Roger Burton West wrote: > As a sort of corollary to this, I'm _very_ wary of reactionless > thrusters. Reaction drives, even super-efficient total conversion > thrusters, still need reaction mass, and there's a limit to just how > much delta-V you can squeeze out of them. Reactionless drives, apart > from breaking physics which I can live with, automatically give you > planet-killing weapons: just plug together a drive and either a > high-power reactor or solar panels, and wait a few months or even years, > and you can slam into a planet at relativistic speed. And most settings > have at least one group - and it doesn't have to be a big group - that > would be willing to do this. Yes, there are ways round the problem, but > I'm not really entirely convinced by any of them.
Technically, you'd have to rule out solar sails too: while they're not truly reactionless, they don't need to carry their own reaction mass and have the same unlimited delta-V issues that true reactionless drives have. That said, there's a reason why I prefer reaction drives and inertial dampening as the default means of interplanetary travel. -- Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
