I just got Hard Times yesterday and have a few things to say.
As you might guess, the first thing I looked at was the new craft & the
construction stuff.
Question: What use is a TL 4 resistojet when you
can't build a spacecraft power plant (batteries) till TL 5?
Did anyone even LOOK at the 'Little Renegade' TL 8 spaceplane before they
published it? Take a good look! Ok, Disp=20, that's a the size of a 4.5
ton aircraft with the wings unfolded. Or the size of a 13.5 ton aircraft
with them folded. Ok, this thing is about the size of an A-4 Skyhawk, or
a MiG-21. Right?
Look at the weight. Loaded=484 tons. Ok, this thing weighs more than
twice the weight of FULLY LOADED B-52, and has wings the size of a Skyhawk!??
Ok, think about it this way. The Space Shuttle, fully loaded weighs
about 80 tons. This thing weighs 6 times that and could fit in the shuttle
bay!
This thing is supposed to FLY? For one thing it is going to have the glide
angle of a crowbar, and a stall speed in the super sonic range. To land this
beast you'd have to be flying at an absolutely horrendous rate of knots!
The Space Shuttle (the real one) requires a HUGE runway. Why do you think
they land in the salt flats. This design is going to require a runway of
much larger proportions. It's a flying prostitute! No visible means of
support!
Ok, in the adventure, they want you to land this thing on a planet that has
NO starport. Not even a spaceport? FORGET IT! You would be dead. Dead. DEAD.
(It looks suspiciously like a design Rob Dean put up a LONG time ago, and it
was the ONLY design he's come up with where I said it will NOT work.)
Rob, was this one of your designs?
One other thing I noticed in here was the TL 6 vac suits.
They say they are related to TL 6 flight suits. Presumably they are thinking
of the Mercury Project space suits. Well, I once had the chance to buy an
old Mercury Project suit, (one of the ones used in training acutally) and did
a little research on that particular suit. The Navy GS-1 (I think it was)
was NOT a good suit for dextrous operation. (To put it mildly) Oh, it was
just fine to walk around in and use when you're at atmospheric pressure, but
when pressurized, it becomes almost totally rigid. Wearing one in vacuuum
would basically paralyze the wearer completely. The problem is you are
wearing a huge man shaped rubber balloon. There was no way to articulate the
joints against the pressure of the suit.
At 3PSI internal pressure, the amount of force required for the wearer to
touch his shoulder was the equivalent of bending a steel bar!
Dexterity -2 my eye! All tasks while wearing the suit would be basically
impossible. If the Mercury capsule had lost pressure, the capsule would have
had to be brought down by ground control COMPLETELY. It would have basically
been impossible for the pilot to do ANYTHING.
Presumably the TL 5, and lower suits would have similar difficulties.
Scott Kellogg