Is the hydrogen used by ships in ED stored in a liquid or gas state in the fuel tank?
Is ship fuel in Elite Dangerous liquid or gas
- Thread starter cmdr_kylie
- Start date
I don't know, but considering the amount of energy a ton of fuel contains, i'd say it's liquid, or maybe some exotic state.
I'd have to imagine it's stored in an imaginary state. Considering 1 ton of liquid hydrogen is like 3800 gallons in volume ...it would mean our ships have large swimming pool's of fuel on them. Either under tremendous pressure or extreme cold.
just go with imaginary state. ..
Compressed gas would be more practical than liquid as the latter would necessitate storage at <33 K.
Beats another thread complaining about Odyssey.
Why not?
Metallic hydrogen. It's stacked just behind the Galactic Geographic mags in the toilets. Do you guys never walk around your ships at all 
However it's stored, a tonne of Hydrogen will weigh the same & have the same energy potential (if not density)
It's compressed with handwavium. Even if you froze it solid you'd have a hard time squeezing a small fraction of a ton into a cargo container.
But then that begs the question of why the explosion of a destroyed ship is so small.
Because it’s never been stated by FD. Therefore there will never be an answer. And this game only works by “breaking laws” of physics as we know them so the answer could very well be anything you want. But mostly because it doesn’t make any difference.
normal use of hydrogen is gas
gas is compressed and becomes a liquid.
weight in this case would be weight of the compressed gas aka liquid. ergo buy by the ton
in use its would be pressure ratings but amount available would still be ton or fractions of. for the most part is driven by the industries that use it.
IRL it is the same but different manufacturers will use volume aka litre or gallon whatever. while some simply use weight aka tons or whatever.
often dependent on container type
all of them will actually have pressure ratings, flow ratings volume ratings.
like in a car a litre of nitrous might be used for boosting. liquid in the can, gas out the tube at pressure rating. if a volume gauge is present it is simply a poor
mans fuel gauge because you can run out of pressure that makes it useful and still have gas in the container, to use it though you have to re-compress, either by use of a pump or like butane for a lighter, squish the can.
you can buy it in various size cans and at various PSI per container. the larger usually being the ones more capable to have higher pressure ratings.
physical limitations of the container due to size but nowadays more dependent on what the container is made of and how its built.
gas is compressed and becomes a liquid.
weight in this case would be weight of the compressed gas aka liquid. ergo buy by the ton
in use its would be pressure ratings but amount available would still be ton or fractions of. for the most part is driven by the industries that use it.
IRL it is the same but different manufacturers will use volume aka litre or gallon whatever. while some simply use weight aka tons or whatever.
often dependent on container type
all of them will actually have pressure ratings, flow ratings volume ratings.
like in a car a litre of nitrous might be used for boosting. liquid in the can, gas out the tube at pressure rating. if a volume gauge is present it is simply a poor
mans fuel gauge because you can run out of pressure that makes it useful and still have gas in the container, to use it though you have to re-compress, either by use of a pump or like butane for a lighter, squish the can.
you can buy it in various size cans and at various PSI per container. the larger usually being the ones more capable to have higher pressure ratings.
physical limitations of the container due to size but nowadays more dependent on what the container is made of and how its built.
It's in a state ...
It's stored in a tank with a pole in the middle and dances around it in an exotic way.
gaseous fuel are transported in liquid state
This makes me wonder how the fuel scoop actually works. Collect enough Hydrogen and then cool it down and compress it? That alone would take a huge amount of energy.
It was kind of a jokeHowever it's stored, a tonne of Hydrogen will weigh the same & have the same energy potential (if not density)
Fuel scoops do take up a reasonable amount of the power budget on a ship, but it becomes tricky to work out what actually represents a huge quantity of power when you're talking about the output of a fusion reactor (our powerplants).
You are right though. Hydrogen has a very high specific heat capacity so it won't want to cool down too quickly and this would be an issue for the internals of our ships regardless of what they were made of. This is probably why gas giants would represent a better solution if we were being realistic about it. It would add some interesting risk to exploring as well if you needed planets and not stars to scoop from as you wouldn't know that you had a place to refuel on the move before you jumped. That's before you consider whether it was in a convenient place in the system to get to.
Whether the majority of players would consider this better for gameplay is another matter though.
I'd go with metallic hydrogen.
