Hydrogen tankers... Useful or Pointless?

[Braidborn the Broken]

I mean in the sense of commercial supertankers, Hauling hydrogen from one place to another. Like this:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/o2FAM0-gRX8/maxresdefault.jpg

[rhinorulz]

in multiplayer, where factions can claim ice, it becomes useful (although hauling unprocessed ice may take up less space), in single player or small groups, useless, just go get ice.

[Pyrrhus]

Tanks are useful for travel thru gravity fields. So tankers can be use for transporting between planet and space as you might want to have reserves at both places for getting on and off the planet. Isn't ice heavier than hydrogen, even it takes up less space? Carrying ice thru space is easier than carrying them in gravity field?

[Tryst49]

You forgot the container weight.

Ice is a combination of Hydrogen AND Oxygen so it serves two purposes in one package. In your tanks, compressed gas requires a significantly thicker steel shell to contain it due to the pressure involved. Ice could easily be stored in a thin aluminium shell.

Weight is a consideration for any spacecraft: Three tanks, one holding Oxygen and the other two for Hydrogen (H2O), along with their liquid form contents, would weigh significantly more than the equivalent amount of both elements in ice form in a single lightweight container.

Edit:
Now take the fuel requirement into consideration. If you are ferrying cargo and are therefore expecting to make a profit from it for example.

The gas tanks depicted in SE would weigh somewhere around 2 tonnes each when empty. That's 6 tonnes of additional weight that has to be accounted for in terms of fuel to get back for another haul.

The aluminium ice container could probably be picked up with one hand so the extra fuel required to go back for another haul would be negligable.

[Braidborn the Broken]

So long story short, a container type ship would be much more practical, carrying Ice or whatever other things is needed

[fabricator77]

Tryst49 Posted a lot of dribble.
Aluminium in SE ? Guesswork on container/tank weights based on what they look like ? Carrying both Oxygen and Hydrogen tanks ?

The recommendation for Hydrogen Ships launching from the Earth is to take Hydrogen in tanks rather than carrying Ice in Containers and H2/O2 generators.

One interesting point, a filled Hydrogen Tank weighs the same as an empty one.

Simple test to do, place a Hydrogen Tank and a Large Cargo Container as separate grids. Add a cockpit to both so you can see ship weight, now add Ice to the container till that grid weighs the same as the Hydrogen Tank one. Now finally convert all the Ice in the container into hydrogen and see how much you get.

[Thalyn]

To be fair on Tryst49, what they posted isn't technically inaccurate. That's the kind of design considerations you'd take into account for a real-world implementation of this scenario.

Unfortunately there's quite a few things in SE which vary from the real world specifically related to this scenario. The inability to choose which material you make your containers out of, the inability to determine final storage pressure, that in-game ice can only become hydrogen or oxygen (not both), and that the tanks have a fixed weight, all make most of it moot outside of anything other than academic curiosity.

[Daynen Drakeson]

Having full H2 tanks to transfer to other ships would probably make for a faster transfer than melting the ice on the spot, depending on how many o2h2 gens you're carrying, though you COULD get several generators in the space of one H2 tank...hmmm. Might take considerably less power to just dump H2 than refining at is needed though, so...six of one, half a dozen of the other?

Also worth noting is that a full H2 tank is surprisingly explosive...

[Buzzard]

Hauling H2 gas is the lower-mass way to do things, and lots faster for filling other craft. Of course, the volatile nature of the gas does suggest that safe routes and distant support roles would be better than taking such a craft through hostile fire.

[Pembroke]

Are there any mods that would make hydrogen to have a mass (and affect acceleration etc.)? I know there's a mod that changes ice into fuel that can be consumed by thrusters and engines creating sort-of that kind of effect but I'd like to retain the need for tanks as well as have ice as its own thing.