Setting up a skimming operation in a system

[AnotherDilbert]

And then there is Greenland, whose ice sheets are melting even in the winter. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-46646203

Yes, a foreign scientist speculates the ice should melt:

Ocean physicist Dr Neil Fraser at the SAMS laboratories at Dunstaffnage, near Oban, has created a computer model of how huge waves below the surface of the Atlantic are pushing relatively warm water up Greenlandic fjords.

Meanwhile the scientist that actually try to keep track of the ice mass say:

https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/

Note that ice mass accumulates during the long winter, and some melts during the short summer. Most years are close the thirty year mean, but e.g. 2011-12 summer (red line) melted more.


Indirect satellite measurements say that Greenland has lost some ice mass in the last 15 years, but still increases ice mass every winter.

https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2017/ArtMID/7798/ArticleID/697/Greenland-Ice-Sheet


Again, some reputable team of scientists say Greenland ice mass is increasing by a small amount, and some other reputable team says it is shrinking a little. Neither reports their error margins prominently.


Note that the Greenland ice cap is about 2 850 000 km³ ≈ 2500 trillion tonnes, losing or gaining a few billion tonnes per year is a rounding error.

The Greenland ice cap is not melting anytime soon, but I think we can safely say that Greenland's ice cap is not melting in the winter...

 

[Anonymous]

OK, I can agree that salinity changes can minutely change the density of the seawater, so can theoretically change sea levels a tiny amount, but that is practically close to zero.

Not "can theoretically" but "must". As you say, the rise is very small, but it must happen. Whether or not you care about it is a separate question that I don't care to get into.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Not "can theoretically" but "must". As you say, the rise is very small, but it must happen.
Whether or not you care about it is a separate question that I don't care to get into.

Since the discussion was about noticeable sea level change, and attribution of the barely noticeable sea level rise going on, whether the effect is practically noticeable is relevant. What I feel about it is obviously irrelevant.

 

[steve98052]

A world without significant geological activity would eventually erode to a worldwide ocean, except for scattered islands raised by meteorite impacts. If the world started with abundant water, the world ocean would be deep; if the world started out short of water, or lost a lot of it due to photo-dissociation and hydrogen leakage, it would be a shallow world ocean, and the erosion would take longer to grind down all the mountains that existed before geological mountain building stopped. But it's possible for a world to be short of water in spite of extensive water area.

Traveller canon mentions at least a few worlds where ocean refueling is forbidden due to shortage of total water. Such worlds might insist that refueling be done from gas giants, or ice asteroids if the system lacked gas giants.

The ice asteroid point offers another fuel station option: having belters search for iceballs large enough to supply a lasting supply of hydrogen, but small enough to transport from the outer system to mainworld orbit. The fuel station's capital cost would be ice mining gear and storage tanks that would refuel any likely ship in system in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[HalC]

For what it is worth, I created the Ianic Refueling Corporation from scratch, using GURPS TRAVELLER source books. The star system was changed to a K class star in my campaign, the main world was closer to its star, and the had giant was about 3 AUs from its star. I built the hydrogen fuel transports on 400 dton hulls so that they could be transported via the same jump shuttles as planetary defense boats.

I used the wilderness maintenance rules for ships that had their own parts available, with their own crews doing the work. A total of 5 of these 3g boats were needed, four to handle the scheduled work load, plus one spare scheduled for maintenance.

I also built the automated shuttles that did the skimming runs, depositing their loads at an orbiting space station with a jump 1 engine (if memory serves, it was an 800 dton hull). Then, I did a cost analysis on selling the fuel mined this way as refined vs unrefined fuel, and found it unviable overall. The 3 day journey at furthest separation, allowed the fuel refinery to define the entire load with lots of time to spare.

After that, using the starport sourcebook, I added fuel storage tanks underground, refueling pumps, fuel tanker grab vehicles to service ships at star port, etc. Estimated the people necessary to run this corporation, salaries required, and then used the stock market offering rules from GURPS TRAVELLER FAR TRADER.

It worked out reasonably well overall. Per one of the GURPS sourcebooks, one of them suggested the possibility that worlds with hydrographic values of 4 or less might ban wilderness refueling - which in turn have me the idea of the government banning the use of its water for fuel once the Ianic Refueling Corporation was up and running.

