Starship 'Fuel' Resupply

[majormagna]

Now, we (should) all know that Starfleets vessels use antimatter and deuterium as 'fuel' both for the warp core, and only deuterium for the fusion reactors (If those are even canon, if I recall, there are two theories: they were used for impulse engines and auxilliary/emergency power, or the warp core only powered the warp drive, and the fusion reactors did everything else).

I know the starships can 'sort-of' resupply deuterium on the go, but surely not enough to replenish as much as it uses. As for antimatter, is there a similar thing happening on the ship, or do they only restock this at starbases?

Is it possible for a starship to completely run out of both antimatter and deuterium? And if/when this happens in deep space, what would they do, send out shuttles to local planets in hope for some gas? Or hail the closest starfleet base, and hope they have a freighter or tug spare?

[ACES_HIGH]

According to the TNG Technical manual, ships can synthesize more Antimatter using their deuterium supply, but only in small quantities.  So, ships can be fairly self sufficient.  If they were to run out of deuterium they could collect it with the Bussard Collectors, so all they would need to do is find an area with a significant quantity of Hydrogen, It's the most abundant element in the galaxy, so that's not too difficult, it's only a matter of finding a nebula, barring that Hydrogen is even present in the interstellar medium (albeit in very small quantities) once they have hydrogen it can be assumed that, in the 24th century, it would be a very simple process fusing it into Deuterium (which is just hydrogen with an extra neutron).  Voyager ran out of the stuff a couple times but was easily able to find more.  I think we can also assume that Starfleet would have significant supply lines for these resources as well to prevent ships from running out.

[mckinneyc]

If a ship were to run out I am sure the bright spark of a chief engineer would figure out a way of using the plasma created by the impulse engine reactors as warp plasma. Probably wouldn't do the engines much good

[Tuskin38]

Remember in Voyager, the episode with the Demon planet they were very low on power and deuterium, hence why they went to such great risks to get the deuterium off the surface.

So they can be completely dependant on the stuff.

[eclipse74569]

Actually they would only need to find a good deal of Hydrogen (IE:  Go to a Star or Nebula rich in it and turn on the Bussard collectors) since IIRC Deuterium is the Anti-Matter equivalent to Hydrogen.

[majormagna]

Sorry Eclipse, maybe next time.

Deuterium is an isotope of Hydrogen (Also known as heavy Hydrogen) Having both proton and neutron (Hydrogen only has the proton)

As far as I know, the antimatter equivalent to Deuterium would be called Antideuterium/Anti-Deuterium.

[ACES_HIGH]

yeah, the major's right, the antimatter equivalant of Deuterium is anti-deuterium.

[flarespire]

wait so Duterium is actually possible to make? (going by that description)

[eclipse74569]

Yep, and I can be wrong I AM human afterall

[flarespire]

huh, wonder if any major fuel companies are actually looking into this as we speak, and i know your only human, but still its probably possible.

[Killallewoks]

Adding a simple proton or whatever is incredibly difficult to achieve. It would be easier to do atom fusion suistained for life but one day im certain it will happen.

[FarShot]

Well, making deuterium is not really a good idea.  Too inefficient, on Earth at least.  We have naturally occurring deuterium in our oceans.  A lot of visions in the future depict massive off-shore distilleries that harvest deuterium for the purpose of creating fusion.  Also, the moon has a high abundance of tritium, or hydrogen-3, in its soil.  Tritium is like deuterium but instead it has two extra neutrons, not one.

The fusion reaction most accessible to us at this time is a deuterium-tritium reaction, which is why these two harvesting methods are so often seen.  This reaction releases about 20 mega electron-volts, which is about one-tenth of the energy released in the nuclear fission of a uranium isotope.  Doesn't sound so impressive knowing its less than a Hiroshima bomb, but deuterium and tritium are tons more common than uranium.

And yes, Flarespire, we are actively working on sustainable fusion as a power source.  The largest barrier as far as I know is the physical capacity for it.  Fusing atoms produces tons of energy, even if you fuse literally only a few atoms.  You see, with current nuclear power, we don't actively fissile radioactive matter in the same sense as a nuclear bomb detonation.  It's more like the natural radioactive bleed that we are leeching power from.  In the case of fusion, it'd be much more like a fusion bomb detonating, something akin to the natural process that keeps the sun shining.  Electromagnetic suspension of the atoms to be fused is the only viable way we know of to safely handle the reaction.  That in itself takes lots of energy.

[majormagna]

Then we have to figure out how to actually capture the energy. Which I don't think we have been able to so far. (PLEASE OH GOD PLEASE tell me I'm wrong!)

[FarShot]

Oh we've had a successful fusion reaction.  The deuterium-tritium reaction was suspended in a magnetic toroid and bombarded with laser beams.  The component atoms fused and released their energy.  Whether that energy was captured I'm not sure.  I assume it would mostly be released through electromagnetic radiation (i.e. light, ranging from gamma rays and x-rays to visible light and ultra-violet light) which we already can capture.  I'm recalling this offhand so I can't place the location and time, but this particular case was a couple years ago or so.