MichaelSTee
SOC-12
in the previous post, I meant to say contragrav <i>and artificial gravity</i> would be more expensive in power - ships in atmo could not use artificial grav, and would need maneuver drives to lift off.
Hardest SF possible
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Space Cadet
SOC-12
How about substituting the Alcubierre warp Drive for stutterwarp? The thing about Alcubierre Warp is that once its on and going faster than light, there is no way to shut it off from inside the Warp Envelope, so what it needs is a built in decay factor such as a wave losing amplitude over an ocean surface. A warp drive envelope would similarly dissapate on its own dumping its contents at sub-light velocities. To make it useful, you would need short duration warps and stutter it on and off, at sublight velocities the warp drive can be continuously on. There is no need for artificial gravity within the warp envelope as the warp drive can bias the gravity fields within the ship to hold down its contents to the floor at 1 g acceleration. Warp drives also allow for things such as deflector shields and cloaking devices.
I'd say Star Frontiers has more hard about it. At least before Zebulon's Guide.
No AG.
FTL a phenomenon of reaching relatively high sublight velocities, and maybe the properties of deep space; a plausible kind of handwavium.
Reasonable aliens; not dogs in tuxedos.
Space drives powered with existing technology: fission, ion, and chemical (albeit with odd performances).
It is in tone and story where SF has the opera feel.
Space Cadet
SOC-12
I think a nuclear saltwater rocket would have a similar performance. All it would have to do is reach 1% of the speed of light and the slow down from 1% of the speed of light. To make it more plausible I'd have to require that an actual drive be used to send the ship into the "Void" rather than just any object that exceeds 1% of the speed of light going into the void, as all velocities are relative.
Think of something like Traveller's Jump Drive except the requirement is reaching 1% of the speed of light relative to the point of departure rather than 100 diameters from the nearest planet. The 1% rule defines a vector and its a navigational aide to make sure the Starship arrives where its supposed to rather than some random point in interstellar space. The actual jump is a teleport, there is no jump space, a moment of disorientation and then you are there heading rapidly toward your target system with hopefully enough space to slow down in. If your ship doesn't meet the 1% requirement it teleports randomly to some point in space that isn't necessarily near some star.
Think of something like Traveller's Jump Drive except the requirement is reaching 1% of the speed of light relative to the point of departure rather than 100 diameters from the nearest planet. The 1% rule defines a vector and its a navigational aide to make sure the Starship arrives where its supposed to rather than some random point in interstellar space. The actual jump is a teleport, there is no jump space, a moment of disorientation and then you are there heading rapidly toward your target system with hopefully enough space to slow down in. If your ship doesn't meet the 1% requirement it teleports randomly to some point in space that isn't necessarily near some star.
Space Cadet
SOC-12
What do you think about substituting a Star Frontiers Style Star Drive for 2300? What you need forst are spaceships capable of reaching 1% of the speed of light maybe a total delta-vee of 2% or perhaps only 1% with a magnetic sail to take care of the slowing down part, this would force the use of realistic starships that accelerate and decellerate rather than zipping around on their Stutterwarp engines. What do you think?
Even if the drives don't work, with the inclusion of something like Low Berths, you could still argue they would be fairly decent starships as it would take one 440 years to reach Alpha Centauri from Earth, which is a heck of alot better than 30,000 years that we are capable of now.
Even if the drives don't work, with the inclusion of something like Low Berths, you could still argue they would be fairly decent starships as it would take one 440 years to reach Alpha Centauri from Earth, which is a heck of alot better than 30,000 years that we are capable of now.
epicenter00
SOC-13
Of course with the added excitement of your ship abruptly exploding in a multi-megaton nuclear detonation if a meteor punctures the fuel tank. [/QUOTE]
You make that sound like it's a bad thing.
It's always nice to have realistic reasons for pretty explosions in space. That way you don't need to such a killjoy and deny players their explosions.
In addition, it lets grizzled spacers grouse about, "One hit, and we'll make an explosion bright enough to read by on the planet below" and similar comments.
Oh, another benefit of Hard Sci-Fi: No anti-gravity means you don't need to invent (unsupported) reasons why people just don't fly their ships everywhere. There's actually a reason for them to use that tracked rover and that wheeled ATV, unlike Traveller where anyone with half of a brain has figured out that their fusion powered J1 merchie can pretty much fly around forever on a planet's surface and can hover indefinitely, removing any need for any other vehicle than the ship on uninhabited worlds. And that their ship has better armor than most other vehicles players can buy. Don't turn your starship into a car. Just say no to anti-grav.
Space Cadet
SOC-12
There are some sites that have reprinted the Star Frontiers material. I have Crash on Voltunius as a Word File, the system is easy to convert to D20 and hence T20. Ability scores are based on percentile dice, you can convert that to D20 very easily. Stamina converts directly into Traveller Stamina, just got to find the approprate level. Star Frontiers characters don't have classes though, some creativity will be involved to figure out which character class is appropriate. I like the floor plans that come with Knight Hawks.
Keklas Rekobah
SOC-14 1K
siefertma2
SOC-13
Hey! I'm on JREF.
