Low Tech vs Interstellar societies...

[atpollard]

Something ELSE has to generate the electricity that is needed for BOTH use cases.

Hydrogen is not created from electricity … it comes from chemical manipulation of OIL (just as most Elecltricity is generated from fossil fuels). So both start out as 100 watts of “coal/oil/natural gas”, but the Electric Car ignores the 66% energy loss generating electricity while the Hydrogen Car is charged for the 25% loss in generating the Hydrogen.

That is an deliberately dishonest comparison.

 

[McPerth]

Think about Atmosphere: A-C type worlds with Fluid Oceans that are not composed of H2O, but from other molecular substances.

Well, I guess much will depend on what are those fluid oceans made of. Hydrogen may be taken from other soruces than water, for what I know...

And, in any case, I guess in those not-friendly worlds most people live in domes, and personal transport is less needed than mass transport, where pure electrical means are less an issue, so I mostly think on friendly ones, where people roams free on the atmosphere with personal (utilitarian) means.

Hydrogen is NOT quick to refuel. It's also ridiculously expensive (in the real world).
Take your usual petroleum fuel price and multiply it by 6-10x (or more!) and that's the typical hydrogen refueling station price.

But, as you say yourlef above in the post, with ample and cheap power and better superdense materials for storage, this will no longer be the case.

Zaragoza, Spain you say?

Yes

You no longer need to make an overnight stay in Zaragoza at a (low power) destination charger before completing your road trip between Barcelona and Madrid. Simply plan for a 30 minutes (or less) charging session at the Supercharger station (get out of the vehicle, stretch your legs, use the water closet, get a drink, etc.) before resuming your journey. So ... 6-8 hours in an electric vehicle too.

Well, you can really have a good lunch in Zaragoza, as food is good there ...

Nonetheless, unless this has also improved, those quick charges burn the batteries quite faster than slow ones, and they are the most expensive part of your car...

Fuel Cells have their niche roles, including Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) in non-nuclear power submarines(!) while submerged ... but they aren't a panacea and they aren't "best in slot" for every single use case where you need power. However, those use cases tend to be in "challenging environments" (such as in space or submerged in the ocean) rather than in terrestrial vehicles (cars, busses, trains, etc.).

Well, I see it the opposite way: once those problems are solved, fuel cells are the default for small power plants (car, motorcycle, small to medium planes, etc.) in friendly planets, while batteries are the alternative when they may have problems (including non-friendly plantets, though they will use colosed environments and so less such personal transport). Both have issues, but I see easier to solve and probably cheaper...

By the way, may I ask you a favor? Try to avoid using so many acronyms, as they make reading it slower for those of us not used to them (not to tell if English is not your native language, as it's my case).

 

[Spinward Flow]

Hydrogen is not created from electricity … it comes from chemical manipulation of OIL (just as most Elecltricity is generated from fossil fuels). So both start out as 100 watts of “coal/oil/natural gas”, but the Electric Car ignores the 66% energy loss generating electricity while the Hydrogen Car is charged for the 25% loss in generating the Hydrogen.

That is an deliberately dishonest comparison.

I see that there is a rather marked lack of education and knowledge on the subject of hydrogen engineering among our posters in this thread, to a degree that is rather worrisome.

Therefore, I'm assigning some "homework" to anyone who wants to be Better Informed™ about the topic.

But, as you say yourlef above in the post, with ample and cheap power and better superdense materials for storage, this will no longer be the case.

With "enough high tech" you can solve almost any problem.
The trouble is that right now (in the real world) the necessary technology/engineering prowess to "master" the hydrogen fuel challenge has not been reliably accomplished. As evidence, I offer recent NASA issues with hydrogen leaks causing delays in multiple launches (not just the current one for Artemis 2 that got delayed). Hydrogen, especially liquid hydrogen, really doesn't want to stay confined inside of containers.



Be kind of hilarious if the most reliable method to "contain" hydrogen wasn't a (made of matter) pressure vessel that atomic hydrogen LOVES to permeate through ... but instead what you need is a "gravitic bottle" that uses (artificial) gravitic fields to confine hydrogen (much more safely) within a container/tankage volume at an acceptable level of long term reliability.

Well, you can really have a good lunch in Zaragoza, as food is good there ...

It's Spain.
By definition, the food is going to be better there than almost anywhere that is an English speaking country.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Nonetheless, unless this has also improved, those quick charges burn the batteries quite faster than slow ones, and they are the most expensive part of your car...

As I said before, your information/knowledge on this subject is out of date.

With modern (last 5 years?) battery management systems, quick charging no longer imposes a "penalty" on battery life ... which is basically what you're asserting.

OLDER battery pack systems, especially those which lacked a battery management system (heating, cooling, power load balancing, the whole thing) or are unable to update their battery management system (for conversational purposes, that means every vehicle company except Tesla) were either not designed to handle fast charging or otherwise were unable to accept power at fast charging speeds.

