CT Only: Ship's Boat -The Ultimate Fighter?

[atpollard]

cue to the TL11 "Hand Computer" which costs Cr1,000 and is probably imagined as less powerful than my old TL7.5 Nokia phone).

... personally, I always wanted to take the claim that the HandComp was equivalent to a Model/1 computer literally and design a personal small craft with 0.5 dT of "Passenger Couch and life support" and a Model/1 computer HandComp tucked into a pocket on the leg of the pilot's coveralls ... just plug it in, add a small MD & PP and call it a personal small craft.

 

[rancke]

I don't think anyone back then in 1977 could've predicted the great increase in computing power and the massive reduction in computing power cost in the next 38 years and its effects on society (cue to the TL11 "Hand Computer" which costs Cr1,000 and is probably imagined as less powerful than my old TL7.5 Nokia phone).

There's a fan theory that the research and development that went into computers in the Real World went into space travel in the Traveller Universe. This would mean that Real Earth today is advanced several Traveller tech levels in computing -- i.e. our computers are atypically powerful for TL7.


Hans

 

[aramis]

I wouldn't be surprised to find that even the cheap Samsung Galaxy S3 mini I bought for 650 ILS (about $175) a month ago has more power than an 1970's mainframe. Again same OS family (Android which is also of the Unix family). Semiconductor technology advanced in great strides since the 1970's...

Hell, I started using a home computer in 1992, it was a 386 SX, 25MHz with 4MB of RAM (which was A LOT - "why the hell do you need more than 1 MB" we were asked by the vendor) and 120 MB of hard-drive space. It cost us about 6,000 ILS (about $2,000 back then, maybe even $2,500) with peripherals. My phone cost a tiny fraction of that and has memory and storage space greater by two orders of magnitude.

I don't think anyone back then in 1977 could've predicted the great increase in computing power and the massive reduction in computing power cost in the next 38 years and its effects on society (cue to the TL11 "Hand Computer" which costs Cr1,000 and is probably imagined as less powerful than my old TL7.5 Nokia phone).

Ah, but people HAD predicted it. Moore's Law had been formulated in 1975.

Most people didn't believe him, and, until 2010, he was correct. (It broke down in 2010. New processors have not doubled in transistor count nor in processing power - the two versions of moore's law that held up - since. Still, incremental improvements in processor architecture are improving things.

 

[aramis]

... personally, I always wanted to take the claim that the HandComp was equivalent to a Model/1 computer literally and design a personal small craft with 0.5 dT of "Passenger Couch and life support" and a Model/1 computer HandComp tucked into a pocket on the leg of the pilot's coveralls ... just plug it in, add a small MD & PP and call it a personal small craft.

I can see doing that with small craft. I don't allow it for jump craft.

And a counter theory to Hans' mentioned one, equally popular: the mass of a ship's computer isn't the computer, but the network cables and screens throughout the ship.

 

[kilemall]

... personally, I always wanted to take the claim that the HandComp was equivalent to a Model/1 computer literally and design a personal small craft with 0.5 dT of "Passenger Couch and life support" and a Model/1 computer HandComp tucked into a pocket on the leg of the pilot's coveralls ... just plug it in, add a small MD & PP and call it a personal small craft.

Check out my current IMTU thread, just got done putting in the 4000 Cr Model/1 computer- or M-1. But there are consequences going with commodity astronics....

Also going to be working up an EVA/container handling tug/pod for the Seeker Queen using HG rules, should come out about 4-5 tons.

 

[kilemall]

I wouldn't be surprised to find that even the cheap Samsung Galaxy S3 mini I bought for 650 ILS (about $175) a month ago has more power than an 1970's mainframe. Again same OS family (Android which is also of the Unix family). Semiconductor technology advanced in great strides since the 1970's...

First mainframe I operated was a 1970s era machine.

1 MHz I believe.

384K OS, the NCR B3 operating system.

640K assignable memory to partitions, usually we ran 6, from little 32K and 64K partitions all the way to 'huge' 256K ones.

http://www.thecorememory.com/html/ncr_criterion_series.html

We were able to run daily billing cycles, payroll, purchasing, AR and general ledger on that thing.

The trick is that what you spent money on were the programmers getting the nth amount out of the machine, whereas now the emphasis is on rapid development and deployment and secondarily minimal support or fuss.

 

[Patron Zero]

Drifting back to the thread's original subject matter if I may .....

My inclination would be that fighters of the same displacement (or less) would be much more agile than a stock ship's boat that's been 'gunned-up' for a similar application.

Mind a ship's boat could be a very effective platform as a gunship-assault craft but again dedicated dogfights might not be it's bailiwick.

C-130s make great gunships but have not the speed or agility of P-51s or F-16s.

 

[Condottiere]

Moore's Law cycles around every two years, and probably will hit the wall with seven nanometres, unless some new material or manufacturing process is introduced.

 

[kilemall]

Drifting back to the thread's original subject matter if I may .....

My inclination would be that fighters of the same displacement (or less) would be much more agile than a stock ship's boat that's been 'gunned-up' for a similar application.

Mind a ship's boat could be a very effective platform as a gunship-assault craft but again dedicated dogfights might not be it's bailiwick.

C-130s make great gunships but have not the speed or agility of P-51s or F-16s.

That's something I think we all have to get over, that space hardware has the same laws and engineering properties as current Earth hardware.

In space, a brick can be as fast and agile as a sleek ship given the proper engine and thruster power/arrangement.

 

[elbmc1969]

That's something I think we all have to get over, that space hardware has the same laws and engineering properties as current Earth hardware.

In space, a brick can be as fast and agile as a sleek ship given the proper engine and thruster power/arrangement.

More importantly, there's not much in the way of "dogfighting" with small craft this agile (that it, in the ability to point the nose, regardless of primary thrust).