Space Cadet
SOC-12
I did some calculating. I don't think the Star Frontiers Fission Drives are possible. A fission drive can achieve high thrusts, but at most they can sustain that thrust for hours not 3 1/2 days as would be required to reach 1% of the speed of light. A fusion rocket could achieve 1% of light speed, but it would not have high thrust, it would probably take about a year to reach 1% of the speed of light if not longer. Rockets are a pretty poor way to get around the universe. A mass drive if long enough could accelerate something to 1% of the speed of light. There are plenty of asteroids that have enough mass to build mass drivers to achieve significant fractions of the speed of light.
Space Cadet
SOC-12
What if a space faring society didn't use spaceships at all but instead wormholes?
One end of a wormhole is attached to a spaceship and the other is left on Earth.
The wormhole spaceship is accelerated by a giant mass driver to near light speeds.
Accelerate the wormhole to 0.999999c and you will have a time dialation factor of 1000. After enduring this crushing acceleration, instruments and parts can be pushed through the wormhole. After about 30 years the galactic core can be reached, a further boost to 0.99999999c will produce a time dialation factor of 10,000, so in about 3 centuries the Andromeda galaxy can be reached, deployment of a magsail and careful aiming at an ionized cloud will slow down the ship, and colonization of a planet in another galaxy can begin with people walking through the wormhole and stepping 3 million years into the Future.
One end of a wormhole is attached to a spaceship and the other is left on Earth.
The wormhole spaceship is accelerated by a giant mass driver to near light speeds.
Accelerate the wormhole to 0.999999c and you will have a time dialation factor of 1000. After enduring this crushing acceleration, instruments and parts can be pushed through the wormhole. After about 30 years the galactic core can be reached, a further boost to 0.99999999c will produce a time dialation factor of 10,000, so in about 3 centuries the Andromeda galaxy can be reached, deployment of a magsail and careful aiming at an ionized cloud will slow down the ship, and colonization of a planet in another galaxy can begin with people walking through the wormhole and stepping 3 million years into the Future.
Keklas Rekobah
SOC-14 1K
Because it wouldn't work.
In order for a wormhole to open and remain that way is for it to be outside a gravitational field. Even sending a small space probe inside would collapse it.
So having a wormhole anchored to a planet's surface -- while it makes for interesting science-fiction -- would not be possible, due to it being inside the planet's gravity well.
Space Cadet
SOC-12
I kind of doubt the Earth's gravitational field is strong enough to collapse it into a singularity. Maybe your thinking of a black hole with a ring singularity, or a Kerr Ring warp. Wormholes have exotic matter propping open their throats, and since this matter is highly speculative, its hard to discuss what is possible. The hardest science fiction of all is no science fiction. The Movie Contact had a wormhole that was anchored to the surface of the Earth, and that was written by an astrophysicist. Typically an engineered Wormhole is an area of curved space with a corridor of flat space leading through it. To accomplish this, you need alot of exotic negative mass matter to negate the gravity field locally so objects can pass through. A wormhole is shaped like a sphere and one can see what's on the other end by looking through it as light passes through.
Send mass through it and it adds to the apparent mass of one end and subtracts from the apparent mass at the other.
Send mass through it and it adds to the apparent mass of one end and subtracts from the apparent mass at the other.
Keklas Rekobah
SOC-14 1K
That's what I said, "It wouldn't work."
Space Cadet
SOC-12
So you say Carl Sagan is wrong?
I have no way to judge what you claim, I am sure professional astronomers and cosmologists are of two minds about this. Since no one really knows, no one has seen a wormhole, they are theretical constructs mathematically deduced through the application of Einsteinian physics and perhaps reinforced with quantum mechanical uncertainty.
Now shall I just take your word for it because Heretic Keklas Rekobah says so, or are you really from the future? I think it is far easier to be certain about some things than about others, maybe wormholes are impossible according to your model of the Universe, but how do you know that your model is the correct one?
I think wormholes make for harder science fiction that Stardrives, because they force you to move to a certain location before traveling to the stars, whereas a Stutterwarp or a jump Drive allows your ships to escape the normal rules of Newtonian/Einsteinian motion. Sorry, your going to have to come up with a better reason to spoil the fun than because you say so. If we listened to too many skeptics, we'd come up with the theory that nothing is possible, nothing will work, and technological progress will suddenly come to a halt tomorrow, a rather boring setting for science fiction if we only stuck with what skeptics thought was possible.
I have no way to judge what you claim, I am sure professional astronomers and cosmologists are of two minds about this. Since no one really knows, no one has seen a wormhole, they are theretical constructs mathematically deduced through the application of Einsteinian physics and perhaps reinforced with quantum mechanical uncertainty.
Now shall I just take your word for it because Heretic Keklas Rekobah says so, or are you really from the future? I think it is far easier to be certain about some things than about others, maybe wormholes are impossible according to your model of the Universe, but how do you know that your model is the correct one?
I think wormholes make for harder science fiction that Stardrives, because they force you to move to a certain location before traveling to the stars, whereas a Stutterwarp or a jump Drive allows your ships to escape the normal rules of Newtonian/Einsteinian motion. Sorry, your going to have to come up with a better reason to spoil the fun than because you say so. If we listened to too many skeptics, we'd come up with the theory that nothing is possible, nothing will work, and technological progress will suddenly come to a halt tomorrow, a rather boring setting for science fiction if we only stuck with what skeptics thought was possible.
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