> Right; but what about year-long trips? At 10G, a ship would take > about 13 months to reach a destination that's one parsec away; 19 > months for two parsecs; 23 months for three parsecs. These would be > non-stop trips. I don't doubt that a ship that's designed with > week-long trips in mind could manage such distances without breaking > down; but there's the matter of food supplies: such ships probably > won't be equipped with stasis tubes, and aren't likely to be carrying > enough food to feed the crew for a year or two (or more, if you need > to go more than three parsecs out in one hop).
I was thinking of a factor of ten or so -- months instead of weeks, years instead of months -- and a well-prepared flight. Provisions might take ten on twenty percent out of the cargo capacity, or even less. 13 months are 400 days. So a ship designed for 40 days and ample safety margins should be able to do a parsec if push comes to shove. 40 days sounds like an outer-system craft. > I've stated that the thrust-to-mass ratio of the drives is on the > order of hundreds of Newtons per kg of drive; probably not more than > 300N/kg, and possibly as low as 100N/kg. Power-to-thrust requirements > should be somewhere between 1kW/10N and 1kW/100N, and field > maintenance requirements should be negligible in interstellar space, > and possibly in interplanetary space as well. > > With those assumptions, what sorts of spacecraft could you design? Call it 200 N per kg of engine/power pack. A ship capable of 10 G acceleration would be roughly 50% engine. I'm assuming that quarters, life support and provisions are proportional to the crew size. That leaves the required hull/armor as a major decision. If it takes many meters of ice or steel to survive the hazards of interstellar flights, small ships become impractical and up-armored ships will be hard to tell from regular ones. Either way, it should be possible to build ships with a significant payload percentage, be it weapons or cargo. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
