No, there is no reason. I've seen it used for >30 years in the game.
So, what happens, in game, when you take 1 Dton of water & convert it to LHyd?
Crossing Empty Hexes In A J1 Ship
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No, there is no reason. I've seen it used for >30 years in the game.
So, what happens, in game, when you take 1 Dton of water & convert it to LHyd?
Not in canon material, though, which is what my original statement referred to. You seem to be mixing up "Canon says" with "IMO Canon ought to say".
Check your house rules. Or read Wil's post above for some ideas.
Hans
Well, if something is a physical reality and cannon is SILENT, then physical reality IS the rule.
Unless, you are of the opinion that any physical law that isn't explicitly included in the rules, isn't in effect in Traveler? That would make for a VERY interesting gaming session.
Canon isn't silent. I already gave you an (admittedly vague) reference. I also believe that whatever rules and examples there are for building multi-jump ships use 1T of volume for 1T of spare fuel.
But feel free to prove me wrong and cite a canonical example of a ship carrying spare fuel along in the form of water. Or a rule for doing so.
If you're going to persist in claiming that canon is silent on the subject, we're obviously not going to get any further.
Hans
Sorry, but your ref says NOTHING about H2O carried and converted to fuel. So, quit trying to cite that, as it exists as being a "rule" only in your mind. Not in reality.
The whole water thing is like putting a bandaid on a sucking chest wound, it doesn't makes any sense or difference. Why hydrogen fuel and not deuterium and why so much? Water vs hydrogen is too irrelevant to be an issue, even though going over this before, there would be other inhibitions to carrying water.
Exactly my point. Every rule and example that involve spare fuel uses 1T of volume per T of fuel. That's liquid hydrogen, not water.
Incidentally, Wil gave you a reference to a rule that specifically talked about water and why it's not used.
Hans
Come to that, why not carry those huge amounts of power plant hydrogen your power plant guzzles as water? You certainly have enough time to hydrolyse the water before you need the hydrogen.
I'm definitely not saying the rules don't need a serious retcon on this matter.
Hans
Factors that are big enough to make a significant difference at the scale of the game should be fixed. Take for example the power plant fuel consumption. If you have a ship with a cargo space of, say, 80T that uses 20T of hydrogen per month, carrying that hydrogen as water would increase the available cargo space by almost 10%. I can tell you that that would make a significant difference to the profitability of a ship.
Realistically, any loophole big enough to interest a bunch of PCs is either impossible to exploit, has siginficant downsides, or has already been thought of by lots and lots and lots of people for thousands and thousands of years and thus aren't actually available as loopholes.
Hans
From a muppets point of view its a storm in a teacup. Either I never got taught that hydrogen packs better when in water form or I was asleep in that class in high school (likely I was too engrossed in my new copy of High Guard...). So I've spent the last 30 years assuming it takes 3 times as much water to get 1 ton of hydrogen (Matt logic... 2x O to every H). So I'm quite happy that its actually better than a 1 to 1 relationship.
But I'm with Hans, there is no reference in canon that water fuel is preferred over liquid hydrogen fuel. If water was considered viable for storing hydrogen in the Traveller OTU, it would also be a lot safer than liquid hydrogen and preferred for more reasons than those discussed so far. But its not (handwavium - these are not the droids you are looking for...)
Given that hydrogen is dumped into the PP for the jump drive, I'd pick you cannot separate the H2O fast enough for the jump process. That doesn't stop the water cargo idea suggested earlier tho'.
But I'm with Hans, there is no reference in canon that water fuel is preferred over liquid hydrogen fuel. If water was considered viable for storing hydrogen in the Traveller OTU, it would also be a lot safer than liquid hydrogen and preferred for more reasons than those discussed so far. But its not (handwavium - these are not the droids you are looking for...)
Given that hydrogen is dumped into the PP for the jump drive, I'd pick you cannot separate the H2O fast enough for the jump process. That doesn't stop the water cargo idea suggested earlier tho'.
It doesn't really fix anything is the problem and changing the hydrogen carried as fuel trope Traveller has had since the beginning is actually a vast change. As far as cargo carrying goes, IMO most is carried by the bulk 60K dTon haulers mentioned in AHL and such, so what the incidental carriers do, would be of lesser importance. The small ships don't really make much sense at all, economically, but I wouldn't want to retcon away the free traders. So the un-named issues with why liquid hydrogen is carried as fuel call the issue, we don't know how the power plant, drives or life support work, they just do, using liquid hydrogen for fuel in a fusion process.
I believe we have some idea of how the fusion power plant is supposed to work. We do have other rules that describe power plants (MT, TNE, T4, GT) as well as other examples of fusion power plants (There was one portable PP in a TD, IIRC).
Be that as it may, we do know the rate at which CT claims that power plant fuel is consumed and we know how fast a fuel purifier can process water into hydrogen. I believe the former is lower than the latter, making it exceedingly strange that carrying water for power plant fuel use isn't done.
Hans
I'm talking about carrying water in the cargo hold. I HIGHLY doubt T4 doesn't allow something as dense as water being carried as cargo. So, no, he didn't give a reason why.
Nice try though.
Absolutely. THAT is cannon. It would only be useful stored for later conversion to LHyd. Which is the exact point I was making about fuel and multiple jumps.
It IS cannon that H2O is used to obtain H. So, it IS cannon that 1 Dton of water stored in your cargo hold WILL yield ~1.6 D ton of LHyd once you run it through your fuel purif plant.
Canon says that fuel is carried as liquid hydrogen, the other explanations of "how fusion works" are wonky at best, having read other papers from livermore labs and such as to how fusion actually is supposed to work in theory. I would stick to what canon says as to try to rewrite it just falls into other logic traps. Canon is fusion works and is the basis of all power generation, with liquid hydrogen used as fuel. It is simple enough, starting to change it, one would start to say, well, how does it work? Is it actually doing physical work? Are there steam turbines? Which I don't like as it becomes an analog of steampunk, but using 20th century mechanics.
Starships are magic carpets in Traveller, too much trying to figure out how they work just destroys the magic, because the bottom line is that they don't work. The other way to do it is to totally rewrite everything and then it isn't Traveller anymore.
It is ALSO canon that this is not something the people of the Traveller Universe usually do.
If they did do it on a regular basis, the rules for carrying spare fuel would specifiy that it is carried at 1T of volume per 1.6T of fuel. The rules do not do so, nor does any of the canonical examples specify it. Nowhere in TTA does it say, "And the neat thing is, standard procedure is to carry spare fuel in the form of water, so you can actually have 80T of fuel in those demountable tanks, enough for TWO extra jumps! Isn't that peacy keen? And, hey, since water is pretty easy and safe to carry, why bother with demountable tanks in the first place? Just fill your cargo hold with liquid storage containers full of water and you're all set!"
Hans
So far you're fine. But then you have to explain why hydrogen for power plants has to be stored as liquid hydrogen, which I don't think is possible.
My suggestion would be to go with what QSDS0.5 says.
But leaving the referee the impossible task of explaining to his players why their perfectly logical plan won't work is equally magic-destroying. And sloppy work to boot.
Hans
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