Harvest hydrogen from sun

[dmclean62]

Say you’re exploring and jump into a system with no source of hydrogen for jump fuel. What tech at what TL would make it possible to harvest hydrogen directly from the outer atmosphere of the star?

[Reynard]

TL 6 for heat shielding plus TL 15 if you can acquire a Crude Gravity Shield device with an upper limit of 20 gs (Book 4: Deep Space Exploration handbook page 23). Hard radiation at a 'reasonable' fueling distance should be an issue too.

Still, hydrogen would be extremely tenuous as it's blasted away from a star meaning weeks or months to accumulate enough. Probably take more fuel to collect the fuel than what you take in.

[Condottiere]

Ram scoop?

[Reynard]

A ram scoop is featured in Book 4: Deep Space Exploration handbook page 25. It's very inefficient except for science missions and sleeper colony ships. Construction parameters are not pleasant for casual use. Using the device in the chaos of a star's atmosphere could be catastrophic to boot.

[Condottiere]

How hot is a brown dwarf?

If you have to start harvesting hydrogen from the sun, you might as well just use collectors, fission reactors, and solar panels.

[Reynard]

"By the time you get to the surface of the star, you’re down to somewhere between 2000 degrees Kelvin and 750 degrees Kelvin, depending on the size of your brown dwarf."

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Not sure why you would think ANY system has no source of hydrogen. Water/Ice is one of the most common molecules in the universe. Even a system with no planets will still have small asteroids floating around, go far enough from the sun (beyond the habitable zone) and they will be icy asteroids. ICE = Water = H2O = Hydrogen for fuel and oxygen to breath.

Water/Ice is EVERYWHERE.

[Reynard]

To say the least, in most Traveller system generators, non-empty hexes are often loaded with hydrogen sources though not all are easily accessible. Do you really want to go hunting for the right asteroid because no gas giants and the planets are dry rocks when you spent your jump fuel arriving and have, very often, a 4 week power plant fuel supply?

[Condottiere]