A One Way Hyperdrive ?

[Whipsnade]

Um, Bill, didn't you argue in a recently-abandoned thread that those landless Aslans who didn't weren't true ihatei but merely colonists?

Hans,

Yes, but if you remember that thread was deliberately non-OTU re-examination of the Aslan from their basic physiological and psychological descriptions in canon.

Because the term ihatei gets wrapped up so much in the "land grabbing" activities of an absurdly small percentage of all ihatei, I wanted to suggest that we avoid using the term in that thread to describe the vast majority of Aslan ihatei who move to lands already controlled and/or developed by their clans. I felt that by limiting the use of the term ihatei to specific activities we could avoid importing all the subconscious "land grabbing" assumptions into other situations.

It was just a working suggestion regarding potential semantic-based issues in a non-OTU thread.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Starviking]

Nothing official in CT nor MGT...

There is a historical note in the CT Hivers book about their early Jump drives breaking down after about 10 jumps - no technical details on the matter if my memory serves me well.

On the subject of Jump Tenders - I may be mistaken, but I think they may have been mentioned in MT Hard Times. IIRC they also feature in the colonization mission in GURPS: Sword Worlds

 

[rust]

I'd allow 50% cost, 75% size, and it fails anytime you Roll less than or equal to the number of jumps since last overhaul. Figure an overhaul is done during annual maintenance, and costs 25% of drive cost.

Thank you very much.

I will describe it to the players as one of their options and let them decide
whether they will use that kind of drive or charter a jump tug.

 

[dmccoy1693]

add water... and it becomes instant colony!

Fixed that for you. :rofl:

 

[rancke]

Because the term ihatei gets wrapped up so much in the "land grabbing" activities of an absurdly small percentage of all ihatei, I wanted to suggest that we avoid using the term in that thread to describe the vast majority of Aslan ihatei who move to lands already controlled and/or developed by their clans. I felt that by limiting the use of the term ihatei to specific activities we could avoid importing all the subconscious "land grabbing" assumptions into other situations.

It was just a working suggestion regarding potential semantic-based issues in a non-OTU thread.

I see. In that case, consider my quip amended to:

>Cough< ihatei as they are portrayed in virtually every canonical mention >cough!<​

Hmm... doesn't have quite the same pithiness to it...



Hans

 

[Whipsnade]

>Cough< ihatei as they are portrayed in virtually every canonical mention >cough!<

Hans,

How about...

>cough< The type of ihatei that get all the press because they are kewl >cough<

Sound better?


Regards,
Bill

 

[Strangelove]

What was the line from the movie "The Hunt for Red October"? Sean Connery explains to his officers why he notified their superiors back in Moscow of their intentions to defect to the US with their nifty new ballistic missile submarine. I think it was:

"Cortez, upon reaching the new world burned his ships....and as a result he found his men were well motivated."

Or the scene in the Stargate movie where Kurt Russel tries to deactivate the nuke they brought along only to find out the powers that be back on Earth included that switch as decoration only. Obviously the intent being if there was reason to flip the detonate timer on in the first place they didn't want anyone else second guessing the decision later. No one on the crew would realize it wouldn't be able to be shut off until it was too late.

All that being said, I like the idea of building colony ships with the intention that they be disassembled for supplies upon reaching their destination perhaps through the use of modular bulkhead sections that can be taken apart.

As an engineer for my "day job" when designing things for one use versus re-use the biggest thing to be omitted is maintainable access space and the safety mechanisms to protect people in those access spaces. "One shots" are designed to not be worked on and hence require fewer access panels, controls for temporary re-routing, fluid fills, safety lock-outs, etc. Typically materials used are not that different but perhaps just used in lesser quantities, such as thinner plate, since you are not as concerned about long term wear reducing the Factor of Safety from a strength of materials point of view.

A lesser known aspect of modern "one-shot" design is the small increase in reliability you get because of the lack of access to the working components. Contrary to popular thought the most common cause of equipment failure is human intervention or contamination via an access area design for maintenance. The actual working parts once assembled and sealed are typically highly robust and isolated. This keeps out contaminants which affects the sort of air/fluid filtration required and generally results in a simpler mechanism overall. I easily spend more time designing for access, safety and repair than I do designing the actual working mechanisms. Making things work is easy, making them work while allowing them to be serviced without posing a risk of sucking someone into moving parts is hard

 

[rust]

Thank you all very much for your ideas and proposals.

