A couple of answers to my last questions got me thinking ...
* Many fictional starships are capable of surface landing. It
helps to keep the special effects budget down, it saves the
screen time for a docking sequence, and it keeps the entire
crew together, exposed to the same risks (good for RPGs).
* Another common meme are shuttles and starships, or fighters
and carriers. The shuttle is a short-endurance vehicle for
atmospheric and orbital operations. The starship is a long-
endurance vehicle for orbital and interstellar operations.
The two vehicles meet in orbit, the shuttle is taken into
the starship, and cargo and passengers are moved from the
shuttle to the starship. Alternatively, the shuttle is
docked outside, but it will be empty during the flight.
Usually it will take many shuttle flights to load or unload
the starship.
Those are the common concepts. I tried them before ...
* Then there is the idea of a LASH carrier. The starship is
still a long-endurance, orbit-to-interstellar craft, but
it carries the payload within smaller craft. Key points to
separate this from the following concepts:
The LASH carrier is a complete starship, capable of STL
and FTL flight, and equipped with a complete bridge, etc.
The lighters are not starships, without FTL drive and the
necessary navigation systems, but they have the life
support endurance for interstellar flights.
* Taking this one step further, the starship is somehow
incomplete without the lighters. They contain essential
components for the orbit-to-interstellar part of the
flight.
- The lighters could contain the STL drive and perhaps
the power plant. The starship has only a FTL drive, and
this drive isn't precise enough for orbital insertion,
it can't operate without lighters.
- The lighters could contain life the support or quarters.
- The lighters contain the bridge and navigation.
Note that I wrote 'lighters', but it could well be just
one 'lighter'. That could simplify many design questions.
* Another step onwards, the starship makes no pretense of
being a ship. A STL spacecraft is equipped with a FTL
drive in a removable pod. (Using GURPS 3E, a TL11+
fighter probably has the reactors and power cells for a
decent hyperdrive).
* As a branch of the lighter idea, perhaps the starship
needs no STL drives. It has just FTL. Maybe a warp drive
only works beyond some distance from a star, and there
is no reason to take the warp drive any closer in, it
would be dead weight. Outside the warp distance, there
is no reason to use anything but the warp drive. That
would be the shuttle or LASH concept, replacing 'orbit'
with 'warp distance'.
The challenge with all of those concepts is to come up with
an explanation why the weight and complexity of a multipart
starship is worth the increased performance.
One problem is that stardrives are dirt cheap in 3E, and
-- if you ignore the power systems -- pretty lightweight,
too. If the power plants are shared between FTL and STL
drives, the LASH concept with a complete starship as barge
carrier takes a serious hit.
A way out may be what I've done recently, insanely fast
starships. The TL16 Fast Courier has a hyperspeed
multiplier of 80. Two years ago, when I wrote a TL15
navy, I thought that 25 or 30 were pretty hot for a
destroyer.
Fiction follows history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbinia
Regards,
Onno
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