Resource Scarcity in the Far Future

[mike wightman]

And no one mentions in the rush to get rid of fossil fuels that all those products will either go away or have to be manufactured by much more energy intensive and more expensive methods.
Or that the fuel for our military vehicles will increase in cost as the oil industry winds down.
Here in the UK we now import, at the cost of shipping around the world, the ash from Chinese coal fired power stations to make cinder block/breeze block - that's just one example of the near sighted idiocy of globalisation.
The UK can no longer guarantee energy security or steel production, we can not manufacture tanks, planes and ships necessary to fight a war. Here's hoping for peace in our time.

 

[Spinward Flow]

And no one mentions in the rush to get rid of fossil fuels that all those products will either go away or have to be manufactured by much more energy intensive and more expensive methods.
Or that the fuel for our military vehicles will increase in cost as the oil industry winds down.

Ever notice that the "devotees of the invisible hand of the market" suddenly believe that said invisible hand of the market will be PARALYZED if any (unforseen) market disruption happens, that defies historical trends?

The worshipers at the altar of "supply & demand" somehow believe that both supply AND demand are immutable and eternal ... and any disruption in either is both negative and must always be resisted, because disruption is not advantageous to the status quo (and the incumbent players who have captured the relevant market segments, thus have no incentive to yield the field to anything better, especially when something better comes along).

The fallacy of perspective that @mike wightman is advocating for is that "all of these things will go away" as if they'll cease to exist (and we'll all just have to learn to live without them) ... or worse, be more expensive to produce than they are under the status quo.

The reason why that is a fallacy is because in order to supplant and replace the status quo ante, the "new way of doing things" MUST BE better and/or cheaper than the old way ... otherwise the new way doesn't get widely adopted. That's just the way these things work (see: build a better mousetrap, if unsure).

Why is coal power declining every year on a global scale?
Because there's a cheaper alternative that can replace it "unfairly quickly" from an operator and regulatory point of view.
Out with the old, in with the new.
The invisible hand of the market is not paralyzed, nor are the "laws" of supply & demand repealed (never to be heard from again).
What's being lost is "market capture" by the incumbents ... and they won't take kindly to that (fact).

After all, don't get between grifters and their money/marks ... people tend to get violent when that happens.

 

[mike wightman]

We will soon see who is right. For the sake of civilisation I hope I am not.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I've been of the opinion for some time that starship fuel purification plants, in game play, border on alchemy. Big black box connected to pumps and fuel scoops; Ice, water, and/or GG atmo goes in; hydrogen and waste come out.

Given the stated capabilities of technology in the OTU, it's not alchemy. The chemistry is about TL-6, maybe simpler than that. Thermal separation of gases (processing skimmed fuel) and electrolytic cracking of 2 H2O into 2 H2 and O2, are dead simple.

It merely requires fantastical amount of energy to accomplish at scale.

Fortunately, Traveller assumes the easy availability of fantastical amounts of energy.

For example,, there's a gas-fired utility-scale power plant near here -- on Terminal Island in Long Beach, CA -- with a nameplate capacity (250MW) that's just half of the stated power of the Size A power plant out of a Free Trader or Scout/Courier...

 

[mike wightman]

Explain how you skim 40t of unrefined fuel, fly away from the gas giant, switch on your purifier.
Where does the refined fuel go when the fuel tanks are filled with unrefined?

How does 40t of unrefined fuel become 40t of refined fuel?

 

[aramis]

Rare Earth series elements such as are mined for modern RL electric vehicles would arguably be in higher demand in a society without fossil fuels relying more on an all-electric economy and industrial base. That would almost certainly necessitate asteroid mining, though they're almost certainly rare in space, just not as rare as on-planet.

they're also much (multiple orders of magnitude) more available off worlds than on.
Largely because most of them on earth sank to the core LONG ago... same will be true of any silicate-over-metal worlds.
Likewise, Gold is known to be more abundant... but also less concentrated... in the asteroids.

It's just that the cost of retrieval is high.

 

[aramis]

Explain how you skim 40t of unrefined fuel, fly away from the gas giant, switch on your purifier.
Where does the refined fuel go when the fuel tanks are filled with unrefined?

How does 40t of unrefined fuel become 40t of refined fuel?

