Re: TDR reviewers, drives, etc.

Vote For NoneOfTheAbove Write In Candidate 27-Nov-1990 1032 [email removed] writes:
> RE: TDR rules categories
>
> What's the chances of varying TL pieces of equipment actually working together?
> In one of the Star Wars books, the Falcon's control system gets shot up, so Han
> Solo cobbles together a 'fluidics' control system;  I thought it was laughable!
This depends on what the equipment is.  I can imagine using TL3 sails to propel
a TL9 water ship in an emergency (a lot of them, though!) but I have trouble
using pieces from one TL 7 computer in another TL 7 computer.  Making a TL 8
computer talk to a TL 7 printer is feasible, as long as the TL 8 computer is
not an IBM PC - making that talk to anything is a serious problem!

> RE: TDR drives
>
> In general, Traveller ships seem to have two or three types of drives: jump
> drives, and maneuver drives, and perhaps gravitic drives.  The Jump drive is
> used for interstellar travel, the maneuver drives are used for interplanetary
> travel, and the gravitics drives are used to land the ship without damaging
> the real estate.

Nice summary, and I agree with every word.

>						Are there other ways to land
> ships?  Are there reaction drives that are not destructive?  Some scenarios
> have space ports have gravitic landing platforms, and scorched earth
> wilderness landings.  I kind of like that.

Reaction drives are bound to be destructive.  It's all down to Newton's 3rd
law.  Without doing sums, force pushing ship up = force pushing ground down.
If mass of ship = huge, force pushing ship up = lots, so force pushing ground
down = lots, so being under the ship isn't a good idea.  Gravitic landing
platforms - you mean a big repulsor that lets the ship down gently without
the ship doing anything?  Nice idea, and I expect the ship gets charged some
CR for it.

> If you have a gravitic landing drive, perhaps it's combined with the shipboard
> gravity equipment, so that it's essentially free?  In any case, I'd like to be
> able to design ships without gravity equipment.

And at TL <8, you have to.  Which is why the Shuttle has a big, hard launch
pad.

> I definitely don't like the idea of the maneuver drives being (anti)gravity
> drives.  In my mind an antigravity drive has to have a nearby mass to work
> against, and I question if antigrav vehicles should work further in space then
> low orbit.  I'm sure there are ways to explain it away, such that the gravity
> drive generates a gravity field, and the ship falls toward it, but for some
> reason it goes against my grain.

This was discussed on rec.arts.sf-lovers some time ago.  It's about as likely
as making the ship out of iron and fixing a big magnet to its nose.  Either
it has a reaction (the gravity well pulls the ship towards it, and the
generator pushes the ship the other way) or it doesn't, it's a reactionless
drive, and I'm tempted to post my proof that reactionless drives can't work.

> I like the idea of maneuver drives being reaction drives.  Traditionally
> spacecraft have always had some kind of jets or exhaust, even the highest TL,
> and I don't want to change that.  However, it seems that the physics doesn't
> work, if I'm following the TML discussion correctly.

The sums don't work.  The physics do, or the Space Shuttle wouldn't get off
the ground.

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

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