I have a query:
In one of the flavours of traveller, I was just reading about external tankage.
That passage described:
- drop tanks - such dry then jump, but no real explanation of where that volume somehow fitted within your ship and it would be much larger than the exiting jump engine so you can't say it just goes there unless it is consumed and a much smaller power storage grid could contain the equivalent amount of energy... in which case why would not every ship have that loaded up with power with their tanks full with another set... so how this works I don't know. I know the historical plane model, but nobody jumped through another reality....
- demountable hard external tanks - should mess with aerodynamics and with mass distributions and vulnerable if you are in hostile conditions, but pretty obvious that this is just 'a bigger gas tank that happens to be stored outside of the hull'. Not sure any concrete detail of the impacts was stated.
- collapsible external tanks - Once you are done with them, collapse them. This could be used to put a fuel bladder in a cargo bay or to carry a soft external tank (even more vulnerable) outside the armour that could be deflated as fuel depleted to the point where it might not be as impaired (compared to an empty demountable hard external tank).
A lot of detail on the particulars, tasks, etc. didn't seem to be in evidence and drop tanks seemed a bit hand-wavy.
Anyone know how the drop tanks are supposed to work in-universe to power jumps where you drop the tanks before activating the jump engine?
Tom