Black Globes revisited

Having left my rules at home today, I am winging this response.  I would agree
with everyone who traces the origin of the black globe to Pournelle's Langston
Field (I think it showed up in a Pournelle book set in that universe prior to
the collaberation with Niven on Mote, but I could be wrong.)

In any case, to refer to the current Travller black globe as "the ultimate
defense" when it will eventually overload and destroy your ship in a huge
explosion is, in my opinion, overstating the case a trifle.  Now if someone
who has the books handy can tell me how much energy the globe needs to be
overloaded on, say a 100,000ton ship with a Jump-4 drive (I think we still
use the jump drive as an energy sink even though the Starship Operators
Manual has disallowed jumping using the stored energy) we could make a
considered opinion.

All I remember is that in High Guard, I never considered it worthwhile
because the addition to the armor class while flickering with any BG generator
you could build in the Imperium didn't seem to be worth the possibility of
being blown to atoms by the overload.  This leaves out the tactical surprise
considerations.  (And so without reanalyzing the situation, you won't find BGs
on my latest imperial navy design proposals.)

Rob Dean