Starship Operator's Manual Feedback

[Seffix]

p.145 (I went straight to the walkthroughs) The office diagrams are not labeled to indicate which ship they belong to like the other diagrams.
That said, I'm enjoying the heck out of this!

 

[Sigtrygg]

I like the handwavium used for gravitcs.
I can forgive:
13.5 cubic metre displacement tons
making nuclear dampers now affect the strong force, the nuclear strong force and the weak force
making ion weapons canonical (I still think they should be described as directed EM pulse guns)
retconning meson weapons without handwaving how they now work (pretty obvious they use a tachyonic field condensation)
making lanthanum now part of the hull cable network as well as the jump coils
using hydrogen plasma to help form the jump bubble

what I can not forgive is
thermodynamics - I'm sorry but circulating helium from the reactor waste products is not going to cool the ship, in fact it will heat it up - circulating liquid hydrogen before it is fed into the reactor cools the ship but that would not come close to mitigating the waste heat.
Shunt the waste heat into the grav modules and job is done (explains why you don't have to power them too).

Questions.

How do collector and antimatter powered jump drives make a jump bubbles when there is no hydrogen?

How is a TL15 fusion power plant different to a TL12 fusion+?

Whatever happened to superdense armour?

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

I like the handwavium used for gravitcs.

Gravitics and Jump Drives being the two chapters I spearheaded, hearing this makes me do a lil' happy jig!

How do collector and antimatter powered jump drives make a jump bubbles when there is no hydrogen?

The original manuscript did go a bit into collectors, but it had to be cut to fit into the book (we purposefully wrote much more than required for the 168 pages, with the philosophy that it's best to have to cut something than find yourself short of it). Given the entire manual is written from an 'in-universe' perspective and the Third Imperium is not really familiar with collector technology, the authors stated they've heard of it, but no shipyard they've contacted knew how to make one and the IISS is apparently not sure they exist.

But my view of it is that the collectors utilise the particles they gather over time as the material to exert the internal pressure required to expand the jump field in lieu of hydrogen. Whatever it is that they do, it's clear that they're orders of magnitude more efficient at forming the jump fields than traditional jump drives.

And antimatter... well, you'll have to ask Yakoydray for that one.

 

[Sigtrygg]

You do know I was the person who came up with the concept of jump particles?

And they are now canonical for the setting in a way that Annic Nova never was - see Great Rift and High Guard.

What about thermodynamics?

 

[CordwainerFish]

Back cover:
* "books that examine about how to build" should strike either that examine or about (but presumably not both)
* this is ridiculously petty, but it bugs me that the three named starship types are listed in a different order than they are covered in the text

p. 135: "Courrier" (inset, page bottom) should be "courier"

 

[Sigtrygg]

Ok I will spell it out.
Page 28

Cooling is more of an issue. Modern ships route
‘waste’ helium from the power plant into tubes running
throughout the ship at very low pressure, relative to
the fusion plant’s interior, to lower the temperature,
absorbing heat then venting it

How is the 'waste' helium separated from the fusion plasma? How is the 'waste' helium cooled down from the temperature inside the reactor to a temperature lower than the ambient temperature of the crew environment? How can a ship vent hot helium into space and not have a huge signature? How can a ship vent helium while in jump space?

My suggestion remains using gravitics as heat sinks

Cooling is more of an issue. Modern ships route
‘waste’ helium from the power plant into tubes running
throughout the ship at very low pressure, relative to
the fusion plant’s interior, to lower the temperature,
absorbing heat through gave plate coupling.

 

[WHULorigan]

Ok I will spell it out.
Page 28

How is the 'waste' helium separated from the fusion plasma?

Presumably a portion of the plasma could be continuously cycled through a separator unit utilizing a strong electric/magnetic field, the heavier, doubly-charged alpha particles and/or helions would deflect at a different angle than the singly-charged protons, deuterons and tritons.

How can a ship vent hot helium into space and not have a huge signature?

It was always my understanding that this was one of the means of detecting a ship, especially as it was prepping for jump and you picked up a "heat-bloom" on your IR sensor.

How can a ship vent helium while in jump space?

Is there a reason it can't vent in jumpspace? And doesn't this mean we really don't need to worry all that much about maintaining a hydrogen plasma bubble while in jump, as we are continuously replenishing it with helium plasma, which ultimately takes the heat away into jumpspace/otherspace/somewhere else as it contacts the jump-bubble barrier?

Perhaps the concept of the "hydrogen-plasma envelope" around the ship in Jump has less to do with maintaining the jump-field bubble and more to do with maintaining thermodynamic equilibrium aboard the ship in the absence of gravitating bodies to shunt the heat to since you can't use the gravitic system in the M-Drive to do so like you do in Einsteinian-Space?

 

[Sigtrygg]

What powers the separator?

What happens to the waste heat from the separator?

How is it cooled down?

How is the 'waste' helium cooled down to such a degree it can be used as a coolant for the rest of the ship - where does the heat go?

And there is no hydrogen filled bubble - collectors exist as core tech now (Great Rift)

 

[WHULorigan]

What powers the separator?

Simple electrically-powered electromagnets like in a sophisticated version of a bubble-chamber. Siphon off plasma and separate the heavier and more charged nuclei from the lighter less charged nuclei by coulomb force and momentum.

What happens to the waste heat from the separator?

How is it cooled down?

