Difference between revisions of "Moria CHONics"

Revision as of 14:24, 27 August 2012

Moria CHONics is the main mobile part of the Morian faction that is otherwise based on Luna, as Moria Mining. "CHON" is the basis for organic life – the chemical symbols for Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen.

Ammonium Nitrate - Solid Air.

Created by Ace Dreamer.

CHON and Biomass

If you've got plenty of power, in the form of solar energy, and you're prepared to accept low yields, then going from CHON to organic material doesn't require a complete chemical industry. You might like to look at the 1950s experiments into the origin of life from the 'primordial soup':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment

Venus is short of hydrogen, Luna is short of carbon and nitrogen, mixed asteroids seem to have most of what you want, without the pain of hauling it out of a gravity well. Part of the economy of Fenspace is getting the right chemical elements to the right place. Ammonia may be a useful feedstock, though it's nasty stuff. Ammonium nitrate, plus some carbon to soak up the balance, say as hydrocarbons (or ethanol?), is pretty well solid oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere.

Solid CO2 from Venus to Saturn's moon Titan, ammonium nitrate and carbon goes to Luna, ammonium nitrate and minerals go from Luna to Venus. Ammonium nitrate and carbon, gives you solid CHON, sold all over the Solar System.

As for biomass, plants quickly provide it. Just give them an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, with trace carbon dioxide, water, a few trace minerals, and water. Viola!

If you want to cheat, there're quite a few handwavium recycling set-ups, that take waste carbon dioxide and sewage and provide you with air, water and stuff a human can live on. 'Dole Yeast' is a biological route to the 'food' side of the same. Though after a while you'll kill for a bacon sandwich (or the vegetarian equivalent – marmite/vegemite?).

CHON Trade

Just how big could you build an Air Freighter? You'd want to ship as much as possible... (Economies of scale.) And, the ship would have to have its own chemical plant and refrigeration on board.

A ship plying the CHON triangle - carbon dioxide ice from Venus, processed with nitrogen from Titan into solid ammonium nitrate, to Luna for processed Moon rock, NH4NO3 and rock to Venus.

But, Venus just wants hydrogen. So, it is carrying solids, some refrigerated.

The idea is that nitrogen (and some methane) from Titan is processed with the solid carbon dioxide into NH4NO3. So, no liquid nitrogen required. Considerable carbon is carried on the Titan-to-Lunar leg.

Venus wants the NH4NO3 to make the hydrogen (and the Moon rock), Titan is the source for the nitrogen and hydrogen (and might like some goods from Venus), Luna wants the nitrogen and the carbon. Luna sells the NH4NO3 all across the system. Moving (gas or liquid) hydrogen around is far too much like hard work, so, you compromise, and move liquid methane.

Family Ships

If you want an extended family on a ship that gives a practical minimum size. Which is good, as the CHON trade works best if you are shipping around at least kilo-tonnes.

If you provide good living space for up to twenty-five people, say about fifty cubic meters each, including their contribution to shared areas, and you assume the same average density as water for the living areas, with infrastructure (engines, life support, etc.) doubling the volume, that is about 2.5ktn or 2.5k cubic metres.

If you say that is standard, and the small ships only carry ten times that as cargo, they have 25ktn of cargo, the large ships 250ktn, the immense ships 2.5Mtn. A cubic metre of water (S.G. 1) has a mass of a tonne.

Solid CO2, dry ice, has a specific gravity of about 1.5, ammonium nitrate about 0.75, carbon (graphite) about 2, liquid methane about 0.4. Moon rock has a specific gravity about 4. Say the containers add ten percent to the mass and have the same density as water.

You now have the information needed to estimate the volume of various ships, and from that their size.

Fenspace Oil

You might ask, why does Fenspace need oil? It can make just about anything organic it needs from CHON, with a few trace minerals. Quite a few Fenspace vehicles need oil or oil-derived materials to run, even though they've been waved. There are also a lot of chemical processes that are designed to start from oil, or oil products. Petroleum/gasoline is also a very high energy density chemical storage medium (given oxygen).

Given (liquid) methane you can make oil. In the process you get spare hydrogen, which is pretty uncommon off-Earth, in the Inner System, as anything but the occasional water ice. Venus really needs hydrogen, as they have a ready source in their atmosphere of the rest of CHON.

Using CHON

Moria CHONics sells their product Solid Air throughout Fenspace, though mainly through distributors. They also give away, free, a rugged fist-sized handwavium Air Maker with all non-trivial first purchases.

An Air Maker can completely replace eight cubic metres (about 90 cubic feet) of atmosphere using about 12.5kg of 'Solid Air', from hard vacuum, in less than three minutes. An 'emergency fill' can provide that volume with a survivable (oxygen-rich) atmosphere in about forty seconds. There is some waste ethanol.

Eight cubic metres is a common size for medium airlocks, and many Fen personal vehicles will be less than that. They will sell bigger gadgets that work quicker.

Given a little handwavium chemical processing CHON (and energy) is all you need to start a biosphere, and generate your own biomass. In some parts of Fenspace biomass comes close to being a currency. All you need apart from that is trace minerals (the other 4% of the chemical constituents of a human body.) And a lot of those can be recycled, whereas air (oxygen and nitrogen) tends to slowly get lost. Cheap bags of 'salts' are often for sale alongside CHON. And 'Dole Yeast' spores.