Howdy,
There is an interesting article by Chuck Gannon in the latest challenge
on Tech 9 ships. As an avid design nut I thought I wouild just voice a
few observations on them.
He goes on at length about the use of centrifuge systems in TL 9 ships.
But there is no cost/weight/volume/power requirements of such systems.
(Sigh)
The utility/necessity of artificial gravity is gone into in some detail.
However, In my opinion, TL 9 and above do not always need such systems.
Ok, in order to keep the crew and passengers comfortable, you need to
keep your standard maneuvering at 1 G of acceleration. This would mean
that the crew will be standing on the 'floor' (the plane perpendicular to
the direction of acceleration) And the crew would feel perfectly normal
doing so, as long as the instrument panels are so aligned.
It has always been my thought that all military ships would have their
interior setups in this fashion. There may be exceptions as seen in
ships deck plans (scout ship, Kinunir, and other published designs)
but the majority would be more in line with the Broadsword and Azhanti
High Lightning type plans. The reason for this is that an accelerating
ship need not turn on it's internal gravity, and needs only partial
inertial compensation to have a simulated 1G to keep crew/passengers on
the floor. (It would save power to do so, and in case of environment
systems failure, the crew wouldn't be suddenly plasterd to the walls, they
would only feel pressed into the floor)
Regardless of military designs, a ship without internal gravity must orient
their floor patterns this way. I would guess that most maneuvers by such
craft would be made at 1G so as not to expose the crews to higher than normal
accelerations. (2G's isn't so bad when you're sitting down, but I wouldn't
care to walk under that if I didn't have to.) Given the endurance of the
ships involved (30 days) you don't need to be a super 3G speed demon to get
where you are going. Thus 1G sounds just fine to me.
Ok, now when is such a ship going to be in zero G? Well? The only time
you wouldn't be firing your engines is in Jump. (Actually I have never
read anything that says you can't use your maneuver drive in jump, but
there is no reason to except in this particular case.) {maybe our TML
historian knows of a reason I do not... Metlay?}
At all other times a ship may fire it's engines to simulate gravitation.
Even if the ship is just stationkeeping in orbit, the engines may be
fired. Just put a slow spin on the ship and accelerate at one G. You will
essentually be flying in a circle, but that won't affect a ship in orbit
too much. You might annoy some guy in the starport control tower with
maneuvers like that, but then again it should be a standard tech 9 station
keeping maneuver.
"Regina Tower, this is Six Eight Alpha Charlie, requesting clearance for
non-gravitic station-keeping maneuvers..."
"Six Eight Alpha Charlie, this is Regina Tower, clearance for station
keeping maneuvers is given, when are you guys gonna get that internal
gravity fixed?"
Another problem I noted in the designs was a difference of opinion on what
is needed for navigation in a Tech 9 ship.
When I had worked up The Horde, I had a few ideas about the minimum
necessary sensors needed by a space craft, and starship. The Horde
had active All Weather Radar with a planetary range. I figured that the
ships mightn't always be having to land under clear skies, and certain
types of planetary atmospheres would require it.
The designs in Challenge all have only radar.
I hadn't really given much thought to ducking radiation belts as is covered
in Challenge, and hadn't included the radiation and magnetic sensors.
These of course only cost about 1000 Cr a piece and so may be considered in
the noise level of the ships.
But the sensors I did included that Challenge didn't had good reason behind
them. I included a radar direction finder so that the craft could easily
locate navigation beacons at interplanetary ranges. For interplanetary
travel to planets/asteroids that do not have such radio beacons, I included
a Light Amplifier (which is about as close to a telescope as the sensor
lists get) (The Light Amp is noise level, but the RDF cost around 13,000Cr
which is starting to get into the range that counts)
Now military ships are definitely going to want a radar direction finder,
and probably a laser sensor as well for defensive purposes. But the
Cruiser included does not have either of these.
I would also think that a starship would need some sort of sensors that
are capable of pinpointing the star to which the ship is going to jump
to. Radiation & Magnetic sensors just aren't gonna do it. I think you
are gonna need at least a telescope (light amplifier) and possibly a
radar direction finder to locate the destination star by it's radio
emmissions. (I don't know much about astronomy but I do know that a
radiation counter will not pinpoint a star against all the background
radiation. A magnetic sensor will be equally useless)
Mr. Gannon includes an active audio sensor (sonar) in all the ships with
the justification that this is a replacement for the Neural Activity
Sensors in higher TL craft. Well, that's an interesting idea that I never
thought of, but I would question the utility of such a sensor on the ships
that can't land! According to GDW, unstreamlined ships can not land
on a planetary surface. Therefore an audio system is NOT really useful.
On the other hand, a ship which is capable of putting out 1G of
acceleration for 30 days should be able to enter a planet's atmosphere at
any speed it chooses (max speed 300kph? fine!) Perhaps Mr. Gannon will
persuade GDW this is possible.
My last complaint with the designs may be just a typo. But None of the
ships have fuel scoops. Why worry about the radiation belts in a gas
giant if you don't have scoops to use in there anyway? FUUUURRRRR!!!!!
I think that here we have another example of GDW's FAMOUS WONDERFUL
editing/proofing that we will doubtless see more of in Traveller 3.
Grumble, Grumble, Grumble...
Mr. Scott
PS. on inter-racial sex in Trav? I once had a character who was a telepath.
He ran into a male Aslan from Darrian who claimed to have slept with every
major race and many of the minor ones.
I was a BIT doubtful of this and read his mind to confirm this...
He was lying about the Droyne.