To the best of NASA's knowledge, the LDEF was never hit by anything larger
than a pinhead in two years of flight orbiting around the Earth. To use
this, and other data from man's limited exploration of his universe so far,
to make guesses at how a Traveller starship must be armored, isn't a good
idea. In my opinion, the 40-minimum should be preserved in any economically
viable ship design, for essentially one reason: high-velocity fragments.
The odds of getting hit by an asteroid larger than a sand grain on a trip
through the Asteroid Belt in our system at relatively low speeds (Voyager
took years to get to Jupiter, you do the math) are infinitesimal. But what
about a ship that plies a thousand different star systems or more for well
over a century, often at near-relativistic speeds? At a rough guess, once
a year or so it'd go through a Trojan point or meteor swarm in a hurry, and
run a very real chance of something fairly big striking fairly fast. And if
you don't think a ten-gram impact getting turned into energy would hurt a
ship with a 1-inch-thick skin of aluminum alloy plating and honeycomb core
(std. NASA design), think again. The entire starship combat system of another
game I admire intensely, ALBEDO, is based on what happens to a ship if a half
dozen small chunks of metal impact on it at near lightspeed. (In fact, if one
were to follow the economic logic of Dow Rieder's Robot Drone Missile Swarm
system, the MT universe and ALBEDO universe would have identical combat
strategies!) Starships don't put that much of their cost in hull armor; even
factor-40 bonded superdense is a pittance compared to the computer and drives.
It's good insurance on the part of the manufacturer to see to it that a random
strike won't cripple the ship and kill the crew; so I would say that the 40
rating is not a PHYSICAL requirement for construction, but a LEGAL requirement
for minimum safety that an underwriter would insist on before financing the
ship's construction. You can build an airliner without firefighting equipment
or onboard oxygen or advanced IFR gear. You'll save a bundle. But would you
be able to find a buyer?
Just my two cents' worth. Thanks to Dow Rieder for his input on this.
metlay
PS> TDR will NOT support discussion of topics with a separate mailing list.
As long as what gets talked about here eventually finds its way into real
TDR submissions, then the TML is a good place to discuss these topics:
whether or not they find their way into TDR is the TDR group's business;
whether or not they are interesting and stimulating, and encourage thought
and development of our beloved game, is EVERYONE'S business.