Hello everybody, I've been thinking about asteroid bases, comet ships, and the like. Does this make sense to you?
* Vehicles has no rules for asteroid hulls, but both Traveller and Transhuman Space do. When it comes to structural design rules, Traveller is closer to generic GURPS than THS. * A rock with one mile diameter is roughly 75,000,000,000 cf, or 150,000,000 Traveller dtons. That means 18,750,000,000 stons according to the GT rules. * I'm assuming that a delta-V of 25 mps is good for insystem flights in a decent timeframe. * With a mass driver engine from VXi, which has Isp 720, the required fuel percentage is about 99.6%. * To get 0.00001 G initial acceleration, you need 0.06% of the initial mass in engine and power plant -- roughly 11 megatons. * When the rock arrives, it is down to 0.34% of the initial mass. This would still be a 250-yard sphere, but it is a pale shadow of the original asteroid. * Alternatively, there could be a shell just a couple of feet wide. The results look disappointing. Any errors in my assumptions or my maths? I could assume that there is some ice for use in TL9 fusion rockets, but it would have to be a lot of ice, and would a dirty slushball be attractive for asteroid miners and the like? Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