If that 40 T is actually 2240kl of methane (CH4), it's about 1344 tons mass, of which about 25% is hydrogen, so 337 tons of LHyd once cracked...
Ammonia, (NH3) would be about 1680 tons mass, with a hydrogen fraction around 17%, so 285 tons of hydrogen once cracked.
The mixture would likely be only about 150 tons of hydrogen, once you get down to cracking the actual atmosphere, which is a mix of gasseous hydrogen and helium, plus ammonia, methane, and some others... it's not that you're lacking hydrogen, it is that it takes energy to free it up from the oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. All of which can be processed by electrolysis to varying efficiencies.
So... the question is which isotopes does that A-plant need, and can it also fuse the helium? If it can use protium and helium, as well as deuterium and tritium, there's plenty of energy to crack it from the C/O/N binders... the Oygen then goes into the LS tanks, the Nitrogen as well, or simply dumped over if the N2 tanks are full, and the carbon can be dumped overboard, too, probably as CO2.
It also means that one can probably crack the CO2 aboard...

 

[mike wightman]

In which case you are opening the can of worms of deliberately filling your fuel tanks with water and only refining as you need it, thus allowing you to carry lots more fuel than liquid hydrogen alone would.

 

[Badenov]

Explain how you skim 40t of unrefined fuel, fly away from the gas giant, switch on your purifier.
Where does the refined fuel go when the fuel tanks are filled with unrefined?

How does 40t of unrefined fuel become 40t of refined fuel?

I originally misread this and replied with the wrong answer. Corrected answer:

40T of unrefined fuel is 40T of liquid hydrogen that has been converted from scooped material instantaneously by the scooping process and deposited in the fuel tanks. It has traces of the original material in it because the process is not perfect and allows someone's brother-in-law to sell fuel purifiers, which will weed out those trace impurities in 24 hrs per ton of purifiers.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Explain how you skim 40t of unrefined fuel, fly away from the gas giant, switch on your purifier.
Where does the refined fuel go when the fuel tanks are filled with unrefined?

How does 40t of unrefined fuel become 40t of refined fuel?

It's not a case of "scoop first, refine later" actually.
Instead, it's a case of "refine while scooping" which then limits how quickly the scooping process can proceed.
In other words, scooping with refining dictates how long the scooping "maneuver" takes in order to fill your fuel tanks.

LBB5.79, p32:

Fuel Purification Plant: Unrefined fuel can be refined on board ship using this installation. Such a plant can process one ton of gas in a minute (or one ton of water in ten minutes)

Need faster processing time(s) for a really LARGE fuel tank? Install more fuel purification plants.
2 plants can process 2 tons of gas per minute or 2 tons of water per 10 minutes.

The unstated implication being that for (liquid) water scooping, the ship touches down on and floats on the water surface (or submerges, if desired) onto/into the body of water to be scooped. In other words, it's NOT a (high) speed run like a water dropping fire fighting (super scooper) plane would do with bodies of water.

It IS like that when you're doing atmospheric skimming of gas giants, but there you're doing orbital velocity runs into the atmosphere which can take tens to hundreds of minutes per skimming run. So basically you're refining WHILE scooping and you just keep scooping until your fuel tanks are full of refined L-Hyd.

In both cases, you're not doing a scoop ... fly away ... refine later while en route to somewhere else type of maneuver.
Instead, you're refining while scooping ... and the "rate of refining" (see: LBB5.79, p32 citation above) determines how LONG you need to keep scooping until your fuel tanks are full. So the duration of the scoop+refining maneuver is determined by your refining rate capacity in concert with your fuel tank capacity that you're trying to fill. Any waste byproducts (that you don't want to keep) of refining get dumped overboard while scooping.

 

[mike wightman]

Nowhere does it say you refine while scooping so the question remains, you could even scoop with a fuel shuttle and then process on the mothership so the question remains.

"Any streamlined or partially streamlined ship may be equipped with fuel scoops
which allow the skimming of gas from gas giants. On streamlined ships, such an
installation also includes hoses or other equipment for drawing water from oceans.
No additional tonnage is required; cost: Cr1.000 per ton of ship. If fuel scoops are
installed, a fuel purification plant should be installed on the ship or available on
another ship before the fuel is used in drives.
Unrefined fuel, when used in starship drives and power plants, can result in
equipment malfunctions and misjumps. This can be avoided with the use of a fuel
purification plant which allows refining of the raw gas before it is used in the drives.
The fuel purification table indicates the various models of plants available: tech
level is the tech level at which the plant is produced, tonnage is the tonnage required
aboard ship, and cost is the price of the plant in credits. The fuel purification
plant cost is based on 1,000 tons of fuel. A large ship with a large fuel tank
capacity requires several plants. A small fuel tank capacity requires a fraction of the
fuel purification plant shown. In no case may a fuel purification plant be procured
with less than one-fifth the tonnage and price shown."

 

[willtron3030]

If that's true ... then PETROLUEM REFINERIES ALSO border on alchemy!
The high octane gasoline you pour into your ground car ... that's the result of (borders on) alchemy!

