Deuterium is hydrogen with a freeloader neutron in its nucleus, making it about twice as heavy as a regular hydrogen. So heavy water, is, in fact, slightly heavier water.
Also, Dirtball's icecap wasn't pure heavy water. As in, not all of its water molecules contained deuterium, it just had an unusually high percentage. For perspective, Earth's oceans have about one atom of deuterium in every 6,420 atoms of hydrogen, and Dirtball's ice cap had about 3 times that density. So not all of the water this plant processes turns into fusion fuel, a large amount of its byproduct is boring regular hydrogen. In fact, the plant in its heyday produced far more regular hydrogen than even oxygen gas.
Transcript
Talita: So... we're just going to run one block unit of the facility. That's only four electrolyzers. But at least we can avoid having to check several kilometers of gas pipes and tanks for leaks.
She points at four large cylinder clusters in the floor of the factory next to the elevated road they're walking on.
Bip: I suppose the only thing more suspicious than energy overuse would be a hydrogen tank explosion.
Talita rolls her eyes.
Talita: I have to admit, this would be a lot easier… If your highness took plain heavy water as fuel, not refined deuterium.
A sketched molecular diagram behind her head shows two 2H2O (heavy water) molecules being transformed by an electrical charge into one O2 (oxygen gas) and two 2H2 (deuterium molecules).
Bip: What can I say, I have…
The frontloader and the worm sitting on its steering wheel both mimic shrugging.
Bip: …Refined tastes.
51 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 167”
zofifi
Bip, I love you pal but: BOOOO bip BOOOO XD
wytch
the eclectic worm in the cockpit of the machine is killing me I love that so much ❤️
Rad Internet Stranger
I adore the fact that both the Electrician Worm and the vehicle are emoting the same way
evileeyore
https://files.catbox.moe/j0qs57.gif
dokki
I love bip emoting with the truck and the worm. It’s so charming
florence
BOOOO GET OF THE STAGEEE BOOOOO 🍅🍅🍅
Teod
I assume that most ships have their own mini-refinery onboard, so they can take heavy water raw. Bur Runaway is built for speed (if that even makes sense for a civilian space ship) and that weight is trimmed to get more delta V out of the engines, at the cost of consuming more expensive fuel.
Hunter
Booooooooooooooooo
Connie
I absolutely love the way Bip uses the electrician worm and front loader as a pseudo-body. Honestly the idea of AI using mundane tech to construct a pseudo-form is really interesting! The possibilities are endless! TBH kinda gender
talonboot
the image of bipp as an electrical worm operating heavy machinery really suits them tbh
Gar G
Booooo X”DD
Three eyes catch void
Never before have I seen a truck emote
Vinemaple
Nor a worm. Double bonus points for the build-up in the next-to-last panel. It’s actually two double emotes.
Bip is inspiring me to a lot of life goals, all of a sudden.
JoB
“If your highness took plain heavy water, not refined deuterium.”
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Well, that’s the comeuppance for your snark on page 151, Talita. Of course Bip doesn’t want to waste the measly couple tons of fuel they’re getting on hauling the heavy water’s oxygen along for naught.
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Since “the plant” (used to) produce(s) “large amounts of […] boring regular hydrogen”, I suppose that the water in the tanks has already been preprocessed? (Because throwing a mix of 2H2O and H2O into normal electrolysis will not result in a mix of just 2H2 and H2, but also lots of mixed 2H–H molecules.)
JoB
… today’s lesson is that the RttS comments system “takes HTML”, but not all of it (as in, today, it filtered out [sup] and [sub], and a while back, [center] and [hn]) …
Enai
Oh dear, I hadn’t thought of that. Of course the Hydrogen atoms don’t stay atoms for very long after being “liberated” from their molecular bond to the oxygen atom… You’ll certainly need to separate the single proton ones from those with a proton and a neutron. I wonder if there’s a semipermeable membrane the protons would tunnel through that the proton-neutron kernels wouldn’t, or vice versa? Otherwise, it’s centrifuge time, babey!
