On 8/18/06, Onno Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Summarized, this would be build on low-wage TL6 worlds for export to other TL6 worlds, not for export to TL8+ worlds. In a TL6 world well connected to interstellar trade, you'd probably dump the TL6 long-range radio and navigation instruments and take a TL10 short-range radio and GPS instead, but not when the nearest qualified maintenance tech is two jumps and four weeks away.
A TL6 world isn't going to be able to sell a TL6 plane to someone who can buy a similar looking, same-capacity plane from a TL10-2 provider for the same or less money. The plane built by the high tech people would be the same basic design, but made of TL10 material. That gives you engine parts that never wear out when put in a tl6 engine. I really do mean *never* wear out. In todays world, it's possible to build TL6 engines with early TL 8 tech, and have them last 10 times as long as they would with TL6 techniques and material. That takes an aircraft engine from 2000 hours to 20,000. TL9 and 10 will give another order of magnitude, each. That takes you to 2,000,000 hours; something more than 225 years of continious operation. Electronics will see similar gains, though I doubt anyone would bother with TL6 stuff. Even if you can't repair it locally, it simply isn't going to need to be repaired for anything short of attack with an axe. Which would you buy -- a 375K TL6 plane, or a 375K TL6-looking plane, if the second one has maintance requirements of "clean the windshields" as the only maintance item in the first 100 years? -- David Scheidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
