Travel Times

>I have a MegaTraveller Question that frankly has be baffled.  I was computing
>orbital periods and distances between the Gas Giant and main worlds.  I was
>trying to compute the travel time between the gas giant and the main world.
[Stuff Deleted]
>Now figuring that the folks at GDW had ran into this questions the mention
>something about an "In System Transfer" in the Imperial Encyclopedia under
>travel, but they mention nothing more about times or methods other than to say
>that you use "In System Transfer" to get to a gas giant.  I remember a journal
>article on the subject where you "goosed" the jump drives, but it goes against
>all normal jump drive rules.  No to mention that the fuel consumption would
>make gas giant refueling impractical.
>
>Does any one have any light on
>  a) In system Transfer
[I still have questions on this one!!!]

>  b) Better time computations to and from Gas Giants.
>
Ok, I should have read the books a little better,  (Thankful I still have my
old Traveller stuff :-) .)  Here is a little 'C' program that I whipped up
that computes travel times.
   o /
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   o \
/* TTIME.C
   Rob Miracle

   Language:  Ansi 'C'.
   Date:      March 18, 1989

   This program computes travel times for Traveller, a role playing game by
   Game Designer's Workshop.  It takes the distance to be traveled in
   Kilometers and returns a table of times.  The times are in days, hours,
   minutes, and seconds.  Each line represents the 6 different manuver drives
   in the game.  It is listed in G's of acceleration.  The formulas are based
   on ones found in "The Traveller Book".  They were originally published in
   Traveller Book 2, "Starships".

   This program compiles correctly under Turbo 'C' V2.0 and VAX/VMS 'C'.
   The only possible incompatiblity is with the 'pow' function.

   This program is placed in the public domain and I don't think that I
   am infringing on anyone's copyrights.  No warrentys or guareentees implied
   and the author assumes no liability.
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

main() {
    int i,j;
    double TDist,TAccl;
    double Seconds,Minutes,Hours,Days;
    char buffer[128];

    printf("Distance (Kilometers): ");
    gets(buffer);
    TDist = atof(buffer) * 1000.0;
    printf("Days     Hours    Minutes  Seconds\n");
    for(TAccl = 10.0; TAccl < 70.0; TAccl += 10.0) {
        Seconds = 2.0 * pow(TDist/TAccl,0.5);
        Minutes = Seconds / 60.0;
        Hours = Minutes / 60.0;
        Days = Hours / 24.0;
        printf("%-8.1f %-8.1f %-8.1f %-8.1f\n",Days,Hours,Minutes,Seconds);
    }
}

    o  /
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    o  \

Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks in Advance, Rob
- --
Rob Miracle              | Bitnet   : [email removed]    CIS: [email removed]
Programmer/Analyst-II    | INTERNET : [email removed]
University of Louisville | UUCP     : ...[email removed]

>I have a MegaTraveller Question that frankly has be baffled.  I was computing
>orbital periods and distances between the Gas Giant and main worlds.  I was
>trying to compute the travel time between the gas giant and the main world.

>The net distance if the worlds were at their
>closest would be 5,804 Million KM - 418.9 (round to 419) Million KM or
>5,386 Million KM.

>Ok now to change gears for a second.  If a 1G vessel takes  8 hours to >move
>from a size 8 world to 100 diameters, that would imply a mean vessel >speed of
>100,000 miles/hour (Size 8 world = 8,000 mile diameter * 100 diameters =
>800,000 miles / 8 hours = 100,000 miles)  Or 160,000 KM/hour. Now I know that
>acceleration is constant to the mid point, thus the ship can achieve higher
>velocities, however there must be a maximum velocity where the thrust can
>no longer accelerate the craft.

>The travel time, if we assume a max speed of 160,000 km/h would be about 3365
>hours or about 140 days.

These computations are fine except there is no maximum velocity where the thrust
can no longer accelerate the craft. There is no resistance to slow it down, so
any
thrust will be used to accelerate our spaceship. Using those formulas it takes
 733,893 seconds to get to the gas giant. 203 hrs or 8 1/2 days. The maximum
velocity is:3.6 million m/s or 13 million kph (1.22% of the speed of light.)
This is incedibly fast but not out of reason for the drives used. (this is for a
1G
ship a 6G ship would take 4/10ths as long and be going 6x as fast at midpoint.)
I hope this helps a little. In system travel can take a long time. Space is BIG.
        -Love Kisses and a Neutron Bomb
                -Eric the Finn
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