Author Topic: (Answered) Can a Faslane Yardship jump with another warship with no core  (Read 3840 times)

shadowdancer

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Can a Faslane Yardship jump if the K-F core has been removed from the Warship in its bays?
« Last Edit: 12 February 2017, 11:56:59 by Xotl »
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HABeas2

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Technically, yes. But that core needs to be completely removed. Unfortunately, for many JumpShips and WarShips, the core runs the entire spine of the ship, from nose to stern, and can weigh from half to over ninety percent of the vessel's mass.  You tear that much out of a ship, you may as well break it down entirely.

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shadowdancer

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So how are the materials shipped that make up jump cores? Raw ore or coated refined material that will not affect the jump?
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Xotl

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Fluff-based follow-on:

Germanium can be shipped via jump safely provided it is in an amorphous form.

Pure germanium is a metallic substance.  Like other metals, it forms crystals based on conditions of heating and cooling, also affected by trace impurities.  The manufacture of jump cores involves production of a very specific crystalline matrix, which is another reason why jump cores are maintained at cryogenic temperatures -- heating of the core would cause distortions of the matrix.

The presence of any significant alternative crystalline structures in relatively pure germanium will have a disrupting effect on a forming K-F field.  The safest way to avoid such  unwanted interactions are:

1) Oxidise the germanium, or otherwise form chemical compounds containing it, and ship the compounds.  While this is 100% safe, it involves additional processing, additional tonnage, and then re-refining at the destination.  Shipments of ore naturally containing germanium are also safe to ship.

2) Grind the germanium up into a fine powder, and ship it in a fluidised state with a chemically neutral fluid (e.g. nitrogen gas).  This is the most common means of moving refined germanium.  It still requires pre- and post-processing, and additional tonnage, but minimises the time involved.  However, most would consider this 99% safe. Complications with this method are implicated in a number of probable misjumps, due to:
 - insufficient buffering of the powdered germanium, plus localised melting due to eddy effects from external magnetic fields (poorly shielded power conduits or even K-F field effects) leading to melting and re-crystallisation of patches of the cargo, and,
 - pure germanium's tendency to spontaneously generate long screw dislocations, which end up forming masses potentially capable of interfering with K-F fields.

Understandably, while there was much theoretical work done on this by the Star League, and more recently by Successor State researchers, there has been little practical testing of these problems given the cost (and losses) involved in almost certainly losing an almost-irreplacable JumpShip.
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