Gravity Compression

[Spinward Scout]

Hi Everybody,

Thinking about cargo space the other day when I saw a commercial about the plastic storage bags that you can suck all the air out with a vacuum to make more space in your closet. Has anyone ever used gravity compression to add extra storage to your cargo space? Food can be compressed to the point before the chemical bonds break, but then you are looking at glop - basically a puree of the original food. Water can only be compressed to a certain point - I can't remember how hydrolics works offhand (I must have failed my roll), does anyone else know? Gravity compressed water - just add water? Nah, too silly. You can compress fabric - obviously from the commercial I saw. What else can you get away with compressing - without destroying it in the process?

Later,

Scout

 

[Uncle Bob]

Water is a liquid. Liquids are by definition "incompressible fluids", which is how hydraulics work. So water is Not Compressible, even by gavity.

(OK, Traveller does have collapsed matter armor, but such material does not retain structure, not even chemical...well maybe crystaline, sort of.)

Those bags work because clothes are mostly fabric, and fabric is mostly air trapped in a mesh of fibers. Take the air out of the fabric and you can collapse it with pressure.

 

[Richard Saunders]

Hello.
Everything in the know universe is compressable, it's what a black hole does (dont know if this is what you ment, right who am i kidding).
you can compress anything it depends on the amount of damage your willing to put up with.
Compressed food usualy dehydrated.
Not a lot of help but its another entry in the great soc race.
Bye

 

[womble]

You could successfully use artificial gravity to compress for transport anything that can be easily reassembled from having been hammered flat. So the list of commodities which would remain usable after having been transported under compression severe enough to save significant space is quite restricted.

 

[daryen]

And, at TL10+, one could also assume that anything that is "compressible" has already been compressed long before the middle-men (including our Free Traders) ever become involved.

 

[Spinward Scout]

I always thought that it was interesting with hydrolics that you can't compress water. What if you could? Traveller is basically speculative fiction. What if you could compress the hydrogen in your fuel tanks? The ship must already have some kind of equipment just to keep the hydrogen liquid. Chillers and such. Some elements change state when there is pressure added. Solid hydrogen would only exist at certain lowest temeratures. But solid hydrogen couldn't be used as fuel, could it?

Wondering about the strangeness of the Universe,

Scout

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Water - and other liquids - are indeed compressible. If they weren't, the sea level would be several metres higher than it is (since it's being compressed at the high pressures at the seafloor). They're only considered 'incompressible' at the pressures we tend to deal with them at - when you get up to a few hundred or thousand atmospheres, the compressibility becomes much more important. (the bulk modulus for water is something like 3 GPa)

LHyd is also compressible - it's certainly highly compressed in the interiors of planets like Jupiter (in fact, it gets so compressed there that it starts acting like a liquid metal).

 

[vegascat]

A possible cheap and easy way to carry water at less than 1 ton/M cubed.
Start with Hydrogen gas and pure O2. Chill them down supercold until they solidify as snow. Mix in a 2 to 1 ratio and compress into ice.This is not water ice at this point, but a highly combustable fuel mix that will burn in a generator with a pure water exhaust.

Does anyone know what the density is for supercold Oxygen or Hydrogen compressed into ice?