2300 AD: Sung ion drives and light sails, I don't buy it

[Yatima]

* I highly recommend the linked article, it's very interesting stuff.

Hi Simon, thanks for that article, it was really enjoyable. Take your point too about how politics and culture can totally screw with what would be the rational course of action to any objective observer. I was really looking to have that fleshed out, I suppose, which Colin has done.

 

[GJD]

Two other things to consider - The Sung are an avaian species, so their development will be shaped by that. I doubt there is a huge Sung automobile industry, for instance, and they may have an inherent GPS like pigeons do. This is also going to shape the path that their technological development takes. Aerospace industries will be a late bloomer, since they can already fly themselves, ground transportation will likely be for large cargoes only. I would imagine they have quite a good rail network, mostly used to ship large, heavy stuff about and probably automated (since what Sung would dream of being a train driver when they can fly). It seems sensible to me that light sails would occur to the sung, since they have an inherent knowledge of how thermals and eddy currents work, they have an intuitive grasp of how a light sail would also work.

Also the way that technological advances work in Sung society means that the dominant faction in Sung society is required to educate the less dominant. This means that new ideas are propagated by the winners, and whenever a new faction comes to power, potentially it means that a new "truth" is propagated. i.e. they won, so their ideas must be right. Teach me now!

 

[Yatima]

... The Sung are an avaian species, so their development will be shaped by that. ... Also the way that technological advances work in Sung society means that the dominant faction in Sung society is required to educate the less dominant. This means that new ideas are propagated by the winners, and whenever a new faction comes to power, potentially it means that a new "truth" is propagated. i.e. they won, so their ideas must be right. Teach me now!

Some excellent points, GJD, very well made. I have started looking at how Sung physiology would shape ship design philosophy and details, and consider that large automated cargo hauling will dominate their space fleet.

For example, I'm speculating that Sung hatches will be round, not rectangular, to accommodate wings (even folded); That they'll prefer open spaces they can free-fall through, and may not use spin gravity as a consequence; that they won't sleep or recline on their backs, they may sit or squat, like a bird so sleep arrangements, low berths etc may be upright not reclined - that sort of thing.

Finally, I cannot find rules in 2300 AD or High Guard for designing Robotic ships – am I missing them entirely? I'd like to design Ion driven cargo trains, older designs with laser/maser propelled sails, all robotically controlled and on cycler orbits. They may have small bridges and minimal crew accommodations for emergency maintenance visitors.

J

 

[F33D]

This is also going to shape the path that their technological development takes. Aerospace industries will be a late bloomer, since they can already fly themselves, ground transportation will likely be for large cargoes only.

Probably the opposite. Since they can fly, they understand aeronautics innately. Just because we could walk didn't mean that we ignored land travel tech development. We looked for ways to go faster, take more weight with us etc. It wouldn't be any different for them in the air. If their planet has less grav than Earth, it would develop even faster still...

 

[AndrewW]

Finally, I cannot find rules in 2300 AD or High Guard for designing Robotic ships – am I missing them entirely? I'd like to design Ion driven cargo trains, older designs with laser/maser propelled sails, all robotically controlled and on cycler orbits. They may have small bridges and minimal crew accommodations for emergency maintenance visitors.

High Guard page 60, Drones.

There isn't much and it applies specifically to small craft but might give you an idea.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Also, once you figure out the crew requirements, you can use Expert Programs to fill those positions. Don't need a medic or steward for a robotic ship, but Pilot, Astrogation, Engineering etc could be handled with Expert Programs (requires a big or secondary computer). All Robotic ships should include repair drones to act as the "hands" of the Engineering staff.

No official previous ship design has included an un-crewed Jump capable ship, but it is Your TU, so do what you want.

 

[F33D]

No official previous ship design has included an un-crewed Jump capable ship, but it is Your TU, so do what you want.

MGT allows for every needed position to be automated with expert pgms and repair drones (acting as engineer). So, even though they have published such a ship design, it is allowed in the ship design rules in the MGT universe. No house rules needed.

 

[Colin]

Sung technology has gaps in it that would look strange to an outsider. Limited ground vehicles, poor road systems. Ground effect vehicles ala the ekranoplan are more common. Cargo transport is by railroad or ocean-going ship. No airships at all. Cities are vertical rather than horizontal, with many large opening and landing stages. Sung are better at building tall buildings than humans, though they are rather in awe of human space elevators. Only the tallest buildings have personnel elevators, though most buildings have cargo elevators. VTOL aircraft are common for cargo and emergency use. Helicopters are considered to be a nasty joke.

Sung enjoy ocean-sailing, and are good swimmers, though they are too light to swim long distances underwater. They tend to bob to the surface quickly.

 

[Colin]

Robot ships are possible in 2300AD, though typically only for system ships.

 

[Yatima]

@Colin are there any specific guidelines for automating ships in 2300ad? The design sequences says:

9. Determining crew size.
     a. Automation.

But there's nothing relating to automation in the text in those sections on pp. 205-206

J

 

[randymcdonald]

I've a non-canon write up on the Sung at the 2300AD Collective.

https://sites.google.com/site/2300adcollective2/contact-us/the-sung

I assumed, inspire by Robert Forward's writings, that the Sung made use of laser arrays to propel their solar sails. That would have given them reasonable transit times.

On the subject of reasonable transit times, one thing that occurs to me is that, maybe, the range of destinations in the Sung home system is constrained and the distances involved are compact. Stark is one obvious anchor for Sung interplanetary civilization, as is Home of the Mother, a garden world also in the life zone. These two worlds are in the relatively compact habitable zone of an orange dwarf star, though. The distance between the Stark and Xiang homeworlds, even at maximum separation, would have to be substantially less than (say) the Earth-Mars system.

Where else would the Sung go? Inner-system worlds would seem more likely targets for a Sung presence than outer-system worlds, at least going by the precedent of pre-stutterwarp Sol (colonies on Mercury, Luna, and Mars, but only scattered science stations in the gas giants). The rare trips to the outer DM+4 123 system might take a long time, sure, but they might be rare. For inner-system trips unassisted ion drives might well be enough.

 

[MrBackman]

The idea that the Sung used beam powered sails is pretty enticing.
They may have huge masers to push the sails where they want them and they might have ground based lasers to launch stuff into orbit. To keep the theme they could have built huge solar stations that convert sunlight into microwave beams for large ground antennae parks or to push the sails.
This means an enemy with insanely powerful and long range weapons but with incredibly fragile and stationary targets.

A weird war that the Terran stutterwarpers would easily win but not before they incurred some heavy losses from not knowing how to tackle these strange aliens.