Originally posted by J.C.D.:
What's the maximum number of people a beowulf, marava, suileman, etc, could support?
J.C.D.,
You can find that answer in GT:Starships. I believe it's the first actual official answer to that particular question that has been available in
Traveller.
One thing I thought of, and hang onto your hats for this because it'b brilliant, is that a ship may have nearly unlimited oxygen supplies thanks to it's fusion reactor.
It is brilliant. It is also as old as the idea of fusion itself and utterly impractical for anything but weirdest of situations.
I first ran across the idea close to
forty years ago in one volume of the
Tom Swift juvenile scientist series. Tom and his pals are stuck at their moon base for a while. Tom creates oxygen and food (
!!!!) for them using the process you so recently thought of. Believe me, if it was in a
Tom Swift book, the idea has been around a looonnnggg time.
Google "the curve of binding energy" next. You'll see how far 'up' that curve oxygen is and get some understanding of the energies involved in 'building' it atom by atom from hydrogen. Simply put, you'll need a regular fusion reactor to supply power to the fusion reactor that is making oxygen.
Fusion as a power source will work because the energy gained by fusing certain atoms is (hopefully) more than the energy used to force that fusion in the first place. Fission works as a power source in the same manner doing the opposite thing; you gain more energy from splitting atoms than it takes to force that splitting.
You'll notice that the curve of binding energy peaks near an iron isotope. Very roughly speaking, everything before that peak is 'easy' to fuse and everything after that peak is 'easy' to split. However, you'll also notice that the elements we use in fission power generation and the elements we will use in fusion power generation are about as far from the peak of the binding energy curve as you can get. The further from the peak, the less energy it takes to fuse to 'fiss'.
So, that's the rub. You can use a fusion reactor to make oxygen. Sadly, you cannot use a fusion reactor to make oxygen and electricity at the same time.
Of course, IYTU YMMV. And YM should V because it is YTU! We all make tweaks we feel are fun and neccessary to make our TUs work. You should too. It's one of the strengths of
Traveller.
Have fun,
Bill