Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: >> What are the >> implications >> of these assumptions? > > * Interstellar travel will still take months, and there is > no faster means of communication than a ship, right? How > is that going to affect multi-stellar polities?
At 100N/kg, a ship composed almost entirely of engine could manage 10G. At 10G, you can achieve lightspeed in about a month; but interstellar voyages would still be measured in years. Conversely, you could go anywhere of interest in the solar system within weeks, and anywhere in the inner solar system within days; and maneuvers in Earth orbit would take hours. You're not going to have interstellar empires under these conditions; and most spaceships won't be built for interstellar travel, even though it's conceivable that they could manage it. I'd be willing to up that thrust-to-mass ratio somewhat; but I'm not comfortable with routine interplanetary travel being measured in hours. > * Will fuel be a limit on multiple interstellar trips? Can > a typical ship self-refuel (say skimming or ice asteroid > mining)? Fuel limitations will be determined strictly by the power supply, as is the case with any reactionless drive. > * The travel times might still justify putting passengers > into cryosleep if such a technology exists. Spaceships > makes cryonic capsules as large as a bunk, in Vehicles > they're smaller (especially if life support is figured > in). > > Will there be derelict ghosts full of slowly failing > coffins in some edge of space? It's possible. However, there's the matter that it's not easy to safely turn off the drive once you're moving at a good clip. If something goes wrong on an interstellar trip, the more likely result would be an obliterated ship. > * Is there a way to detect small dark bodies in the flight > path, or are they just going to bet against astronomical > odds? I cannot think of a reasonable justification for any sort of superluminal sensors. > * Do you want to allow or exclude planet-killer rocks? Exclude, if possible. That said, I'm sure that a sufficiently creative character will be able to manage it anyway. > * It isn't a warp drive as GURPS uses the term. By itself > that is neither good or bad, but 'warp drive' is a very > loaded name. No, it isn't what GURPS normally calls a warp drive. In concept, it's closer to a gravity drive (or, in Spaceships terms, a subwarp drive) that gets to ignore the lightspeed cap; statistically, it's a regular reactionless drive. > * Can the non-pseudovelocity part of the drive be used in > a gravity well? Multiple G for multiple months sounds > pretty amazing. Non-pseudovelocity part? Please clarify. > * What is the payload fraction of a typical starship? I don't know for sure; that's left to the engineers to figure out. -- Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