Current "new" vehicles are being built with battery management systems already integrated which permit incredibly fast charging speeds. In fact, the Chinese battery manufacturers and car companies are racing ahead to develop and field faster and faster charging speeds without worrying about the economic tradeoffs involved in that race. As evidence for this assertion, I'll cite these references which were posted in the past week:

And as for the question of "how soon will autonomous driving become a reality?" ... well ... the answer is ... SOON™ ...

 

[McPerth]

The trouble is that right now (in the real world)

I trust you knowledge in current real world, but here we're also talking about Travller universe, and that's what I mean when I talk about superdense materials and cheap power to produce Hydrogen...

As I said before, your information/knowledge on this subject is out of date.

I already warned you this might be the case...

With modern (last 5 years?) battery management systems, quick charging no longer imposes a "penalty" on battery life ... which is basically what you're asserting.

And yet, I'm warned by people who (unlike me) claims to know about the issue not to recharge batteries too often if I want them to last...

And as for the question of "how soon will autonomous driving become a reality?" ... well ... the answer is ... SOON™ ...

From the engineering point of view, maybe, from the legal one, I'm not so sure...

 

[Enoki]

An alternative to hydrogen for portable fuel is ammonia, specifically anhydrous ammonia. In terms of Traveller, you can get this almost directly from many gas giants as it's already present in the atmosphere. That means it takes little energy other than to collect and filter it to make it into a fuel.

 

[King Midas]

If you look at that gray tractor, "none" of those parts can be made locally. They all need specialty manufacturing. No one is going to pound any of those parts out at a blacksmith.

Nobody builds carburetors in their garage (not those types of garages). Can someone mate a foreign carburetor salvaged from another machine? Oh, for sure (with obvious caveats). That's a different problem. But making one out of raw materials, not so much. That requires specialty manufacturing not just for the carb body, but for the small parts, the jets, the springs. About the only thing that might be more locally available is the gaskets if you can find some suitable gasket material (but those also require specialty manufacturing -- tree bark likely won't work).

You might be able to make one with foundry that can cast the body, then machine out the holes and such, but even that it likely above a typical machinist.

Then, of course, there's the tubing...

Showing my age here. I saw this when it was first broadcast. We all know gaskets are easily available from common kitchen supplies:

 

[Black Vulmea]

hate to jump in, but:

Technological level also indicates the general ability of local technology to repair or maintain items which have failed or malfunctioned.

reading between the lines, that could support the supposition of higher TL around the port. It does not say absolute ability. Why I like the latter world building stuff (outside of CT so not directly applicable) where TLs for specific industries can vary a bit.

Anyway, I feel the use of general implies there can be some variety.

Am I the only person here who uses extended TLs from DGP's Grand Census?

 

[kilemall]

I see that there is a rather marked lack of education and knowledge on the subject of hydrogen engineering among our posters in this thread, to a degree that is rather worrisome.

Therefore, I'm assigning some "homework" to anyone who wants to be Better Informed™ about the topic.

With "enough high tech" you can solve almost any problem.
The trouble is that right now (in the real world) the necessary technology/engineering prowess to "master" the hydrogen fuel challenge has not been reliably accomplished. As evidence, I offer recent NASA issues with hydrogen leaks causing delays in multiple launches (not just the current one for Artemis 2 that got delayed). Hydrogen, especially liquid hydrogen, really doesn't want to stay confined inside of containers.



Be kind of hilarious if the most reliable method to "contain" hydrogen wasn't a (made of matter) pressure vessel that atomic hydrogen LOVES to permeate through ... but instead what you need is a "gravitic bottle" that uses (artificial) gravitic fields to confine hydrogen (much more safely) within a container/tankage volume at an acceptable level of long term reliability.

It's Spain.
By definition, the food is going to be better there than almost anywhere that is an English speaking country.

It’s probably metallic hydrogen, which requires gravitics in terms of pressure creation not force field.

 

[Condottiere]

In terms of Traveller, once you have basic fusion reactors, that covers the the needs for most of civilized practices.

What's probably an issue, would be electricity distribution to rural areas, and transportation.

The way I see it, it's more a case of trying to fuel the mobile vehicles, with something that's affordable, and relatively efficient.

 

[kilemall]

I trust you knowledge in current real world, but here we're also talking about Travller universe, and that's what I mean when I talk about superdense materials and cheap power to produce Hydrogen...



I already warned you this might be the case...



And yet, I'm warned by people who (unlike me) claims to know about the issue not to recharge batteries too often if I want them to last...



From the engineering point of view, maybe, from the legal one, I'm not so sure...

I’ve already driven next to a Waymo car in Dallas this past week, so not a next decade thing.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I trust you knowledge in current real world, but here we're also talking about Travller universe, and that's what I mean when I talk about superdense materials and cheap power to produce Hydrogen...

