How does Traveller handle artificial gravity on ships

[EDG]

Reactionless thruster plates work by manipulating the "sign" of ions, changing postive ions to negative ions and the reverse.

This manipulation makes the ions repell from each other, not unlike like poles of a magnet.

The plate can be placed inside a ship, but heat becomes a real problem (which is why they are usually mounted externally).

A gyroscope is used in the center of the ship, encased in a sphere of T-Plates, all pressing towards the center. This gives the ship a point at which it can "push off" from, steering the ship in a given direction.

That doesn't even make any sense though. For starters, what do ions have to do with gravity? How does repelling ions inside a ship move it through space? Why does a gyroscope have any influence on ions?

There's so much wrong with this explanation that it's actually better to pretend it never existed.

 

[captainjack23]

Maybe the ship's reactionless drive can also push "forward" inside the ship's hull? Combine that with "grav plates" that push down from the ceiling, and you get most of the effect you need. Plus, your crew still gets thrown around by collisions.

The best description of this I've seen is found in MT's Starship Operator's Manual.

Reactionless thruster plates work by manipulating the "sign" of ions, changing postive ions to negative ions and the reverse.

This manipulation makes the ions repell from each other, not unlike like poles of a magnet.

The plate can be placed inside a ship, but heat becomes a real problem (which is why they are usually mounted externally).

A gyroscope is used in the center of the ship, encased in a sphere of T-Plates, all pressing towards the center. This gives the ship a point at which it can "push off" from, steering the ship in a given direction.

Are you sure you don't mean "gravitons " ? That seems to be what they are talking about for thrust, anyway.

Granted, gravitons are imaginary (probably) but ions are all to real...and unrelated to grav. In fcat, what is described is more like a static electricitydischarge machine......

 

[EDG]

Are you sure you don't mean "gravitons " ? That seems to be what they are talking about for thrust, anyway.

Granted, gravitons are imaginary (probably) but ions are all to real...and unrelated to grav. In fcat, what is described is more like a static electricitydischarge machine......

Yeah, I just looked it up, it has nothing to do with ions. It doesn't even go into much detail, it just says that the gravitic drive changes how gravitons interact with the ship, and that thruster drives (a later development of gravitic drives) combine them with nuclear damper tech to produce reactionless thrust "by reacting with both the strong and weak nuclear force". (In other words, it's magic - but is at least more internally consistent than the misremembered "ions" explanation).

The "gyro in the centre of mass surrounded by grav modules" part is correct (though strangely always missing from deckplans...) but is only used for changing the orientation of the ship - not for thrust. The ship basically rotates around the gyro in order to change orientation (which I guess is what S4 said, though "pushes off" implies "thrust" to me).

 

[Supplement Four]

It's been a while since I read it. I remember the "blue glow" stems from the ion discharge.

I guess it was gravitons.