Fuel

Fuel, or more precisely water fuel, is a nano-modified, radioactively stabilized form of tritium oxide (T2O). Water-fuel is a stable, liquid form of tritium, suitable for easy handling and storage. The tritium is consumed in the ship's reactors and engines through various types of nuclear fusion reaction. The heavy isotope also makes it highly suitable for use in solar sail applications. Solar sails are deployed by pumping water-fuel into kilometers-long microfilament structures, and retracted by pumping the water-fuel back out of the sails and into the tanks. In a deployed solar sail, the massive, actively-energized tritium isotope interacts dynamically with the solar radiation, absorbing the energy and then re-radiating the energy in an amplified and directed form, giving greatly increased thrust.

For centuries, spacers from all quadrants have always strongly believed the tradition that drinking water fuel is the only sure way to protect themselves from radiation, space sickness, inertia madness and other grim hazards of the void. While the medical and scientific grounds for this might be doubted, the firm belief in the tradition amongst spacers is unshakeable. There is no surer way to break the morale of a space crew, than to withdraw their daily rations of water-fuel.

Decades of drinking the slightly corrosive and slightly radioactive liquid is what gives old space hands their characteristic greying skin and reddish eyes, the look of the "space ghoul". The harsh, acid-smelling breath of the old space-dog is a badge of honor among those who ply the darkness between the stars.

While it is possible to collect tritiated water in raw form from certain astronomical objects, such as tritium-oxygen asteroids or gas giant rings, ship's engineers will avoid putting such unrefined fuel into their engines unless there is no other choice. Spacers too prefer to fuel their bodies with the refined fuel, fearing that dangerous "void spirits" may be present in raw water-fuel.

In game, your ship requires fuel to both move between systems in a quadrant and to jump to another quadrant. The rate of consumption is dictated by your ships engines. Refueling can be done at any Starport, assuming you have the required reputation with the owning faction.