Eric replied to me: > > * To get 0.00001 G initial acceleration, you need 0.06% of > > the initial mass in engine and power plant -- roughly 11 > > megatons. > > RL rocket thrust equations are in the realm of calculus as the effective > thrust (in Gs) is steadily increasing while the mass of fuel spent > (thrust in lbs) is constant due to the total mass of the ship decreasing!
GURPS covers that in VXii. I wrote about initial acceleration for that reason, and calculated delta-V. > E.g., if you have spent, say, 50% of the asteroid mass to accelerate it, > at that point, the effective G of a rocket is doubled! > > I think to approximate it you might try doing math at each 10%... Using my assumptions, I would get 0.001 G or so as the final accel, which is a 100-fold increase, but I'm still not going anywhere fast. The reaction mass to move the mass driver engine and power plant out to the asteroid will be in the gigaton range, too. By contrast, a reactionless thruster to get the rock up to 10 kps in a year would be 0.5 megatons, and it could bring itself into position easily. Ah, the temptations of using superscience ... Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
