No, they are usually people who have at LEAST 1,000 times more experience in spacecraft operations than our astronauts...
Ice Refuelling
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
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No, they are usually people who have at LEAST 1,000 times more experience in spacecraft operations than our astronauts...
No, they are usually people who have at LEAST 1,000 times more experience in spacecraft operations than our astronauts...
...and who, by canon, can be of practically any level of intelligence and education. The ones who make their survival roles, they tend to be more intelligent, at least in the Merchants and the Navy. The ones who don't - well, that's the guy who tried to stop a 1 ton mass in low-G.
martletsquire
SOC-12
Ice Mining - a more difficult task than you think
The concept of Ice Mining is great, but either you'll have to bring the chunk onboard and let it melt or deal with a whole lot of headaches. Check out John Ringo's "Vorpal Blade" or the follow-up books (can't remember, but check it out, good read).
In the book, the ASS Vorpal Blade, a converted Ohio Class SSBN, tries refueling on an ice asteroid.
The same book also deals with refueling from a gas giant and some of the potential hazards that can occur.
The concept of Ice Mining is great, but either you'll have to bring the chunk onboard and let it melt or deal with a whole lot of headaches. Check out John Ringo's "Vorpal Blade" or the follow-up books (can't remember, but check it out, good read).
In the book, the ASS Vorpal Blade, a converted Ohio Class SSBN, tries refueling on an ice asteroid.
The same book also deals with refueling from a gas giant and some of the potential hazards that can occur.
Man invents tools to deal with headaches. If he doesn't deal with a problem often, he may be forced to improvise when it happens that he's forced to deal with the problem. If he deals with that problem regularly, history shows that he is very, very good at coming up with and refining the tools to deal with it. The question of how easy or hard it might be to mine ice rests on how badly and how often someone needs the ice, which is not to say there won't be dangers but it's likely that the culture that's been in space for - well, ten thousand years if you count from the rise of the Vilani - is pretty adept at it by this time. I mean, commercial fishing in the seas off Newfoundland's pretty dangerous too, but humanity's answer to that seems to have been to develop some new tools and techniques and then accept the casualties.
It's important to note that the "Armor" of the Ohio class is considerably less than the equivalent for the average Traveller merchant space ship.
Per MT, the AV 40 civil hull is the equivalent of 33cm of steel. The Ohio is a few CM of advanced steel (4 or so, perhaps less), equivalent of maybe 6-8 cm of reference steel.
The risks for an Ohio are considerably higher than even civil spacecraft in Traveller.
You also don't know what kind of reinforcement or bulkhead structure is inside. A series of ribs? Struts? As far as the game goes, say a scout ship for example, it is like a sub, an inner hull surrounded by an outer hull with the gap in between being fuel storage.
I'm still curious how anyone is going to push around a nine meter stack of snow/ice in a wheel barrow.
Bulk is an issue, but surely a 9 meter stack of styrofoam peanuts in a wheelbarrow is an awkward load, but hardly a physical impossibility.
As a practical matter, it would be easier to cut a giant block of ice and just push it ... Ice sliding on ice is a pretty low friction transportation mode to begin with, so throwing in low gravity and you might be able to push some very impressive loads.
It might be possible to just toss each shovel full of ice directly into the hold rather than bothering to load and unload a wheelbarrow.
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
GUys, I know that I am late to the party but I have a couple of questions....
We have been assuming water ice for this, but if you are mining a comet for fuel then don't you have to deal with a conglomeration of water, ammonia, methane, and carbon dioxide ices all mixed together? Can't a chemical reaction be made from these to speed up the hydrogen extraction and heating?
If we again are working with ice, why can't we just shovel huge chunks of it into an empty cargo hold and let it melt? Or skim through a ring system composed of ices and just pretend you are playing a staship-sized game of Pac-Man to grab ice chunks?
We have been assuming water ice for this, but if you are mining a comet for fuel then don't you have to deal with a conglomeration of water, ammonia, methane, and carbon dioxide ices all mixed together? Can't a chemical reaction be made from these to speed up the hydrogen extraction and heating?
If we again are working with ice, why can't we just shovel huge chunks of it into an empty cargo hold and let it melt? Or skim through a ring system composed of ices and just pretend you are playing a staship-sized game of Pac-Man to grab ice chunks?
Well, if you're going to go mining, you could always mine MegaTrav for some guidance and port it over for use in CT. Starship Operator's Manual provides some guidance on ice refueling. "Routine", ergo no more difficult or risky than sucking water from an ocean.
Time's a bit confusing, a minute per kiloliter (I assume that's per kiloliter of resulting hydrogen), or about 14 minutes per dTon. I think that's off their usual task system timing, which means 14 minutes is 10% of the average time, ergo 14 minutes times a roll of 3d6, or 42 to 252 minutes, or an average 140 minutes per dTon. By comparison, sucking in water takes an average 5 hours for the entire load, irrespective of tank size - presumably because for larger tanks they provide more inlets, while for mining ice it's just you and your tools. However, I think that might be a per-person-doing-the-mining figure; doesn't make sense otherwise.
