Low-tech (realistic and semi-realistic) Manouver Drives in Traveller

[Golan2072]

This thread and that one have made me think about reducing the amount of "handwavium" in my next TU design experiment (which I'll probably do once I purchase T20) to the bare minimum of Jump Drives; the rest would be gravitics-less, with a 3D realistic starmap, realistic worlds and realistic "realspace" drives.

Aside for Hard Times, which other books hold realistic drive systems? Which include realistic or semi-realistic reactors (fission or fusion) and other power systems? Has anyone included any such items into HG or T20 yet?

 

[Andrew Boulton]

FF&S is the obvious answer.

 

[Pickles]

This thread also looks at the subject.

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Solar sail propulsion is on my referee's list of things-to-do.

 

[Uncle Bob]

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html

A pretty good semi-technical overview of the problems.

IIRC, the deep space supplement to Cyberpunk took a stab at it. I have hopes for Transhuman Space, but I have not seen it yet.

There is a problem with "Real space" drives like HePlar: in an effort to appear more plausable, they become heinous, impossible fantasies. They only appear more plausible if you flunked high-school physics. At least with gravitics or "impulse" drives we don't know what is possible or impossible. Any realistic drive is not going to be very good as a plot device.

Something like jump drive has been proposed as the Alcubierre Warp Drive. Which was proposed in a physics paper about ten years ago. Since then it was shown to require too much energy, then a much smaller amount of negative energy. It may or may not violate causality, particularly as our understanding of causality is in flux: Google on Process Physics.

Gravitics is another not impossible but how do we do it, situation. Dr Robert Forward discussed a couple of ways to approach it in Indistinquishable from Magic. Looking at them, a air raft is easier than an impulse engine, and both are ten thousand times easier than deck gravity. A FTL drive will almost certainly require a level of gravity control.

Power plants: NASA has a proposed Fission/MHD power plant design which supposed to get about one MW/ton, including radiators. A fusion plant probably wont be much lighter as much of the mass is in the radiatorand`in the MHD generator

 

[mike wightman]

GURPS Terradyne was/is a good resource for a near future sci-fi game based on hard science.

 

[ElHombre]

there was a series of old 'Challenge' magazine articles on this subject. new rules, drives, technology, etc.

i don't recall which ones, though.

 

[aramis]

Terradyne is excellent for the subject, but a bit GURPS-specific.

Project Rho is excellent, if you want to reverse engineer it. (just assume 10Mg (Tons Metric, aka Megagrams) per displacement ton when doing the math.

MT-HT is a good resource if you use MT...
FF&S likewise for TNE/T4.

No real CT sources at all for "realistic" drives.

a swag for ionized gas/plasma accelerators, based upon the claims of "an order of magnitude more efficient than current ion drives" for the plasma accelerator drive about to be tested.
At TL9, %G=%Ship
At TL11, %G=2x%Ship
At TL13, %G=3x%Ship
At TL15, %G=4x%Ship
etc
Cost in MCr=TL-8 per Td
EP=TL/10 per Td
Fuel: 10% drive tonnage per month, Cr500/Td (refined gasses)

This is based upon the 0.001G available with ion drives under current optimal conditions.