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Ice ball stations

kafka47

kafka47

SOC-14 5K
Marquis
Murph raised an interesting point about much space between systems.

I believe that it TNE that raised the ideal of callibration points. Redirected comets and whatnot between systems to serve as refuelling points. Has anyone done anything more interesting than this. My experience with Naval stations (Kronstadt & San Diego) seem to make think they are rather boring places. Filled with bureaucrats and bunk style lodging. What would Naval stations be like in the 3I?
 
How would you get a comet to an area that would serve as a station? You'd have to do it sublight, then you'd need to have a way of getting it to stay where it was put so it wouldn't drift. I'd imagine most pilots wouldn't be too chuffed at the thought of jumping into nowhere to stop at a refuelling station.
 
Why would you need to get it to stay put? After all, planets don't stay put very well when I set them in place. Just make sure it's a comet in a predictible and non-degenerating (is that a word?) orbit around the sun. It'd also be pretty good if it stayed a bit back from the sun too, would be pretty annoying for your multi-billion cred installation to melt. Halley's comet is a decent example. It's got a predictible orbit, it's kinda far out if you want to use it as a transit point in-sys, but it would still be a (actually, now that I think of it) crappy one since it goes way too far out. Just get a closer one.

RV
 
Here's my 2credits.

Take the iceball and fly it in system. Shield it with a couple of kilometers (square) of microthin reflective sheeting.

Take it in behind a decent sized habitable planet, keep it about ten diameters out, and set it in orbit in the permanent darkside of that world, within the umbra so it's always in shadow. That way, you can keep it near enough to the ship routes to be useful and it won't melt.

I'd imagine most worlds without large amounts of water on surface (heck, most worlds anyway) would keep a few billion metric tonnes worth of ice at this stable orbit (L4? L5) for storage purposes.

Think of it as an orbital icebox.
 
As for between system locations- most systems have Oort clouds pretty far out, and Kulper Belts too (I think the KB limit can be almost a light-year out).

You'd have to jump to a decent sized iceball up to a light-year out to refuel, which wouldn't extend your range too much, really. And as for jump-towing more ice, wow. Maybe military/naval ships could be designed for such work, but you'd be trying to move billions of tons of mass, and keep it in a jump field.
 
To be at all useful you'd need to move the comet from a system to empty space, preferably in the middle of a lot of empty space to make it worthwhile. Say 3 parsecs from the nearest system. That's over 9.6 light years.
Now if you can suggest to me how you're going to get billions of tons of comet out there then I'm listening, as I wouldn't have thought anyone would like the idea of jumping into places like these to search for a suitable comet, you'd definitely have more luck finding a needle in a country full of haystacks.
 
I seem to remember a comet in the great rift used as a secret refueling station. Don't have my material here or I could look it up.

------------------------------
In the end, Murphy will rule
 
I had an adventure published in SJG's online JTAS called "The Pirates of Caledonia", basically I came up with the adventure when trying to work out how to set up a deep-space calibration point.

The pirates had one "legitimate" fat trader with a collapseable tank in the hold that would jump to a system that had an ice-capped planet, fill the tank with fuel, jump out to a spot in deep space and dump it, making regular trips until there was enough fuel for the raiders, who would use it to jump into one of the systems they raided. They would fill their tanks at the gas giant, make a raid and jump away. But, when the navy tried to track them down they could not be found in any system within 2 jumps.

My thought was that the pirates simply dumped the fuel into space. There was no reason it was going anywhere. But the editors changed it to free-floating fuel tanks.

Having a tanker supply your "calibration point" works at jump-1. I think it would be really hard at Jump 3 or 4, and completely impossible at jump 5 or 6.
 
I think that, if you had powerful enough sensors/telescopes/etc, you might be able to detect either large icy comets, or more likely, rogue/wandering gas giants/brown dwarfs between star systems. Some might be discovered by accident when the gravity well forces a ship out of jump, etc.

Either way, such locations would be commercial or military goldmines, and the location of such a natural refueling point could be something that people might get killed over...

*thinks about adventure based upon this...*
 
Originally posted by DrSkull:
My thought was that the pirates simply dumped the fuel into space. There was no reason it was going anywhere. But the editors changed it to free-floating fuel tanks.
Click to expand...
I'd say the editors made a good call on that. In a vacuum, liquid hydrogen fuel simply "dumped" into space would evaporate almost immediately.

Having a tanker supply your "calibration point" works at jump-1. I think it would be really hard at Jump 3 or 4, and completely impossible at jump 5 or 6.
Click to expand...
I think it can be made to work if the tanker brings fuel in detachable external tanks, and uses drop tanks on the outbound leg. You won't deliver much in n trip, but you can build up a stockpile with repeated sorties.
 
Originally posted by BenBell:
Now if you can suggest to me how you're going to get billions of tons of comet out there then I'm listening, as I wouldn't have thought anyone would like the idea of jumping into places like these to search for a suitable comet, you'd definitely have more luck finding a needle in a country full of haystacks.
Click to expand...
Depending upon who you ask and what numbers are used, a best guess estimate would be between 2 and 2000 comets in any given empty hex.

As you say, finding them may be difficult, but it's not impossible given the highly advanced sensors available. If you're willing to take the time, send a high powered laser pulse through the space in question and wait for the return pulse (like radar). Time for the return pulse may be several years, but if you've got nothing better to do (like the IISS)...

IMTU, using deep space Ice asteroids as refuling bases is dangerous because the variablility on the jump drive is larger than the 100 diameter limit on a small body. While the ship won't pop out of Jump Space inside a solid object, as the target gets smaller, the probablity grows the ship appears at the surface of the body and immediately smash into it. You can probably avoid this by carefully plotting the comets velocity and rotation, your relative velocity, and hoping that when you come out of jump space, your real space vectors is away from comet.
 
Hello Dave Nelson,

This is my first post on TravellerRPG, but I have started posting on TML and have been moderately acrive on the JTAS discussion boards.

After reading all of the later posts that replied to the following portion of your post:

"Having a tanker supply your "calibration point"
works at jump-1. I think it would be really hard
at Jump 3 or 4, and completely impossible at jump
5 or 6."

My idea is similar to a couple already described.
I used a relay of ships to carry fuel to certain
locations or "Calibration points." The first two tankers jumped to a calibration point and dumped specially designed fuel tanks. The next tanker or
tankers hit the first point at which one
refuelled and hit the next point. One or two of
the original tankers refueled and headed back to
the system to get more fuel. I was eventually
able to have fuel at the maximum jump range. Of
course this took time, but when the Task Force
dropped in from on a pirate base from an
unexpected direction the fight was very short.
 
Originally posted by Thomas Rux:
Hello Dave Nelson,

This is my first post on TravellerRPG, but I have started posting on TML and have been moderately acrive on the JTAS discussion boards.

After reading all of the later posts that replied to the following portion of your post:

"Having a tanker supply your "calibration point"
works at jump-1. I think it would be really hard
at Jump 3 or 4, and completely impossible at jump
5 or 6."

My idea is similar to a couple already described.
I used a relay of ships to carry fuel to certain
locations or "Calibration points." The first two tankers jumped to a calibration point and dumped specially designed fuel tanks. The next tanker or
tankers hit the first point at which one
refuelled and hit the next point. One or two of
the original tankers refueled and headed back to
the system to get more fuel. I was eventually
able to have fuel at the maximum jump range. Of
course this took time, but when the Task Force
dropped in from on a pirate base from an
unexpected direction the fight was very short.
Click to expand...
Welcome Aboard! Glad to see you over here! :cool:


If you remember the 500k dton Starship contest on JTAS I designed a mobile base that would jump to deep space hex and function as a fuel dump and repair depot. Once it was in place, tankers would occasionally refuel from a local system.

The concept of a deep space depot was to allow the jump 2 task force to enter the target system while still capable of jumping out without refueling.
 
Originally posted by tjoneslo:
Depending upon who you ask and what numbers are used, a best guess estimate would be between 2 and 2000 comets in any given empty hex.

As you say, finding them may be difficult, but it's not impossible given the highly advanced sensors available.
Click to expand...
This is one of the places where the Traveller universe and the unfortunately Real Universe parts way. It is quite clear from the history of the Traveller universe that however many dark icy bodies there may be in your average empty hex, finding them is well-nigh impossible. If this was not the case, the rifts wouldn't be the barriers they are and many routes would be quite different (For instance, a deep space fuel station in one of the hexes next to Grant/Jewell would cut several weeks off the X-boat route from Regina to Jewell).

Hans
 
I am not certain if this is where we part company, I just read on the CNN website that there are possibly millions of bodies that have escaped the Ort's Cloud and Voyager is busy sending signals back to scan the extent of medium.

Surely, it would be not be too far off that in the far future, that it would be possible to deflect a large comet into a far Solar orbit. And, wouldn't be possible to put a small refining station. Sure heat would be a problem, but, I am sure our fellow Travellers who have been on Arctic or Antarctic duty for their Wet Navies or a Division of the Planetary army can testify... it ain't fun...

Haven said that I do take exception to the density of Earth-like planets that populate any given sector. My preference would be for inhospitale planets and weird environments. Such as colonies that mine gas giants or those that would be located on dead worlds. As I cannot suspend belief that the Ancients terraformed that many worlds...
 
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