On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 7:31 AM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Let's see: > > Troop Transport: > * Must be fast, possibly faster than economical for a commercial craft. > * Must be landing-capable or carry a full complement of shuttles. > * Substantial medical facilities, soldiers get hurt. > * Substantial cargo, from several tons to several dozen tons per trooper, > for AFVs and ammo. > * Mil-spec stealth, C4, probably point defense. > Stealth is against my hard-science religion. Landing capable is against common sense. But look at what the US used for troop transport in WWII. They used a bunch of converted civilian ships, jamming people in them (15,000 (!) in the queen mary, which normally carred about 2000 paying passengers), and a number of purpose built ships, that also held troops in sardine fashion (bunks four high, as many as 100 people in a cabin). No medical facilities, not much cargo capacity. limited anti-aircraft armament. Not terribly fast, either. I don't see the need for a full complement of shuttles, either. It's a troop ship; not a landing craft. It would probably carry a shuttle or three, but local resources are better for that. > > David replied to me: > > We're down to 50K people per ship, so for 200 million people a year, we'd > > need about 400 ships. number of pax containers is the same. We'd need > > cargo containers, but for stuff that doesn't need life support, they're > > cheap [1]. We need more shuttle craft, probably, to get the cargo into > > orbit, and out of orbit on the far end, but they're not terribly > expensive > > (vehicle of the week 759 can move a pax module and its cargo module in > and > > out of orbit. It's about 50 mil a pop). Probably 20 trillion in > capital, > > and a couple trillion a year. A TL10 world that's got 200 million people > > leaving a year could afford that. > > I was thinking about reactionless thrusters for the shuttles. At TL10, > that cuts into the payload percentage, but fusion rockets are called > "mildly" radioactive, which is not nice near unprotected population > centers ... Needless to say, reactionless thrusters are against my religion. Mildly radioactive is right. Assuming D-He3 fusion reactors, the products are (lots of) heat, a proton, an alpha particle, and X-rays. The Xrays will directed in a spherical pattern; only a small fraction come out the exhaust vent, and they'll be absorbed quickly (as heat) in the atmosphere; in vacuum, many of them will be absorbed by the reaction mass (probably water.) The alpha particle isn't a problem, because it's an alpha particle. The proton will lose energy rapidly in atmosphere. Heat is the big problem. If you get close enough for the radiation to hurt you, you'll already be on fire. None of these are long-term problems, and you'd hope that by the time the technology gets here, we'll have lost our knee jerk "radiation is scary" mass hysteria. > > > > Now, this isn't an evacuation in the "oh, no, the sun is going out!" > sense. > > It's a "go start a new life on Suprema IV!" sort of thing. (There's > lots > > of colonization going on in my setting, but it's normally done on the > 10,000 > > people with two ship loads of gear sort of scale, and lots of it done > places > > where there's not a useful planet.) > > "Our numbers say the sun is going nova, in about 1,000 years, give or > take a few millenia in either direction." > > There'd be scientists denying there was a problem, politicians and > lobbyists using that excuse to do nothing, until finally steps are > taken to Save Mankind. Couldn't have the voters upset because of a > disaster that might be millenia away ... > > Chris replied to me: > > You may want to take a look at the "Night's Dawn" trilogy by Peter F. > > Hamilton. The first book, 'The Reality Dysfunction' has a lot of the > > action on a newly colonized world. Be warned, though - each book is > > somewhere around 1500 to 1800 pages. Damned good series, highly > recommended. > > I have read most of his books, with highly mixed feelings. He wrote > a great space opera background, and tacked on weird mysticism and a > weak plot. Not just in Night's Dawn but also Pandora's Star and its > sequels. I liked his Greg Mandel books much better. > > Right now I have drafts for > * A TL14 freighter, 2 mt Lwt and 1.25 mt payload. > * A refugee transport variant of the freighter, Lwt down to 1 mt > (doubling acceleration and hyperspeed), payload down to 0.125 mt > including 1,000,000 refugees and a suitcase each. > * A TL10 shuttle with 1 kt Lwt and 250 t payload (including 1,000 > colonists and several large suitcases each). > > The shuttle would service a 100,000-man colonizer transport, with > about eight docking airlocks and the hangar capacity to ferry one > or two shuttles home with each flight for major maintenance. > _______________________________________________ > GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> > http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l > -- David Scheidt [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
