[Added GEnie to the Subject line so Carl will forward it -- James]
These are some strong recommendations that I have for the new
Traveller. I'm not going to go into ALL of the scientific
detail, but I hope that the folks at GDW take the time to do
so.
o Correct fusion and fission power plant output and fuel
consumption. It should be simple to get the correct
numbers for fission plants. For fusion plants, you
must find the energy gained from a fusion reaction. A
science textbook is probably a good source for this --
if I had the information handy I'd post it.
For fusion, there is a problem with fuel -- ordinary
hydrogen does not have enough (or any) neutrons to fuse
into helium. Thus, current fusion uses heavy hydrogen
(deuterium or tritium) which is found in SMALL amounts
along with normal hydrogen. Refinement of fuel could
then mean either selecting out all of the heavy hydrogen
or better yet MAKING most of the hydrogen "heavy". It
could also be possible to burn normal hydrogen, but you
would need to find a way to "donate" neutrons to the
reaction. Note that this would probably be harder and
more damaging to the reactor than pre-treating the
hydrogen in the first place.
After adjusting the power plant output, you'll HAVE to make
this next change:
o Correct fuel amounts required for maneuvering. It is
currently possible for a ship to gain more kinetic
energy from its maneuver drives than it puts into them.
This makes impossible things such as perpetual motion
machines not only possible, but you get energy to boot.
The formula for kinetic energy is:
1 2
E = - mv
2
where m is the mass of the ship and v its (relative)
velocity.
It MUST cost MORE than this much energy to accelerate
a ship of mass m to a new velocity v. Currently it
costs LESS in many cases.
I could convert this equation into a more usable
form, but the idea is the same -- you can't get energy
for free, or else the whole universe falls apart.
It's been a while, but I once used this equation to
determine how much fuel would be required for a
fusion plant to accelerate a ship to 0.1c. Assuming
all deuterium, I think that 1/2 of the ship needed
to be fuel. That drops down to about 4% (I think) of
the ship if antimatter is used (assuming total energy
conversion -- I don't know what the real output of an
antimatter reactor would be).
By the way, fusion powered ships should have an
exhaust -- all of that helium being created as a
by-product. It would be dead weight otherwise. Of
course it doesn't have to be coming out of the ship
at 20,000 degrees -- the fusion reactor could even
use cold fusion, or the energy from the excess heat
might be tapped somehow. In fact, it doesn't even
have to be helium, in theory. You could even put
out "normal" air, if your reactor is capable of
enough control over the fusion reaction.
I think you'll find that if you make the energy
costs for propulsion reasonable, you won't need to
play around with 6G limits -- simply limit the
power output of power plants and make maneuver
drives capable of high-G thrust inefficient at
lower G's. Then it would be POSSIBLE to design
ships with high accelerations, but only FEASIBLE
for smaller ships. Sure, someone could build a
dreadnought which is all power plant and high-
consumption drives, but it would need to be
refueled hourly and would be exorbitantly
expensive.
Also note that grav drives must ALSO use more
energy -- they must use more energy than the
combination of difference in gravitational
potential energy PLUS the difference in kinetic
energy (the same is true for all drives, but I'm
assuming that maneuver drives simply impart a
vector of acceleration, to which gravity must be
added). This post is long enough, though, so I
won't go into the gory details.
I hope these suggestions are taken in earnest.
Jerry Williams ([email removed])