Why is refined fuel so expensive?
- Thread starter Egil Skallagrimsson
- Start date
Egil Skallagrimsson said:
We're both operating under different assumptions.
I disagree about crew and maintenance costs as I am including for raw material transport, which should bring it in line with starship/spaceship operations.
The MgT SRD also mentions that it takes 1-6 hours to scoop 40dtons of unrefined fuel although another entry indicates scooping takes 1-6 hours to refuel the ship, which is closer to how MT handles fuel scoops.
Then it has to be transported in-system.
Then it has to be refined. MgT SRD indicates that it takes 1 ton of purifier to refine 20tons of fuel per *day*; you'll need huge industrial plants to refine fuel for a reasonable starport. This should require workers and maintenance and power. And the waste needs to be disposed. I don't think dumping such huge volumes of waste into the vacuum is satisfactory.
Most likely, there will be refineries in orbit around suitable GG's with transports hauling refined fuel and the waste gets dumped back down the GG's gravity well.
All of these steps involve risks. Not just from scooping, but with plant risks similar to chemical refineries. Risks + financial transactions = admin staff and admin costs.
The government gets a cut, of course.
Prices will be what the market can bear.
As far as additives go, I assume that the entire fuel usage issue is a game abstraction to keep players from having to worry about lubricants, hydraulic fluids and coolants, all of which come in a wide assortment of types for various uses. This is how past editions treated it.
Thinking about the potential damage caused to a planet's ecology
by using its water for starship fuel, I made a few calculations - ho-
pefully without mistakes.
The Lake Constance, not necessarily a very big or important body
of water, has a volume of 48 cubic kilometers, which translates in-
to 48 billion cubic meters of water. Using electrolysis to get the hy-
drogen, this would become 76 billion cubic meters or 5.6 billion dt,
sufficient to run a starport's fuel service for 3,169 years of 10 free
trader tanks of 22 dt each day.
If there is no major bug in my mathematics, this obviously means
that the average planet will not undergo any serious ecological da-
mage because of the use of its water for the foreseeable future of
the Third Imperium, at worst a few minor lakes or a few millimeters
of ocean depth will be lost.
by using its water for starship fuel, I made a few calculations - ho-
pefully without mistakes.
The Lake Constance, not necessarily a very big or important body
of water, has a volume of 48 cubic kilometers, which translates in-
to 48 billion cubic meters of water. Using electrolysis to get the hy-
drogen, this would become 76 billion cubic meters or 5.6 billion dt,
sufficient to run a starport's fuel service for 3,169 years of 10 free
trader tanks of 22 dt each day.
If there is no major bug in my mathematics, this obviously means
that the average planet will not undergo any serious ecological da-
mage because of the use of its water for the foreseeable future of
the Third Imperium, at worst a few minor lakes or a few millimeters
of ocean depth will be lost.
DFW said:
The waste are all the impurities that are removed from unrefined fuel to make it refined. If it didn't have any impurities that needed to be removed, then it would already be refined.
The lubricants are for the various moving assemblies that are on a ship. Ships do have moving parts. Additives are for the same or for corrosion resistance or to replace any materials that are used up during normal operations.
You really don't think a fusion power plant would really use that much hydrogen, do you?
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
In regard to scooping the core book says 1d6 hours for any amount. Yes, there would be huge processing plants, but that is hardly a problem, the profits will be huge as well, even after paying the workers and maintaining the plant, yes, there will be risks, pen pushers and other expenses....Ishmael said:
But, the basic point remains, making 400Cr off processing fuel is a huge mark up, the processors are pretty efficient and reliable, prices will be lower as soon as someone sets up in competition.
Of course, the points about scooping would be a problem for the sale of unrefined fuel as well, but not reflected in the price.
Egil
Egil Skallagrimsson said:
Read it again - I'm talking about the supply of refined fuel in a system at the spaceport. You're not talking about the same thing.
Unless you're talking about the time taken to go fetch the fuel, in which case, it might take a very long time.
Let's assume that your system's gas giant is on the same orbit as Jupiter (5.6au from the sun) and your planet is on the same orbit as Earth (ie 1au). That's 6.6 au you need to travel (assuming a straight line, which would (of course) be impossible (unless you really want to try flying through the sun)) at worst and 4.6au at best. Assuming the best-case scenario, you'd be looking at around 4.5 to 5 days to transit between the gas giant and your port... assuming Jupiter's diameter (approx 143,000km), 100d would likely take another 15 hours... so we're up to 5.5 days to 6 days, allowing time for the skimming of fuel... If the gas giant was larger and the orbit similar to one of the others in our system (I used our closest) and if you calculated an eliptical path, yes you'd take around a week just to collect and process the fuel.
As opposed (using Earth's diameter) to a little over 4 hours for the 100d trip to the port.
I've assumed a M-Plant rating of 2g for these calculations - a 1g ship would take significantly longer (around 40% to 50% longer).