This is always the elephant in the room that we sidestep and handwave: The black-box that solves our waste heat problem will itself generate additional waste heat while operating that needs to be dealt with.

How is the 'waste' helium cooled down to such a degree it can be used as a coolant for the rest of the ship - where does the heat go?

This I will not attempt to answer.

And there is no hydrogen filled bubble - collectors exist as core tech now (Great Rift)

No, I never liked the hydrogen-bubble idea either for Jump-operations. But you could justify creating such a plasma (H or He) outside the ship to carry off waste heat into Jumpspace, if you are unable to employ gravitics to do so because of no external gravitating bodies to interact with (presuming that is how one sees the "gravitic heat-sink" as working).

 

[WHULorigan]

Also, a minor quibble:

SOM p.105:
NUCLEAR DAMPERS AND MESON SCREENS
‘Nuclear damper’ is a generic term for several devices that project nodes and antinodes that enhance or to degrade the strong or weak nuclear force, such as by projecting fields of quarks that mediate these forces. . . .

I think you probably wanted to say either gluons or bosons, not quarks in the above sentence. Quarks are the fundamental matter particles that are acted upon by the Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces via gluon and weak-boson interactions to bind nucleons together and to one another, and to mediate certain particle-decay reactions, respectively.

 

[WHULorigan]

Another thing that is curious to me that has never been mentioned is that "Tractor/Pressor" technology, in addition to application as a low-powered non-tactical utility "tow-cable" device or a navigational deflector for micrometeoroids, or a longer-ranged tactical device that can restrict maneuver and momentum of a combatant or deflect incoming ordnance, also ought to be able to be set up as a type of weaponized "Gravisonic Disruptor" by very rapidly oscillating the polarity of the device with a highly focused beam, and cause disruption of molecular bonding thru the induction of harmonic vibrations in the target.

 

[CordwainerFish]

p.69: neutrinos are uncharged, they can't cause Cherenkov radiation.

 

[Sigtrygg]

There are two expressions of the strong interaction or force.
One it due to the exchange of virtual gluons and is what keeps quarks together "inside" the nucleon.
The second is the exchange of virtual mesons that keeps protons and nucleons together. Now since in QFT a particle is just an expression of a field then it is correct to say meson field since mesons are made from quarks.

Another note. If Nuclear damper tech now affects both the strong interaction and the weak interaction then by TL12 there must be a GUT development. To cause beta decay requires weak interaction manipulation (W and Z bosons, maybe something involving neutrinos), while interfering with the strength of the strong interactions requires manipulating quarks and gluons

 

[WHULorigan]

p.69: neutrinos are uncharged, they can't cause Cherenkov radiation.

Probably easier to suggest that Damper-mediated control of the Weak-Interaction allows one to set up conditions that cause neutrinos to interact with particles in a superdense-target that generate reaction-products that are detectable.

 

[Sigtrygg]

p.69: neutrinos are uncharged, they can't cause Cherenkov radiation.

True, but the electrons and muons they create as they interact do generate the Cherenkov radiation.
From wikipedia
"Neutrinos are electrically neutral leptons, and only interact very rarely with matter through the weak force. When they do react with the molecules of water in the ice via the charged current interaction, they create charged leptons (electrons, muons, or taus) corresponding to the flavor of the neutrino. These charged leptons can, if they are energetic enough, emit Cherenkov radiation. This happens when the charged particle travels through the ice faster than the speed of light in the ice, similar to the bow shock of a boat traveling faster than the waves it crosses. This light can then be detected by photomultiplier tubes within the digital optical modules making up IceCube."

So instead of a huge block of ice transparent superdense with the added nuclear damper handwavium.

 

[WHULorigan]

The second is the exchange of virtual mesons that keeps protons and nucleons together. Now since in QFT a particle is just an expression of a field then it is correct to say meson field since mesons are made from quarks.

Fair enough.

Another note. If Nuclear damper tech now affects both the strong interaction and the weak interaction then by TL12 there must be a GUT development. To cause beta decay requires weak interaction manipulation (W and Z bosons, maybe something involving neutrinos), while interfering with the strength of the strong interactions requires manipulating quarks and gluons

I have always assumed that such was the case at TL12.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Fair enough.



I have always assumed that such was the case at TL12.

Me too, it is just nice to see Traveller authors finally using nuclear damper tech to handwave things rather than just say gravitics did it.
I still want them to use my gravitic heat sink though...

 

[WHULorigan]

Me too, it is just nice to see Traveller authors finally using nuclear damper tech to handwave things rather than just say gravitics did it.
I still want them to use my gravitic heat sink though...

Agreed. Gravitics gets overused as magic solution for everything. Use it where appropriate, but look to other fields for spin-off applications where applicable.

{Side note: In T5, in the Starship tech section where applicable skills are listed for use/repair of systems, CommPlus (which is Meson/Neutrino communications), and Neutrino Sensor are listed under gravitics skill. That might just be an errata item, or it might be an indication that the "gravitics skill" and what it entails includes all of the higher "Unified Field" technologies (pseudo-gravity, strong force, weak force, etc) as part of its overarching skill-set.}

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

p.69: neutrinos are uncharged, they can't cause Cherenkov radiation.

Neutrinos themselves cannot, but their (rare) interactions with other particles via the weak force do, and it's one of the most reliable ways to detect their presence currently available.

 

[Sigtrygg]

You still have no heat removal mechanism... grav modules can slow the waste helium down thus remove heat