I'm thinking of trying a space opera setting where the distinction between interplanetary travel and interstellar travel is merely one of scale, not of type. In particular, I want the standard drive system to be a gravity drive that uses a version of Alcubierre's "warp bubble" theory to ignore the lightspeed barrier. Interstellar travel would involve a ship accelerating halfway to the destination system, then decelerating for the second half of the trip. This same drive system would be used for interplanetary travel and for combat maneuvering. OTOH, I'm thinking that gravitational tidal forces might interfere with it, thus keeping it from being usable for planetary takeoffs and landings.
I'm thinking of keeping the accelerations reasonably low, on the order of single-digit G's (figure a thrust-to-mass ratio of, say, 100N per kg for the drive system), and I'm figuring that the tidal forces that occur in low Earth orbit are sufficient to disrupt the drive. What are the implications of these assumptions? -- Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