After looking at the starship design chapter of the MGT core rules and High
Guard, the colonists can have either a 7,000 dton ship with a hyperdrive (mo-
dified according to Aramis' proposal) for about 1,300 MCr or a 6,000 dton lan-
der without a hyperdrive for about 1,100 MCr (plus ca. 85 MCr transport cost
for the delivery to the colony world).
So the tender/lander option would save at least 100 MCr, and since with a
project like this every Credit has to be looked at closely before it is spent ...

"Cortez, upon reaching the new world burned his ships....and as a result he found his men were well motivated."

A very nice quote for the NPC leader of the colonization project, should she
be asked why there is no "exit strategy" for her project ...

 

[aeontrin]

This reminds me of how they did this in Earth 2: put the colonists in low berths to conserve on life support in a colonization lander and have a tender drop it off in orbit.

Will

Thank you, the rider/tender is an interesting idea.

From what I have seen of the colony's equipment list, the colony ship will
have to be closer to 10,000 dtons than 5,000 dtons, and will require a cor-
respondingly powerful drive. To use that drive for a ship used for trade or
errants would be "overkill" for the colony, and the maintenance costs alone
would be extremely high.

However, I could allow the colony's engineers a research project to build a
smaller drive from the parts of the big one, and a smaller starship from parts
of the original colony ship.
Such a project would take a couple of years, but it would give the colonists
something to look forward to (and the characters an opportunity to earn ad-
ditional training time, because in our campaign the time spent on reserach
projects counts as training time).

 

[aramis]

Fixed that for you. :rofl:

1) "fixed that for ya" posts are NOT appropriate when you leave the "correction" innside [quote][/quote] tags
2) it doesn't need water... just any hydrogen bearing liquid or ice...

 

[Trent]

1) "fixed that for ya" posts are NOT appropriate when you leave the "correction" innside tags
2) it doesn't need water... just any hydrogen bearing liquid or ice...

I agree with you on the matter of "fixing" people's quotes, essentially putting words in their mouths. I don't like it either.

As to water, while the power plant may need hydrogen, a lot of colonists tend to require oxygen in fairly regular amounts. So, water is a good thing to carry as it provides for both energy and that pesky breathing habit most colonists have...

As to a huge colony ship, a couple ideas come to mind:

The jump engine, after reaching their destination, is dismantled and recycled into necessary components or into raw materials to build things like generators, electronics, etc, from. This reduces the amount of stuff the colonists need to carry.

The jump vessel becomes a megafreighter after delivering the colony. It carries cheap but necessary goods, like food, water or even liquefied air, in truly gigantic quantities from site to site making it economically viable to do so due to huge volume. Imagine a situation where there's a very rich world in biological terms, teaming with edible plants and animals, near a system that's lifeless but is loaded with metals. The ship may carry vast quantities of relatively fresh food and such to a huge mining operation in the metal rich system, then carry back hundreds of tons of ore to the eco-world which the colonists buy there in bulk and process themselves as it's cheaper that way.

The ship has a viable use then.

 

[rust]

The jump vessel becomes a megafreighter after delivering the colony. It carries cheap but necessary goods, like food, water or even liquefied air, in truly gigantic quantities from site to site making it economically viable to do so due to huge volume.

A very good idea, but unfortunately it would not work in my setting, because
planets unable to supply their population with basic necessities like air, water
and food are not colonized there. This would leave only some outposts as po-
tential customers for such goods, but they rarely require them in volumes to
make a megafreighter profitable.

 

[savage]

Jump ships

In my T20 universe, I have a 10mdton colony ship which drops off landers that become hubs for permanent bases. The giant station can seed multiple colonies on the same world for a client or expand influence of the Imperium. My point being that much like movers help us in the modern day in the future mega-movers will help establish new colonies to improve survival rates.

The only other alternative that's viable is the previously mentioned ship that's disassembled which makes perfect sense and will likely be the method we use for a future Mars colony.

Not much reason to build a colony on a useless rock unless it we're by accident. Too many useable moons with mineral wealth out there. Unless they built the colony and the wealth was a fraction of what was anticipated or its a military strategic location. Still its worth something.