[Shipyard] The Xboat discussion

[robject]

A recent thread that weaved its way through the varied and byzantine rules of powering the jump drive reminded me of two Oral Traditions in Traveller which are currently Canonical but only loosely defined.

First, the Self-processing Jump Drive: a jump drive that requires no power plant.

[FONT=arial,helvetica]The Self-processing Jump Drive. Less tonnage than J+P but (insert drawback here).
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Second, the Xboat... with a maneuver drive:[FONT=arial,helvetica]

[Marc doesn't] mind if it has a maneuver drive. "stripped-down" is all we really need.

The decision to not have a maneuver drive was a top-down political decision.

Hmmm. What if we left out the maneuver drive?
(thinking… "that’s stupid") (Saying "Yes, sir, that’s brilliant! You’ve solved the problem!").

[/FONT]

 

[Condottiere]

You could always attach a 0.1 gee manoeuvre drive to the ship, so that's not really a problem.

You can acknowledge that a self processing jump drive exists as an option, but without being told the mechanism which permits this, all you get are wild speculations.

 

[robject]

And that's the intention. Some wild speculation never hurts.

 

[whulorigan]

You could always attach a 0.1 gee manoeuvre drive to the ship, so that's not really a problem.

You can acknowledge that a self processing jump drive exists as an option, but without being told the mechanism which permits this, all you get are wild speculations.

In fact, with only a 0.1g M-Drive, perhaps the X-Boat "Drive" is completely unified and optimized: [(J4Drive + PPlant) + (0.1g MDrive)] all as a single custom-designed unit in the space allocated for drives in the standard deck plans.

 

[whulorigan]

And that's the intention. Some wild speculation never hurts.

Suppose a Unified J-Drive/P-Plant Unit displaces 75% of the total displacement of the two units calculated separately?

 

[robject]

Suppose a Unified J-Drive/P-Plant Unit displaces 75% of the total displacement of the two units calculated separately?

That satisfies the first item.
Now, what's the drawback or drawbacks?

 

[aramis]

You could always attach a 0.1 gee manoeuvre drive to the ship, so that's not really a problem.

You can acknowledge that a self processing jump drive exists as an option, but without being told the mechanism which permits this, all you get are wild speculations.

And Players reverse engineering it from the other components, and being pissy about it not being available elsewhere in rules.

 

[Condottiere]

That's one of my primary motivations in remaining interested in Traveller.

Consistency is a holy grail.

 

[kilemall]

Heh, perhaps its the destructive devil in me, but when I see 60% fuel feed into an itty bitty space with the power to jump and a LOT of energized mass, I don't see 'fuel/power savings'.

I see one helluva opportunity to weaponize.

I mean wave motion gun auto destruction.

Spinal fusion gun firing something on the order of being hit by a solar flare?

 

[kilemall]

As for self-processing jump drive, I would tend to think either

* Annic Nova/power collecting requiring advanced batteries,

* a battery-powered ship that gets it's capacitor charged by a mothership/station right before jump (X-boat service vendors pay attention), or

* a mini-jump style reactor that requires low power to start up but requires another 5% of hull fuel tank to generate the power for initializing the main jump power reaction.

Risks and therefore drawbacks are of course no maneuver or sustained weapons beyond missiles, batteries running out on life support or jump/reactor startup before they can be recharged, being tethered to a support system, and often time costs.

Jump drive should probably be a bit bigger and require more fuel to allow for a little extra to be drawn off for life support and bored scout microwave popcorn/movie marathons.

 

[robject]

I see one helluva opportunity to weaponize.

The TML had some chatter about the inherent danger of ships being mobile nuclear fusion plants. Way back when. Meh.

 

[aramis]

The TML had some chatter about the inherent danger of ships being mobile nuclear fusion plants. Way back when. Meh.

A lot of poorly thought out discussion.

Fusion plants require high pressure and high heat to trigger fusion.
Anything that causes a failure will lose one or both of those. Without both, the reaction stops.

The only explosive force from a drive damage event is going to be the sudden thermal expansion of the drive components and the atmosphere near them... Grenade level, not bomb level... as the current plasma leaves containment.

 

[kilemall]

The TML had some chatter about the inherent danger of ships being mobile nuclear fusion plants. Way back when. Meh.

One of the reasons I am requiring continuous power plants for jump AND jump mass ejection for a fast jump portal entry without being able to use it otherwise, both for weapons AND not allowing some 100 G getaway maneuver.

Not work for ship IMO at full power, just too much reaction to even keep the thing on target. The sort of thing that would use 1-2% per shot.

Planetoid however, has enough mass to not be that affected.

The Guns of Navarone Station?

Solar Flare Gun?

Phew. Sounds Star Wars. Gotta work on that.

