On Thu, 2011-09-15 at 19:08 +0200, Onno Meyer wrote: > Hello everybody, > > the sandjammer is ready to roll, so I'm thinking about the next > vehicle. A sail-powered aircraft could be a balloon with a sail > to catch more or less of the prevailing winds, but that is not > very exciting. > > The cinematic image is of course Jabba's barge from Star Wars, > but were the sails more than just show? I'm prepared to go with > science fantasy here -- how realistic are contragrav, jump > drives, and stars arranged in a hexgrid? -- but I'd like to > think about the laws of physics before I break them. > > * It is obvious that sails on a contragrav vehicle could be > used to increase speed while running downwind. > > * It is equally clear that sailing directly into the wind is > impossible. > > * Would it be possible to arrange the sails so there is some > lateral propulsion? > > What do you think?
I think that you could get lateral propulsion and maybe even sail into the wind if you used kite sails that were long enough to get into different bands of wind and the winds were moving in different directions. I don't believe that there's any reasonable explanation for contragrav technology without corresponding propulsion technology. If there was, the contragrav would need to be low tech. Some kind of mineral like the stuff in Avatar or Jules Verne stories. Or some kind of natural superconductor that reacts strongly with powerful local magnetic fields. Or maybe leftovers from the fall of civilization or scraps from an ancient alien race. TL 5+4? TL 5^? -- Knowledge Is Power Power Corrupts Study Hard Be Evil _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
