it be detected? If you came up with figures for that, what was your notion on the magnitude at exit and the rate of fall off?
d) Does anything in the jump bubble being formed on the departure end (or any leftovers) give any clue to the destination of the jumping or already having jumped vessel? Is tracking into jump possible?

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:59 AM Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:


On 19Jun2020 1606, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:
> Even in MT, they are mentioned in text and on a table, but there's no
> detail of whether fuel goes into the main fuel tank (and the main fuel
> tank feeds the jump drive)... or for that matter how the Jump Drive
> consumes the fuel - all at once? in a metered way? How long does that
> take?
As far as I'm concerned, it's 'all at once', or nearly so. We know jump
tanks work. We also know that there's no requirement to have any extra
tankage on board, and that the jump drive's volume is very small
compared to the fuel used (so it can't be stored there). So it's all
used in some way in that short time between jump initiation and actual
jump. IMTU some is used in a really inefficient fusion process to power
the system, more is used as coolant, and most goes into creating a 'jump
bubble' for the ship to sit in during jump.

On jump exit the burst of hot hydrogen from the bubble bursting back
into normal space-time is one of the signatures of a jump emergence (the
other main one is the sudden gravity wave from a massive object suddenly
coming into existence where there was nothing before). Analysis of how
much hydrogen there is and how hot it is can give insight into the size
of the ship and how far it came (especially if you've also got data of
the gravity spike).

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>

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