As I was sitting around today, idly looking over the vehicle design system,
I started to build a vehicle for Lydia--an almost airless world in the Glisten
subsector of the Spinward Marches with a TL or 5 or 6. (I figure it is a
failed/exhausted mining colony, lsiding downhill fast with nothing but a few
thousand scavengers picking over the bones.) The only non-airbreathing system
that the inhabitants can use for power is batteries. So I started to put
2kl of TL5 batteries on a 13.5kl cargo sled (sort of lunar rover-ish), and
realized that those batteries had a theoretical cost of Cr1,000,000. Not
only does this artificially drive up the control point requirement (which is
based on cost--usually okay, but batteries don't require the sort of
sophisticated control that a 10MW TL10 fusion plant--also MCr1--would) but
it seems ridiculously high to me. If you followed the actual rules, these
two cubic meters of batteries would require a TL5 mechanical control system
occupying 100 cubic meters, weighing 25 tons. I don't think that will fit
on the cargo sled. (-8 (Control Points=1000000*5 [TL]/100000=50. Each
mechanical control unit would supply 0.2CP, so 250 would be needed, and would
occupy 0.4kl and weigh 0.1 tons.) I suspect the real thing could be controlled
with a big rheostat or the like.
At TL8, we could compare the cost of real batteries to Traveller
batteries--from work I did one summer long ago with an experimental
battery company, I have it in the back of my mind that the electric car
demonstrator they had had around a 50kw-h battery. (0.05MW-hr) That's
1.25kl of TL8 battery costing Cr40,625. Does anyone have a handy Cr to $
conversion factor?
As a first approximation, I think the price of batteries could be
divided by a factor of up to 100, and that they could be made exempt in
calculations for control factors.
I'd appreciate seeing any hard numbers that anyone has on current real-
world batteries. I don't want to skew things too much in favor of batteries,
but as it stands now, there will never be an electric vehicle in Traveller
due to the cost factors.
Rob Dean