Re: Battle of Two Suns

Rob Miracle [email removed] writes:

> >With Regard to Adrian Hurt's commentary on the battle of Two Suns:
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Now for the question.  The final battle of the Fourth Frontier War was the
> >Battle of Two Suns, so called because it took place somewhere between Yres
> >and Menorb (see Library Data A-M, and Adventure 1 - Kinunir).  What were two
> >battlefleets doing in interstellar space?
> >other! :-)
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >								The mere
> >fact that that module describes a 1250ton vessel as a "cruiser" compared to
> >the later 50,000ton+ cruisers, and equips it with a black glode marks it as,
> >shall we say, a trifle obsolete.

Even MegaTraveller refers to the 400 ton Patrol Cruiser.  It all depends on
what sort of cruiser you mean.  "Cruiser means whatever I point at and say
'cruiser'." :-)

> Well, there is one thing to consider about this.  In space, stars are rarely
> one parsec apart. ...
> 					   It is possible that they are close
> to being a binary system, just that one doesn't rotate around another.  In
> which case the battle could have occured in deep space.

How close do they have to be, to be a binary system?  In Book 6, Scouts, the
companion star in a binary or trinary system may be up to 6000 AU away from
the main star.  Even planetary orbits out to 367,711 million km (2,458 AU)
are listed.  Now, assuming the ship has 6G acceleration (which the Kinunir
hasn't), the time to travel that sort of distance is:

time	= 2*sqr(distance/acceleration)
	= 2*sqr(367,711*10**9 / 60)
	= 4951168 seconds
	= 57 days
	= a whole lot longer than doing it by jump.

Putting it another way, you use a jump even to get from one side of a big
system to another.  If the stars are far enough apart to count as two
separate systems, you don't use manoeuvre drive unless your jump is out.
If you do, expect to be doing it for a few months.

- --
 "Keyboard?  How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
 UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian     |  ARPA:   [email removed]