Anthony replied to me: > > I'm trying to justify the million-man transport, but only if it can > > be justified without too much fiat. > > In the context of Vehicles, it's not really practical, as Vehicles > doesn't do much with size scaling. If you're using realistic mass > shielding and spin gravity, the most efficient habitats (per person > carried) are very large -- probably O'Neill cylinders or the equivalent > -- and hold an enormous number of people, but that tends to only make > sense if flight time is substantial.
Engines, reactors, power cells and life support scale roughly with loaded weight, but avionics are just required once (presumably one redundant set, of course). So if the commo includes a 5,000-ton FTL communicator and the sensors include a few lightmonth-range FTL radars, it makes sense to build a megaton-range ship rather than a thousand kiloton-range ships. Or maybe megaton-range freighters make sense in the setting, and the megaton evacuation transport uses freighter hulls and engines, either refurbished or from the same standard plans. And if starship operation requires highly skilled human pilots, navigators, and engineers, and if the evacuation and colonization requires many new ships, it might make sense to build in the tens or hundreds of kilotons, instead of single-digit kilotons, to save scarce/expensive crews. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
