Johannes replied to me:
> It also might be that due to political turf wars or because of treaties
> with other galactic empires, there are funds that can not be used for the
> military but they can be used for the disaster relief agency. So the plan
> was that the DRA purchases troop transports, that in case of war could be
> conscripted by the navy. Then some smartasses in the DRA accepted the bid
> for the giant evacuation ship, because it did fill the official role
> better then the pseudo troop transports. And propably because they were
> angry at being used.
Let's see:
Troop Transport:
* Must be fast, possibly faster than economical for a commercial craft.
* Must be landing-capable or carry a full complement of shuttles.
* Substantial medical facilities, soldiers get hurt.
* Substantial cargo, from several tons to several dozen tons per trooper,
for AFVs and ammo.
* Mil-spec stealth, C4, probably point defense.
Rescue Transport:
* Must be fast, possibly faster than economical for a commercial craft.
* Must be landing-capable or carry nearly a full complement of shuttles,
if it isn't first responder it will come soon thereafter.
* Substantial medical facilities, something forced the evacuation.
* Very limited cargo, a suitcase per person.
* Good C4, but probably unarmed and unstealthy ("Red Cross" IFF setting).
Colonizer transport:
* The most economical speed.
* Can rely on pre-positioned shuttles or lighters.
* Normal medical facilities in proportion to the population.
* Significant cargo, unless cooperating with freighters, call it several
tons per colonist. Even if there are freighters, some will go with the
colonizer transport.
* Usually no special C4, might have limited weapons and stealth if there
are many BESMs in an unfriedly galaxy, but that cuts into the profit
margins.
The designers of the rescue transport might say, "why, we can carry ten
times the refugees if we drop those pesky cargo holds".
> > How is that different from sending the colonists in special
> > trains or buses to the starport? Of course the psychological
> > of a shuttle would be greater.
>
> If you hold them in an spaceport waiting room, some might want to have
> fresh air, while waiting, or take photos of the sunset or pick some
> flowers ect. If you lock them in trains or busses that don't move for a
> long time, they will complain and want to get out for various reasons.
[...]
I'm tending towards shuttles for the colonizer transport, right now, but
a landing-capable refugee transport.
Kurt wrote:
> One thought would be to take a page from Traveller and scale it up to
> what was shown in Dune (the theatrical movie); massive jump tenders that
> are not much more than a transport frame and all the payload modules are
> self contained, self maneuverable, ships.
The Traveller background had large, volume-dependent stardrives, and
in GURPS 3E streamlining added to volume. That made tender/lighter
systems very competitive for major routes. The colonizer scenario is
probably a major route, while the resuce scenario is a major op, but
no permanent route. Tenders really pay if the fresh load of lighters
is already waiting at the jump limit, time and again.
David replied to me:
> We're down to 50K people per ship, so for 200 million people a year, we'd
> need about 400 ships. number of pax containers is the same. We'd need
> cargo containers, but for stuff that doesn't need life support, they're
> cheap [1]. We need more shuttle craft, probably, to get the cargo into
> orbit, and out of orbit on the far end, but they're not terribly expensive
> (vehicle of the week 759 can move a pax module and its cargo module in and
> out of orbit. It's about 50 mil a pop). Probably 20 trillion in capital,
> and a couple trillion a year. A TL10 world that's got 200 million people
> leaving a year could afford that.
I was thinking about reactionless thrusters for the shuttles. At TL10,
that cuts into the payload percentage, but fusion rockets are called
"mildly" radioactive, which is not nice near unprotected population
centers ...
> Now, this isn't an evacuation in the "oh, no, the sun is going out!" sense.
> It's a "go start a new life on Suprema IV!" sort of thing. (There's lots
> of colonization going on in my setting, but it's normally done on the 10,000
> people with two ship loads of gear sort of scale, and lots of it done places
> where there's not a useful planet.)
"Our numbers say the sun is going nova, in about 1,000 years, give or
take a few millenia in either direction."
There'd be scientists denying there was a problem, politicians and
lobbyists using that excuse to do nothing, until finally steps are
taken to Save Mankind. Couldn't have the voters upset because of a
disaster that might be millenia away ...
Chris replied to me:
> You may want to take a look at the "Night's Dawn" trilogy by Peter F.
> Hamilton. The first book, 'The Reality Dysfunction' has a lot of the
> action on a newly colonized world. Be warned, though - each book is
> somewhere around 1500 to 1800 pages. Damned good series, highly recommended.
I have read most of his books, with highly mixed feelings. He wrote
a great space opera background, and tacked on weird mysticism and a
weak plot. Not just in Night's Dawn but also Pandora's Star and its
sequels. I liked his Greg Mandel books much better.
Right now I have drafts for
* A TL14 freighter, 2 mt Lwt and 1.25 mt payload.
* A refugee transport variant of the freighter, Lwt down to 1 mt
(doubling acceleration and hyperspeed), payload down to 0.125 mt
including 1,000,000 refugees and a suitcase each.
* A TL10 shuttle with 1 kt Lwt and 250 t payload (including 1,000
colonists and several large suitcases each).
The shuttle would service a 100,000-man colonizer transport, with
about eight docking airlocks and the hangar capacity to ferry one
or two shuttles home with each flight for major maintenance.
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