[snip]

But refining hydrogen out of a variety of feedstocks?
Hey, now ... let's not start dabbling in alchemy ...

My how feathers get ruffled when I invoke Clarke's Law. I get it. My father was a ChE who taught refining and chemical reactor design. I worked for a while in the energy sector, albeit as a drudge in a rheology lab and later on the MMS/IT side. It is an achievement of both science and engineering that we have this kind of infrastructure (He included power transmission, transportation, refrigeration, and telecommunications) all around us, supporting us, and we really do take it for granted on the daily. Dad called it "a fragile plenty".

But these processes take lots of energy (cheap with Traveller Universe fusion), and, a lot of space (a scarcity on starships). And some of these systems, at TL-8 at least, rely on gravity. And yes, we are taking this for granted in-game, given the paltry amount of tonnage allocated to produce hydrogen from feed stocks at ship scale. It feels like, "yeah, we have machinery, and stuff happens." And that's okay. It's a game. But recognize that in-game it is still a lot of "at TL-foo..." handwaving.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Nowhere does it say you refine while scooping so the question remains

"So it works well in reality, but what about in theory?"

 

[kilemall]

My how feathers get ruffled when I invoke Clarke's Law. I get it. My father was a ChE who taught refining and chemical reactor design. I worked for a while in the energy sector, albeit as a drudge in a rheology lab and later on the MMS/IT side. It is an achievement of both science and engineering that we have this kind of infrastructure (He included power transmission, transportation, refrigeration, and telecommunications) all around us, supporting us, and we really do take it for granted on the daily. Dad called it "a fragile plenty".

But these processes take lots of energy (cheap with Traveller Universe fusion), and, a lot of space (a scarcity on starships). And some of these systems, at TL-8 at least, rely on gravity. And yes, we are taking this for granted in-game, given the paltry amount of tonnage allocated to produce hydrogen from feed stocks at ship scale. It feels like, "yeah, we have machinery, and stuff happens." And that's okay. It's a game. But recognize that in-game it is still a lot of "at TL-foo..." handwaving.

One of the things I have been looking into is chemical engineering in the far future. We know about Titan, hydrocarbons for centuries, likely to be other odd ducks like that.

Asked my chemical engineer dad about differing conditions like Titan, atmospheric effects of refining, gravity etc. He was not keen to spend much mental time on it, but he did say whatever processes they will be it will require a lot of water.

 

[mike wightman]

"So it works well in reality, but what about in theory?"

Where in reality is gas scooped from a gas giant?

 

[Spinward Flow]

Where in reality is gas scooped from a gas giant?

It IS like that when you're doing atmospheric skimming of gas giants, but there you're doing orbital velocity runs into the atmosphere which can take tens to hundreds of minutes per skimming run. So basically you're refining WHILE scooping and you just keep scooping until your fuel tanks are full of refined L-Hyd.

The atmosphere.
At orbital velocities.
Like I mentioned (see above quote).

 

[whartung]

Where in reality is gas scooped from a gas giant?

The point being that however it works, the whole hydrogen/methane/water/banana peels -> LHyd -> fusion workflow, demonstrably does work because Traveller starships have been doing it for a 1000 years. That's the "reality" we have to explain. While the drives can apparently run straight off of methane/water/banana peels, the power gets a bit buggy, so a "fuel purification" plant is a handy facility to clean it all up.

(FYI, banana peels are about 17% denser in hydrogen than LHyd, whereas water is about 56% denser. So, if you don't have any water around, and need a boost in terms of fuel range -- consider banana peels.)

 

[mike wightman]

The atmosphere.
At orbital velocities.
Like I mentioned (see above quote).

You are saying this happens in reality and then give examples in a fictional setting.

 

[bookwyrm]

Explain how you skim 40t of unrefined fuel, fly away from the gas giant, switch on your purifier.
Where does the refined fuel go when the fuel tanks are filled with unrefined?

How does 40t of unrefined fuel become 40t of refined fuel?

The way I think it works is that the ship skims the gas giant, filling the fuel tank. The gasses are then continuously filtered through the fuel filter and back into the fuel tank until all the fuel in the fuel tank is filtered purified fuel fit to be used for jump without the worry of mis-jump, while the impurities are safely ejected into space.

I know this is a simple look at a complex operation, but it works for me.

 

[bookwyrm]

"So it works well in reality, but what about in theory?"

If it works well in reality but doesn't work out theoretically, it just means we don't understand how it works.

If it works well in reality and it works out theoretically, it means we understand how it works.

If it works well in reality and it doesn't work out theoretically, it could mean we are only seeing a side effect of what is actually happening and haven't realized it yet. Hopefully, we discover what is really happening before something possibly catastrophic happens.