[TML] [Merchant Shipping] Some ideas I came up with tomakemerchant shipping more interesing

[Richard Aiken]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 11:53 PM, Timothy Little <tim at little-possums.net> wrote:
> at the surface of Europa - at least a hundred thousand rads per day.

Yeah.  Something like that.  Real "glow in the dark" time . . .

> Fortunately charged radiation is pretty easy to shield against.
> However there is also a fair bit of neutral radiation, though I
> haven't yet found definite figures.

Uh huh.  But . . . if you're scoping hydrogen in the gas giant's upper
atmosphere, can you run your "charged particle deflection shield" at
the same time?  Wouldn't you be stopping the intake of the very
substance you're trying to get ahold of?

IMTU, civilian ships *can* do wilderness refueling . . . but it's
definitely a "life or death" choice.  Everybody doses up on anti-rad
and then huddles in the ship's tiny stellar flare shelter, while the
pilot handles it via remote.  And even so, it's only done if you can't
afford the time/fuel necessary to find a nice, cool ice ball
somewhere.

Like the other fellow said, it's also a "time is money" issue.  In my
last extended campaign (lasting for just less than a year of weekly
sessions), the players refueled outside a starport exactly TWICE -
once from an ice ball and once from a gas giant.

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein