Plasma, a wonderous material, and the reason you and your fellow crew-mates are out here in the Spinward Periphery! Discovered in the early 26th Century, during mining work for other minerals, it soon turned out to be a greatly fortuitous find; being utterly unlike any element previously discovered across human-conquered space!
It has multiple properties that make it a lucrative target for development into a market-ready product, such as:
- Highly useful as an energy-dense, efficient fuel
- Its ability to generate electricity when exposed to radiation.
- It's extreme volatility, giving it potential to be used as an explosive
- A high heat capacity, allowing it to improve the efficiency of heat engines
- Reactions with a wide variety of standard earth-known elements to give new and exciting materials
And, furthermore, the local xenobiology shows a variety of reactions to the substance upon exposure, presenting a great many new avenues of research!
The States of Plasma
Plasma -- admittedly confusingly named, but so goes life -- has a number of different states:
- Plasma Ore - mined by Shaft Miners on the mining outpost.
- Solid Plasma - Plasma Ore can be smelted into Solid Plasma bars, using the ore redemption device in Cargo.
- Liquefied Plasma - Solid Plasma can be put into a Reagent Grinder to be liquefied.
- Plasma Gas - Normally found in canisters in Atmospherics, Engineering, and the Research Division; but can be created by pouring Liquified Plasma from a container, onto the floor. This creates a 1x1 tile of plasma, which will expand -- following the ideal gas law -- to a certain pressure based on how much liquefied plasma there was.
Plasma can be put to many uses, a very versatile substance indeed:
- Chemistry
- Slime reactions in Xenobiology
- Virology research
- P.A.C.M.A.N. fuel
- Fuel for Radiation Collectors, to generate power from supermatter radiation.
- Exporting via the supply shuttle
- Starting fires
- Explosives
- Poisoning people
As you can see, it is a very valuable material, and thus why NanoTrasen maintains such a strong presence in regions of space that are rich in Plasma deposits!