TNE Only: Black powder as a rocket fuel

[TheDark]

I guess given my background as an historian and former Army supply officer, I naver view historical data as irrelevant. If the data in a role-playing game manual conflicts with actual data, the actual data wins out, unless the author of the manual was using say, prices of equipment, as a mean of relieving the players of all of the loot thay had collected.

There's at least one flawed assumption in your claim that CR 5 for a kilogram of black powder is an order of magnitude too much, which is that CR 1 = $1. Using FF&S, a Colt 1860 Army is CR 156.2 to manufacture. Colt sold them for $20 originally, declining to $14.50 by 1865. This implies that $1 in the 1860s is somewhere between CR 7.8 and 10.8 (taking CR 156.2 and dividing it by the historical prices). Applying this to black powder CR 5 for a kilogram is equivalent to $0.46 to $0.64, which has a midpoint exactly equal to the historical price, +/- $0.09 in each direction.