(For reference purposes, my background is a physics grad
student specializing in stellar astrophysics.)
The fusion debate on TML has been going on for a while now and
most of the arguments have been factual, but I think many of
the posters have been presenting facts without thinking about
what they want to say. The important question to address is:
How should powerplants work in TDR. We can decide on what
sort of energy efficiency we want and then figure out how the
power plants work (and fudge them to make them work out right,
this is what GDW did, but not terribly well) *or* we can figure
out how the power plants are going to work and let our game
mechanics be decided by whatever ramifications the physics has.
I favor the latter. It's no more work and it's more realistic.
The disadvantage is that it would make TDR look less like the
familiar Traveller. It is apparent that Metlay, Dow and some
of the others on this net have become aware that Traveller Done
Right may have very little resemblence to Traveller.
First off, let's assume that a ship's power plant uses D+D for
its reaction. Now we fudge fuel requirements for various things
to give space and weight figures that we like. There are some
things that we can't fudge, though. First, fuel skimming. Since
about 1% (from memory) of natural Hydrogen is Deuterium, skimming
for fuel will now take 100 times longer than it used to (how long
it would take using a p+p cycle, to my knowledge, has never been
stated authoritatively.) Note that if a majority of fuel intake
is used for reaction mass, this isn't a problem. We could have
power plants use p+p and then skimming is still viable. Then we
must have rules for "supercharging" the engine using higher
concentrations of Deuterium. We could also use one of the higher
level fusion methods Metlay suggested, but that would prevent skimming
altogether. I think the first option is best. In any case, we
calculate energy conversion (and mass loss using fuel as reaction
mass, regular Hydrogen could be used for this.)
>From the choice of power system, many things have been decided for
us. Can neutrino detectors work? Well, that depends on what type
of fusion reaction is used (as an occasional twist, specialized
ships might be built using a different fusion change.) The important
thing (and this will go for computers, maneuver drives, jump drives,
screens, and weapons too!) is to decide how something will work,
figure out the consequences and if we don't like the consequences,
start over having the system work a different way. Note that
the "committee" method is especially unsuited to this as people's
opinions on which way things work will differ. I say since its
Metlay is in charge he can decide. Since he also knows what he's
doing with game mechanics and physics, he can figure out the
consequences. Of course this has him doing all the work, but that's
what I had said earlier. Any serious game designer knows that
you have to do all the hard work by yourself.
Oh, as a note to the person who asked (if they had the endurance
to read this far:-), we can expect Deuterium concentrations on
earth to be roughtly the same elsewhere in the galaxy. Any excess
Deuterium created in the p+p process gets eaten up quickly
in a D+p reaction that has a much, much higher cross section than
p+p. The 1% D rule can be expected to hold true just about everywhere.
Nick Christenson
[email removed]