Topic: Klingon Naval Fleet Tankers For SFC 1.

[Panzergranate]

As part of my project to have a comprehensive Klingon Navy, these are some of the essential vessels that any deep space faring race would have in service.

These fleet tankers keep the warships and bases supplied with fuel (Anti-Matter for Warp Reactors and Deutronium for Auxilary Fusion Reactors & Impulse Power Units) and provisons.

I've covered from the first MAM Warp driven fleet tankers of the mid to late 2100's to those in service through the 2200's up to the end of The General War.

As with the Earth's WW2 fleet oilers, these ships are an essential lifeline to battlefleets operating in hostile zones often deep into enemy lines. Limited fuel mean limited tactical options. All starships are capable of collecting and refining Deutronium from Hydrogen gas clouds and gas giant planets, but not in the sufficeint quanities nor quickly enough to fuel a battlefleet. The process itself would make a battlefleet extremly vulnerable if it spent a week orbiting some gas giant. Needless to say that any enemy would mine and guard sources of Hydrogen well.
 
As for anti-matter, definately not something that can be sourced in space or created in sufficient quanities on board a starship for deep space travel.

Anti-matter refineries employ multiple particle accellerators, which are bigger than a cruiser, to create the anti-hydrogen atoms needed for fueling MAM Warp reactors. This is collected and distributed by tankers to where it is required.

Rick Sternbech did portray a Federation anti-matter refinery in "The Space Flight Chronology" but noboy since has dealt with the subject of how anti-matter is distributed to starbases, starships or anywhere else.

I've given these vessels the kind of explosion value (varies between 500 and 600) that you'd expect for a vessel containing a lot more anti-matter than the average warship. In a test all of them proved more than capable of destroying a healthy battleship from any of the races if parked next to it prior to exploding.

In game remeber that these thing go bang in a very big way so if you're attacking one, try to deliver the coup degrace from a safe distance. If you're playing the escort best keep an eye on the tanker's health and decide when its time to make distance fast. If you're playing the tanker then think Klingon and try to takes as many as you can with you....

Earlier fleet tankers flew with escorts, trusting on luck not to be attacked. Later ones could fend for themselves and outrun the enemy in some cases.

Later models have improved shields and defensive armament to compensate for increases in opponent's weaponry and the changing role criteria being placed upon fleet tankers as the Klingon Empire engages in different wars with different enemies. Also the increasing warp speeds that the Klingon's own warships causes improvements in propulsion and hull design of the fleet tankers.

So for those wanting to have something different to design and model for a race, try fleet tankers and other naval support vessels.

Enjoy.

[Lieutenant_Q]

Very nice.

Not many people tend to think about the logistics of naval warfare.  It's an under-appreciated, but vital operation.  Not sure how much it would be used.  Most Starbases are in places where they can simply pull the fuel from the local system.  Very few Starbases are in isolated areas where they would require a constant source of these freighters.  Warfleets, on the other hand, would have to have a couple of these with them, and their advance speed would then be hindered by the presence of these tankers, as they could not expect to keep pace with modern Starships.

And obviously as technology progressed, the amount of Deuterium burned by Starships goes down, especially as the ships start getting more efficient use of their MAM reactors.

[Starfox1701]

Very nice

[Panzergranate]

I would tend to believe that starbases would be situated in strategic locations where Hydrogen and its isotope, Dueterium, were present or close at hand. Starbases are important as supply depots, personnel transfer points, limited repair facilitiies and refueling points.

They also deny an enemy access to, say a gas cloud or gas giant containing star system.

Trawlers could collect and store the Hydrogen at the starbase for processing, unless processing was conducted in transit by the trawler itself.

However, anti-matter is something that has to be created and a starbase would not be able to house a particle accelerator capable of creating enough anti-matter fuel for a warship, let alone a fleet. CERN produces 3 to 5 anti-Hydrogen atoms a year. One would need a seriously big operation to produce industrial levels of anti-matter for MAM reactors.

Even starbases would require the occasional visit from a tanker to top up their storage tanks.

Rick Sternbeck proposed that the inclusion of Dilithium Crystal Focus, in order to control and regulate Warp reactors was the breakthough in Warp Drive (perhaps Kelso's reference to , "We've solved the time barrier" in "The Cage" could have been this) nush in the same way that the introduction of Quartz Crystal stabalisation was a huge breaklthough in radio back in the 1930's. Gene Roddenberry based a lot of the Warp Dynamics science on his wartime experience with aircraft radio during WW2. As a radio ham I see how Star Trek has Warp Drive physics and radio physics as one and the same.

As Warp drives become more effiecient obviously the ranges between refueling sessions would decrease. It a bit like Jets versus Tubo Props versus Piston Engines.

If one looks at the huge support fleets that the US Navy had running backwards and forwards between battlefleets during the Pacific campaign, one can't help but be impressed. Old destroyers gutted out and converted into fleet battle tenders (ammunition and spare aircraft), fleet oilers, repair, personnel and hospital ships, etc.

All of which enabled the US Navy to stay at sea for a longer than normal period and not have to resort to resupply at a port.

Both the Royal Navy and the Japanese Navy were dependant on extensive base facilities, which in themselves, proved vulnerable. Without an active base you cannot operate a battlefleet in an area for long.

[sierracharlie]

In regards to fusion powered drives, Helium 3 (He3) would be a strategic resource. The mixed DT-He3 reaction allows fusion reactors to run at significantly lower internal temps an order of magnitude lower than pure DT-DT fusion. We have known about He3 for decades. If we had sufficient supplies of it we could build self sustaining fusion reactors now. Unfortunately, the only source on earth comes from decommisioned nuke weapons (and we have about a thimble full of it).

