Starship design revamping

Accursed editor!  I have a bad feeling that this is going straight to James,
and not the list.  I also bet that it used the wrong subject.  Sigh.

[Yep, it did.  I spell-checked it, put a meaningful subject line on,
and resent it for you.  I'd rather people send something, anything, to
me, rather than stay quiet out of fear of administrator wrath.  What I
mean to say is, thanks everyone for the contributions! -- James]

  I have started work (slowly) on revising the traveller rules to more
accurately reflect real world physics in their starship design sequences.
While it is true that I have not the foggiest idea how much fuel a fusion plant
takes, I would bet it is a lot closer to the gurps statement (The plant
includes fuel for 200 years of straight operation; longer than the designers
expect the plant to last) than the traveller conception (A fusion plant may get
as low as about a thousand miles to the gallon.)  As a result, I am shifting
some percentages about some. Here are the axioms I hope to work under:

  1.  Space is taken up separately for power, locomotion, stardrive, agility,
life support, and living space.  These represent the lion's share of the ships
initial volume in many cases.  Power plant fuel is trivial for fission, fusion,
and antimatter (in effect).  Jump drive fuel may not be, if the ship needs to
bleed it off as reaction mass as they travel through Jump space.  Manuever fuel
is mostly used for heat sinking.  The thrusters themselves are reactionless,
but the ship needs to blow off immense amounts of mass to move.  Otherwise, the
numbers make no sense at all.

  Most of the "fuel" used for increased agility and for life support power I am
assuming is used as reaction mass for small thrusters in the first case, and as
raw materials in the second.  If fusion is good enough, one could synthesize
many basic raw materials out of the plasma.  I would bet that TL15 fusion is
that controllable, and possibly earlier types as well.

  2.  The primary limit on a ships capacity is volume.

  3.  Computers are so fantastically adept by the end of TL8 that they can do
just about anything.  The need for controls and control panels is to display
information to the human operators.  Their whole function in life is not to do
the small stuff, but to do the risky maneuvers.  This is why a low engineering
skill does not matter much, while a high one does.

  4.  Anyone with a ship, no matter how bad, is wealthy.  It has a power plant
to power a small city, enough resources to outdo a basic machine shop, and
more computing capacity than the NSA.

  I will get some hard numbers for this, possibly using the neat set of
percentages of hull volume worked out by a net compatriot a few days ago.  (I
do not have my mail folder with me, so I can't give proper credit.  It was
posted to the list.)

  I will also let you know on how the "equipment by tech level" chart works
out.  It is coming along slowly. but I have a few items worked out.  I warn
you, I wandered rather far from the tech levels posted in the traveller books
when talking about computers and materials.  The rule is that each tech level
about doubles what came the tech level before.  I also rule that a tech level
is about fifty years of uninterrupted progress.

  See y'all.  Any suggestions about technical problems in the traveller rules
would be appreciated, as long as I am a-fixing.

  Thanks much

  Scott Ellsworth
  [email removed]
  [email removed]

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