Space Craft or Freighter? How much of the Falcon or Serenities money coming in, is cargo, bulk or other wise?
Not large ships, so its likely higher end stuff, such as mail, some food and like? medical supplies and what else? Medivacs and what else? So how does the Falcon compare in origin to the Serenity "Firefly Class" of ship, similar in origin and usage in the post war era? The falcon in after the start of the Rebellion and Serenity from the war that forced Malcolm and friends to become for all purposes former Confederates (many like them turned to like professions after the US Civil War, but same goes for many other wars where the losing side military often turns to smuggling or gunslingers or robbers and like? traveller the game, had many like type ships? Junkyard planet from Piper or Space Viking, freighters that became war ships? Mike Mike 1. Designing Yet Another Spacecraft Posted by: "DataPacRat" [email protected] gradenezh Date: Thu May 10, 2012 5:15 am ((PDT)) I have a pet hard-SF setting whose plot is about to involve the main characters shifting base from Earth orbit to the asteroids; and I'm working on statting out some of the fworkhorse vessels they'll be building for themselves as they get settled in. As I recall, this list is very good at constructive critiques of such things, so I'm offering my thoughts so far for whatever commentary I can evoke from you all. :) In particular, an online acquaintance has offered to create a picture of one of these superfreighters, and I'd like to fix any obviously wrong aspects before they get committed into an image. So... what would you suggest needs changing, or could use improving, or could be made better with greater detail, or the like? * Historical/Political background: A decadish ago was the "Blue Revolution", a collection of uprisings against the various oligarchs. Think along the lines of "3D-printed solar-powered onion-routing ad-hoc mesh-network quadcopters" vs "remote-piloted infantry 'bots controlled by a central authority which no longer needs to pay attention to the demands of the people", as mixed by Cory Doctorow, David Brin, and Charles Stross. A decade later, all such efforts have either petered out or been outright crushed, save for the orbital habitats, many of whom are now part of the libertarian-themed polity of "New Attica". Any group on Earth with access to a fighter jet and 1980's-level missile tech can blow up a New Attican hab; New Attica can drop rocks anywhere on Earth; thus leading to a MAD-based Cold War. Our Heroes are a dozenish citizens of New Attica, the "Bayesian Nakama", with a long and storied past together. One of their shared goals is to 'live forever or die trying', and due to some covert-ops nudging, are now moving one of their backup plans to their main plan - to get far, far away from Earth-Lunar space before the seemingly inevitable exchange of WMDs. Their destination - a set of asteroids in the Vestoid family, of sufficiently varied types to give them access to all the sorts of resources and manufacturing processes they'll need to be self-sufficient. * The ships: - "Water boys" A small fleet of fuel tankers carrying 40-tonne bags of water. The two main variations are the WN "Water Nymphs", nuclear-heated steam rockets to lift off from a body into orbit, and the WS "Waterslides" solar-powered steam rockets to carry them wherever needed. Both use engines of astonishingly low efficiency - Isp of 198 seconds - but due to the simplicity and low mass, turn out to be the most economical for the task. (Main inspiration: http://www.neofuel.com/solarship/ ) - Superfreighters The workhorses, and the current focus of my tinkering. The basic configuration is a standard long boom, roughly so: Attachment for cargo and/or lander | rotating hab | misc equipment | long truss | water tanks | power & propulsion The main drive takes pions from an antimatter reaction, and uses them to induce sub-critical fission with a Lithium-6 fuel. A maximum delta-vee of about 180 km/sec per year using about 244 tonnes of water propellant, a thrust of 25.6 kiloNewtons, and an Isp of 48,000 seconds. Two radiators, of 6.3 x 12.6 metres each, emit heat at a cherry-red 2700 K. The 8-person crew section uses a Bigelow-inspired inflatable design, with two counter-rotating sections, each with two lobes 6-stories tall; rotating at 5 rpm to provide 0.6 pseudo-gravity on the outermost levels. Radiation protection is provided by a charged plasma, as well as a storm shelter surrounded by 100 kg/m^2 of polyethylene. Two of the more interesting pieces of equipment are an He-Ar nuclear-pumped laser, nominally to use for prospecting (but which just happens to be able to vaporize pieces of an enemy vessel, if necessary, as well as bits of rock to spectro-analyze), and a Wakefield e-beam. The latter is a versatile thing, good not just for boring holes for mining, but also serving as a backup electrothermal rocket drive (which can use just about any mass as propellant). The inital model used for the first trips, the SF-0 "Zip", had a somewhat different drive configuration than became standard. Once it was rebuilt with the new manufacturing processes available on the V-type asteroids, it was redesignated the SF-1 "Love". The next ships sharing the design were the SF-2 "Unity", SF-3 "Imagination", SF-4 "Napier", SF-5 "Ludolph", and SF-6 "Euler". Most official markings are English written in the Unifon script. - Landers. 40 tonnes. Primary job is to move stuff from world surfaces to the orbitng superfreighter and back. Secondary job is to use a Kuck mosquito to mine water, or a scoop to collect and compress atmosphere. Main drive is based on a H-B fusion reciprocator, which compression-heats plasmoids to 300 keV, thrusts with a force of 3.2 megaNewtons, and has an Isp of 460 seconds. To accelerate 9.7 km/sec, enough to get from Earth's surface to LEO, the lander would need to use up 300 tonnes of water propellant. Mars orbit, at 4.1 km/sec, only needs 60 tonnes; Lunar orbit, 1.6 km/sec, 17 tonnes; and Ceres orbit, 320 m/s, just 3 tonnes. In fact, the lander's drive would only need 13 tonnes of water to push both lander and superfreighter from Ceres' surface to orbit around it - and even less for smaller asteroids. Almost entirely to annoy bureaucrats, the builders give the landers absurd serial numbers - 2^79641170620168673833 and 3^50247984153525417450, Skewes' number (e^e^e^79), Alef-theta, Moser, Graham's number, a Busy Beaver number, etc. Thank you for your time, -- DataPacRat lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Poetry-L/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Adulthumor-L/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abrigon-World/ _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
