Emergency Beacon Detection Range

[MasterGwydion]

Well... mostly it's for publishing convenience.

But there is a thing where mass production damps out the variations you get with hand built bespoke objects. Before mass production settled on a small number of general purpose hammers (claw, ball peen etc) *every* job had several specialist ones. Since it's almost as easy for a blacksmith to make one tool design as another and were mostly supplying local people they knew, the customer got what they ordered. Farriers got different hammers to carpenters who got different hammers to masons. It's a constant frustration for re-enactor types that themselves aren't blacksmiths, who pretty much have to modify store bought tools as best they can or put up with general use ones that aren't totally wrong.

There never was a mass produced warship - liberty ships probably came the closest, although they were freighters. Traveller ships seem more modular than mass produced, but it's not unlikely that most shipyards are building most standard ships with little scope to vary the build outside of standard options. The components are likely cranked out in bulk to average TL standard at the nearest high tech industrial hub and shipped in as required. That would be the way to interpret the LBB Book 2 method.

The NAVAL ships seem to have much shorter active service lives with more ship to ship variation.

Even in the published ship classes, you do see variations within a class. Kinunir, Leviathan and AHL cover an entire class in detail, and we have a good sampler for the Gazelles.

For publishing convenience, yes. That is why using Mass as opposed to Volume is bad for deckplans. You can't represent Mass on a deckplan. You can represent Volume.

 

[Condottiere]

If a design is considered and recognized as efficient, and unless there is some disruptive trend or technological advancement, you're likely to keep it.

 

[MasterGwydion]

If a design is considered and recognized as efficient, and unless there is some disruptive trend or technological advancement, you're likely to keep it.

So why does the whole world not use chopsticks? There is no simpler or more perfect tool to eat with, unless it is soup. I love chopsticks and often use them with non-asian food but forks still exist. Soup spoons in the US are different from soup spoons in some Asian countries. All basically used for the same purpose, roughly the same size, and yet, completely different. Even if you just look in the US. If you go to the store and buy salad forks, how many different styles of salad fork can you find? That is just one, specific class of fork, salad forks. You could do it for soup spoons, butter knives, dinner knives, kabob skewers, etc.

 

[Condottiere]

You could go back to basics.

I believe that forks are a Byzantine invention, and took a while before adoption by the rest of Europe.

 

[rinku]

Fashion and tradition play their part. It took centuries for the table fork fashion to take hold in western Europe, although forks for cooking with go back to Egyptian times and Europeans used agricultural forks for moving hay and such.

Eastern Romans seem to have invented the table fork around the 4th Century, but it didn't spread to Italy until the 11th century, Spain by the 16th Century, France shortly after that and it was as late as the 17th century for it be a fashion in northern Europe. But 18th century for Britain and Northern America.

 

[rinku]

Further, I present to you the Australian spork - the Splayd!



Spoon and fork, but also an edge better at cutting than a spoon's.

 

[Condottiere]

Not arguing. Still, it’s kind of expected at this point.

Here is what else is hidden in it.

View attachment 4994
View attachment 4995

Three power points per six minutes, over default ten years, for two fifths of a megastarbux.

No fuel requirements (and costs).


Mini Mono Power Point Power Plants

PreFusion
. budget
.. Colonial Cooker
.. technological level six
.. one hundred fifty six and a quarter kilogrammes
.. thirty seven and a half kilostarbux
.. fifteen and five eighth kilogrammes fuel per month
. very advanced
.. technological level eight
.. hundred kilogrammes
.. fifty kilostarbux
.. ten kilogrammes fuel per month
. highly technologized
.. technological level nine
.. eighty seven and a half kilogrammes
.. fifty two and a half kilostarbux
.. eight and three quarter kilogrammes fuel per month

Variable is the fuel cost, and frequency of refuelling.

 

[Condottiere]

Over ten years, I presume I have to refill the tank every twenty eight days, so thirty six hundred fifty days, plus three leap days, thirty six hundred fifty three days.

That's 130.4642857142857, at ten percent, thirteen times volume of reactor.