Let's see, we're talking, what, 9 tons of water ice for every ton of hydrogen? That's a bit over a kilogram a second of ice mined, about right for one person operating a one-man powered digger of some sort, or perhaps a team operating something a bit more potent with some of the team occupied in transporting the result.
All in all, it's clear that ice mining is a slooooow way to refuel, around 2 1/2 hours per dTon per person (if we draw on MegaTrav and assuming I understand the time thing right). We're looking around 75 man-hours to get a free-trader's tanks filled, 200,000 man-hours to get a Kokirrak refueled (which with a crew of around 1500 means a week and a half parked on the iceball with most of the crew working the ice in 12-hour shifts). MegaTrav's 14x3D6 variable's quite enough to account for variation in the composition of ices, not to mention whatever other random factors might speed things up or slow things down. For CT, gamemaster might give bonuses or penalties to time depending on the percentage of hydrogen in the specific mix of ices being mined - or just go ahead and use MegaTrav's roll.
Time's a bit confusing, a minute per kiloliter (I assume that's per kiloliter of resulting hydrogen), or about 14 minutes per dTon. I think that's off their usual task system timing, which means 14 minutes is 10% of the average time, ergo 14 minutes times a roll of 3d6, or 42 to 252 minutes, or an average 140 minutes per dTon. By comparison, sucking in water takes an average 5 hours for the entire load, irrespective of tank size - presumably because for larger tanks they provide more inlets, while for mining ice it's just you and your tools. However, I think that might be a per-person-doing-the-mining figure; doesn't make sense otherwise.
Let's see, we're talking, what, 9 tons of water ice for every ton of hydrogen? That's a bit over a kilogram a second of ice mined, about right for one person operating a one-man powered digger of some sort, or perhaps a team operating something a bit more potent with some of the team occupied in transporting the result.
All in all, it's clear that ice mining is a slooooow way to refuel, around 2 1/2 hours per dTon per person (if we draw on MegaTrav and assuming I understand the time thing right). We're looking around 75 man-hours to get a free-trader's tanks filled, 200,000 man-hours to get a Kokirrak refueled (which with a crew of around 1500 means a week and a half parked on the iceball with most of the crew working the ice in 12-hour shifts). MegaTrav's 14x3D6 variable's quite enough to account for variation in the composition of ices, not to mention whatever other random factors might speed things up or slow things down. For CT, gamemaster might give bonuses or penalties to time depending on the percentage of hydrogen in the specific mix of ices being mined - or just go ahead and use MegaTrav's roll.
esampson
SOC-13
So lots of people are trying to figure out how to move around the amount of ice needed by hand. The truth of the matter, for me at least, is there are still an awful lot of variables.
For one thing how does the thrust on your scout ship work? Different incarnations of Traveller have had different rules concerning whether the drives are reactionless or not (there was even some spirited discussion a little while back concerning the 'nozzles' on the back of ships shown in artwork).
If the Traveller ships in your universe have any sort of high temperature exhaust then I'd probably use my engines to melt a big honking puddle. Gravity on Europa is a bit over .13 G's so I'll bet that with .1 G of thrust and my contragrav lifters I shouldn't have much problem (.1 G is actually a very large amount of acceleration. We're just not use to thinking of it as being very much when we play Traveller).
Maybe it will refreeze before I can get a full load, but I can just lather, rinse, repeat and I'm sure I will be collecting water faster than you will with a wheelbarrow (and with considerably less effort).
Of course a lot of water will boil into steam, especially in the almost non-existent atmosphere of Europa. No problem. It will refreeze very quickly as enormous clouds of snow and ice particles that very slowly settle down in that .13 G. Perfect for scooping up the way you would mine an ice ring.
What if my maneuver drives don't produce heat or the heat is so low it can't melt the ice before being drained away by the environment? Well, I've got an air/raft as well. Ideally I could probably figure out some way to use it to heat the ice. Perhaps partially disassembling it until I can get to parts that get too hot to touch when the raft is in use. Maybe altering part of the raft to intentionally make a heater of some kind (running current from the air/raft through a coiled cable). Use that to generate enough heat that it starts to melt the ice and causes it to sublimate, then just cruise back and forth through the rising cloud.
Incidentally, don't forget cryovolcanism. If the planet happens to be like Enceladus you could simply move over to one of its geysers and scoop up water from its plume.
Lastly, what is the ship armed with? Lasers would probably be good for creating giant puddles if you have to ability to control their power output. I can't decide if a pulse laser would be better or worse than a beam laser. It would most likely depend on how rapidly it 'pulses' and if you could control it (a lower frequency of pulses could provide more gentle heating to prevent the ice from exploding).
Worst case scenario with any form of beam weapon you could blast large chunks of ice free from the surface and then use the air/raft to tow them back to the ship. The exact mechanism for getting the large ice chunks into the fuel refinery would be dependent on some specifics we don't have but should probably not be insurmountable, mostly consisting of removing grates and panels, I would think.