Fusion systems would probably be retained for civilian and merchant use long after Matter-Antimatter drives were adopted for the military.

He3 is found naturally on places like Mercury and the Earth's moon where solar radiation bombards the surface for a very long time. Not sure if they have found any in the gas giants.

[Panzergranate]

I've always noticed that the fuel management control on the shuttlecraft, in the TOS episode "The Galileo Seven" has H3 next to it when Spock dumps the fuel from the tanks.

It is only inner star system barren moons and asteroids without atmosphere that would collect Helium 3, so these would also be prized aquisitions by any spacefaring race.

You need Hydrogen atoms in order to make anti-Hydrogen atoms in a super collider (big particle accellerator). Hydrogen can be extracted from Methane and Ammonia so planets with these atmospheres would also be useful sources of raw fuel materials.

At the end of the day one still has to transport the fuel from where it is sourced and refined to where it is wanted.

I've written an SFC 1 mission script in FMSE where the Klingons attempt to blow up or at least cause significant damage to a Hydran battlestation using an old Q3 fleet tanker. In 10 attempts I've only managed to destroy the battlestation once with the explosion. Positioning when self destructing seems to be everything as there seems to be a sweet spot. On two other occasions I reduced the battlestation to 50% health, which it recovered from quite quickly despite the efforts of my escorts to exploit this opportunity. On all the other attempts either only minor shield damage os achieved or a few weapons are disabled and 10% or less damage is inflicted.

Obviously not destroying the battlestation is a mission fail along with loosing the escorts.

[sierracharlie]

The common assumption of fusion reactors is they only use Hydrogen fuel. There are many reactions that can be used, some are aneutronic (meaning no neutrons are released) and neutronic reactions. Aneutronic is better since there is a much lower level of radiation released, meaning much less shielding.

The most likely candidates for this kind of reaction uses He3, Boron, Lithium or Deuterium in combination. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen (about 1 in 6000 atoms) and would need to be refined before use. Boron and Lithium are much more easily processed on Earth.

I am always amused they use Bussard collectors in Star Trek. The interstellar medium is very thin. You would need mag fields with diameters of 100 km+ to collect enough hydrogen for use in fusion (after you process it of course). Wouldnt the collection field interact badly with the deflectors?

[Starfox1701]

Busards would be great for collection at Jovian typ planets or if you are collecting H2 at warp.

[Panzergranate]

The Warp "bubble" thrown around the ship at warp speed prevents the collection of H2. At sublight speeds the navigational deflector would push any gases and dust around the ship. The only speeds a vessel would be able to collect H2 through the bussard intakes would be a velocities bewteen stationary and subsonic with the navigational deflectors turned off, otherwise excessive heat through hull friction would occur.

Rick Sternbech proposed trawlers in the book, "The Space Flight Chronology", which have magnetic ram scoops or tractor beam scoops for the purposes of harvesting gases and dust from asteroid belts, Jovian planets, etc.

In the BBC cult Sci-Fi comedy show "Red Dwarf" the Jupiter Mining Company vessel "Red Dwarf" is a magnetic ram scoop trawler. It is 5 miles long by 1 mile wide and uses a Stellar Ramjet Fusion Torch for propulsion. It sources its own fuel. Maximum speed is 1c for brief bursts.

Actually the use of Unmanned robotic trawlers to harvest the dust from the asteroid belt are a very real and serious consideration by a few companies at the moment. At our current space technology level they are very feasable though a permanent Earth orbiting station to collect, service and rotate an armada of these things would be needed.

Some of us might live long enough to see it happen....

[Starfox1701]

The Warp "bubble" thrown around the ship at warp speed prevents the collection of H2. At sublight speeds the navigational deflector would push any gases and dust around the ship. The only speeds a vessel would be able to collect H2 through the bussard intakes would be a velocities bewteen stationary and subsonic with the navigational deflectors turned off, otherwise excessive heat through hull friction would occur.

According to Rick Sternbech's  TNG tech manualand I quote"... From this gas, which possesses an average densituy of 1 atom per cubic centimeter, may be distilled small amounts of deuterium for contingency replentishment of the matter supply. At high relativistic speeds, this gas accumulation can be appreciable, though  the technique  is not recommended for long periods for time-dilation reasons. At warp veloccities however, extended emergency supplies can be gathered."

So the bubble doesn't seam to interfere and the Deflector  can apparently be tuned to let some stuff in.

[Panzergranate]

Of course TNG is a nearly a century on from TOS and TMP. TOS and TMP period starships don't have Bussard Collectors as the technology seems unique to the TNG period.
 
Taking in Hydrogen for processing would only provide fuel for sublight engines on a MAM warp powered starship.

However more primitive fusion and impulse powered warp starships would be able to spend a week gathering and processing enough fuel, form a gas cloud or gas giant planet,  for maybe a lightyear's worth of space flight.

Welsley's school science project to create a few anti-Hydrogen atoms seems to point that between TMP and TNG a new and simpler method was devised to create anti-matter, though Wesley's device only creates a few anti-atoms over several days and is only enough to enable the USS Hathaway 1 second of warp drive.... not exactly to the industrial scale required to refuel even a TOS starship's anti-matter tanks for several hundred lightyears between starbase visits.

Clearly, if Wesley's experiment was scaled up to produce anti-atoms at the required industrial rate, were looking at something the size of a Borg cube.

Modelling refinery is going to be a mammoth project....