Zan replied to me: > 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.
Hello Zan, in that case, couldn't the grav vehicle simply rise to the required altitude and catch the wind directly? This sounds like a variant of "catch the right breeze" ... Say you have a funnel to catch the wind, with a nozzle to the side (in line with the center of gravity, so it won't turn the ship). This would still move the ship leeward, mostly, but with some lateral force. Or am I missing some force from turning the air stream? If this works in theory, we can reconsider the exact shape of the funnel -- perhaps a handful of twisted sails will do. > I don't believe that there's any reasonable explanation for contragrav > technology without corresponding propulsion technology. Two thoughts on that: * GURPS contragrav uses only very little power, compared to some other rules, just 2 kW per ton of lift. If power supplies are an issue, it might be possible to power contragrav, but not thruster tech. In Vehicles, you'd probably have to go for solar power to make that happen. * Or I could accept that the vehicle makes no economic sense. It could be a sporting or pleasure craft, like sailboats today. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
