Hydrogen to water

[steve98052]

If jump drives like pure (refined) liquid hydrogen, but don't work as well with (for example) methane of equal hydrogen content, maybe you can ship fuel to a deep space fuel depot more efficiently in the form of methane ice and then refine it to liquid hydrogen for jump drives. But what do you do with six tons of carbon per ton of hydrogen? That's a lot of soot at your fuel depot -- and a lot of capital tied up in fuel refinery equipment if the task of refining fuel is to be accomplished at a reasonable rate.

I thought about all sorts of alternate means of storing fuel, but then tried just designing a ship without it. And I managed to design a ship that can do three Jump-3 jumps on its own internal fuel. The longest gap in the rift between Deneb Sector and Gushemege is Jump-8, so the Jump-9 ship is just an exercise. I also designed a double Jump-4 ship, specifically for that crossing. It doesn't need to push the rules; it just needs to be a purpose-built ship.
I designed it as a carrier, with matching passenger and cargo non-starships to make the longer trip with a lot of cross-loading operations.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Are you kidding?
What do you do with all that carbon?
Turn it into organics, diamonds, graphene, composites.

The water ice that is shipped in provides you with oxygen atoms, the ammonia ice that is shipped in provides you with nitrogen. So along with producing hydrogen fuel you can also manufacture fresh air.

You end up with a fuel depot/refinery that also supplies fresh air and trade materials.

What TL to you imagine your deep space fuel refinery to be?

 

[steve98052]

No need for a deep space fuel depot. Just make the crossing with a Jump-4 ship with fuel enough aboard for two Jump-4 jumps. I designed one as a carrier so ships that make the full crossing only need the very expensive service of a double Jump-4 for that one segment.