On 2/11/2016 2:46 PM, Bruce  Johnson wrote:
>
>> On Feb 11, 2016, at 3:00 PM, xxxxxx@comcast.net wrote:
>>
>> Hi Bruce Johnson,
>>
>> Marc Miller's article in JTAS 24 did not cover how the refined liquid hydrogen was used. From CT LBB 2 1977 my take was that the jump drive's fusion power plant used the fuel. When CT LBB 5 1979, CT LBB 5 1980, CT LBB 2 1977/1981 and the JTAS 24 article in 1985 came out I have no clue why the jump fuel has to be refined since the maneuver drive does not care as long as the power plant provides the power.
>
> These are the inconsistencies that have lead to long back&forth discussions about this stuff here. Fundamentally it doesn’t make sense (particularly in light of the mentions of "solar and antimatter-‘fuelled’” jump drives) that:
>
> 1- so MUCH fuel is fused, the amount of energy is staggering
> 2- Why a separate fusion drive is needed
> 3- Why ‘un-refined’ fuel makes the ship more likely to misjump.
> 4- Why fuel is related to the volume of the ship, rather than the mass.
>
> However, using very pure mono-molecular H2 as a buffer between the N-space of the ship and J-space makes all of the above make a great deal more sense:
>
> 1- the drive doesn’t generate THAT much energy, it’s just that the jump capacitors are needed to dump it into the grid all at once.
> 2- the separate plant is eliminated, the regular ship’s power plant is used by the J-drive, which is supported in early rule sets
> 3- Impurities alter the buffering capability of the H2 shield
> 4- the volume of the ship determines the volume of buffer needed.

And all of this is a prime example of what happens when people who
actually know their subjects sit down and work the numbers and consider
the implications for stuff that Marc Miller basically pulled out of his
ass back in '77.

(To be fair, that was what /everyone/ was doing back then in terms of
game design and world building... and, for that matter, it's still
mostly true.  Most games [and other fictional settings] just don't hold
up to close scrutiny, let alone decades of it.  Tolkien being one of the
rare exceptions, and that's because he was pretty much one of us, if not
the prototype.)

--
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Kelly St. Clair
xxxxxx@efn.org