JoB
I’m not sure that it would be easier to keep the hydrogen atomic (which, I guess, effectively means “plasma”) for that process than to sort the water molecules into D-O-D, D-O-H and H-O-H fractions beforehand …
Enai
Well, modern electrolysis plants for “Green Hydrogen” use a catalyzed process that uses a semipermeable membrane in some fashion. (I have not looked at the process in detail, but if you want to get research-y about it, the Forschungszentrum Jülich has a project in that area. Mayhaps I’ll check it out later). My idea is: what if the membrane only lets H through (something something different tunneling probability. Hang a lampshade on it, this is SciFi, not SciFact). Let the Process run until you have extracted as much H2 (purely Protons) as you need such that the remaining heavy water is heavy enough for the next stage: Separate electrolysis that yields a mixture of H2, D2 and D-H that the fusion reactor can take (as well as Oxygen. Seeing how the Runaway currently has no atmosphere, she’ll* need that, too). Oh, and the H2 and O2 you made in stage one? Just turn it into water, and do whatever with it. Gives you back most of the energy expended, too, cutting down on the spike in power drain 🙂
.
*I use “she” for the Runaway because that’s the convention for vessels. Bip, of course, is a they or xey, depending on if you’re Martian or not. I wonder how separate the two are in this universe? Nobody on Earth would mistake the captain for their ship, what with us only having human captains. But Bip literally uses the Runaway as their “body”, so I’m a bit confused about pronouns…
Enai
I have just learned about the Girdler sulfide process. That was unexpected, but what’s more unexpected is that it was, in fact, invented twice, by independent groups. So, if you’re interested in how Deuterium is extracted in the present day, wikipedia was nice to me today 🙂
JoB
> the Forschungszentrum Jülich has a project in that area
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… yeaaaahh … considering that those guys are just a bunch of miles upwind of my home, I happen to be more interested in an ex-project of theirs … :-3
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> what if the membrane only lets H through […] different tunneling probability.
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I don’t think that you’ll see entire atoms do (quantum) tunneling very often. In terms of normal membrane filtering, the pores would need to fit the atom’s electron orbital(s) – and IIRC H and D don’t have a significant difference, if at all, in that respect …
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> I wonder how separate the two are in this universe?
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We know that Calcery switched from employment on Dirtball to being a ship AI (on a human mining vessel, if memory serves well) and their computers were physically moved over, so I’d guess that they likely are (still) somewhat disassociated from their new “body”. Whereas Under-River-Through-the-Weeds would likely fight teeth and claws to stay in their current (non-ship) body … :-3
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> what with us only having human captains.
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… well, that may change soon-ish, though I’m unsure whether it’ll actually get closer to or farther from handing AIs the steering wheel …
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> Girdler sulfide process
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An equilibrium reaction with a temperature-dependent isotope preference … if someone had speculated about that in sci-fi before the actual discovery, I have a hunch that they’d’ve been laughed out of the room. 😀
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Yet, it says that:
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> Normally in this process, water is enriched to 15–20% D2O.
> Further enrichment to “reactor-grade” heavy water (> 99% D2O)
> is done in another process, e.g. distillation.
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(Behavior in a distillation process is largely influenced by the weight difference between atoms/molecules involved, which is much more significant between H and D.)
Enai
Re: The Jülich reactor’s many so-called ~mishaps~ : Yeah, not great :-/ Not great at all. Hydrogen production as a fuel source is much nicer.
.
Re: tunneling: Atoms don’t often tunnel, true. Protons however are just another sort of elementary particle and definitely do. I mean, alpha decay happens when an entire Helium2+ kernel just up and tunnels out of its former atom’s core, so what’s to stop a lone proton from tunneling all over the place?
