I just received copies of Traveller's Digest #2, #3 and #4 in today's mail,
and was reading through them. I found something interesting in #3, which
was the first discussion of densitomters as far as I know.
It was the intention of the original system to limit densitometers to
scanning an area of 1% of the distance to the area at one time, with a
maximum resolution of 1% of the scan width. Or, to put it directly in
the terms we are interested in the smallest object that can be discerned
is .0001 times the distance away. Thus, at 500,000km, no object smaller
than 50km across can be resolved. In an example from the PBEM game, a
missile turret, perhaps 1m across, could not be resolved from the
background at a distance of more than 10,000m (10km). The penetration
depth number that has been carried on through the MegaTraveller referee's
Manual (e.g. 1km at TL15) is independent of this other limitation, so that
at TL15 you could get a 3D picture of an object to a depth of 1km with
a resolution limited by the range as described above. To make out a
10m object underground (such as a grav tank bay, for example, drawing on
last summer's planetary invasion thread) at a depth of 1km, you would have
to be within 100km of the object. Thus, you couldn't really look 'through'
a whole planet even without the depth restriction.
Thought I'd mention this, since getting a copy of TD #3 is probably a little
difficult...
Rob Dean