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Today the CS Clogau, one of the odder ships in my collection. The Clogaus are neutronium harvesters. Yes, you heard that right. In Coalition universe tech forcefields are a big deal, and the way they work is that the denser the generating antenna is, the more efficient and powerful the forcefield is. Thus, the history of forcefield tech is the quest for the densest possible material to make your forcefield antennas out of. And of course, the densest possible material is neutronium.

You get neutronium from pulsars - and not just any pulsars, they have to be relatively new. What you do is send an extremely tough ship on a hyperbolic trajectory past the pulsar, getting as close as you can, skirting the energy jets, and use forcefields to scoop neutronium off the surface. It's crazy-dangerous, hellishly hard on the ship... and immensely, massively profitable. The newer the pulsar is, the more neutronium you can scoop off of it on a given mission - and the whole thing is only really profitable if your pulsar happens to be in the first few centuries of life. So having a nice new pulsar in your territory is extremely good news, especially if you have the tech to extract from it yourself. And the Coalition does have one, and does know how to extract from it. It's one of the things that gives an otherwise upstart mogrel alliance a place on the big table of galactic politics. And makes them both friends and enemies at that table.

The Clogaus are small - they have to be, to withstand the gravity gradient. They're nevertheless expensive, and will only last a few months at the regular rate of one mission a day. By that time they've paid for themselves many times over. A Clogau is essentially a massively thick web of structural beams with a bunch of engines on the back and various forcefield generators studded all over the front. A big pair of neutronium tanks is stuck in the middle, a crew area at the bow. No FTL drive, they are built in the pulsar system and scrapped there when they're done. Assuming they've survived that long, of course, which only about 90% do. Crewing a Clogau for a tour will make you moderately wealthy for life - assuming you don't end in that 10% that don't make it, of course.

Awesome concept; reminiscent of the old days of sail trade, when ships and crew being lost at a certain percentage was acceptable as long as the profit kept coming. Also, modern Nike factories.

Tsukiyumi wrote:Awesome concept; reminiscent of the old days of sail trade, when ships and crew being lost at a certain percentage was acceptable as long as the profit kept coming. Also, modern Nike factories.

Pulsars are essentially the oil fields of the future, a big honking natural resource.

My astrophysics may not be the sharpest, but why would it have to be a pulsar rather than any non-rotating neutron star?

Mikey wrote:My astrophysics may not be the sharpest, but why would it have to be a pulsar rather than any non-rotating neutron star?

I read an article once that said Pulsars actually eject neutronium into space around the beams they emit. I figured collecting neutronium as it was ejected would be orders of magnitude easier than having to lift it off the surface against the gravity of the Pulsar itself, because it's done all the work of getting the stuff to escape velocity for you.

Graham Kennedy wrote:

Mikey wrote:My astrophysics may not be the sharpest, but why would it have to be a pulsar rather than any non-rotating neutron star?

I read an article once that said Pulsars actually eject neutronium into space around the beams they emit. I figured collecting neutronium as it was ejected would be orders of magnitude easier than having to lift it off the surface against the gravity of the Pulsar itself, because it's done all the work of getting the stuff to escape velocity for you.

K, thanks for the info. I'd admit, getting off of a neutron star on which you'd landed to mine would be just about a bitch.