[TML] Freelance Traveller Contest 2008-01: Lead to some other thoughts, questions and inventions about gravity generators.

[Richard Aiken]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 12:50 AM, Jerry W Barrington
<jerry.barrington at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/24/08 12:20 AM, "Richard Aiken" <raikenclw at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 8:25 PM, Jerry W Barrington
> > The actual *scout* Scout uses a
> > module which has it's entire aft surface dedicated to sensor ports.
> > So it looks at planets/etc through it's own a$$.  :)
>
> Cool, but I would have expected insertion through bow or top...  and
> extensible sensor arrays, where appropriate.  Not so great if you expect
> combat.

I didn't want to weaken the hull too much - with only repulsors
(rather than contragravity), I still use meteoric reentries.  The
diamond shape is a very strong one.  Cut out a chunk of it and you
introduce unnecessary failure points.

As for extensible sensor arrays, certainly!  These just fold out of
the a$$.  You can't manuever while they're deployed, anyway.  And the
scout version will normally only be fighting if something is between
it and the jump point.

> Given the communication delay, I could see that.  Throughout history,
> communication time has been the dominant factor in how big empires can get
> and still function.  There's reasons Alexander's empire didn't last, and the
> Roman Empire split in 2...

Yep.  A lot of "Imperial" space - IMNTU - is rather recently annexed
and has a centuries-long (at least) history of being independent.
Most Imperial noble families (at least in my campaign area) are
*local* noble families who got co-opted by the expanding Empire, which
took them in with all their existing powers and perogatives intact.
The Emperor is (to them) a distant overlord who occassionally lends
them assistance . . . in exchange for 2% of their Gross Planetary
Product in taxes.  Half this goes to the next higher noble and half to
the local Imperial Navy Fleet.  The nobles would like to not pay those
taxes, but no one of them is powerful enough to renege on the deal and
no alliance of them is stable enough to do it, either.

> But I could even see them not being even loosely allied.  I could deal with
> the sort of shifting alliances and arrangements of Old Europe.  Any two
> nations may be at peace for a few decades, then have a war, then settle back
> into watchful peace, eventually becoming allies, etc.  Systems could shift
> between different nations over time, sometimes repeatedly in highly
> disputed, strategic stars.

Yep.  This, too.  Especially if I go with the Fourth Imperium model,
where the Spinward Marches fragmented into numerous small states which
have only recently been "re-united."  The areas past the new borders
are *really* chaotic.

> > Yeah.  But did you ever hear the JTAS solution to that one?  The
> > particle concerned isn't actually a meson.  The physicist who
> > discovered it was simply named Dr. Bob Meson.  :-)
>
> But *no* particle decay works that way.  It doesn't fit into physics.

Maybe the gun is pulling bit of jumpspace into real space?  Or shoving
*part* of the target into jump space?

> I don't see how you can get total conversion from fusion.

Sorry.  As I understand it, this refers to total conversion of the
hydrogen fuel into exhaust energy.  Rather than just "warming" it into
a plasma state.

> I'm doing major surgery...  you know, the kind described as "surgical
> strikes".  :P

heh.  :)

-- 
Richard Aiken

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