[Spaceships] Antimatter Plasma Torch fuelled by Water?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

Makes sense, but I can't see where that's spelled out in the book.

Probably because it's unnecessary detail. The mixture is never significantly variable, so it's simplest to have one system with the weighted average statistics rather than two different sized fuel tanks, which you can't really do with the Spaceships system anyway.

Almost all reaction engines require you to mix things inside the engine - though one of them may be energy - there are a few exceptions, called monopropellants, but they aren't used much. They tend to have fairly low performances, and they're *dangerous*. You don't want a single/premixed "fuel", because the thing that makes it a good fuel is it easily converts to an extremely hot pressurized gas. Having that happen accidentally somewhere other than in the engine would be really really bad.