What actually happens when a ship runs out of fuel?

[GypsyComet]

But just hanging there in space with no forward momentum ... no.

There was nothing in that ep to say it was 'stationary'.


Anyway, stationary is impossible in an absolute sense. Stationary relative to what...?

That's why the meson comm is more or less useless unless both parties are on a planet, but that's another thread....

Nah. Meson Comm is fine for an established connection between ships of a fleet. What you can't do is "Open Hailing Frequencies" with one. The MComm just always has a navigational and maneuver data carrier wave under the voice and vid.

 

[zanwot]

As I've said (repeatedly), a fusion reactor realistically won't run out of fuel. Even if a single ton of hydrogen is left on board, that'll be enough to run it for years (if not decades).

Since M-drives run on reactor power, they also won't run out given the above.

Actually we don't really know how much these wonder M drives use like energy, the same as we don't know the same for artificial gravity and all. We don't even know if their magical heat sinks actually use energy.

We don't know how efficient Traveller Fusion power plants are, nor do we know how much energy they produce really. We don't know what refined fuel *really* means (the fact that you can actually attempt to use unrefined fuel tends to say refined fuel is not pure D T, but with no more non hydogen impurities maybe, even if the obvious motivation for it all is game balance), so how much D T there is per ton of H fuel is an open question.

So we don't really know how fast fuel is used. Ok if the M drive is not used, the jump drive is not used, and the grav gadgets are not used, the ship should be able to run almost indefinitly on very little. But if the ship is not in jump but otherwise in full operation the only info is from the rules that clearly state that X quantity of fuel lasts 1 week. This is obviously really a game balance issue to keep fuel a constant issue, so we can explain it by a massive consumption of energy of those gravitic gadgets, and maybe a less idealised version of fuel & Fusion than otherwise imagined, even (maybe especially as) if the power output becomes considerable to use these gravitics gadgets.

 

[GypsyComet]

As I've said (repeatedly), a fusion reactor realistically won't run out of fuel. Even if a single ton of hydrogen is left on board, that'll be enough to run it for years (if not decades).

Since M-drives run on reactor power, they also won't run out given the above.

Actually we don't really know how much these wonder M drives use like energy, the same as we don't know the same for artificial gravity and all. We don't even know if their magical heat sinks actually use energy.

EDG is speaking from some knowledge of real-world physics and what is known about H-H fusion. Things that weren't known when GDW put together their TLAR* numbers for Traveller in the 70s.

Mongoose has chosen to follow that original set of numbers because they make a good game, not because they make any real world sense. Other editions of Traveller chose to use numbers a bit closer to real world information available when they were written, again to make the numbers for ship design and operation work the way they need to for the game.


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*TLAR = That Looks About Right