On 3D printers in Ship Lockers

[Nathan Brazil]

Slightly off subject but Here in the United States, there is a Congress member that is going to propose a ban on 3D printing weapons parts.

I am a US guy also. There was an article on national TV news on this. The problem is that the 3D-printer shown manufactured non-metallic handgun parts that can escape metal detectors. Not sure how much of it has to be non-metal to escape detection, but it is more about the terrorism issues and the firearms debate in the US.

Slightly on subject,

Would some worlds (governments) ban the use of a 3D printer in their area of control?

Would there be an extra tax for such a device?

Why would they, well to protect local manufacturers and those big monies that pay them (I mean donate to their campaign fund).

Just an interesting thought of possbilities of What IF in the future.

Dave Chase

Using standard Traveller rules, government codes 3,5,6,9 and B treat Technology as Contraband outright (Core Rules p.175) and 7 and D might (Varies). If they have a Law Level of 7 or higher (TL7 Items p.176) they likely regulate restrict 3D Printers themselves from the general public.

Taxes on 3D printers or the manufactured items? YMMV, but I would think that taxes have been applied at various levels. Using current tax examples:
Sales tax on the sale of the printer and raw material.
Maybe add a VAT because it "improves" the raw material.
Printing of items for private use, maybe not.
Sales of printed items, business taxes.
Restrict the sale and ownership 3D printer via licenses (really a mechanism for control and oversight to track printers and their owners) and associated fees.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

The big money will be come from the sales of the designs that the 3D Printer will work off of.

If you refuse to buy a design, you personally would have to design your widget. Not all of us have taken drafting classes or have experience with CAD/CAM. I took drafting and one CAD class and it was boring as heck to me. Which is why I went into applications, databases and ETL. If you have and like it, congrats!

If not, you will have to find a design. The more complex, the more likely it is copyrighted or patented in some way. The fun will begin with how the designer gets the appropriate monies from each and every widget you make off of their design...

 

[F33D]

If not, you will have to find a design. The more complex, the more likely it is copyrighted or patented in some way.

Which means it will be on a torrent... :lol:

 

[alex_greene]

To keep this from turning into a "matter replicator", which would ruin Traveller's economic assumptions, I would always have printed items be inferior to other manufacturing techniques

Why not stir things up, and make them superior to products made at a lower TL, especially at TL 9+?

Perhaps the "spare parts" budget over TL 10+ comprises barrels of fabridust, and a really good fabricator. It just can't manufacture parts with a higher TL than, say, its own TL+1 - and that would require a Difficult(-2) Mechanic or Engineering roll on the part of the ship's engineer.

 

[F33D]

Speaking of matter replicators. Ever wonder how much energy was required to make Captain Picard his cup of Earl Grey (assuming 500 grams of matter & perfect efficiency)?

Approximately the same energy released by 11 megatons of TNT

http://www.1728.org/einstein.htm (calculator)

 

[DickTurpin]

This is a good explanation of the Traveller version of spare parts used to make ship repairs. I have always wondered what kind of "Spare Parts" could be used to fix hull plates, jump drives, weapon turrets or sensors equally well.

The rules don't state that only one kind a spare part is carried...

Realistically, you would indeed carry many different parts for each different system on your ship. In order to have the correct spare on hand you would need to keep a significant percentage of your ship's mass in spares to make certain that you actually have the part you need when something gets damaged.

The Traveller rules however do not differentiate between spare part types. If you are carrying two tons of "spare parts" they can be used to repair any system on the ship that is damaged (except structure), no matter what it is. Maybe in YTU parts stores hire psychics that can predict the type of damage a ship will take and they only sell you that type of spare, but the RAW don’t make that distinction.

Having a machine shop on board that can make whatever part is needed from raw materials makes a lot more sense to me. The two tons of spares are actually two tons of materials that can be made into the correct type of spare part as needed. It also provides a way for characters with Engineering and Science skills to actually create new items as mentioned under the Mechanic skill description on page 56 of the CRB.

 

[alex_greene]

Realistically, you would indeed carry many different parts for each different system on your ship.

As well as build ship components to be more or less interchangeable, for the most part.

 

[locarno24]

I have speculated that maybe they are just a large roll of duct tape.

Hey, don't mock duct tape. At least one commercial cargo vessel currently plying the seas has a non-trivial proportion of the engine room suspended from or sealed with the stuff.

The problem is that the 3D-printer shown manufactured non-metallic handgun parts that can escape metal detectors. Not sure how much of it has to be non-metal to escape detection, but it is more about the terrorism issues and the firearms debate in the US.

