Hydrogen Fuel Sourcing

            Starships need to generate enormous amounts of energy to fly, and elaborate generators and powerplants can be found in every starship, however the fuel is relatively simple, generally hydrogen, or anti-hydrogen, and whilst the later is difficult to generate the sources for the former are wide and easy to extract.

            With the invention of infinite matter devices, which essentially tap and shape the energy of singularities, the bottleneck on anti-hydrogen production has almost vanished, though as the number and output of these devices is quite small antimatter is still the ultimate fuel. And when examined by bulk, liquid hydrogen is the most consumed fuel, which not only serves for antimatter reaction chambers but also for fusion reactors, which make up the most important generators of energy in the Federation.

            Liquid hydrogen is relatively difficult to source on terrestrial worlds, it generally is collected through chemical transformation of hydrogen compounds. Though there is this barrier the energy of fusion more than pays back the difficulty in extracting the fuel, however for fuelling starships which are already in space it is far easier to collect liquid hydrogen from an altogether different source, where the hydrogen exists freely and not chemically combined.

            The greatest sources of hydrogen are the stars and although these are attractive targets the conditions are hostile, instead the usual sources of collection are gas giants. Although the atmospheres of gas giants are complex often made from a whole spectrum of different compounds there is to a degree a layering effect, the principle sources for fuel collection are the ‘hydrogen seas’ though as the pressures and temperatures are enormous, the hydrogen is more accurately described as supercritical. It is at these certain depths that the relatively pure hydrogen is siphoned off. The collection apparatus is relatively simple consisting mainly of a wormhole generator and whatever attachments must be made to ensure its correct buoyancy and stability against the weather, these collection sources are of course unmanned and can remain in the high pressure regions effectively continuously. As the fuel is transported elsewhere by wormhole there is no need to associate the fuel processing facilities with the gas giant.

            Though the collected hydrogen is of a relatively high purity it must still be separated before it can be used for fuel, and this process is simply met by repeated fractional distillation. Some refineries merely produce hydrogen as a by product as their pipelines start in the jovian atmosphere rather that at the depths, the gases they process are used for terraforming projects or other applications where bulk gases are needed, and rather than waste the hydrogen it can be entered into the supply chain (this source of hydrogen actually makes up a significant amount of all collected fuel hydrogen). In addition to hydrogen separation most systems have preferences for isotopic purity, and there exist different grades of hydrogen fuel which suit different types of reactor (some blends include helium isotopes too). Isotopic separation is also performed in the distillery in a continuous process. The distilleries themselves can effectively be situated anywhere as their input and output feeds are taken care of by wormhole, a lot of the asteroid harbours and large spaceports have distillery facilities as it is easier to take in bulk streams and then blend them to the desired output rather than having to draw upon pre-blended supplies from elsewhere. Though the distilleries can form large complexes of vessels and pipes, the equipment can be shrunk down to convenient sizes, most starships carry what are essentially micro-distilleries, though rather than using fractionating columns, they use the existing hardware for matter recycling where materials are vaporised and the atoms sorted by magnetic deflection. These small units mean that most vessels can perform onboard distillation of crude material from the surrounding space, even if the processing rate is quite slow. The main reason that ships do not collect and refine their own fuel is that the space that they travel through is quite rarefied and the hydrogen can not be efficiently collected whilst travel above c (it is possible, but in non-emergency conditions collecting fuel from stations saves more energy overall and gives a higher flight efficiency) though spacecraft can divert to higher density regions (stellar corona and jovian atmospheres). Though space craft can if the need is dire become self sufficient in hydrogen, antimatter is somewhat more difficult to obtain, and much fewer space craft have the appropriate facilities aboard to generate their own, and in any case the energy for this generation requires more hydrogen more often than not (as fusion reactors provide most energy demands).

            Fuel transfer to starships is either by wormhole (a more sophisticated solution and increasingly popular as the technology becomes established) or by docking and attachment of umbilicals to the starship, throughout the entire process the hydrogen is transferred as a liquid, though it is often compressed to the metastable metallic state for storage, where the increased density facilitates greater storage of hydrogen per volume.