Inadequate hull materials

[DFW]

For the heck of it I just calculated the speed reached by a 1G ship traveling from Earth to Jupiter. At midpoint the speed is ~6,045,840 mph! Hitting something as small as a BB at that speed would be catastrophic if your hull was made from something as soft as titanium, unless it was so thick as to be ridiculous. Interesting. I think I'll look at making some rules using a substance like scrith or mono-molecular hull material, a la Niven.

Of course, this will lead to kinetic weapons being much less effective...

 

[rust]

This is why in almost all of my settings civilian ships are not allowed to
have sandcasters - imagine flying a free trader into a cloud of sand at
such a speed, especially if that cloud of sand moves towards you with
an equal speed. :shock:

 

[alex_greene]

Volcanic Ash on Aeroplanes

The above concerns volcanic ash in atmospheric flight. However, the effects of sand impacting on a moving vessel are roughly analogous. Viewscreen and sensor damage, scouring of the ship's hull and destruction of external components such as the comms antenna are likely with an impact of a sand round on a ship.

 

[DFW]

However, the effects of sand impacting on a moving vessel are roughly analogous. Viewscreen and sensor damage, scouring of the ship's hull and destruction of external components such as the comms antenna are likely with an impact of a sand round on a ship.

Interesting, but not true at 6 million MPH based on a hull made of titanium.

 

[BP]

For the heck of it I just calculated the speed reached by a 1G ship traveling from Earth to Jupiter. At midpoint the speed is ~6,045,840 mph!

Not sure how you arrived at 6,045,840 mph, but yeah, one would build up a tremendous 'speed'. (By my estimate, @ 1G (~ 10 m/s), accelerating to midpoint for MGT 600,000,000 km would mean a 'speed' of about 2.5 million meters per second - or over 8.8 million km per hour...)

To be technical, the 'separation' of Jupiter and the Earth varies from 629 million kilometers to 928 million kilometers - depending on where they are in their orbits in relation to each other. We won't mention initial velocities...

Hitting something as small as a BB at that speed would be catastrophic if your hull was made from something as soft as titanium, unless it was so thick as to be ridiculous.

Yep, Traveller has never been even remotely realistic about this aspect of space travel - even for orbital velocities.

 

[far-trader]

Hitting something as small as a BB at that speed would be catastrophic if your hull was made from something as soft as titanium, unless it was so thick as to be ridiculous.

Yep, Traveller has never been even remotely realistic about this aspect of space travel - even for orbital velocities.

More like (my take, and others, anyway) another gravitics handwave. In my take the maneuver drive incorporates a hull deflection/shield effect such that whatever velocity is attainable by the drives includes proof protection against simple navigational hazards, as long as the drive is still powered.

Get up to a ridiculous speed and shut down the drive and yes you risk random obliteration by some speck of dust. Not an advisable action and sure to void your warranty

But then I also don't wholly buy into unlimited acceleration either. E=mc2 and all. For most activity (100d to world) you're not going to have seriously high velocity. For the rarer activities (running full 6G to another world or making a STL crossing to another system) you'll need to observe some limitations and risks.

It's one of the things that is generally below the level of game play so it wasn't addressed. The best one can do is handwave the issue IF it comes up.

 

[BP]

...
It's one of the things that is generally below the level of game play so it wasn't addressed. The best one can do is handwave the issue IF it comes up.

Yep - never bothered me - of course it helps when designers don't do silly things like define hull materials!

 

[rinku]

It's probably a good thing then that most ships aren't going to have to be building up such massive burns most of the time, as they are just going out to the 100D and back from the 100D.

But it *is* worth a thought for those in-system jaunts... depending on the expected debris hazard, you may be much better off accelerating to a tolerable velocity, coasting and decelerating.

Of course, with a 1G or better constant burn you can get pretty creative about the trajectory in terms of known hazards. Boosting into a high ecliptic path would usually clear most junk. Usually.

 

[rust]

There would still be the considerable problem of the consequences of a
major space battle in an inhabited system. While it should not be diffi-
cult to remove the starship wrecks and the bigger pieces of debris, the
hundreds or even thousands of sandcaster sand clouds alone could turn
the entire system into a Red Zone for years.

