Adrian, Bertil and others have been talking about if earth is
TL 8 or not.
Well, I would say we are a very EARLY 8. Here's a bit from JTAS
#22: in an article on nuclear warhead technology
"A Scout crew, for example, would take great intrest in whether
the "low-tech" planet they were investigating could intercept
them with a gun-armed ME-109, (sic) an F-12A multisonic
interceptor carrying an air-to-air guided missile with a 5Kt.
warhead or an SA-5 "Gammon ABM weapon with a 5 Megaton warhead
(VERY interested), yet all three of these weapons are nominally
tech 6!"
"TL 6.0 would be equivanent to 1940-45, and would include
"Little Boy" and prop driven monoplanes.
TL 6.1 would be 1945-50 and include "Fat Man", the first
jets and V-2 class rocket weapons.
TL 6.2 is 1950-55, the first thermonuclear warheads, first
_deployed_ supersonic jets, and missiles up to 1,000 km range.
TL 6.3 (1955-60) includes the first ICBM's and aircraft up
to Mach 2.
TL 6.4 (1960-65) includes the first manned orbital
spacecraft, thi first "neutron" weapons, and aircraft of the
SR-71/F-12A class (speeds around Mach 5) (sic)
TL 6.5 (1955-70) would include manned lunar rockets and
primitive reusable spacecraft, like the X-20 "Dynasoar" would
have been had the development of it not been cancelled."
-Jim Cumber JTAS 22
>From the Ref's handbook:
TL 4 =1900
TL 5 =1930
TL 6 =1950
TL 7 =1970
TL 8 =1990
TL 9 =2010
I personally disagree with the above. In my opinion it
should be:
TL 4 =American Civil War
TL 5 =World War I
TL 6 =World War II through mid Korean War
TL 7 =Mid Korea up to mid Vietnam War
TL 8 =Late Vietnam war up to today
The whole point of this is that Tech level can be pretty vague
when you try to pin down 'This is TL 8'.
A great deal of the vehicles I have put up are TL 8. (I may even
have put out more Tech 8 stuff than the unbeatable Rob Dean!:-)
I have sort of been going by the design tables in the ref's
manual and COACC to define this as TL 8, but that is flawed too
if you look at what the designs say. According to COACC the F-14
is a TL 8 aircraft (oops it was deployed in the early 70's!)
The A-6, the A-10, the Harrier, the B-52, the Boeing 747, and
many others are TL 8. (The B-1 is TL 9) (sigh!)
The FLIR in current military aircraft is TL 8. LADAR in current
tank technology is TL 8
No, I have'nt seen any Spinal mount partical accelerators in the
world today, nor 250MW laser batteries, nor man portable laser
weapons that can kill.
But in my (ahem, considerable) experience in vehicle
construction, I have found that when I want to build a present
day vehicle, I need TL 8 to do it. TL 7 just doesn't cut it.
Take a look back at the designs I have put out in this reguard:
Tank M-1A1 (TL-8)
Tank T-80 (TL-8)
Submarine SSN Los Angles Class (TL-8)
Submarine SSN Alfa (TL-8)
Submarine SSBN Typhoon (TL-8)
Fighter FA-18 Hornet (TL-8)
Carrier CVN Nimitz (TL-8)
These can't be built at TL-7
(Look out he's getting on the soap box!)
The problem we are dealing with is that Traveller came out in '79
and had the '60's outlook of what technology was gonna do in the
next 10 years. Look at all the predictions that have gone wrong:
UFO said SHADO would have a base on the moon in 1980.
Buck Rogers was supposed to have left Earth in 1987.
Remember 2001? we thought we were gonna have HAL in operation
last sunday! January 12th 1992!
The Robinson family was supposed to be lifting off from earth in
1997.
Space:1999 had a base on the moon.
(Ok, 2001, and UFO are the only good science fiction listed
above, but I don't care!)
The point is that back when Trav came out, we thought technology
was gonna go alot faster than it did. (We also thought that the
economy would keep us going at the rate we did!) Let's face it,
technology is not progressing at the rate it did back then. Some
of our top of the line fighter aircraft are 15-20 years old. We
went from P-51 mustangs to Tri-sonic aircraft in that amount of
time! GEEZ!
Well, anyway, We are at the low end of TL 8, and have been for
about 10+ years. No we don't have fusion, no we don't have
antigrav, but take a look at the ref's manual, those aren't TL 8
any more! When Trav first came out, they were, but then the
plasma physicists said '20 more years folks' and MegaTrav made it
TL 9.
Fade out grumbling...
Scott Kellogg
Support Science!
Put a man on Mars!
Increase Research Bugets!
Pour money into Fusion!
Put money into NASA!
Ok, Ok, I'll get off my soap box...
PS. I have only cheated once: That was for the designs of The
SHADO Skydiver. I put in TL 9 grav and a TL9 fusion plant. But
that was noted in the design. (In the show the sub was fission
powered, but I couldn't get it to be foil-born with it's weight.
I needed the grav to keep Sky one airborne because of the weight
of its pressure hull.