IF on the other hand, someone else goes to fetch it, they need to supply a ship and process the fuel on the way back... and these ships are going to be huge. If they need to find the parts to keep a fuel processor up and running, they need to pay for the upkeep of said ships and are likely to want larger crews (the unrefined fuel is going to be less explosive than pure hydrogen) and, as I said, if you want less downtime, you'll need sufficient refining equipment to refine on the way back to the planet with zero downtime. This is assuming that the system controls actually want bulk ships flying around full of hydrogen without some kind of military escort, of course (such a ship would make an excellent pirate catch or a terrorist bomb-ship). A ship of unrefined fuel would make a much less appealing target in comparison. The 4-hour trip for a tanker from out-system would be much less dangerous and much easier to escort in and out.
Lastly, consider the "convenience factor" - your ship has to waste the equivilent of a jump just fetching it's own fuel. Let's use the standard 200-ton "Beowulf" Free Trader. You have a Thrust 1 ship (so the Gas Giant trip is going to take around 8 days) with a cargo space of 88 tons and a fuel capacity of 22 tons. It's going to cost you (22x500=) 11,000Cr to refuel at the space port. Alternately, you can waste the week going to get your own and lose 1 week of endurance in the process (either at the start or the end of your trip - it's going to happen at some point). The Free Trader only has 2 weeks of endurance (as does the Far Trader) so you'd be arriving with next to nothing in the tanks for the 6-hour trip to the port - you might even (if you fuelled before visiting the port in the previous system) already have run out while in jump, so you'd arrive completely out of fuel (I'm assuming that, in addition to running the jump drive, you still need to power the life support and so on - even if not, you're dipping into the reserves a bit).
In addition, consider this: How hard, with 88 tons of cargo, is it to make 11k in profit? by my count, that's 125Cr per ton... Now consider how much you COULD have made over that 125Cr... because that's the potential loss you're making by not refuelling at the port.
Rust: remember that this will not just be per year, but over 100s of years and that it doesn't take much to damage the eco-system (ie you don't need to drain the lake, just knock the content a bit). You're probably right though - I'm talking perceptions, not necessarily fact. Also you do need to consider the size of the ships coming through... true a trader might need 22 tons, but a Heavy Freighter needs 216 tons and a Large Liner uses 246 tons and both would be visiting just as regularly (I imagine a few each week at a large port).
I think we all need to consider this: Fuel costs are not just for the small traders, but for the larger bulk ships too.
Well, some of the oxygen could be "bottled" and sold to star-Ishmael said:
ships and orbital facilities as life support consumable.
But, yes, there would be problems, although they would pro-
bably be negligible compared to all the other industrial pollu-
tion and environment exploitation. Except for arid worlds, the
problem would most likely have a very low priority.
Ishmael said:
For water, minuscule. Mostly O2. For what you get from a GG, the impurities have other industrial uses. So, not an issue.
Ishmael said:
Moving parts are VERY minimal. The metals are already corrosion resistant. Metalurgy moves forward 5 TL's from now. That almost as far as we are from ancient Egypt. And that has to do with Lhyd how?
Ishmael said:
Nope, in my game, most LHyd is used as coolant and expelled in space. Most Jump Lhyd is used for the bubble.
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
BFalcon, I understand your point about the delay of refueling at a gas giant, it could well add 5 days insystem to a thrust 1 vessel, so waste a lot of time.
However, what the canny free trader does is go straight to the starport, and while unloading etc fuel up with unrefined fuel at 100Cr per ton, say 22 tons at 2200Cr. He then runs his processor and takes just over a day to purify it. The alternative is to buy refined fuel at 11000Cr for the sam amount. The fuel puruifyer takes up one ton of space, but will save him 8800Cr everytime he does this.
Of course, in some planets he can help himself to free water etc, but buying unrefined fuel will be neccessary in most places to avoid upsetting the locals.
So refining companies go out of bussness quickly, or drop their charges, which they can do because their overheads are no where near enough to justify a 400Cr mark up on each ton.
Egil
However, what the canny free trader does is go straight to the starport, and while unloading etc fuel up with unrefined fuel at 100Cr per ton, say 22 tons at 2200Cr. He then runs his processor and takes just over a day to purify it. The alternative is to buy refined fuel at 11000Cr for the sam amount. The fuel puruifyer takes up one ton of space, but will save him 8800Cr everytime he does this.
Of course, in some planets he can help himself to free water etc, but buying unrefined fuel will be neccessary in most places to avoid upsetting the locals.
So refining companies go out of bussness quickly, or drop their charges, which they can do because their overheads are no where near enough to justify a 400Cr mark up on each ton.
Egil
Egil Skallagrimsson said:
We'll just have to disagree.
It will be profitable, yes, but due to costs involved and the low profit margin ( based on oil refinery economics ) where transport would be the greatest expense ( Hydrogen is hard to transport without losses or acceptable safety for the general public ), I don't think the markup is obscene when compared to other issues. Less volume would require a higher profit margin to be worthwhile.
Maybe I should compare the cost of 100 liters of water from my tap to 100 liters of distilled water....
