Melting fuel

[Jak Nazryth]

Does anyone know of any cannon (either Mongoose or any past versions) of a device that would allow a ship to land on an ice world or large comet that would allow the crew to melt the ice so that it could be pumped into the ships tanks? Or do fuel processors already come with that ability?
thanx.

 

[zero]

I handwave it as the fuel scoops and processors sorting that out, not entirely scientific, but it works for my games where refuelling is very much a background thing.

 

[Burocrate]

Jak,
I can't remember any specific details for this activity from any of the versions of Traveller rulesets I have owned over the years. Of course all that really means is that I just don't remember. But I do recall and adventure that specified this very action. I think it is in the JTAS Adventure Achieves.

I’ll keep looking, for anyone else with access to their personal achieves it is an adventure where a the PCs have the opportunity to help out an old merchant captain down on his luck AND donate a few credits to some religious group in return for a ‘blessing’. The PCs then mis-jump into an empty hex with dry tanks and typically panic. Right about then the PCs remember the words of the ‘blessing’. Eventually, the sensors detect an icy asteroid. The PCs maneuver to the icy asteroid and begin the process of melting and collecting. The adventure included mishaps during the process depending exactly on how the PCs describe their actions.

Now if I could only remember the name of that adventure or get past my firewalls at work.

-------------------
EDIT
Well, I was mistaken. The adventure was titled "Into the Void" by Roger Barr. The whole melting ice and recovering process was provided for via equipment but no gaming rules were provided. Maybe a search of TML topics would turn up some mechanics for specifically required equipment and ruling success.

 

[rust]

Does anyone know of any cannon (either Mongoose or any past versions) of a device that would allow a ship to land on an ice world or large comet that would allow the crew to melt the ice so that it could be pumped into the ships tanks?

The brute force method would be to use the ship's laser to
turn the ice into water vapour which can then be skimmed
like a gas giant atmosphere - not elegant, but efficient. 8)

 

[phavoc]

The other thing to remember is that the aforementioned starship usually has a fusion plant onboard. It doesn't take a lot of juice to melt ice.

But I agree.. just do a hand-wavium and say that most ships that perfrom frontier re-fueling have the appropriate equipment to melt ice and pump it into their tanks.

If you want an explanation, just say the ships have heated hoses with a portable 'box' that you dump ice into. The ship powers heaters that liquifies the ice and then pumps it into the tank. Repeat the process until your tanks are full. Works equally well when docked on/next to large ice asteroids and moonlets.

 

[Chernobyl]

it takes the same amount of energy to heat 1 gram of water from 0C to 80C as it does to melt that same gram of ice from 0C (solid) to 0C (liquid).

 

[lastbesthope]

it takes the same amount of energy to heat 1 gram of water from 0C to 80C as it does to melt that same gram of ice from 0C (solid) to 0C (liquid).

Latent heat of fusion IIRC from high school chemistry

LBH

 

[BP]

Don't know of any canon sources...

IMTU, I've always designed my own ships (never used any published ones) and scoops are scoops - their exteriors and interiors can be heated as a lot of gaseous atmos would have ice particles. Refueling on an 'iceberg' (we enjoyed dramatic 'comet' refuelings back in my CT days) simply involved landing on it - the scoops melted the ice - the steam and liquid being sucked into the scoops for processing (I never had un-refined designs).

This has other 'dramatic' and roleplay uses - such as creating vast amounts of steam for water landings and melting into an icepack for visual concealment.

 

[BFalcon]

You know, I actually like the idea of a crew having to go and break up the ice for collection by the scoops and having to go cut blocks out of planetary ice (also makes sense - the Starport book does refer to ice planets being more trouble to get fuel from - if the scoops did it automatically, that wouldn't apply, surely?). I'm sure that the various laser welding "torches" could be used to provide a means of breaking up blocks and I'm also sure that the coolant systems from the fusion reactor (people have already commented on the heat with a ship's reactor being significant) could be utilised (I'd guess there's already a heat exchanger in engineering that air could be pumped through) to blow hot air (you don't want to use water, it'd just refreeze) over the ice to melt it - while at the same time, using a pump and hose to pump the water into the ship (probably heating the pipe the same way to prevent frozen water in the pipe.

A slow process, to be sure, but it would prevent players from just landing, grabbing fuel and going - what creatures are on the planet? Something like the ice wampa in Empire Strikes Back maybe? Do they need to post guards? Will the authorities catch them? Are they allowed to be fuelling up here? Did they land the ship on solid ground or just really thick ice? Can they get enough fuel loaded up before the ice cracks completely and the ship drops through?

I think just "splash and dash" misses the opportunity for a decent adventure...

Of course, the comet, I'd just turn the main guns on the comet (or secondary or point defense guns in the case of a larger ship - you don't REALLY want to use a spinal Maser on a comet... not if you actually want any decent fuel quantity left over after it explodes in all directions...) and then scoop the remains... might want to turn the lasers down a notch though - you want to cut it, not cause it to explode... that's the one you might want to just say "OK, 2 hours pass and you've got enough small enough pieces cut off to refuel the ship from...".

Of course, if you're in the solar system and the comet's got a tail, you'd just need to fly through that tail and the scoop will do the rest... since it'll be either water or hydrocarbon vapour, most likely. It'll just take a while - but that's ok, since you'll be refining it as you go anyhow and that will also (normally) take time...

