On Aug 2, 2011, at 12:27 PM, "Onno Meyer" <[email protected]> wrote:
Johannes wrote:
An other possible motivation for such a vehicle, could be a mining,
prison, or whatever world in a system that does not have more then
TL6.
Hello Johannes,
imagine a TL6 garden world where the Starport Authority has
furnished a TL10 downport with a couple of TL10 cutters for
SAR and liaison work. The SPA brass isn't (much) interested
in development aid, so when somebody has a clever idea to
leapfrog across TL7 fission power and to go straight to TL8
fusion, the locals will have to find their own helium-3
supply.
So they build a moon base and start sifting the regolith.
A maximum security prison on the moon would also be possible,
but would they need ground vehicles? You build a base and a
landing pad, that's it.
And what are the benefits of a moon surface base over an
orbital base? Radiation protection? Water ice?
Gravity. At least in a less magical setting. Radiation protection
makes sense, too.
Such operations do justify, that corporations, with access to High
Tech
spend R&D resources on reducing the amount of high tech spare parts
an
outpost needs.
Not exactly R&D, since the tech is in the Imperial database,
they just have to get the processes going.
And that's the thing that really bugs me about traveller. There's lots
of tech that's very clearly the wrong way to do things, even given a
set of limitations of technolgies and materials once you know better.
(go look at patents for automated cardboard box making in the first
drcade of the 20th centyry rjousands of patents, incremental
umprovents on each other, and all obsolete in a decade, without major
advances in fundamental
Tech, just trial and error. ) And that makes it possible to make tl 7
(3e tl) stuff with a tl5 industrial base. If you allow that there are
really plans, you can do better. (with my desktop computer I can do
the design work for a much better engine for the model t, which ford
could have built from the start. ).
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