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Rocketship to the stars

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Knight
I've been pondering manned spaceflight and pushing T5's technological envelope (again). This is a design feasibility study to see if its possible to build a manned rocket at TL5. I'm choosing TL5 because it covers the historical Earth era of the 1930's and 40's when rockets appear in the movies (Flash Gordon) and on the battlefield (the A4/V2).

T5 says Rockets to Orbit can be done at TL7. This is where putting a rocket in orbit becomes common place. The underlying technology is standardized and well understood. Looking at the availability of technology on p500 we can expect to have primitive orbital rockets available at TL6, TL5 and TL4. There is no possibility of a rocket achieving orbit at TL3 or lower.

Wait a sec! We can send a rocket into orbit at TL4? But thats the equivalent of 1900AD on Earth. How come we never did it then? Well if our TL7 rocket is a Saturn V then its TL4 equivalent would have to be three times the size according to the Tech Level Stage Effects on p500 that would be quite a construction undertaking. Russia's Vostock that carried the first manned (and proto-Vargr) space flights first launched in 1960 and would be TL6.

Now the main problem with this feasibility study is that T5 doesn't include rules for reaction thrusters. However the Beta test did. It set the base tech level for Rockets (Chemical Reaction Drives) at TL6. Again we can expect to have primitive rockets available at TL5, TL4 and TL3. There is no possibility of a rocket at TL2 or lower. TL2 is 1500AD and the Chinese had gunpowder rockets in the 16th century

So we can in theory build a TL5 Prototype Orbital Rocket with a TL5 Early Rocket drive. Next on to the practical considerations.
 
Obvious you are not aware of Americans secretly sending men to the moon during the civil war.

They needed food that was there and to be able to observe the enemy movements since a balloon basket could only see so much.

(I jest but there were stories written for decades about this possibility.)

Dave Chase
 
Hull and engine

I'm going to generally follow ACS for the design process but I'm going to ignore cost and practicality. Details of the Rocket Drive are contained in How Maneuver Works from a September 2011 Draft. Consider me a mad scientist for the purpose of this study.

TL5 Orbital Rocket Study


Hull
We could go into a lot of detail about building the hull. Using Pods or Barges we could build a multi-stage rocket with separate re-entry capsule. Over all
a streamlined hull will be required although other types are possible. The tonnage will depend on the fuel tankage and payload required. For a rocket this depends on on the performance of the rocket drive unlike designs for M and J Drives.


Armor
Experimental Plate would satisfy our TL5 construction requirement. Only the re-entry component actually needs to have much armor to combat friction during re-entry. We could build an unarmored hull and grapple a 10ton pod to the nose. Armor the pod and give it a coating of Ablat.


Drives
We have a TL5 Early Rocket Drive. The Rocket Drive includes both the drive and fuel tanks together. The design sequence in the T5 Beta isn't great as it doesn't sit well with how G and M Drives work in game terms. But it is doable. There's no requirement for a P-plant with a Rocket Drive. This is where I run into a problem Power Cells and ambient cells are TL A and B respectively so i can't produce a primitive version at TL5. Fuel cells are a possiblity but I can't find a base TL for them. I could fudge it and say that there is a steam generator system built into the Rocket Drive capable of powering everything required.


Life Support
LS isn't TL dependent so we can install whatever we like or go for a more minimal TL5 airtank for 4 hours breathable air and leave such things as heating and cooling to the crew's suits.


Sensors
We can put in a viewport and a simple altimeter but we can't have Experimental Radar unless we import it as it's TL6. But early spacecraft don't have a huge suite of sensors. Communications can be Prototype Radio TL5.


Controls and Crew
An Experimental Model 0 is available at TL5. We might put the bulky computer on the main hull and give the crew in the pod a simple crew console to pilot with. I'm going to consider crew in a later post.


Payload
With a rocket Drive Payload is related to the amount of fuel carried. When we think about payload we'll consider the re-entry capsule, the Pod grappled to the nose, as our total payload. So the total size of our Orbital Rocket is going to depend on how much fuel is required to put our pod into orbit.
 
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Obvious you are not aware of Americans secretly sending men to the moon during the civil war.

They needed food that was there and to be able to observe the enemy movements since a balloon basket could only see so much.

(I jest but there were stories written for decades about this possibility.)

Dave Chase

I could use Jules Verne's Colombiad cannon to blast an armored pod into space. Or balloons have a great history in scifi and scientific romance. In reality balloons have gone to 22km up but NASA says space is 80km up. I could also catch some geese and tie them to my sofa to voyage in the aether.

I'm going with the Nazis in Space Scifi trope for this one. If V2's were possible in the 1940's at TL5 could they have built an Orbital Rocket if the period at TL5 was longer?

After I've proved or disproved my theory I'll work on recreating the Irish space programs Solar Mission with a peat powered Rocket. They went at night obviously ;)
 
An earlier draft also had data for the Orion drive.

T5 p.363 said:
Non-Gravity-Based Drives. In addition, several non-gravity based In-System drives are available (although not described here) and include: Rocket, HEPlaR, Orion, Thruster, and Inertialless.

That's all that's in the core book. Data on these drives were cut for book size purposes.

There was also a "Rocket to Orbit" table that gave us a simple-but-handy way to figure out how much fuel we'd need to get around.
 
p505. the technology chart lists "Rockets to Orbit" under Transport at TL7. Everything else except Rockets (Chemical Reaction Drive) is from the Core Book.
 
