Reinventing Traveller

[MyndkryM]

Unless you want the ships to have hilariously-large radiators (and nobody wants that -- even Discovery from 2001, a Space Odyssey, which was pretty hard SF, had the heat radiators deleted because they'd've looked too much like wings and nobody would believe a hard-SF spaceship with wings...) And even then... nah.

I pretty sure most here are familiar with Atomic Rockets, http://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/ If not....definitely check it out, because making real life atomic rockets has some challenges to say the least.

As you pointed out...heat, lots of and lots of heat. One of the interesting solutions is something called a Curie Point Liquid Drop Radiator.

Heat Radiators - Atomic Rockets

projectrho.com

I could see something in Traveller using gravtics instead of magnetics, thus resulting in a smaller size device.

 

[mike wightman]

I have been calling for years for recognition of gravitic heat sinks...

 

[JohnCalyn]

Psionics in Traveller are much (much!) less "potent" than in the Lensman series. And inertialess drives completely change the "texture" of the game's feel. For example, psionic characters in the Lensman series certainly never worried about energy dispersal when teleporting. This is a major limiting factor.

 

[JohnCalyn]

I have been calling for years for recognition of gravitic heat sinks...

Depending on your hand-wavium, one could argue that those manuever-driver "thrusters" are big heat dumps. Maybe laser refrigeration? Of course, that makes every manuever drive a really big laser... (watch out, Kzinti!). A radiator doesn't have to look like a sail, or a wing. With sufficient thought and power it can look like a really big gun.

 

[aramis]

Psionics in Traveller are much (much!) less "potent" than in the Lensman series. And inertialess drives completely change the "texture" of the game's feel. For example, psionic characters in the Lensman series certainly never worried about energy dispersal when teleporting. This is a major limiting factor.

Given that I much prefer T4 psi to CT, in part because it keeps the skill levels similar to it's parent edition's skill range... it's quite doable in T4 to exceed almost anything Kimball or Red do, just not as often.

Given a boost from the lens (say, PSR + 1d6 while bonded, and allows skills to rise under CT psi rules) it's quite possible to hit most of the lensman uses and power levels. Plus, Kimball himself is statted in Supplement 1, page 43, entry 2. Telekinesis F and Telehypnosis F. Unlimited Psionic points.. It also gives him level 5 in almost all skills...
I'd argue his skills are only about 3, not 5, and he should also have awareness ...

In fact, all the spiffs statted out in S1 & S4 are space opera stuff...

 

[Spinward Flow]

And, you're right about thermodynamics. I've said elsewhere that the real handwavium isn't fusion or jump drive or grav tech. It's heat.

 

[JohnCalyn]

Given that I much prefer T4 psi to CT, in part because it keeps the skill levels similar to it's parent edition's skill range... it's quite doable in T4 to exceed almost anything Kimball or Red do, just not as often.

Given a boost from the lens (say, PSR + 1d6 while bonded, and allows skills to rise under CT psi rules) it's quite possible to hit most of the lensman uses and power levels. Plus, Kimball himself is statted in Supplement 1, page 43, entry 2. Telekinesis F and Telehypnosis F. Unlimited Psionic points.. It also gives him level 5 in almost all skills...
I'd argue his skills are only about 3, not 5, and he should also have awareness ...

In fact, all the spiffs statted out in S1 & S4 are space opera stuff...

I stand corrected. I think. Truth be told, I don't recall ever looking closely into the T4 character generation stuff. Although I love the covers...

 

[robject]

But to qualify as hard sci fi to me the fiction bits must be an extension of exotic current theories rather than just 'magic' and they have to be consistently applied.

Traveller does not conform to Atomic Rockets.

What do they do with all the waste heat?

Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy answered that for us, albeit it took a couple decades to get there.

 

[mike wightman]

Traveller doesn't have to conform to Atomic Rockets to be 'hardish sci fi' - what it needs to do is explain how it deals with thermodynamics and also consistently apply the high tech breakthroughs.

Ever think what the energy density of a gauss rifle power cell must be? Why not use lots of them to power other things, how do you explain why you can't etc.
If a nuclear damper can control the strong and weak nuclear forces then transmutation of elements becomes trivial, as does the production of antimatter, and you already have grav technology to explain how you can contain said antimatter. Again, if not why not.

 

[JohnCalyn]

Depending on your hand-wavium, one could argue that those manuever-driver "thrusters" are big heat dumps. Maybe laser refrigeration? Of course, that makes every manuever drive a really big laser... (watch out, Kzinti!). A radiator doesn't have to look like a sail, or a wing. With sufficient thought and power it can look like a really big gun.

I suggested earlier dumping heat out the maneuver drives, as cooling lasers; halfway tongue-in-cheek. But the same idea cold apply to refridgerating microwaves dumped/pumped through an EM drive. The description of the EM drive (real or not) isn't that far off the description of Traveller maneuver drives (ignoring the difference in thrust, of course, but that would be 'an extrapolation of modern physics', wouldn't it?).

It's still handwavium, but it's a little step toward 'hard' SF.

 

[Dragoner]

IMTU I add radiator panels to spacecraft. Grav tech gets pushed up the TL's to where it, and a lot assumptions might exist, just above the average TL, so that a grav tank is TL F, grav deck plates never, etc...

