Zan replied to me: > I think that you could design a special type of ship for high pressure > gas giant operations. As a quick idea, give it two hulls. Inside the > outer hull, put equipment that is dedicated to gathering and liquefying > the incoming hydrogen. > > In fact I doubt if gaseous hydrogen will penetrate a layer of liquid > hydrogen, so keep the outer hull filled with the liquid and dedicate the > equipment to keeping it chilled and under pressure.
Hello Zan, that sounds like trying to get a free lunch -- wouldn't that liquid hydrogen tank have losses from diffusion, too? (There is the question how starships store hydrogen, of course. A very efficient seal at TL9?) > These dedicated ship types could serve as military defense forces. Deep > in the atmosphere they'd be difficult to attack. They could also be > mining some exotic material. I don't know if they could survive deep > enough to get to the theoretical metallic hydrogen core, but that would > be interesting and could maybe be a high-TL plot element. I see combat ships at higher altitudes than dedicated research vessels. They have to get up for combat, and if they are too specialized for low altitude, they can't compete. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
