On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 8:03 PM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > With the 3E GURPS Traveller rules, including the cross-TL exchange rates > from Far Trader, is there any way to make airships economically viable?
I really doubt it. Airships of worthwhile size imply aluminium production, which requires large amounts of electricity, and thus a fair amount of industrial infrastructure. They're a lot of vehicle per ton of carrying capacity, very vulnerable to bad weather, and do need infrastructure at the far end: less than a big runway, but they need huge buildings to protect them from weather. The period when airships were popular was a time when the wealthy weren't so concerned about transit time - airships were considerably faster than sea ships - but did like comfort, and heavier-than-air aircraft weren't quite developed enough to provide a competitive comfort:time ratio. Gas turbines solved that problem comprehensively. John _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
