Proneutron
SOC-13
No, I know a C level exec, or Ex exec of the Algae farm hopefuls. It is FAR, FAR more expensive. Which is why none have panned out. They was at it for 10 years with tons of funding.
What if the tech levels came in at their originally stated decades?
- Thread starter Werner
- Start date
No, I know a C level exec, or Ex exec of the Algae farm hopefuls. It is FAR, FAR more expensive. Which is why none have panned out. They was at it for 10 years with tons of funding.
Computer technology is currently at about where it was in 1985. There's an internet, but it looks like BBSs and early AOL. Cellphones are still big and still basically cellphones; PDAs are the size of hardbound books, and instead of laptops we have "luggables" like old Kaypros.
Computer use still requires some coding skills, rather than simply operating the applications.
There are no self-driving cars, even in the limited sense that Tesla and others have it.
Hardcopy books are in no danger of being obsoleted by ebooks, because the devices are too unwieldy.
Why would Traveller tech retard the advancement of computer technology? So I assume Apple does poorly.
I figure Traveller tech is more of a floor rather than a ceiling. The computers used in starships aren't just computers, they are sensor and communications packages designed to communicate across interplanetary distances, a bit more mass is involved than just a computer.
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kilemall
SOC-14 5K
The original CT TLs had a solar age before fusion. So I would expect many if not most are operating on solar panels as a lower capital entry cost option.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
1. Apple sells a lifestyle, in a closed garden ecosystem; like Walmart, they squeeze their vendors at one end, and unlike Walmart, try to offer apparent greater value at inflationary prices to their customers.
2. Once the energy aspect is removed from the petrochemical industry, it moves from strategic to important, since I'll assume there's nothing to replace the flexibility of plastic, even in Five Kay.
3. However, recycling recovery percentage may have improved, since energy costs fall to practically nothing, and you can automate garbage collection and sorting.
4. Corporations become hundred percent liable (in most jurisdictions) for health and ecological damage, and cannot socialize it by declaring bankruptcy, so either fantastic insurance premiums, or large long term bonds, since by this time most electorates will have figured out that preventative is cheaper than reactive, especially as the industry can no longer claim to be strategic.
5. The United States Marine Corps will have the financial means and technical industrial base to totally convert their transport assets to air/rafts, allowing them to stage expeditions directly from the Continental United States to anywhere globally, within the half century timeframe; the Osprey and the Ef Thirty Five programmes might even have been abandoned as anti gravitational technology becomes viable. This might not have been an option for any other military, as the discovery likely becomes proprietary and classified.
6. Cruise missiles become a real threat, since their duration can be measured in days and weeks with gravitational motors, essentially becoming hunter killer drones.
7. Speaking of drones, instead of a warhead, the military places communications or sensor suites onboard, turning them into reconnaissance vehicles or low orbit satellites.
2. Once the energy aspect is removed from the petrochemical industry, it moves from strategic to important, since I'll assume there's nothing to replace the flexibility of plastic, even in Five Kay.
3. However, recycling recovery percentage may have improved, since energy costs fall to practically nothing, and you can automate garbage collection and sorting.
4. Corporations become hundred percent liable (in most jurisdictions) for health and ecological damage, and cannot socialize it by declaring bankruptcy, so either fantastic insurance premiums, or large long term bonds, since by this time most electorates will have figured out that preventative is cheaper than reactive, especially as the industry can no longer claim to be strategic.
5. The United States Marine Corps will have the financial means and technical industrial base to totally convert their transport assets to air/rafts, allowing them to stage expeditions directly from the Continental United States to anywhere globally, within the half century timeframe; the Osprey and the Ef Thirty Five programmes might even have been abandoned as anti gravitational technology becomes viable. This might not have been an option for any other military, as the discovery likely becomes proprietary and classified.
6. Cruise missiles become a real threat, since their duration can be measured in days and weeks with gravitational motors, essentially becoming hunter killer drones.
7. Speaking of drones, instead of a warhead, the military places communications or sensor suites onboard, turning them into reconnaissance vehicles or low orbit satellites.
There was a Time when Apple was user-serviceable, reliable and competitively priced... And also innovative. Then they let Steve Jobs come back...
Keep in mind that many a tech innovator is stifled by their boss.
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Because I'm taking the prompt seriously. CT was wildly optimistic about some kinds of technology, and severely underestimated progress in others. I just posit that they were correct about everything, not just the stuff they were too enthusiastic about.
It's a world where we did SPACE!! but didn't do computer technology.
Under LBB3, an iPhone is an experimental Hand Computer (at least 2TL before its proper TL) with a Short Range Communicator grafted on. The Hand Computer's "internal radio" is Bluetooth or maybe WiFi, not a cellular radio. Wouldn't expect it to weigh less than 750g, and it's probably closer to the size of a very thick iPad than an iPhone. It's probably priced like a modern flagship cellphone.
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Having clunky computers is not really necessary for an interstellar setting, whether your cellphone is the size of a brick is not really relevant, the game designers had not really anticipated how far modern electronics would come, they don't really change anything as far as Travelling is concerned. I was thinking of grafting the modern timeline onto the Traveller tech timeline, I didn't think of including tech limitations. Do you really want to have pay phones at your starports?
How about secretaries with typewriters?
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kilemall
SOC-14 5K
The hand computers, battle computers etc. point to at least microcomputers in the 1980s sense in the hands of secretaries.