 

[rust]

Ah, just ask "Spaceballs Inc." for a "Weltraumputze" class orbital vacuum cleaner.

With them at work in the system, it would become a Deep Red Zone ... 8)

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Sounds like the seeds for an Adventure!

 

[phavoc]

I do find the discussion interesting, but as far as gaming goes, I'm a big fan of the 'handwavium' technology that just makes it so - and therefore I don't have to work the issues out.

Maybe in the future they come up with a light-weight material that coats the outside of the ship that provides protection from impact with floating materials. Obviously it could potentially affect weaponry, but hey, we can't have everything in our RPG, now can we?

 

[AndrewW]

I do find the discussion interesting, but as far as gaming goes, I'm a big fan of the 'handwavium' technology that just makes it so - and therefore I don't have to work the issues out.

Maybe in the future they come up with a light-weight material that coats the outside of the ship that provides protection from impact with floating materials. Obviously it could potentially affect weaponry, but hey, we can't have everything in our RPG, now can we?

Maybe all the ships are equipped with a static repulsion field, wont deflect bigger items like missiles but takes care of all that troublesome small junk.

 

[DFW]

Thanks all. Great Responses and ideas.

Far trader, I wouldn't worry too much about E=MC2 as it was successfully falsified by the discovery of extra galactic gamma ray bursts and the inverse-square law.

 

[far-trader]

Thanks all. Great Responses and ideas.

Far trader, I wouldn't worry too much about E=MC2 as it was successfully falsified by the discovery of extra galactic gamma ray bursts and the inverse-square law.

Not quite, or rather it would be if you allowed that the bursts were omnidirectional. If you allow instead that the bursts are beamed, much like a black hole jets/beams it's emissions in two narrowed directions, then the energy involved falls within E=mc2. As I understand/recall it.

 

[DFW]

Not quite, or rather it would be if you allowed that the bursts were omnidirectional. If you allow instead that the bursts are beamed, much like a black hole jets/beams it's emissions in two narrowed directions, then the energy involved falls within E=mc2. As I understand/recall it.

Yes, if you allowed an unfalsifiable hypothesis to resurrect a theory successfully falsified by reference to proven physical laws. However, that's not how actual science is conducted...

 

[far-trader]

I think you lost me. I am talking science, theories, not proof. I would never claim, and did not claim, anything was unfalsifiable.

As I recall it, at first the idea that they could be outside the galaxy was seen as impossible because it would have broken E=mc2. The required energy was literally astronomical, presuming omnidirectional emission, for them to be too distant. The theory therefor supposed them to be sourced within our galaxy. I seem to recall Neutron Stars capturing and consuming asteroids being the proposed likely candidates

Later the gamma ray bursts were determined to originate far outside the galaxy causing the E=mc2 validity doubt because for the energy to be detected at that range would have broken E=mc2, again and still presuming they were omnidirectional sources.

An alternate theory was proposed that they were not omnidirectional, but beamed, like (or in fact from) Black Holes. Black Holes created by the deaths of massive stars in stellar nurseries. Based on that theory the energy falls within E=mc2.

So which theory (of the two: omnidirectional energy that requires something like more mass than exists; or directed energy that requires only massive stars dying) one chooses to accept as more supportable seems obvious to me. You may disagree, and propose other rational, observable, testable theories. That is how actual science is conducted.

 

[DFW]

I think you lost me. I am talking science, theories, not proof. I would never claim, and did not claim, anything was unfalsifiable.

What I said was that the "jet" hypothesis wasn't falsifiable and therefore can be dismissed out of hand. That's how the process works.

 

[rust]

What I said was that the "jet" hypothesis wasn't falsifiable and therefore can be dismissed out of hand. That's how the process works.

This is just as true for the "omnidirectional" hypothesis, so in the end you
would have a phenomenon without any currently falsifiable hypothesis to
explain it - which, by the way, is not uncommon in astronomy and astro-
physics (and especially cosmology), given our very limited ability to make
any experiments on the required scale. :wink:

 

[DFW]

This is just as true for the "omnidirectional" hypothesis, so in the end you

Nope. The "omni-directional" has been proven by direct observation. Thanks for playing though.