Support ship, a tanker

I grew up on a SAC base with KC135s, which was also the plane my Dad happened to do maintenance on so I may just be sentimental about this.<br /><br />That said I was thinking about support ships in another project and it occured to me that the Frontier could have a tanker. Shadow has argued that chem drive ships can certainly reach jump speed with enough fuel bunkerage. naturally a chem drive ship even with enough bunkerage could still find itself in need of a top off of fuel at the other end of the jump, especially if it was forced to do some manuevering.<br /><br />Thus a grapple equipped vessel might be employed in systems where a regular shuttle run by chem drive ships was established. Typically a chem drive ship is expected to carry enough fuel for the accel and decel at both ends of the jump but sometimes a ship has to make course corrections and this could put a chem drive at a deficit for the full trip. I'm thinking that long before atomic drives and or Ion drives became cost effective that the earliest contacts in the frontier were by chem drive ships. such that in the early Frontier and for as long as some shipping lines relied on chem fuel ships that the tanker would have very neccessary use. <br /><br />Later on moth balled tankers could end up being a good buy for a star ship for the PCs