Actually I kind of like the starport pay phone, plenty of reasons to have them.
Backup comms for incompatible comms gear standards situations, particularly with starports located on borders between polities.
Radio traffic suppressed on purpose and forced to the pay phones, for listening in on all comms, disabling pesky Traveller shenanigans, and/or supporting a local 'fleece the starport users they got money' franchise.
Or just ref amusement as the concept has to be explained to the younger players.
But once Fusion is "solved", solar will vanish. Fusion (as portrayed) is far cheaper, and far more efficient. The only reason for solar is because you don't have fusion. And, given the timelines, we do have Fusion, and lots of it.
There's little reason we can't have community power centers, where each town has it's own Fusion power plant.
Apple headquarters has their own natural gas power plant to power their campus, augmented by large amounts of solar. Cheap fusion democratizes energy.
With the combination of solar and batteries, my house is, mostly, "self sufficient", generating and consuming its own power. And I live in an urban area.
A small town of 50,000 people can run their own power plant, cheaply, safely, and efficiently. Lessening the need for a grid. We have a power grid because the power plants are monolithic, large, dirty, expensive and not where the people are.
Cheap fusion fixes that.
The problem, though, is with cheap power comes more power. My solar guy said that most folks who install solar INCREASE their electricity use. "Why not? It's FREE(tm)" People turn lights off to save power, not light bulbs.
More cheap power means more cheap air conditioning and other things that create heat.
Some areas of high density in areas like India, air conditioning is becoming a problem. Urban heat bloom has been on folks radar for some time. More "free" power means more power consumed, which means more environmental heat.
Vile
SOC-12
You still have to factor in government type when considering the impact of technology, though of course that might also change if we were a proper TL8. The main reason for large regional power stations and a national grid is centralisation and control. Local fusion power plants would make places more independent from the national economy, so most governments would want to limit this decentralisation.
Wasn't the videophone a common trope of science fiction back in the 1970s? We have those now, called video teleconferencing, I am sure Traveller has that, its not just scratchy radio. I believe they have holograms as well. In Star Trek they had those flip communicators, those are like cellphones, no reason why they couldn't have a little video screen either, these ideas were not unthought of in the 1970s.
In the present day, it's for economies of scale and redundant capabilities. With "too cheap to meter" non-polluting fusion power, the regional grids should be replaced by much smaller grids.
I think fusion reactors have moving parts that need servicing by a team of skilled engineers, solar panels don't require that, which is why fusion plants would be huge, the number of engineers isn't proportional to the size of your plant, and you want that plant huge so you have a large number of customers paying those engineer's salaries, and you deliver the electricity to their homes by wire. Solar panels are nice as they don't need a team of engineers, thus you can have one set per home.
Fusion is governed by the Lawson criterion, larger fusion plants are more efficient because you can have more fusion going on inside them, the amount of energy generated is proportional to the volume of its fusing plasma, while the energy radiated is proportional to its surface area.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
1. I kinda suspect energy efficiencies are going to get mandated.
2. Capital investment costs will also play a part in determining whether it's totally fusion, a hybrid model with renewables, or trying for mostly renewables.
3. Primary assumption is that the minimum size of Traveller power plants have to be fourteen cubic metres; it could be less, as Striker made it a case of diminishing returns, or economies of scale, depending on which direction it went.
2. Capital investment costs will also play a part in determining whether it's totally fusion, a hybrid model with renewables, or trying for mostly renewables.
3. Primary assumption is that the minimum size of Traveller power plants have to be fourteen cubic metres; it could be less, as Striker made it a case of diminishing returns, or economies of scale, depending on which direction it went.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Building lots of solar panels from space based mineral exploitation will allow you to build a Dyson swarm around as much of the Sun as you want to and then beam all that power around the solar system.
This would be trivial engineering for a TL9 Earth.
Such a swarm will generate a lot more power from the biggest fusion reactor in the Solar System - the Sun itself - rather than any vehicle, ship or city scale fusion power plant. It would be a lot cheaper in the long run too.
The question is how big a swarm has been constructed between 1990 and 2020, the ongoing construction project could be the location for an Outland type campaign...
This would be trivial engineering for a TL9 Earth.
Such a swarm will generate a lot more power from the biggest fusion reactor in the Solar System - the Sun itself - rather than any vehicle, ship or city scale fusion power plant. It would be a lot cheaper in the long run too.
The question is how big a swarm has been constructed between 1990 and 2020, the ongoing construction project could be the location for an Outland type campaign...
Well, I'll just disagree.
Simply, consider that there are a gazillion cell towers in some countries that offer no autonomy to the local populations, as they are all centrally controlled.
You can have a distributed grid that is under centralized control. In fact, as a nation state, a more distributed production capability is a safety net against attack, as the importance of a single station loses it significance in ratio to its smaller size.
The down side is that the individual stations are more difficult to defend (being so distributed) against, perhaps, an internal break away region but that's a lower threat, even to totalitarian regimes, and still, I think, not difficult to defend against.
With central control, the individual stations can be remotely disabled before they're taken over, and even permanently disabled to the point of requiring new control equipment to be installed to start it back up. The reactor is fine, but the control systems can be bricked remotely to never come back on line without replacement. (This would be a risky capability as well, since it could be potentially exploited by someone else -- 2 edged sword.)
But, simply, distribution does not necessarily mean lack of centralized control. It complicates it, but does not repudiate it.
Yea, and look how much we hate this capability today!
