On 10/15/09 3:07 PM, Bret Indrelee wrote:
On Oct 15, 2009, at 3:47 PM, Jon Lang wrote:
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.
[snip]
My first thought is this means the drives will interfere with each other.
Similar to the jet wake from a modern air plane, the drive would create
a gravity wave which interferes with other nearby drive systems. You
would need clear flight lanes in order to operate the drives, and want
to define what happens in the presence of 'bad gravity'. Defining the
failure mode will do a lot to define the setting.
[snip]
This could also mean that heavy gravity fields are serious navigation
hazards. Getting too deep into a gravity field would make your primary
drive system useless. The ship would have to fall back on reaction
thrusters or ion drives to get back to an area of space where they could
move again.
If they just happen to fly through an area of interstellar space with an
uncharted black hole or brown dwarf that has a high relative speed
toward them, they'd be doomed. Although I suppose that a trajectory that
just happens to be an intercept is pretty unlikely.
Well, they could still be trapped in normal space for months while it
passes by.
--
Zan Lynx
[email protected]
"Knowledge is Power. Power Corrupts. Study Hard. Be Evil."
_______________________________________________
GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]>
http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
