Re: Starship design revamping

I suggest that you recheck your figures. You have that starship traveling at
5.0e8 meters/second. But lightspeed is only 3e8 m/s!! And at 1 g, ignoring
relativistic effects, it'll take nearly a year to reach lightspeed.

A month at 1 g gives a velocity of 2.5e7 m/s. This is 1/12th lightspeed and
close enough that you'd have to worry about relativistic effects a bit.
(tau=.997)

The figures *I* mentioned came from the original 3 books. And there was
nothing in there about the drive being reactionless. That's an *assumption*
that was made by so many people that it became official.

A "reactionless" drive can be handled by assuming that it "pushes" on the
rest of the universe. This would give (in effect) double the efficiency
of a reaction drive. Gravitic effects work that way, but then you'd have to
explain why the people inside the ship experience *any* acceleration.

BTW, nobody ever asks what happens to all the helium (and unfused hydrogen)
with reaction drive, no problem. It's the exhaust. But on a ship with a
reactionless drive, you either store it, or dump it. Both require changes
in the way things work.

Dumping it means you leave this nice trail of helium for the sensors to
pick up. Storing it, means that the tanks aren't empty (and leads to
other problems as well).

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