For one thing how does the thrust on your scout ship work? Different incarnations of Traveller have had different rules concerning whether the drives are reactionless or not (there was even some spirited discussion a little while back concerning the 'nozzles' on the back of ships shown in artwork).
If the Traveller ships in your universe have any sort of high temperature exhaust then I'd probably use my engines to melt a big honking puddle. Gravity on Europa is a bit over .13 G's so I'll bet that with .1 G of thrust and my contragrav lifters I shouldn't have much problem (.1 G is actually a very large amount of acceleration. We're just not use to thinking of it as being very much when we play Traveller).
Maybe it will refreeze before I can get a full load, but I can just lather, rinse, repeat and I'm sure I will be collecting water faster than you will with a wheelbarrow (and with considerably less effort).
Of course a lot of water will boil into steam, especially in the almost non-existent atmosphere of Europa. No problem. It will refreeze very quickly as enormous clouds of snow and ice particles that very slowly settle down in that .13 G. Perfect for scooping up the way you would mine an ice ring.
What if my maneuver drives don't produce heat or the heat is so low it can't melt the ice before being drained away by the environment? Well, I've got an air/raft as well. Ideally I could probably figure out some way to use it to heat the ice. Perhaps partially disassembling it until I can get to parts that get too hot to touch when the raft is in use. Maybe altering part of the raft to intentionally make a heater of some kind (running current from the air/raft through a coiled cable). Use that to generate enough heat that it starts to melt the ice and causes it to sublimate, then just cruise back and forth through the rising cloud.
Incidentally, don't forget cryovolcanism. If the planet happens to be like Enceladus you could simply move over to one of its geysers and scoop up water from its plume.
Lastly, what is the ship armed with? Lasers would probably be good for creating giant puddles if you have to ability to control their power output. I can't decide if a pulse laser would be better or worse than a beam laser. It would most likely depend on how rapidly it 'pulses' and if you could control it (a lower frequency of pulses could provide more gentle heating to prevent the ice from exploding).
Worst case scenario with any form of beam weapon you could blast large chunks of ice free from the surface and then use the air/raft to tow them back to the ship. The exact mechanism for getting the large ice chunks into the fuel refinery would be dependent on some specifics we don't have but should probably not be insurmountable, mostly consisting of removing grates and panels, I would think.
In CT 2nd, MT, MGT, GT, it was "reactionless". I believe TNE also. So, almost always it is so.
answered this question long ago.
you break out your Mosquito Rig(c) which is a cargo-container-sized piece of drilling equipment. you anchor it to the ice and it heats up/refreezes the ice around the bottom to form a gas seal. it then drills into the ice, heating up a chamber beneath the surface and drawing off and collecting the evaporating gasses for pre-processing and delivery to the normal refueling systems. piece of cake.
Not TNE. TNE utilized HEPlaR Drives for thrust (High-Efficiency Plasma Recombination) - basically a highly fuel-efficient Plasma Rocket utilizing heat from the Fusion Reactor. Gravitic based M-Drives were retconned out of TNE (although rules for them appear under alternate technologies in FF&S), and Contragravity (CG) only nullified gravity - it did not provide any thrust.
esampson
SOC-13
No. This was discussed before in another thread.
In CT there seems to be absolutely no discussion whatsoever as to how maneuver drives work, so it's an unknown. We will label that as a '0' since it is neither 'Aye' not 'Nay'.
In MT the drives are quite definitely defined as reactionless, so we will label that as a '+'.
In TNE it is quite clearly not reactionless as ships are required to carry reaction mass for maneuvering, so we will label that as a '-'.
In 4th I believe it is undefined. I don't actually have 4th but when this issue was raised before no one was able to say 'aye' or 'nay', so for now I'll label that with a '0'.
In 5th it is ambiguous. The drives do interact with gravity fields but that does not necessarily mean they are reactionless. Additionally there are vehicle components such as lifters which would only seem to be important if the drive wasn't reactionless. Since it is ambiguous we will label that with another '0'.
Both GT and MgT are of questionable canonicity so I don't really want to consider them one way or the other (though for the record I'm not sure you are correct that they specify that drives are reactionless).
So in the 5 canon editions of Traveller you've got 1 '+', 1 t'-', and 3 '0's. Hardly an indication of 'almost always so'.
Right. I was thinking FF&S. So, the most played editions ALL had reactionless. Pretty much my point.
T4 had both reactionless gravitic-based M-Drives, as well as HEPLaR. The issue was HEPlaR was TL-10, and standard (grav) M-Drives were either TL-11 or 12 (there are places where the text mentions both TLs). In fact, in the Starships Book there is at least one ship-design that had both a HEPlaR drive and a reactionless M-Drive.
esampson
SOC-13
Only if your definition of 'most played editions' is 'Megatraveller'.
esampson
SOC-13
The thing is that a grav drive is not automatically reactionless. That is simply an assumption. In the other thread examples were given as to how a gravitic drive might not be reactionless.
So unless they state in T4 that the grav drives were reactionless (or that the weren't) the best we have is 'vague' (because in all fairness while it is possible for a gravitic drive to not be reactionless it is just as possible for it to be).
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