DFW said:
Depends on where you get it from, I'd say - you'll have biological impurities (ie nutrients, microbes etc) and possibly some chemical impurities, if you get it from a freshwater location, but if you use seawater, you'd need to desalinate it first, while an unpurified version might still have salt in there (they might use some kind of industrial osmosis filter to remove the majority, but if they want to get a decent throughput, they'll need to keep the filter holes a decent size... and then there's wear and tear on the filters too).
I do suspect you're right though...
As for the hydrogen being used, yeah I suspect that it would take that much to run a fusion plant on the grounds that the power useage is pretty extreme in a lot of those ships and we have NO idea how much it would take to generate the jump for real...
As for heat loss, I used to figure that the heat was emitted by the hull and that heatpipes (as in the copper versions used in computing today) were used to dump the excess heat over the insulated hull in order to maintain the life support temperatures over such a large hull... I guess ejecting some hydrogen might be needed too, but I suspect that the heat loss over the hull would suffice...
BFalcon said:
Right. Take ship purif plants & maint costs as a model as they have to be able to do all that. Most impurities have uses. Salt, bio (fertilizer), etc.
BFalcon said:
From what I remember about maximum radiant ability of materials AND, what fusion produces heat wise, I'm not sure about it. I just looked at the fuel usage and basic math for energy release in fusion. There is WAY too much PP LHyd fuel usage. So, rather than rewrite those rules I just justified it is coolant.
Just an in game explanation is all. Not right or wrong.
Egil Skallagrimsson said:
I would expect all ports to insist that a) All ships not run their powerplants inside the port, unless docking or departing and b) No loitering inside the 100d territorial limit of the planet (most likely a navigational and piracy precaution). They don't want an accident inside their space station (a fully-fuelled ship is going to be a bomb, even if is only half full of explosive hydrogen - the rest will still super-heat and expand). They also don't want stationary ships sitting inside the 100d where other ships might not see them in time, although they might be less worried about this the further from the station you go). They also want to eliminate piracy... a pirate would either shadow a target or wait just inside the 100d limit for ships that look like they're full of cargo. Why just inside? Because outside is the limit of the Imperial Navy and they would prefer to deal with the System Navy if possible.
Also, don't forget that Free Traders are a very versatile class of ship. The Heavy Freighter (probably to reduce the overheads and maximise the profit/dt of the ship) doesn't have any fuel processing and I'm sure it's not the only trading ship that wouldn't bother. Just to run the figures on the Heavy Freighter, it would need 108,000 Cr to refuel one of those and it has 552 tons of cargo so in order to pay for fuel, it would need 195 Cr profit per ton of cargo... again, not a huge amount... whereas, it would take extra time to process all that fuel (during which the Starport authorities would almost certainly insist that it depart, rather than have up to 216 tons of highly volotile fuel sitting there).
I don't think the 500Cr per ton of refined fuel charges are really, therefore, aimed at the small trader, so much as the larger traders for whom time is money, as is cargo capacity.
Also, at up to 6,000Cr per day docking fees, would you really want to wait to process the fuel, even if they allowed you to?
Lastly, you need to consider it from their point of view - you have two choices - buy or do not buy. Nobody's forcing the small guy to buy their fuel. But the larger ships have 2 choices - risk a misjump or buy the refined (expensive) fuel. This might be why only the larger ports have refined fuel. Also it might be the case that the unrefined fuel is the one subsidised and that the processing might be the one that is making the companies who supply the fuels their money... Remember that in the 3I, these companies are still looking to make money and that the small traders are, in effect, fleas where these large bulk shipping firms are concerned. Why worry about what a few hundred Free Traders say when you have a similar number of ships that are 10x their bulk coming through per week, who don't quibble about the prices anywhere near as much.
One thing I learned in business - it's the private buyers who got upset about prices a lot more than the companies - if it costs them something, they'll just charge their customers more... and if you're shipping 500 tons of cargo and you have a 100,000Cr overhead, you just charge 200Cr more per ton of cargo... that's how bulk shipping works... in order to avoid this, do the shipping routes where there's no refined fuel on board and you can be sure that the companies never bother to go out there - there's not enough money to be made.
DFW: not disputing your comments, just pointing out that unrefined might have a fair few impurities and yeah, the ship-board systems would have to deal with them, so...
BFalcon said:
And, as the market is ALWAYS right, freight shipping costs will go up to cover those added expenses at starports that implement such rules. Thus, no net cost difference. EXCEPT for companies shipping their product out system... Thus, making them less competitive with systems companies..
Another thought - supplies of refined fuel may be limited on a Class A, for example, to what they'd normally expect to use in a 24-hour period, with all the rest being stored as (inert) water or similar for safety reasons. If you use refined fuel, they need to run a whole bank (more than your ship would hold), to replace the fuel in time for the next customer. I'm thinking a JIT system to minimise risk. The oxygen would be used for the ship and station's environmental systems recharging. Any stellar fuels would be refined, but into pure water for safe storage.
Would that make sense?
Would that make sense?
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
A "Refined on Demand" set up could work. You buy the raw fuel and rent time on the port's processors. Upshot: 5x price increase.
