What if the tech levels came in at their originally stated decades?

[mike wightman]

I don't think they would be capable of that without artificial intelligence, after all, there are only 7.8 billion people, a Dyson swarm has 1 billion earths of surface area.

It would be doable now if we put the resources into it, with TL9 technology it is trivial.
You don't need AI, nor do you need to build the swarm quickly, the more power sats you bring on line the more power you have to distribute as you want around the solar system rather than a great deal of it being radiated into empty space.

 

[BRover]

. . .
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?

1968, Kubrick did (2001: A Space Oddysey)
Pay-Videophone call from the space station
Of course, that was similar in era to Traveller, so it's understandable.

 

[Condottiere]

Consumer electronics can evolve faster, driven by, and creating, consumer demand.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

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.

CONCERNING cell phone towers:

In the US, it was/is complicated. I worked for a cell phone company 1997-2003 (CBIS/AWS). The story I'm sure has changed. Cellphone technology was often held by two (or more) corporate entities. Cellphone towers and the small real-estate they occupy are owned by the wireless corporate entity. The POTS network was used by the cell companies for long distance and "roaming" payed rental to the POTS owner for permission to use the network" as they had not built independent by another corporation.
"Roaming" back then was defined as "if you have to use another network" to complete call. The main thing Im trying to show is that as the tech changes, it often transitioning, not wholesale dismantling.

Also control of specific towers can be manually and automatically "turned off" or slowed down to allow calls to be completed by other nearby towers depending on saturation of towers in an area.

 

[Proneutron]

Yea, and look how much we hate this capability today!

Exactly. My wife is on conference calls with C level execs and Analyst firms like Gartner at least once a week and most don't care to do video unless they have to show PP or the like. Even then they don't show their faces for most part.

 

[Enoki]

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.

The 1960's Dick Tracy comic strip had the "wrist radio" with camera and video in it. So the idea was floating around quite a while.

 

[Werner]

1968, Kubrick did (2001: A Space Oddysey)
Pay-Videophone call from the space station
Of course, that was similar in era to Traveller, so it's understandable.

There was a lot of things the did not anticipate, such as Pan Am being gone and no Soviet Union, if you read the book however, the Peoples Republic of China was the main adversary.

 

[BRover]

There was a lot of things the did not anticipate, such as Pan Am being gone and no Soviet Union, if you read the book however, the Peoples Republic of China was the main adversary.

Yes, I have. Pan Am is a company--they tend to come and go anyway, especially with tech level changes--but the (hazy) point I was trying to formulate is that this was a visual image floating around (in orbit? ) back when Traveller was being created.

 

[Werner]

Yes, I have. Pan Am is a company--they tend to come and go anyway, especially with tech level changes--but the (hazy) point I was trying to formulate is that this was a visual image floating around (in orbit? ) back when Traveller was being created.

You ever see the 2003 Battlestar Galactica, that is what I'm going for. BSG had all the sci fi technologies to make it a space opera, but no more. All the technology, that had nothing to do with space travel, was contemporary to the time the show was being produced, the same could be said of the show Caprica. Caprica had all the technology it needed to make cylons and the spaceships, but no more. There was no cloning, no tissue repair, no sci fi troupes other than space opera and robots. And you know what, modern technology fit in very well with the setting. I'm not a fan of clunky retrospect which was a result of some sci fi writer's lack of vision. Just because someone back in the 1970s did not foresee the internet or cellphones when he wrote traveller, doesn't mean we can't include modern tech that wasn't there in the original source material.

There are fans of the Doctor Who series that just love the Tardis, the Daleks, and the Dogbot, and the whole host of cheezy special effects that were endemic to the show, but I'm not one of those.

 

[whartung]

You ever see the 2003 Battlestar Galactica, that is what I'm going for. BSG had all the sci fi technologies to make it a space opera, but no more. All the technology, that had nothing to do with space travel, was contemporary to the time the show was being produced, the same could be said of the show Caprica. Caprica had all the technology it needed to make cylons and the spaceships, but no more. There was no cloning, no tissue repair, no sci fi troupes other than space opera and robots. And you know what, modern technology fit in very well with the setting. I'm not a fan of clunky retrospect which was a result of some sci fi writer's lack of vision. Just because someone back in the 1970s did not foresee the internet or cellphones when he wrote traveller, doesn't mean we can't include modern tech that wasn't there in the original source material.

BSG also had a touch of the Virus vibe, trying to stay away from the computer systems because they felt they were compromised by the Cylons. The gist of it was BSG was an older ship that had not been refit, and thus was immune to the computerized shenanigans the Cylons pulled off on the other Battlestars.

Also, didn't Caprica have an advanced Virtual Reality capability? I seem to recall some kind of game "everyone played" that was big deal.

Regarding the topic at hand, I assumed everything else we have today moved along at the same rate. I don't know what specific capability discovery of "cheap fusion", for example, would have had on cell phone development. I don't know if cheap fusion required a certain density of computer equipment (which is what we've been going through, the computers get smaller and denser and thus more computation in to a smaller space with less energy). I would think if a 1980s Cray was fast enough to control a Fusion reaction, we'd be cranking those out as fast as we could the reactors, because they would be such a marginal cost over the benefit of a large, Gigawatt fusion reactor.

