On Thu, 4 Aug 2011, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to David:
There are some points where i disagree with Traveller canon equipment
however. For instance i do believe internal combustion engines will be the
exception
rather then the norm for low and middle tech vehicles, and electric
engines, with high tech power cells be the norm. Power cells are not
extremly bulky, easy to store and transport, need practically no
maintance, replacing them once they are broken is easy and the demand is
easy to calculate.
How about their cost? According to Vehicles and Far Trader:
A TL6 gas engine is $12 per kW or Cr 0.6 per kW
A TL7 gas engine is $25 per kw or Cr 1.875 per kW
A TL8 gas engine is $18 per kW or Cr 2.16 per kW
A TL7 fuel cell is $200 per kW or Cr 15 per kW
A TL8 fuel cell is $25 per kW or Cr 3 per kW
Add your "no user serviceable parts" idea, and fuel cells should
be priced right out of the low-tech market.
I was not thinking about fuel cells but rechargable power cells. A
completly battery powered car, that requires electricity as fuel.
Admitadly they are more expensive then i had originally assumed, the
sample car in Gurps Traveller, would cost a bit more then double as much,
if i just replace the engine. I didn't calcluate it, but i assume
utilizing the lower weight and volume, to need less power cells , would
not change much about the calculation.
I guess it such cars were viable would depend on the relative prices of
fuel and electricity, which i guess is world dependent.
Fuel for internal combustion engines requires quite some effort to
create/find and refine.
How about biofuels?
You need land usable for agriculture, that are not used for anything else,
like planting cash crops, personell working on it, and your agriculture
machinery will itself require fuel, you still need a processing plant,
maintaining that again requires technical know how. Propably you still
need a distribution network (unless you have one central gas station for
the whole colony)
To maintain a middle TL you already need electrical power with a power
plant and a distribution network, so you can assume that this is already
there, so with the electrical car variant, all you need instead is
scaling up the existing electrical power systems, and have suitable
plugs for cars, instead of a complete parallel system of
generating/finding energy and distributing it.
If you have a population like a small town, like many Traveller worlds,
having specialists for thoose fields with some retundancy and education
for the next generation of specialists, might not be a trivial task.
One mans groundfloor is an other mans earthmissle
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Johannes Trimmel
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