 

[BP]

Well, there's still plenty of RP options with my approach - the ship has to sink or move to continue 'scooping'. The added time/risk factors have come into play very nicely during emergency combat refueling. Landing and running hoses, etc., while interactive, might not be as viable in that situation - plus, some players tend to get bored with such things.

And flying through a comet's tail (collecting vapor and ejected ice) can be quite a tale!

 

[BFalcon]

BP: true... not every player will appreciate it, but you can always zoom forwards through that bit - I just view it as in-keeping with a tech level that has manned turrets... that crews prefer the hands-on approach to things.

The other advantage to the approach I mentioned (and yours, possibly to a lesser extent (being quicker)) is that it forces players to decide how to go about planning their trips... if they need to spend a couple of days cutting out ice to melt, they need to decide whether to find another route or spend those days when they could have made more money elsewhere. Of course it also raises the possiblity, at some point, of a planet being surrounded by "inconvenient" fuel sources, so paying more for cargo and charging less, simply because of higher fuel costs, so any enterprising group that could find a workaround could end up with a higher income as a result...

 

[nats]

Well assuming a scout ship hose would provide the same speed as normal aerial or ground tanker refuelling does these days:

3000kg/3000litres per minute = approx 3 tons per minute (of water) so a Type S Scout ship requiring 34 tons of fuel would have to load 50 tons of water first which would require just over 15 minutes to load via a hose if all the water was available immediately (not likely). Its more likely you would have to allow for the melting time first (say 60 minutes of having the main engines vectored onto the ice might do it) plus the extraction time for the hydrogen out of the water (say another 30 minutes) and the messing around time to get out and stow the hoses etc (say 30 minutes to set everything up).

So I would guess 2.25 hours would do it from ice, and half this time if you were extracting the water from a liquid source or in a starport (not allowing for the likely extensive queuing/rerouteing/inefficiency time for a tanker crew to get around to your ship, etc, which would probably extend the fuelling process to most of a full day!).

 

[BFalcon]

nats: thanks for that - I'd up that to 3 hours for ice, assuming that they would be moving more slowly in their heavy thermal clothing and with mits or gloves on, making attaching hoses and so on more awkward. There's also some confusion where the main drives are concerned...

DFW has proposed a more detailed grav-based system, but I, personally, think of gravitic systems as more mass-cancelling than a true gravity-based system - you still need thrust (hence the extra hydrogen used over what a fusion reactor would need on its own - both for cooling and then ejection out the drive nozzles), but under such a system, even maneuvering drives can provide initial lift for takeoffs. With my system, yes you could just turn the main drive nozzles downwards and keep the main thrusters on a very low setting (and keep them on) in order to at least turn the ice into sludge... you would need to be careful, doing that though, to make sure that your ship is on very sturdy ground.

I would, instead, take a bit more time and use the two hoses (one coolant "air" from the reactor and one for sucking up the water) to "dig" a hole some way from the ship - that way you won't risk creating problems for the ship later.

Two major problems I'd be concerned with, running the main engines for water would be firstly the thermal bloom standing out from orbit (assuming it's illegal to refuel for whatever reason or that the ship is a pirate risk) and secondly that melted ice could flow over the landing gear and refreeze, causing the crew to need to run the hoses out anyhow...

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Interesting that this topic came up. I just finished writing an adventure where the crew and passenegers of a misjumped ship have to deal with this exact problem!

 

[Chernobyl]

it takes the same amount of energy to heat 1 gram of water from 0C to 80C as it does to melt that same gram of ice from 0C (solid) to 0C (liquid).

Latent heat of fusion IIRC from high school chemistry

LBH

yep

 

[lastbesthope]

it takes the same amount of energy to heat 1 gram of water from 0C to 80C as it does to melt that same gram of ice from 0C (solid) to 0C (liquid).

Latent heat of fusion IIRC from high school chemistry

LBH

yep

Ms Waugh and Ms McLachlan would be so proud (My chem teachers)

LBH

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Wow. Lots of post since I last looked.
Here's the deal.
My players will be heading along a course that takes them through at least 2 or 3 planets that have no gas giants. But there are still frozen bodies far out in most solar systems (water being one of the most abundant elements) so they plan of melting ice to refuel.
The more I think about it... long ago in the very early 80's I remember my friend having a supplement with an illustration of a scout ship. It had landed near a body of water, or snow.. and there was a large hose running from the crew at the edge of the water, a short distance up into the ship. I think the caption said something like "wilderness refueling". Or course, since that image, most player simply submerge the ship and "open the valves" Base on the old illustration though I was just going to say a ship with fuel processors includes a length of hose that ends with a plasma torch /melter and the water/steam would be instantly sucked up into the processors. Skimming exploding steam off a comet from a ships laser seems a bit time consuming, as most of the steam would simply be lost into space. Anyway, good ideas all. But yeah, I like the idea of boots on the ground, be it snow capped ice world full of snow monsters, or vacuum, micro gravity comet.

 

[zero]

^ I like the idea of the melter at the end of the hose. You could even have the hose not need to come out of the fuel scoop hatches for those nice water skimming refuels 8)

 

[AndrewW]

^ I like the idea of the melter at the end of the hose. You could even have the hose not need to come out of the fuel scoop hatches for those nice water skimming refuels 8)

I used something like that. Had a payload you lowered to the surface and it sat on the ice and extracted what was needed. Didn't really go into details though heat was used in the process.

 

[zozotroll]

We have always used melted ice, without going into details. When you have fusion power and laser cannon melting ice doesnt seem much problem