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And yeah, distilling off all the non-heavy water is the more straightforward option. But it’s boring and consumes a lot of energy. Less so on Dirtball, what with the mostly-vacuum atmosphere, but still. Meh. Quantum tunneling is much more scifi-y. I like my idea: electrolyse off all of the protium (boring lone proton hydrogen), keeping the deuterium water. Since water molecules dissociate and reassociate constantly anyway, after a time you’ll have mostly D2O in your liquid, as well as a lot of Oxygen and Hydrogen Gas, hopefully neatly contained in their respective tanks. Later, in another electrolyzer, electrolyse the deuterium water you’ve obtained. That’ll give you both reasonably pure D2 and equally pure O2 to use for fusion and breathing, respectively.
evileeyore
But it does allow for sub/superscript when you use special fonts…
H₂O
I use this site: https://lingojam.com/ItalicTextGenerator
JoB
𝕺𝖍, 𝕴 𝖘𝖚𝖗𝖊 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕. 😉
(My go-to site is https://qaz.wtf/u/.)
Infanteater
im sure this has been commented on hundreds of times‚ but i absolutely love Talita’s little space suit cat ears
Vinemaple
Hmm, that’s a good AMA question.
NeedsMoreBirds
I love how sassy Bip is.
Marcie
Pretty sure the scientific diagrams are hand drawn, I’ve seen that dot grid in Jay’s inktober drawings
SIGSTKFLT
What do they do with the leftover non-heavy H2?
JoB
My guess would be that they recombine it with the surplus oxygen, returning part of the energy used for electrolysis and making water “safe” (non-heavy) for use in the habitat. Back then, that is. Or does your “they” refer to the current-day getaway team-to-be?
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In that case … I’d still guess the same. Recuperating energy that they’d otherwise have to sneak out of Mel’s hands helps them hide their activity, and water is certainly easier to hide from environmental sensors than hydrogen gas.
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(Hydrogen, if “allowed” to escape, like, per a ‘splodey tank, would mix into Dirtball’s scant CO2 atmosphere … for a while, as it’s certainly too light not to be blown away by the solar wind. The habitat better not vent any oxygen while a cloud of H2 is around, though. 😉 Not that water exposed to the near-vacuum wouldn’t likely go airborne as well, but slower, and it would be explained away as some residual natural ice that has been vaporized by a meteorite impact …)
sex 2
what’s the benefit of binocular vision on the worm robot?
Teod
Easier to control by an operator with natural binocular vision. Also depth preception. Also seeing both sides of a flat object simultaneously. Also redundancy in case one breaks.
Septemberdale
I’d assume having a backup eye to navigate back for repairs with if one gets busted.
Hosp
Obsessed with wormBip
blythe
i wonder if Talita looks weird to Bip since theyve lived around homeplanet centaurs and know their body language
Vinemaple
I don’t think the concept of “weird” has much personal relevance for a sapient AI like Bip. But on the other hand, Bip clearly has a good grasp on what organic sophonts think of as “weird,” and I’m pretty sure has used the word correctly when talking to their co-conspirators.
Also, Talita’s mostly-Human gestures showing up on video was probably an early clue to Bip that she was fostered by Humans.
Greebus
lol
Liza
Absolutely here for the rogue AI using both the little worm robot AND the giant ass loader to emote along with their Dad jokes
foca
talita in her spacesuit reminds me of a chicken.
JoB
[electrician worm slowly backs away]
Planetfall
I love how Bip is having the little worm pretend to drive.
Sparky Lurkdragon
Ba-dum, tish!
forest @ swifty's hq!
the final two panels really made me giggle. i love the dynamic between these two.
Claire
haaa ha. Xey have allll the jokes, huh.
(JK ILYSM BIP)
glazeliights
talita looks so incredibly cunty in the third panel
forest @ swifty's hq!
hold on youre right she’s kind of serving….. i dunno what she’s serving…. zucchini?
Apollo235
This comment reminds me that there’s fanart of an *even cuntier* Talita. It’s very good
https://www.tumblr.com/oodlesodoodles/777931402583883776?source=share
Greenjoe
Those Avian railings are TINY next to Tailita…
Enai
Yes, more along the lines of tripping hazard than safety feature.
Amanda/OwlBear
just love that both worm and loader are emoting, bib you dramatic git
Amanda/OwlBear
*Bip
Enai
Also, quite the godawful pun. “Refined tastes” because it needs refined deuterium, geddit? Geddit??
*Groan* yes, Bip, we get it.