skelfs

By tfb

Fuel hoses for stranded alien spaceship

Obviously these are not alien fuel hoses.  The aliens enjoy frightening the tourists over Dartmoor, and some of the younger and more adventurous ones tend to run out of fuel.  So we've come to a mutually beneficial arrangement: we provide fuel when they run out, and they lend us one of their compact fusion reactors.  This has been very satisfactory for all parties.  This structure is just to get the pipes over a lane to the landing field.

In fact 'fuel' is a misnomer: this is, of course, water.   The propulsion system for the spacecraft is truly ingenious: they use electricity generated by the reactor to crack some of the water into hydrogen & oxygen.  The oxygen they breathe, while the hydrogen is used as fuel for the reactor.  The great majority of the water is not cracked but simply boiled and used as reaction mass.  Yes, their spacecraft are steam powered.

On one occasion they allowed their fuel to run so low that they ran out of hydrogen to fuse.  This required sending a message for help to, we suspect, their parents, who seemed annoyed about the whole thing.

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