2.03125 tonnes of fuel, refined or unrefined.

Times three power plant equivalents.

6.09375 tonnes of fuel, at refined cost of 3'046.875 starbux.

Capital cost of one hundred twelve and a half kilostarbux.

 

[Geir]

We have no currently in-use designs on Earth that are over 100 years old.

I have a perfectly good Model 1911 that was last used in anger... 80 years ago last month.
I believe someone is still producing new ones.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Do you still shoot it? I have seen videos of people still shooting well maintained WWI era M1911s and the later M1911A1s.

Oh to be in the US, or even any of the European countries that allows for citizens to protect themselves.

 

[Geir]

Do you still shoot it? I have seen videos of people still shooting well maintained WWI era M1911s and the later M1911A1s.

I cannot comment any further other than to say the grips have been replaced, once by me, allegedly once before for other reasons...
And the barrel probably ought to be.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Provided the frame and slide have no cracks then it is just a matter of wear and tear on extractor rod, springs, firing pin etc. Keep it clear of rust, light oiling, basic cleaning after range time it will be good for another hundred.

In time it will become the handgun of Theseus

It should be nice and broken in by now

Family heirloom or lucky find?

 

[Geir]

Provided the frame and slide have no cracks then it is just a matter of wear and tear on extractor rod, springs, firing pin etc. Keep it clear of rust, light oiling, basic cleaning after range time it will be good for another hundred.

In time it will become the handgun of Theseus

It should be nice and broken in by now

Family heirloom or lucky find?

I imagine those 200 year-old-scout ships are ships of Theseus, but it helps that parts are still standard centuries later. And if you believe GURPS:ISW the design for the Beowulf is essentially thousands of years old.

As for the other item, let's just say that most of my relatives of my grandparent's generation had interesting experiences during the second world war, and as I got older, I got to hear about the ones that didn't make for amusing anecdotes. Although, some of them were still funny from a certain point of view. Had a great aunt who fed her family by smuggling food out of a Gestapo prison (she was the both inmate and cook).

 

[swordtart]

There is also the 10% discount which makes tried and trusted designs more affordable even when fresh out of the yards.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I have a perfectly good Model 1911 that was last used in anger... 80 years ago last month.
I believe someone is still producing new ones.

You are correct that they do. I do miss My old 1911. There are also many variants of the 1911. Check out how many below.

M1911 pistol - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Condottiere]

Shop smart.

 

[swordtart]

I suppose the other thing to consider is whether those designs really ARE the same. We tend to move around the centuries with Traveller because we introduced a new publisher and they wanted to distance themselves from the timeline before. But with each edition the specs of those 1000 year old designs did actually change. The CT Scout/Courier is the same general shape as the MGT2 version, but it's stat line is different. It's cargo capacity is different for example. That's a pretty fundamental change. It used to be Jump 2 because that was the smallest jump engine you could get, now you could put a Jump 1 engine in it and use the space for something else.

You might say "Ahhh, but then it wouldn't be a Type S, which is true, exactly the same as a C17th 2 prong fork isn't the same as the 3 prong in my drawer. They are still forks. What does it need to have to be a Type S anyway? The deck plan isn't fixed, even the look of it was open to a degree of interpretation even back in CT days. If it has a more rounded nose, is it still a type S? What it it has and extra 2 points of armour. Or you change the layout of the bridge.

Each edition tends to draw the Type S the same general shape to keep some ties to the franchise, if we made it the shape of the Millennium Falcon people would have screamed about a Star Wars sell out, if it had looked like the USS Enterprise, it would be Star Trek. Most SF franchises have their iconic ship shape. The Type A, S, J etc. are Travellers, but we only call them that and say they are the same design because they look like that, it is somewhat tautological.

As for real-life designs changing more frequently it's hard to say given we have been through 2-3 TLs in the last 100 years. Maybe when we have a period where technology isn't changing the base materials every 50 years we might see some design stability.

 

[Condottiere]

That's because the configuration is iconic to the Traveller franchise.

 

[Arkathan]

"Expect us."
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

 

[Condottiere]

That's because they didn't have the internet, back then.