Celti replied to me: > > what are the rules for antimatter production and storage, in > > GURPS 3E and 4E? > > Ultra-Tech 4e prices antimatter per microgram, from $25,000 at TL9 to > $5 at TL12, but offers no guidelines on energy required. The > Designer's Notes further offer costs for antimatter factories, and > suggest that solar-powered facilities, especially those in orbits near > to Mercury or similar, could cut the cost per microgram in half. > Storage is assumed to be an easily solved problem even at TL9, with a > cost for portable storage of $2,000 per microgram (no figures quoted > for installations).
In 3E Vehicles, the cost of antimatter is even lower than that, from $100,000 per gram at TL9 down to $250 per gram at TL13. At a quick glance at Transhuman Space, I didn't find antimatter costs in the fuel table or the index. In 4E, I haven't found numbers on the fuel consumption of antimatter reactors. 4E UT has antimatter prices, but the chapter on antimatter power plants is vague. One gram of antimatter and one gram of matter produce 1.8*10^14 joules. If my math is right that equals 5.7 megawatt-years. The 3E power plants turn almost all the energy into usable power, from TL12 up. If we assume a similar efficiency for 4E power plants, at TL12 it costs $1,000,000 in fuel alone to provide 1 MW for 1 year. A coal-burning fossil fuel plant would need $175,200 according to 3E figures. Antimatter isn't all that bad, if you can get it as cheaply as 4E suggests, and unbeatable at 3E prices. > Judging by these figures, 4E uses entirely different assumptions for > antimatter consumption than 3E. Consumption or production? That's the same when one looks at the whole fuel cycle, but for a vehicle designer antimatter might be a way to get power where you need it, when you need it. Hal wrote: > When I originally looked into Antimatter - I concluded that the weights > involved with shielding against antimatter explosions rendered the concept of > antimatter power pretty much worthless. Robert Forward's depictations of > Antimatter drives and the like had me thinking that perhaps GURPS VEHICLES > overstated the problems inherent in antimatter production and/or storage. And Jonathan replied to Hal: > To be fair, Robert Forward tends to be optimistic in his depictions: Sorry, I wasn't clear enough in my original question. I was trying to recall the published GURPS rules, especially 3E. I have several yards of GURPS, and I looked only at the most likely places. I'm thinking about TL13 vehicles with reactionless thrusters and contragrav, so realism goes right out of the airlock. In a sense, I'm looking for optimal strategies in an artifical game. In 3E TL13, you have fusion power, which is no lighter than at TL11, you have antimatter, which has improved steadily since TL11, and you have some special cases like RTGs, NPUs and super MHD fusion and lightfield reactors (VXii26). The 'holy grail' of total conversion reactors is still one TL in the future. Just from the numbers, antimatter and lightfield reactors are the best solution, but would you want a grav tank that gives a megaton explosion when it is destroyed? Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