The one in the news is overstating things a bit - it's not really a handgun so much as a zip-gun - it only fires one bullet and it's muzzle-loading. Plus, the bullet and firing pin would both show up on (for example) an airline scanner.

A bigger deal is the fact that a man who patently shouldn't be allowed a firearm (psychological issues and/or criminal record) could manufacture one from a 3d printer. I'm not sure how strong the controls on the sale of ammunition independently of guns or magazines are in the US?

Speaking of matter replicators. Ever wonder how much energy was required to make Captain Picard his cup of Earl Grey (assuming 500 grams of matter & perfect efficiency)?

Approximately the same energy released by 11 megatons of TNT

Well, to put it simply, the core would have to burn an amount of antimatter/matter equal to the amount of food replicated each day by the crew.
Easier just to carry some pot noodles, wouldn't you think?

 

[F33D]

A bigger deal is the fact that a man who patently shouldn't be allowed a firearm (psychological issues and/or criminal record) could manufacture one from a 3d printer. I'm not sure how strong the controls on the sale of ammunition independently of guns or magazines are in the US?

Anyone can buy ammo. Also, anyone can buy a gun outside controls. (that's why convicted criminals have them) In short, anyone can purchase a REAL gun. If I wanted to I could buy a fully auto rifle today. It is much to do about nothing.

Speaking of matter replicators. Ever wonder how much energy was required to make Captain Picard his cup of Earl Grey (assuming 500 grams of matter & perfect efficiency)?

Well, to put it simply, the core would have to burn an amount of antimatter/matter equal to the amount of food replicated each day by the crew.
Easier just to carry some pot noodles, wouldn't you think?

Agreed. Picard's ship supposedly had ~1,000 people. That's a LOT of extra antimatter carried to feed everyone for months at a time.

 

[alex_greene]

Agreed. Picard's ship supposedly had ~1,000 people. That's a LOT of extra antimatter carried to feed everyone for months at a time.

They had it to spare.

From what I read of their stats, the Enterprise-D's combined energy output was the equivalent of a Kardashev Type III civilisation - the equivalent of the total output of several large stars greater than Sol.

And that was due to the efficient use of matter/antimatter, combined with the focusing and amplification handwavey power of dilithium crystals acting as the force multiplier from Hell.

 

[F33D]

Agreed. Picard's ship supposedly had ~1,000 people. That's a LOT of extra antimatter carried to feed everyone for months at a time.

They had it to spare.

From what I read of their stats, the Enterprise-D's combined energy output was the equivalent of a Kardashev Type III civilisation - the equivalent of the total output of several large stars greater than Sol.

It's not that. It is actual matter & anti-matter. If you add up how much they would have to use to feed people (see above calc) for long periods of time, the ship probably isn't large enough to hold it all... Also, no it wouldn't be larger than a star's. See above

 

[alex_greene]

They had it to spare.

From what I read of their stats, the Enterprise-D's combined energy output was the equivalent of a Kardashev Type III civilisation - the equivalent of the total output of several large stars greater than Sol.

It's not that. It is actual matter & anti-matter. If you add up how much they would have to use to feed people (see above calc) for long periods of time, the ship probably isn't large enough to hold it all... Also, no it wouldn't be larger than a star's. See above

You forget Star Trek's legendary crystalline handwavium force multiplier dilithium. And I was going by the officially listed stats for the D, which listed those wee bairns as pumping out a truly obscene amount of energy.

It's science fiction. I know this sounds awful for me to say, "handwave handwave shut up stop thinking," but remember that over here we have stories of a bicardial humanoid lifeform who has lived a thousand years and who travels in a blue box the size of an Ikea cabinet, which contains an engine that pumps out the equivalent output of several galaxies' worth of stars - in one quote from (IIRC) an audio adventure somewhere, the Doctor was supposed to have said that the Time Lords were not only a Kardashev Type IV civilisation: they were the Kardashev Type IV civilisation.

Some science fiction shows deal with extremities far beyond what you're familiar with in Traveller, and values that you would only describe in Traveller terms as being the equivalent of TL 20+ - antimatter, teleportation, time travel, dimension travel, sentient artificial lifeforms - are considered routine and even prosaic, mundane and ordinary in those settings.

Star Trek and Doctor Who simply could not exist in the 3I (thank goodness - the Aslan wouldn't stand a chance against either Klingons or Daleks!) and you can't really expect something like Trek to fit neatly into the comparatively restrictive straitjacket of Traveller.