 

[kilemall]

A lot of poorly thought out discussion.

Fusion plants require high pressure and high heat to trigger fusion.
Anything that causes a failure will lose one or both of those. Without both, the reaction stops.

The only explosive force from a drive damage event is going to be the sudden thermal expansion of the drive components and the atmosphere near them... Grenade level, not bomb level... as the current plasma leaves containment.

I'm thinking less grenade and more fusion artillery event, but not fusion bomb event.

Among other things, if you can control and harness fusion you can vent it if you have any kind of controlled event.

Also, some fusion cycles are radioactive in nature. Aneutronic fusion would obviously be preferred for safety AND weight/volume re: shielding, but perhaps the radioactive stuff is cheaper to build, fuel and/or maintain. You could have some rad hits coming.

 

[aramis]

I'm thinking less grenade and more fusion artillery event, but not fusion bomb event.

Among other things, if you can control and harness fusion you can vent it if you have any kind of controlled event.

Also, some fusion cycles are radioactive in nature. Aneutronic fusion would obviously be preferred for safety AND weight/volume re: shielding, but perhaps the radioactive stuff is cheaper to build, fuel and/or maintain. You could have some rad hits coming.

Soon as you lose confinement, you lose fusion.

 

[whartung]

Soon as you lose confinement, you lose fusion.

And folks can wring their hands over "what may happen" all they want, but, anecdotally, it's "nothing" will happen of note. Since Fusion is ubiquitous in Traveller, it must therefore be safe. Safe enough that civilizations appear to have no problem parking dozens of more of fusion equipped ships on large parking lots near population centers.

Seems to me that a catastrophic Fusion failure would be more akin to a steam explosion that would befall a large steam locomotive (another thing folks didn't seem to mind having run by their homes back in the day -- at least not for safety reasons).

Might make a mess of things, but we're not talking mini-nova or anything.

 

[aramis]

And folks can wring their hands over "what may happen" all they want, but, anecdotally, it's "nothing" will happen of note. Since Fusion is ubiquitous in Traveller, it must therefore be safe. Safe enough that civilizations appear to have no problem parking dozens of more of fusion equipped ships on large parking lots near population centers.

Seems to me that a catastrophic Fusion failure would be more akin to a steam explosion that would befall a large steam locomotive (another thing folks didn't seem to mind having run by their homes back in the day -- at least not for safety reasons).

Might make a mess of things, but we're not talking mini-nova or anything.

I know three people whose houses were damaged by exploding boilers...

2 of the three got non-paid by insurance because lack of proper maintenance was proven. (the overpressure vent was found and shown to be diffusion welded shut...)

It's highly energetic... but probably not a lot is actually fusing. And a few decagrams (say 2 dag) of 20,000° plasma versus 200 kilograms of is a sudden rise of only about 200 degrees. (which will kill the engineers...) but is unlikely to kill the ship.

 

[kilemall]

Soon as you lose confinement, you lose fusion.

Plasma guns and fusion guns last I checked WERE small fusion events channeled into a bolt.

So please don't misunderstand, I'm not suggesting ship destroyed, and most of the time the thing will be vented/scrammed so little negative result other then loss of power and whatever damage from the original event, but there should be a small chance of containment lost in a direction before fuel feeds are cut, in which case you have something more then a grenade (but less then a spinal/nuke hit).

 

[aramis]

Plasma guns and fusion guns last I checked WERE small fusion events channeled into a bolt.

So please don't misunderstand, I'm not suggesting ship destroyed, and most of the time the thing will be vented/scrammed so little negative result other then loss of power and whatever damage from the original event, but there should be a small chance of containment lost in a direction before fuel feeds are cut, in which case you have something more then a grenade (but less then a spinal/nuke hit).

Actually, in that case, no, you simply have a hydrogen added to the mix.

The problem with fusion is that it's incredibly hard to KEEP going. The "burn time" on a major fusion bomb is measured in small fractions of a second. Adding more hydrogen after the trigger doesn't do jack; only the hydrogen compressed by the fission bomb within cooks off. The big pretty mushroom is actually just superheated air....


So, dumping more hydrogen into it just cools it quicker. Yes, the hydrogen expands a lot (around 50:1, IIRC) from the liquid state,
so going from 290°K to 490°K and 100 kPa, and ignoring the phase transition volume expansion, the engine room should go to about about 152 kPa,

Adding 1L (0.07g) of LHyd, it phase transitions to 57L, but coming to room temp, (273°K), from the 20.3°K sucks up a good bit of heat...

So, really, the LHyd continuing to flow in is a GOOD thing - as it cools the plasma, tho it does add increasing pressure...

 

[kilemall]

Assuming the above is accurate, how are plasma/fusion guns technically viable weapons?