 

[kilemall]

I suggested earlier dumping heat out the maneuver drives, as cooling lasers; halfway tongue-in-cheek. But the same idea cold apply to refridgerating microwaves dumped/pumped through an EM drive. The description of the EM drive (real or not) isn't that far off the description of Traveller maneuver drives (ignoring the difference in thrust, of course, but that would be 'an extrapolation of modern physics', wouldn't it?).

It's still handwavium, but it's a little step toward 'hard' SF.

I take it one step further- the M drive drops the weight of the ship to kilograms, and the exhaust accelerated out provides thrust. Higher drive levels reduces weight while expelling more micro levels of heat exhaust fuel.

At minimal no drive running, the power plant drops run and the big rear ports are more ‘smoke stacks’ then anything else.

The bulk of fuel use in normal operations is this exhaust use, which is why it doesn’t get affected except by running the power plant at lower levels- less heat to exhaust.

The missiles don’t have big enough chambers to do the passive exhaust bit so I have them burning through more fuel cooling and end up with limited run time once they start up. Could also do molten salt power, may work better for lower tech levels without micro fusion.

Also explains the LBB2 fuel use, probably a cruder cooling system.

The one thing I haven’t decided is if this extends to planetary grav vehicles. A very light tank/aircraft with grav neutralization and rocket or ramjet acceleration could be a very fast mover.

 

[mike wightman]

The term you are looking for is inertial mass.

According to current physics and every experiment performed to date gravitational mass and inertial mass are the same, so if null grav modules reduce gravitic mass they should also reduce inertial mass.

This has been my handwavium for years, the m-drive reduces inertial mass so that an ion engine or plasma rocket can accelerate the ship's reduced mass, lose the grav field and your m-drive would me reduced to very small fractions of a g acceleration.

 

[Straybow]

Unless you want the ships to have hilariously-large radiators (and nobody wants that -- even Discovery from 2001, a Space Odyssey, which was pretty hard SF, had the heat radiators deleted because they'd've looked too much like wings and nobody would believe a hard-SF spaceship with wings...) And even then... nah.

A steam cycle can reduce the final waste heat by about 40%. But who wants a steam powered starship (outside the steampunk melieu)?

 

[Grav_Moped]

A steam cycle can reduce the final waste heat by about 40%. But who wants a steam powered starship (outside the steampunk melieu)?

Wait... There's some other way to power a starship through the luminiferous aether besides phlogiston?

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on the actual output you need, and you could use batteries for a burst.

 

[aramis]

The term you are looking for is inertial mass.

According to current physics and every experiment performed to date gravitational mass and inertial mass are the same, so if null grav modules reduce gravitic mass they should also reduce inertial mass.

Not quite true;

• Inertial mass increases with speed and dilation when viewed from an unaccelerated viewpoint
• several experiments have shown replicable but insignificant reduction in weight over rapidly rotating magnetic fields generated by superconducting magnets. The effect is consistent but within the measurement error bar. They've been done by spring scale (which measures weight, aka gravitic mass) vs balance scale (which measures mass). The effect falls off faster than magnetic field strength as well, per Dr White (yeah, NASA/Eagleworks), so was not worth NASA pursuing further. The mechanism is not clear, either, but the nay-sayers (without attempt at replication) in the mainstream science media assume bad measurement, and when confronted with the replications, write it off (again, without tests to prove their counter-claims) the effect to be purely electromagnetic.

Anti-gravity Effect? Gravitational Equivalent Of A Magnetic Field Measured In Lab

Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step...

www.sciencedaily.com

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.561.3111&rep=rep1&type=pdf

https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0701091.pdf

 

[mike wightman]

There has been , to date, no experiment to show that inertial mass and gravitational mass are any different. Inertial mass does not increase as you accelerate, what changes is your relativistic mass.

And guess what - inertial mass plus relativistic mass is equal to the gravitational mass of the accelerating object.

In point of fact the mass of stuff made of atoms is mostly due to the relativistic mass (although energy is the preferred term these days - call me old fashioned) of the quark/gluon plasma that makes up the protons and neutrons.

Magnetic effects providing a reduction of weight are not affecting mass, they are affecting weight.

 

[Straybow]

I would surmise an interaction between the generated magnetic field and Earth's field.
Run the test on the Moon.

 

[HanleyTucks]

For the hard/soft scifi side discussion, I quite like this:

The Mohs Scale of SF Hardness

where he compares scifi with rocks - diamond (10) to talcum (1).

• For some reason he starts at 8 (topaz). That's real-life, today. like if Apollo 13 had not historically had the accident, but had been written as a story.
• 7 is "it's just engineering." Landing on Mars... after a 12 month trip where you're bombarded with radiation. Ahem.
• 6 is One New Thing. There was some scifi book where everything was exactly as today, except somebody invents a warp drive that can be made with a few hundred bucks of stuff from Radio Shack. Every crazy brave person zips off to space.
• 5 is New Physics, and where things get funky.
• 4 is not merely new physics, but old physics being tossed aside, like artificial gravity you can put on and off with a switch, a Trek "Genesis Device", that sort of thing.

Something like a fusion drive is probably midway between 6 and 7. The Expanse starts here then starts drifting downwards as they bring the Protomolecule and Ring Gate and Mysterious Messages Psychically Received and all that.

Traveller does not conform to Atomic Rockets.

The good thing about Traveller, and Classic Traveller books 1-3 in particular, is you can choose any of those levels as you wish. In CT, you fill in the blanks.