> > Is fusion "hard" or not? How about magnetic sail ships? Light sail? > Laser > > boosted light sail? > > For ship level tech, I'm pretty much in agreement with GURPS Space. > I'm less convinced about nano-tech (actually, that's an > understatement. It's magic at the level presented by GURPS.) and by > the energy density of portable power supplies (so, no handheld beam > weapons, at least practical military ones.)
For surface-to-orbit craft, Vehicles has * conventional rocket engines (little better than TL7) * fusion rockets (different from those in Space 3E, unless that is an unlisted typo) * AM thermal * Orion and nuclear pulse drive * laser rockets * gas core fission rockets Just how civilized is the planet, and how close to it do you plan to operate? Without reactionless magic, all high-thrust drives tend to be radioactive. You can probably do a nice SSTO with conventional rockets and TL10 hull and armor materials, but it won't have much delta-V to spare for adventuring. Fusion rocket craft will have a delta-v around 100 km/s and a decent payload, so you can do multiple landings or lots of orbital maneuvering. Vehicles lists TL9+ fusion rockets as "somewhat radioactive", but what does that mean? And are the second generation models (i.e. TL10) cleaner? Wikipedia calls fusion rockets cleaner than fission rockets, but then it calls fission rockets highly radioactive, so that doesn't have to mean much ... Just how peaceful is the world? With hard tech, pirates in the belt are unlikely, but major powers could have big bad battleships. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