I considered air rafts a quieter, and potentially safer alternative to a helicopter, though if a helicopter fails, there's actually a decent chance of a controlled landing. I don't know what happens if an air raft fails. Downside of helicopters is they're very noisy, invasive with prop wash, and have very large spinny choppy things not suitable to children to be near.

But since we've been flying Cessna's for years safely, I figure we don't need much more technology above generic "anti-grav" to get an air raft to fly (unless the anti-grav itself requires high density computing power), same with the Jump drive.

 

[Werner]

Air/rafts are also orbital interface vehicles in that you don't need a spaceship to reach low Earth orbit, an air/raft and and other gravitational vehicle can reach low planet orbit just above the atmosphere or surface if the world doesn't have an atmosphere, but no further. Basically it flies by pushing what's underneath it, whether its ground or atmosphere, and by pushing down on something it lifts itself up it can also push sideways while pushing down so it can achieve orbital velocity. This antigrav effect has a limited range however, it needs at least a type 1 (Very Thin) atmosphere to push against, it can go above that but not very far, so it can reach a low orbit just above the atmosphere, and if over a vacuum World, it can clear the highest mountains but can go no further than that. Naturally the thicker the atmosphere, the higher you can go. Helicopters can't do this. What an air/raft can't do is push against vacuum, if there is nothing nearby to push against, it can't go anywhere! It can push against a Starship, or space station until that object is beyond its range and can push on it no further.

 

[Proneutron]

This antigrav effect has a limited range however, it needs at least a type 1 (Very Thin) atmosphere to push against,.

Not per RAW. Grav propulsion in no way has anything to do with the presence of gases.

 

[Condottiere]

Gravitational motors.

As opposed to propellers or jet engines.

 

[mike wightman]

I'm in the camp that assumes every technology we have today evolved as per reality but add on air/rafts and fusion power in the 1980s. Forty years with unlimited cheap electricity and grav vehicles that become the lifting stages for getting ion engine powered spacecraft into orbit, with chemical rocket engine powered spacecraft being also lifted to near Earth orbit before having to use their chemical rockets.

Still not sure why a fusion rocket wouldn't be based on fusion reactor technology but hey ho.

Then in the 1990s the invention of maneuver drives making cheap travel around the solar system a reality. But that has only been done for thirty years.

Thirty years of strip mining asteroids, building a Lunar and Martian base.

We wouldn't be in Kansas anymore, not unless that is the name of one of the O'Neill cylinders at the L points.

 

[Proneutron]

I'm in the camp that assumes every technology we have today evolved as per reality but add on air/rafts and fusion power in the 1980s. Forty years with unlimited cheap electricity and grav vehicles that become the lifting stages for getting ion engine powered spacecraft into orbit, with chemical rocket engine powered spacecraft being also lifted to near Earth orbit before having to use their chemical rockets.

That would be HUGE for being able to explore and colonize Mars for instance. Getting payload into orbit is the big problem for that right now.

 

[Werner]

Not per RAW. Grav propulsion in no way has anything to do with the presence of gases.

well then you explain to me what we need spaceships for, why can't we fly an air/raft from Earth to Mars? Air/rafts are a lot cheaper that spaceships after all.

 

[Proneutron]

well then you explain to me what we need spaceships for, why can't we fly an air/raft from Earth to Mars? Air/rafts are a lot cheaper that spaceships after all.

Who knows? Ask Marc. But air raft tech works on airless planets as it is a grav effect. Why would you think gases on a planet would be required for a gravity effect vehicle?

 

[boomslang]

well then you explain to me what we need spaceships for, why can't we fly an air/raft from Earth to Mars? Air/rafts are a lot cheaper that spaceships after all.

They probably use a similar propulsion method, but air/rafts lack many of the amenities of spaceships.

Like toilets, a breathable internal atmosphere, interplanetary avionics, deep space radiation shielding -- stuff like that.

 

[Grav_Moped]

well then you explain to me what we need spaceships for, why can't we fly an air/raft from Earth to Mars? Air/rafts are a lot cheaper that spaceships after all.

The antigrav needs a gravity well to work against.
My interpretation is that it has "lift" equal to local gravity plus 0.1G for lateral or vertical acceleration (based on the Gs/speed table in Striker).

The problem is that while it can reach low earth orbit (1000km altitude and 7.8km/sec lateral velocity), it might be difficult to build up any more speed than escape velocity -- 11.9km/sec -- before getting far enough away from Earth that the antigrav drive stops having any effect.

I'll let someone else do the math.

Wait. You could do repeated slingshot maneuvers, with the grav drives off on the way down, and on (for zero weight) on the way up.

The only limit is that after a few passes, the low point on the increasingly elliptical orbits will start getting down into the upper atmosphere and aerodynamic heating will be a problem.

 

[boomslang]

I'll let someone else do the math.

Wait. You could do repeated slingshot maneuvers, with the grav drives off on the way down, and on (for zero weight) on the way up.

There is an old rule of thumb that one G-hour of thrust (one hour @ 1-G) is enough to get you from Earth orbit to anywhere in the observable universe, if you are simply patient enough and creative enough with all the required gravity-assist slingshot maneuvers.