Fusion power ... and all of the high technology Stuffs™ that fusion power will both need and make possible ... will make hydrogen storage (and refinement from a variety of feedstock sources) a "solved problem" in engineering terms.

As I said before, your information/knowledge on this subject is out of date.

I already warned you this might be the case...

True.
Hence why I'm citing sources that I've used to learn about topics in order to share what I know with persons (like yourself) who don't know these things yet.

And yet, I'm warned by people who (unlike me) claims to know about the issue not to recharge batteries too often if I want them to last...

That is true but also wildly misleading.
There was a time when it was true (a decade or more ago) ... but it's no longer true.

Easiest analogy that I can think of (in petroleum fueled car terms) is that there was an era during which lead (atomic symbol: Pb) was a fuel additive to octane gasoline, used to reduce engine knock and ping (unwanted combustion behaviors). Then later, unleaded octane fuels were developed and internal combustion engines were redesigned for the new fuel mixture that omitted lead additives.

Older engines "needed" to use fuel with lead added to it ... until the newer unleaded fuel engines did not need lead in the fuel mix.

It's a bit like that, in analogy terms, with battery packs for electrified vehicles.
Older battery pack designs couldn't use fast charging ... until Tesla developed the North American Charging Standard (NACS) ... which every competitor trashed at first, but which is now becoming the global standard after every competitor failed to come up with something better (and most of the time developed "built by committee" garbage that couldn't hope to compete). So the competing Common Charging Standard (CCS) is in decline, because more and more vehicle manufacturers are licensing NACS charging port infrastructure from Tesla so their vehicles will be compatible with the Tesla Supercharger Network (that no competitors wanted to share in the build out cost for, leaving Tesla with a temporary monopoly on the best fast charger infrastructure deployment program).

As the fast charger infrastructure iterated and improved (v1, v2, v3, v4 ...), the fast charging battery management systems built into vehicles got better in order to keep pace with the increasingly sophisticated fast charging capabilities of public infrastructure.

Today, basically any Tesla and/or Chinese manufactured electric vehicle can handle fast charging without significant battery life degradation. There are "old" before Model S Tesla cars with 2170 Panasonic battery cells in them that have driven over 300,000km on their original battery packs (no replacement needed).

Here's just one example ...

An alternative to hydrogen for portable fuel is ammonia, specifically anhydrous ammonia. In terms of Traveller, you can get this almost directly from many gas giants as it's already present in the atmosphere. That means it takes little energy other than to collect and filter it to make it into a fuel.

At the risk of repeating what I've already posted ... a video from 5 years ago ...

It’s probably metallic hydrogen, which requires gravitics in terms of pressure creation not force field.

True ... but ...
Traveller is "unfortunately specific" about fuel tankage for small/big craft powered by fusion being ... liquid hydrogen.
Liquid hydrogen density: 70.85 kg/m³ (at 20 K), a relative density of just 0.07
Metallic hydrogen density: research is ongoing, but probably 10x the density of (mere, cryogenic) liquid hydrogen when compressed into a liquid metal form at high pressures (because metals can have a liquid phase state)

 

[whartung]

Once you have fusion, cheap, ubiquitous, reliable fusion, there's no going back. Once the transition is complete, that's core infrastructure.

If you're settling a new world, you bring it with you. Having a few megawatts handy is an absolute game changer.

Whatever problems, say, batteries may bring, are worth it since they can be charged "for free". Deal with it, plan around it. They're not an add on, again, its core infrastructure.

Ground vehicles have little value once grav shows up. The time, money, resources it takes to carve roads are not worth it when grav gets you anywhere you want.

These are not pioneers in covered wagons going to these places. They're, typically, well funded, well capitalized commercial concerns initially. Time is money, they'll pay for the off the shelf grav vehicles. Charged off of fusion power.

Traffic control is not an issue. Why? Because its already a solved problem. Small enough population, you use the Mark 1 eyeball. Or the auto pilot flying computer with sensors to not hit things.

Later, if necessary, you install an OFF THE SHELF traffic control system. The grav vehicles likely are already equipped to be plugged into such a system.

Because in the end, this is all just a capital expense, a cost of doing business. The VAST ABUNDANCE of planetary resources dwarfs any ancillary infrastructure costs like this. It has to be lucrative, otherwise the companies won't do it.

How do people afford this? Grav cars and what not? The companies pay them salaries to afford it. That's how they get the workers. If you have no social "safety net", then folks need to live in places, they need to pay for food, supplies, children, education, save for retirement, they need salaries that let them do that. Otherwise the people don't show up to work on your shiny new planet that you're in the process of strip mining.

If you stop pointing guns at people, in general, the Market(tm), in the large, mostly works -- despite the histories of abuses and what not, there's more general success than not.