It was my intention to run a piracy campaign where one player ran the pirates, one player ran the subsector navy, and one player handled the incoming civilian traders. In addition, the starport facilities were being upgraded to a class C starport, which required its own influx of transportation assets.

Heck, I even went so far as to identify the trade partners with the world, how much tonnage of normal shipping there was and how many freighters were required at 800 dtons or less.

Never fell through though.

 

[Condottiere]

Well, there might be far more water on Earth than might be visible, being locked into the mantle instead of having evaporated during it's formation.

 

[phavoc]

I think most worlds would ban frontier refueling if they were built up to any point, or of sufficient tech level to afford global satellite coverage. Having starships dropping down where they pleased to save a few credits would be annoying, not to mention potentially dangerous with a starship dropping on a lake or sea and causing an accident or disruption.

No, it would make far more sense for a planet to forbid it once it had the capability to enforce it. I could see it happening on frontier worlds, or those core places with very low population, or perhaps balkanized and low tech with nations that don't import higher tech stuff. But for the most part it should get them a nice fine, or worse. Buying water at the port is going to be safer and cheaper in the long run(assuming they have purifiers).

Actually, the more we beat this subject up the more questions get raised about the entire fuel issue in the first place. There are a lot of logical holes in this whole concept.

 

[Condottiere]

... signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

 

[HalC]

I can almost see it now...

"What do you mean you just shot up an Imperial Trader?!!!!"

"Well - he WAS stealing water from my hand stocked lake that I had to import the water all the way over from Hades IV via jump freighters. How DARE they steal water that I paid 3,000 credits per 13.5 cubic meters of water! To think they tried to quote that water is free, there is no law against frontier refueling AND they paid Imperial Taxes - do they realize they're dealing with a BARON!"

None the less, I digress from the original intent of the thread with the tongue in cheek comments.

One of these days, I'm going to have to dust off my old notes, rebuild that which has been lost since 2002, and set up shop via Fantasy Grounds - a game in which three players participate...

1) Naval Assets Player - his job is to control the Subsector Navy assets as detailed in Sector Fleet source book. He will be tasked with handling scheduled missions and deployments along with scheduled maintenance and losing a portion of his trained crew when voluntary separation dates approach. He is responsible for keeping piracy and other such things, to a minimum.

2) Civilian Assets Player - his job is to see that the Starport Authority tasked with building a class C starport at Ianic - gets the job done with the least disruption in scheduling. The player is also responsible for handling any engagements between freights and either of the Navy or the Pirate player.

3) Pirate Assets Player - his job is to gain the most profits from his illegal enterprises as is possible given the situation. His ships can roam throughout all of the Lunion subsector, and will have unknown assets made available to him at the start of the campaign.

All of that of course, would require a more detailed subsector database than I currently have available. In addition, I'd end up redoing the star stats for all of the subsectors based SOLELY upon either of:

GURPS FIRST IN

or

TRAVELLER SCOUTS

The fact that no one caught that there were problems with the material as presented in THE SPINWARD MARCHES CAMPAIGN where the program that spat out the results used, neglected to use the rules as written for either of SCOUTS for MEGATRAVELLER makes me want to do the whole thing all over again.

Ah well, one can dream right?

I'm not familiar with Mongoose Traveller rules despite having the first edition rules plus High Guard, High Guard 2nd edition, and Merchant Prince. I've never run a campaign using those rules before. If I weren't unemployed right now, I'd purchase a copy of the rules set for Mongoose Traveller for use with Fantasy Grounds and maybe give it a whirl, but money being tight, that's a no go.

 

[Anonymous]

One of these days, I'm going to have to dust off my old notes, rebuild that which has been lost since 2002, and set up shop via Fantasy Grounds - a game in which three players participate...

1) Naval Assets Player - his job is to control the Subsector Navy assets as detailed in Sector Fleet source book. He will be tasked with handling scheduled missions and deployments along with scheduled maintenance and losing a portion of his trained crew when voluntary separation dates approach. He is responsible for keeping piracy and other such things, to a minimum.

3) Pirate Assets Player - his job is to gain the most profits from his illegal enterprises as is possible given the situation. His ships can roam throughout all of the Lunion subsector, and will have unknown assets made available to him at the start of the campaign.

I've played wargames with the old Traveller system. As expected it quickly turns into spreadsheets and accounting. I recommend you don't get into too much detail with all of that and focus on the storytelling element.