 

[locarno24]

I think it's the classic failing of science fiction - picking handwavium that we know juuuuuuuuuust enough about to decide it's a load of fetid dingo's kidneys.

I couldn't design and build you an antimatter power plant, for example, but I know the basics of how it has to work because of how antimatter behaves. So the idea of getting more than 2mc^2
energy out just strikes you in the face as bizzarre.

By comparison, the tardis uses a pocket black hole for power. How? I don't know. But since it clearly can use pocket universes - hell, it arguably is one - fair enough. I'm perfectly prepared to believe that a stellar mass black hole is a source of more energy than you could need to throw at anything.

Knowing when not to explain sci-fi science is an art form. Artificial gravity is a commonly ignored trope simply because the other option is far too expensive to film, but rarely have you ever heard described why or how it works - especially since it seems to keep running even when the power goes out. But equally, sometimes it involves less suspension of disbelief not to explain something; in an RPG with sourcebooks I'll just wander off and read, fair enough, but during a game or a tv programme, big technical exposition breaks the flow. One thing I always liked about BSG is that they never actually told you what DRADIS stands for. You can make a reasonable guess, because you know what it is, but why would military crew ever not use the acronym?

 

[CosmicGamer]

Artificial gravity is a commonly ignored trope simply because the other option is far too expensive to film, but rarely have you ever heard described why or how it works - especially since it seems to keep running even when the power goes out.

Ignorance is bliss. I never even thought of such when I was younger and watching those older shows. What pulls you in is the story and characters surrounding the power outage. The more I know, sometimes, the less fun it is to watch those same shows again.

40 years ago there were those who would have said no way could you have a computer as small and powerful as the modern day phone because of the power and heat issues as you put more transistors in the same space on a IC. Technically that's right with the science of the time but new materials were used that produced less heat and required less power, battery technology improved, and so on with several other advances.

I'd rather play Traveller with handwavium, not trying to figure out the details, and have fun. I get drawn in because I'm role playing one of the characters in an interesting adventure.

I've always said, Sci-Fi should combine imagination with science. If you could explain it completely, it would be current science and not future science.

 

[F33D]

You forget Star Trek's legendary crystalline handwavium force multiplier dilithium.

I think it is accurate to say that I've see every episode of every show since the original series aired in the 60's. I can't remember a single episode where it stated that about the crystals. Maybe a fan made it up and posted it somewhere...?

But really, this is the luxury writers have for shows. The characters have to follow the script. In a sci-fi RPG you have to closely & narrowly define what is the fictional science if your players have even a modicum of intelligence or you risk blowing suspension of disbelief.

 

[locarno24]

I'd rather play Traveller with handwavium, not trying to figure out the details, and have fun. I get drawn in because I'm role playing one of the characters in an interesting adventure.

I've always said, Sci-Fi should combine imagination with science. If you could explain it completely, it would be current science and not future science.

Agreed. The key, though, is knowing the threshold at which blatant handwavium starts to irk the audience.

For example, having watched 2012 the film with friends, I know that I can cause near-spastic twitches in a physicist friend of mine simply by repeating the phrase "the neutrinos are mutating"...

Equally, one thing that having 'good science' helps with is the GM's ability to generate a sense of creeping uncertainty and fear. Knowing that you pointedly don't use bad science and make a real effort to be consistent whenever you use 'fake future science' means that on the odd occasion you throw science out of the window for device X it leaves people really, really nervous...ideal for ancients stuff.

 

[F33D]

Equally, one thing that having 'good science' helps with is the GM's ability to generate a sense of creeping uncertainty and fear. Knowing that you pointedly don't use bad science and make a real effort to be consistent whenever you use 'fake future science' means that on the odd occasion you throw science out of the window for device X it leaves people really, really nervous...ideal for ancients stuff.

Exactly. The players get REAL nervous when something is happening that they can't explain as it is NOT the norm for the "universe" they play in.

 

[Phil Smith]

Not sure if this is a 3D printer for a ship's locker, but what about 3D printing of a moonbase?
http://www.alta-space.com/index.php...tail,0&cntnt01articleid=50&cntnt01returnid=99

 

[steve98052]

Canon sources state that the reason pre-Maghiz Darrian ships are still functional after two thousand years is that they repair themselves with TL16 robotic technology -- but their self-repair ability is limited by the ships' stocks of advanced materials.

Similar restrictions would apply to repairs at lesser tech levels; even if one has a 3D printer capable of working an easily-oxidized metal that melts at 1193K, one can't repair the jump grids unless the ship's stores include enough lanthanum.