If I might suggest, launch from Mars or Venus since the gravity is less (reducing delta V) and both are a world size that could have a breathable atmosphere in Traveller.

And the flip side is that a world of 2-3 Earth masses might not reach orbit until grav drives appear.
 
Spacesuits

So building a rocket capable of achieving orbit at TL5 seems feasible. It will be huge, over engineered and completely uneconomical compared to a TL7 Orbital rocket or any of the drives available in the Core Book.

The next question is: can we make it manned.

Above I've noted that Life Support is not TL dependent so we can install LS in our re-entry pod. As a back-up or alternative lets see if we can give the crew spacesuits.

Looking at ArmorMaker we have a choice of Suits that protect against extremes of heat, cold and vacuum.

The obvious choice might be the Vacc Suit. Base TL for a Vacc Suit is TL9 so we can only build an Experimental version at TL6. Vacc suits are ideally suited for EVA, spending periods outside the ship in zero-g.

If we cut the amount of time spent in EVA for our retronaughts we could use an Eviron Suit which although meant for use on a world it also protects against environmental threats: temperature, vacuum, and light. The base TL is TL7 so we can build a Prototype Environ Suit at TL5. To me this seems a lot like high altitude flightsuits from which early spacesuits were developed.

An Early Exploration Suit is also possible at TL5 but doesn't have as good a Sealed protection.
 
If I might suggest, launch from Mars or Venus since the gravity is less (reducing delta V) and both are a world size that could have a breathable atmosphere in Traveller.

And the flip side is that a world of 2-3 Earth masses might not reach orbit until grav drives appear.

Its a very good observation, smaller planets might have an advantage in developing an aerospace industry. Of course in reality a smaller world probably won't have an atmosphere.

But just imagine a Type S discovering a small planet with a population of aliens with TL1.5 or roughly Roman tech. The Scouts think they have nothing to fear observing from orbit, but then the natives bring out the really big catapults!

Prepare to repel boarders! :rofl:


Annnd I just noticed that on p338. T5 actually says: "Theoretically, a TL-5 economy can produce an Experimental G-Drive."*, so I'm not so off the wall with this TL5 Rocketship :)

*of course powering it would be another problem.
 
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What's so different about the aether 'out there' than the water all around us?

Surely we can adapt a diving suit for our orbital shot!

:D
 
It's trying enough to go though the endless arguments of "In the real world this will work, so, we can do it in Traveller too". At least there is science and pseudo science there.

BUT

To hear "It says in Traveller xxx, on page, yyy, that we can do zzz..."

DOES NOT MAKE IT WORK IN THE REAL WORLD! :rofl::rofl::rofl:
 
What's so different about the aether 'out there' than the water all around us?

Surely we can adapt a diving suit for our orbital shot!

:D

Essentially, that's what's being done with the new suit designs. You don't need air pressure on the body, just pressure. A snug wetsuit would provide sufficient pressure for limited exposure.
 
It's trying enough to go though the endless arguments of "In the real world this will work, so, we can do it in Traveller too". At least there is science and pseudo science there.

BUT

To hear "It says in Traveller xxx, on page, yyy, that we can do zzz..."

DOES NOT MAKE IT WORK IN THE REAL WORLD! :rofl::rofl::rofl:

Oh piff. I deny your reality and substitute my own. :D

T5 is a new system, it should be pushed, stretched and tied in knots and generally abused to see what it can do, because ultimately what the system can and can't do shapes the Traveller Univerese(s) we create.

And if you really are confusing rpg rules with physics, chemistry and engineering I hate to be the one to break it to any reader but:

Traveller ain't rocket science :eek:

Is it not good to know that T5 can do rocketpunky things like designing an orbital rocket at TL5? Surely with all the lack luster reviews floating around we should be selling it on its good points like versatility and comprehensive treatment of technology.

:smirk: And here's a fair warning, next week I'm going to build a canoe TL21+ Grey Goo!
 
Oh I'm glad to hear it isn't me....or maybe I should try harder ;)


They way I see it, outside of the OTU I can use the rules to do anything I want in creating MTU. I like my sci-fi somewhere between hard, pulp and space opera, a bit of a curates space egg if you will, so I like to find a realworld reference for the things I create. In my case its to keep MTU grounded with a familiarity so my non psionic players can understand whats in my head.

So in explaining how the rules can be used to create a (distinctly rocket punk) TL5 Rocket its helpful for me to say "Imagine a V2 rocket, only better". I could also explain it as "Imagine Tom Corbett, only without the atomic motors".


A TL4 Steam powered rocket.....thats just insane :nonono:
Oh but wait, Steamships are TL3.3 in T5 and we could substitute the P-Plant with a chemical reactor to flash heat H2O for steam and use that as reaction mass or send it through a TL4 turbine to create electricity to power a Jump Drive.......nah it'll never work! :rofl:
 
It's always better than the beer-driven spaceship Poul Anderson came up with in one of his short stories.


Hans
 
Oh but wait, Steamships are TL3.3 in T5 and we could substitute the P-Plant with a chemical reactor to flash heat H2O for steam and use that as reaction mass or send it through a TL4 turbine to create electricity to power a Jump Drive.......nah it'll never work! :rofl:

We already have FTL drives, magic thruster plates and varying power plants that, in some versions take next to no fuel and in others, can't get enough.:D

Weapons that don't need extra powerplant (CT HG1) to the "carry your own gas giant" ones and back to nothing extra with T5...:confused:

In a FANTASY game, I say go for it. Just no "real world" parallel rational. ;)
 
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