[TML] Thrust Distribution Field

[Timothy Little]

Richard Aiken wrote:
> So . . . a reactionless drive ship can use its engines while "running
> silent."

Better than a conventional rocket of the same thrust, but still not
really usable.  The difference is between a conventional drive that
would require radiating terawatts to petawatts, and the reactionless
drive that radiates "only" megawatts to gigawatts.

If you started from a blank slate, you could posit reactionless drives
that use a tiny fraction of a watt per newton of thrust, but that's
not Traveller.


>  Assuming we use my idea of gravity-lenses to focus and re-direct
> emitted heat, it can also beam it's inevitable IR signature with
> laser-like focus in the direction least likely to be toward a
> detector.

Lenses, whether gravitational or not, still have the same problem as
physical mirrors.  Radiation in a tightly collimated beam has much
lower entropy than isotropic radiation, no matter how it is generated.
You get exactly the same problems of needing radiators hotter than
stars and vast amounts of extra heat generated by pumping the original
waste heat into them.


- Tim
_______________________________________________
TML mailing list
TML at travellercentral.com
http://lists.travellercentral.com/mailman/listinfo/tml