Klaus Kipling said:
We know that jump drives use (preferably refined) h2 for jump fuel, and that power plants use the same.
We know from this version of Traveller that most of the h2 used in jump is used to inflate the jump bubble.
But why h2?
This is just idle speculation, but could it be something to do with the fact that if you strip the electron from a hydrogen atom, you're left with a proton? Is this some useful handwavium we can use to embellish our MTU jump theories?
Actually, and this is just my own speculation, that may be sort of the case.
The unique thing about H atoms is exactly that - the nucleus is one proton, and nothing else....except for the much less frequent heavy isotopes with one and two neutrons, correct ? So, a cool solution would make the need for H2 fuel dependent on its unique properties.
So, how 'bout this. We know from the previous discussion that 1. potential fusion reactions like more heavy isotopes of hydrogen, and that 2. unrefined fuel has to be a lot cleaner than often supposed -ie you can't throw "any old gas involving hydrogen " in there and make it work(the "pull my finger" refuel, as my useless players call it...) . So, basic scooping has to largely result in mostly H2; what do the refineries do, and why is it that it takes much time at all ? Gas separation isn't wildly hard nowadays, and can't help but get easier.
Here's a thought: most of the job in refining fuel is enriching the powerplant fuel with heavy hydrogen from the jump bubble hydrogen. Unrefined fuel for the fusion plant is simply unenriched hydrogen, and possibly has minor contaminants; but mainly it is unenriched.
So we could stop there, but we can tie it to the jump bubble....
suppose then, that whatever jumpspace is, one of its dangerous qualities is that of supressing or at least degrading the strong nuclear force which binds protons and neutrons...thus causing an atomic nucleus from our world to blast apart -and even heavy hydrogen would shed neutrons like crazy. Single proton Hydrogen, however, doesn't have that problem.
So, the more the jump bubble is composed of single proton hydrogen, the better it works; the more complex atoms it contains, however, the more we get sudden bursts of protons and neutrons. This would be....
bad.... in general for the ship and crew...and as the ship's jump bubble enters jumpspace, too many bursts could well disrupt the jump to the point of causing misjumping.
So. The refining process transfers the heavy hydrogen from the jump bubble fuel into the powerplant fuel (as well as minor filtering) ; the hydrogens unique ability to resist jumpspace is increased by the process that makes the powerplant fuel more effective. Talk about efficient dependency !
The nice thing about this, is that the unrefined fuel modifier is no longer caused by the fuel effecting the powerplant but rather the
jump process itself. And the whole Jumpspace/jump thing is so vaguely defined as to cause far less problems than making assumptions about engineering or powerplants......
