Eric Funk wrote:
A military might well consider it acceptable to have to completely
disassemble an engine to do maintance on it, if it meant the fighter
would be faster. At high enough tech, you can feed the removed
component into a automated repair machine, that disassembles, tests,
and reassembles, replacing anything that happens to need it.
If going that route.... At a high enough tech, you can just spray on
the nanites and let them crawl around in the vehicle, repairing
whatever isn't in spec. Microscopic access space?
Yes, TL13 "living metal" structures don't need access space for that
reason. VE 18.
And even at earlier TLs, 'Cyberswarms' (from GURPS Robots) can
perform some maintenance work with very minimal access space
(the microbots are about the size of small insects). Of course,
with their limited effective skill levels and tools they really
cannot effect any major repairs, but they should be able to do
routine maintenance within specific components.
Another thing to consider is that with sufficient skill level
several maintenance intervals can be fairly routinely skipped,
(at -3 penalty per each skipped interval). At higher TLs, neural
net skill programs running on military spacedock computers may
well have skill levels way above 20+ or so.. The thing is,
a large organization like a military only needs to get its hands
on just one high-skill neural net program - It can then be copied
and used everywhere within that organization.
Also, having automated hardware and droids disassemble and put
back together an engine is way, way cheaper than having a team
of human mechanics do it, so this might be a viable option for
a state-of-the-art starfighter.. It would be possible to have
several sets of modular components for each fighter in storage,
so that the fighters would be grounded for maintenance for
the minimum possible amount of time.
-Pauli
--
"..Wings on my back, I got horns on my head. My fangs are sharp
and my eyes are red. Not quite an angel or the one that fell.."
-Lordi, Hard Rock Hallelujah
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