Hello Greg Chalik,

 

I will admit I have not verified how accurate the information is in TNE FF&S but they do mention hydrogen fuel scoops associated with a Bussard Hydrogen Ram that may have a bearing here.

 

"The Bussard ram beats this problem by using the thin interstellar atmosphere for fuel. What atmosphere, you say? You thought space was a vacuum? Well, for most purposes it is. There is insufficient atmosphere to have any measurable pressure, but there is the odd hydrogen atom floating around. The problem is gathering enough of "the odd hydrogen atoms" (one or two atoms per cubic centimeter of space) to constitute useful fuel for a hydrogen fusion rocket.

 

The answer is two fold. First, the faster the ship moves, the more volume of space it passes through, and thus the more atoms of hydrogen it can collect for fuel in a given amount of time. Second, if the ship has a sufficiently large fuel scoop, it can gather a larger volume of hydrogen. In round numbers, a ship needs a scoop area of about 35,000 square kilometers per metric tonne of ship's mass per G of constant acceleration, and needs to reach about 1 % of light speed before it is scooping enough hydrogen for the ram to sustain a continuous fusion reaction. By way of illustration, this means that a fairly tiny ship, of about 1000 tonnes mass, would require a scoop over 2000 kilometers in diameter.

 

It is clearly not feasible to build a solid scoop that large, given the weight limitations of the craft. The answer is instead to use a network of superconducting magnets as the base of the scoop and use their magnetic fields as the scoop itself. That is, the ship's scoop is not a physical presence but rather a large magnetic field projecting from the front of the ship."

 

Again I am not sure that this is anywhere near what you are suggesting or if the above is true. Hopefully, this is helpful.

 

Tom R

 

---

From: "Greg Chalik" <mrg3105@gmail.com>
To: "TML" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>, "Tim" <xxxxxx@little-possums.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2016 4:54:42 PM
Subject: Re: [TML]Tracking spaceships inJump TU, was: Instantcity

The amount of repairs a warship can make to itself is limited by the design intent.

Are Imperim's warships designed for self-repair?

Even so, a misjump can't really be 'repaired'.

Its a fundamantal failure of the system design as a whole to escape its environment...space from which it can not perform another jump.

It seems to me that this would be something engineers and scientists would be working to solve on from the point of invention of the Jump technology, and for all my immagination I cannot conceive of a universe where technology has not been designed to offer a way out of such an eventuality.

However, it seems to me that following a misjump what the ship will lack is fuel, assuming a misjump will consume 100% of stored fuel.

But, space is full of potential fuels, though perhaps not as efficient as purpose-designed fuels.

So I'd say that the SOP would be to deploy massive scoops to start accumulating that matter to serve as fuel.

Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in space, and judiciously is the canon jump fuel in liquid form.

It seems to me then that the SOP for ANY ship in misjump is to

1. Deploy hydrogen scoops

2. when there is a sufficient quantity scooped, commence operation of the hydrogen liquifier converion unit (HLCU)

3. When the HLCU has acheived sufficient volume, commence transfer to fuel tanks

4. When there is enough liquid hydrogen in the fuel tanks, try for another jump.

Is there a problem with this?

Greg

On 17 February 2016 at 10:44, Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net> wrote:

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 03:16:11PM -0800, Craig Berry wrote:
> Also, factor into your "indefinitely" that even at TL15, systems need
> maintenance (including swapping in replacements for worn-out components),

I'm presuming that the ship has a well-equipped TL15 engineering
section, and can make most of the replacement parts as required --
given enough time and engineering expertise.  At the very least, being
able to fashion some version that performs an equivalent function
adequately.

At least in some rules sets, that capability is available at TL13-14,
and should be fairly mature by TL15.

- Tim
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