Reaction Drives and the Single-System Campaign

[EDG]

Something to do with the strange 'bulge' in Iapetus' equator. Now that's not natural is it??

There's no reason to assume that it isn't natural. Current theories are that it appears to be related to the tidal despinning of Iapetus (most likely heating caused by shortlived radioactive isotopes in Iapetus' early history along with the despinning itself, causing icy material inside the moon to melt and redistribute at the equator).

see http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUSM.P33A..04M

What if its a hyperspace acceleration drive or some kind of gate device.

As long as we're talking fiction here... There are crazies out there who actually think that it IS that, and that NASA is covering it up. I would hope that you're not one of them.

 

[EDG]

Not only that, but the whole idea of a First Contact or FTL Breakthrough being the campaign basis sounds cool, too.

I find that the problem with that sort of campaign is that once the First Contact/FTL Breakthrough happens, you either have to end the story or radically change the focus of the campaign to deal with the consequences.

 

[Mithras]

Of course its natural.

But this is Traveller.

'Of course its not natural'.

 

[saundby]

Depends, if the new orbit is big enough relative to the starting orbit you'd be better doing a bi-elliptic transfer, similar idea, but one extra burn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-elliptic_transfer

LBH

Wellll....

I was trying to avoid posting a whole textbook on orbital mechanics and already felt like I was failing. :lol:

I seem to recall a simplified mission planning software package being released for public use by NASA, though I can't find the link presently. As I recall it did a good job of simulating and illustrating tradeoffs in flight trajectory. As fun to play with as one of those gravity simulations. I may be missing it because it wasn't NASA...

 

[lastbesthope]

Sorry, but that sort of stuff is the stuff I vaguely remember from my undergrad spaceflight mechanics courses and I like to discuss/show off a little :lol:

I really need to dig out my old textbooks for that stuff, it's been a while since I used the Jacobi integral to prove the existence of the 5 LaGrange points.

LBH

 

[atpollard]

I really need to dig out my old textbooks for that stuff, it's been a while since I used the Jacobi integral to prove the existence of the 5 LaGrange points.

LBH

Because no Ref can really called himself prepared unless he has proofs for all of the key LaGrange points in a binary star system ready in case some player questions their validity. :lol:

 

[EDG]

I really need to dig out my old textbooks for that stuff, it's been a while since I used the Jacobi integral to prove the existence of the 5 LaGrange points.

*twitch twitch*

By that point I was just taking my lecturer's word for it . The most maths I could handle was two body hamiltonians . Incidentally, do you have Murray & Dermott's "Orbital Dynamics" book? It's my bible for such stuff. Really dense on the maths but it's still got enough text for me to understand roughly what's going on .

 

[EDG]

Because no Ref can really called himself prepared unless he has proofs for all of the key LaGrange points in a binary star system ready in case some player questions their validity. :lol:

Eh, you don't need the proofs, just the formulae for calculating where they are .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

 

[atpollard]

Because no Ref can really called himself prepared unless he has proofs for all of the key LaGrange points in a binary star system ready in case some player questions their validity. :lol:

Eh, you don't need the proofs, just the formulae for calculating where they are .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

But then how do you know that the formula are correct? :wink:
Would Kepler have taken Wikipedia's word for it? :lol:

 

[Vile]

Just slightly back OT ... :wink:

I played in a very long-running no-grav, STL Solar system campaign back in the days of Classic Traveller (before it was 'Classic'). We didn't have that many realistic fixes for things, being before Wikipedia an' all.

We simply did this: our manoeuvre drives were as big as manoeuvre drives and jump drives of the same rating, added together. Then we cut acceleration by 90%. Drives produced 0.1G to 0.6G acceleration. Fuel was based on jump fuel, i.e. 10% of ship volume per drive number, but per month of acceleration. It still ended up with people being careful with their fuel on long journeys.

Eh, if I had MGT High Guard back then ... it may not be really realistic, but then neither was our system - and it would have been a lot easier ... :roll:

But there is definitely a vast range of adventure possibilities in a single star system. They're big. Really, really big. I mean, you might think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's nothing compared to a star system. They're huge. Listen ...

I am very tempted to create a Firefly inspired multi-star system with lots of worlds and dozens of moons (rather poorly terraformed, though) using STL MGT rules. Very tempted. When I have a minute.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I had a single system game that I used as a starting point for a Traveller game.

It was a binary system with two habitable worlds (one around each star) and about a dozen other planets between them. The stars were separated by 100 AU, so you really had 2 systems that were accessable by very long travel.

The PCs eventually found a ship in a very elliptical orbit. It turned out to be a starship.

The government reverse engineered the Jump Drive and the PC's children got to be the crew of the first Interstellar ship. Damn if they didn't jump into the Spinward Marches. Seems they were on a Red Zoned world and didn't know it...

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Mithras, there was another thread a couple months ago about Bootstrapping .. . Galactic Empires without Gravitics.

towards the end of that thread, I posted some calculations for reaction drives that might be helpful to you. When I find it, I will bump it back to the top of the forums.

Hope it is useful.

 

[Mithras]

Please do ... its amazing where suggestions in helpful threads like this one can take you ..

 

[Mithras]

I did something very similar last year using CT, it seemed right to use the Jump fuel calc to stand in for propellant.

AS you say though, High Guard has a few rules in place, seems stupid not to take them on board and use them. I'm certainly having fun matching them to my intended solar system setting.

We simply did this: our manoeuvre drives were as big as manoeuvre drives and jump drives of the same rating, added together. Then we cut acceleration by 90%. Drives produced 0.1G to 0.6G acceleration. Fuel was based on jump fuel, i.e. 10% of ship volume per drive number, but per month of acceleration. It still ended up with people being careful with their fuel on long journeys.

 

[lastbesthope]

Because no Ref can really called himself prepared unless he has proofs for all of the key LaGrange points in a binary star system ready in case some player questions their validity. :lol:

Eh, you don't need the proofs, just the formulae for calculating where they are .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

You don't even need a formula for L4 and L5, you can draw them easily.

LBH

 

[EDG]

You don't even need a formula for L4 and L5, you can draw them easily.

yeah, theyr'e just 60 degrees ahead and behind the smaller mass of the system. It's the other ones that are more fiddly to calculate.