Spinal Neutron Laser seriously broken

[tytalan]

In one of the old CT JTAS Articles (one that was actually discussing some of the SDI Results mentioned above concerning C-PAWS & N-PAWS ironically), the author proposed an "A-PAWS" (Anti-Particle Accelerator Weapon System) that fired Anti-Neutrons (I suppose neutral AntiHydrogen would work as well and I am surprised he didn't suggest it given the article's topic). He called it a "V-Gun" (for "Vaporize") and it spanned Spinal Mounts TL15-18 IIRC.

That might fit your bill for a Main Weapon in that TL range that fits the Setting.


Also, Classic SciFi and Traveller/T5 have had "Disintegrators" (sometimes called "Disruptors") that come in two flavors:

1. The "Classic" Traveller DISINTEGRATOR that suppresses the Residual Strong Nuclear Force (as it does in Damper-Tech) but causes the entire Nuclei of atoms to become unbound.
2. The T5 Disruptor/Disintegrator (lower TL than the disintegrator above) a la Larry Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers that suppresses the charge on the electron and causes molecules to dissociate and atoms to ionize and/or plasmify.

I like the ideal of a weapon that leads to the Disintegrator that would show a progression.

 

[tytalan]

At some point as TLs progress the science fiction has to become more handwavium due to the need to invent fictional physics. The important thing for fictional physics is that it achieves the desired new technology in a consistently applicable manner, the new physics needs to have parameters established.

Jump drive - opens a rift into extra-dimensional hyperspace. Is a hyperspace with different physics and different dimensions a scientific possibility? As things stand we can write the maths for it but we haven't a clue as to the technology that could make it a reality, nor the ontological explanation for it.
Damper and meson tech - manipulation of the strong and weak interactions... scientifically possible, but he mechanisms and technologies not so much...

Gravitics and acceleration compensation are the outliers - there is no handwavium for how gravitics even works or what the limits on the technology limits are, it is the real handwavium of Traveller. This is likely due to that here in the real world gravity is still being argued about. Is is quantisable? Can the gravitaional interaction be unified with the other interactions? You can read textbook after textbook where physicists describe gravity as a force, while others say it isn't, and then all the handwavium as they discus interactions...

I was reading about "mercury engines" as the motive power behind the UAPs and ARVs so beloved of UFO conspiracy theorists. Mercury has the unusual property that its electrons are moving close to the speed of light, so could adding angular momentum to mercury tip the relativistic effects of mercury electrons into the realm of new physics?
No, just no, but fun to speculate

Except you have things in Traveller that are absolutely counter to science like Cold Fusion (now call Fusion +) and psionic. I think it’s funny that people try to claim a game that was largely inspired by Star Wars as being Hard Scifi especially when Marc Miller himself has repeatedly said it’s not hard scifi.

 

[tytalan]

Oh yea for you Traveller is hard scifi crowd explain the fact that the Tachyon Cannons are an official weapon system in Traveller?

 

[WHULorigan]

Except you have things in Traveller that are absolutely counter to science like Cold Fusion (now call Fusion +) and psionic. I think it’s funny that people try to claim a game that was largely inspired by Star Wars as being Hard Scifi especially when Marc Miller himself has repeatedly said it’s not hard scifi.

Traveller was already at the publishers when Star Wars hit the theatre.

Charted Space may have been influenced somewhat by Star Wars with High Guard onwards, but it's primary inspirations have been repeatedly emphasized by Marc Miller as books and pulp magazines of the 50s and 60s. E.C. Tubb, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Doc Smith, H. Beam Piper, etc.

 

[WHULorigan]

Oh yea for you Traveller is hard scifi crowd explain the fact that the Tachyon Cannons are an official weapon system in Traveller?

They don't belong in Charted Space. In other settings, sure - go for it. But as you have played Traveller and the Charted Space setting for so long, I of course do not need to tell you that there are no such things in Charted Space going back thru all the rulesets, nor anything described as remotely like them in style or character, either.

Now, if you want to import them into your version of Charted Space, have at it. But they are not a part of the historic baseline of the setting.

 

[WHULorigan]

Except you have things in Traveller that are absolutely counter to science like Cold Fusion (now call Fusion +) . . .

BTW - as an aside, there ARE legitimate Cold Fusion reactions - it was just the Fleischmann-Pons Apparatus of 1989 that was bunk.

Cold Fusion just means Fusion not requiring MegaKelvins to achieve. But we have performed Muon-Catalyzed Fusion in the lab at about 600K, IIRC (but it can't be sustained because of low muon production rates and subsequent decay, and muon capture by fusion products (if only we had Dampers . . . )

And we have commercially produced tabletop-sized fusion reactors for industry as low energy neutron sources since the 1980s - look up "Fusor" on the internet. Teenagers have built them for high school science projects for an outlay of anywhere between $500-$3000 (in 2005 dollars - don't ask me about today). They just don't work as a power-source - they have to be externally powered.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Except you have things in Traveller that are absolutely counter to science like Cold Fusion (now call Fusion +) and psionic. I think it’s funny that people try to claim a game that was largely inspired by Star Wars as being Hard Scifi especially when Marc Miller himself has repeatedly said it’s not hard scifi.

How can it have been insopired by Star Wars when Star Wars didn't come out until after the rules had been produced. That time machine of GDWs must have been working a lot back then.

Star Wars may have inspired elements of the Third Imperium setting, Mongoose has certainly added more Star Wars, but the original LBB1-3 set published in 1977 not so much.

Fusion+ is not the same as the cold fusion that has been discredited by current physics, it is TL12 for a start, which likely means damper tech is involved.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Oh yea for you Traveller is hard scifi crowd explain the fact that the Tachyon Cannons are an official weapon system in Traveller?

But not in charted space - yet.

As to what a tachyon cannon is you will notice the handwavium has changed - maybe someone listened when it was pointed out that tachons do not do what they think they do...

 

[Sigtrygg]

They don't belong in Charted Space. In other settings, sure - go for it. But as you have played Traveller and the Charted Space setting for so long, I of course do not need to tell you that there are no such things in Charted Space going back thru all the rulesets, nor anything described as remotely like them in style or character, either.

Now, if you want to import them into your version of Charted Space, have at it. But they are not a part of the historic baseline of the setting.

Nore were personal energy screens and ion cannons, that hasn't stopped them being written into the setting by Mongoose. It is only a matter of time until someone writes a charted space book with tachyon weapons, neutron lasers and all the other stuff.
MongooseMatt is on record as sayonmg charted space is open to all the possibilities of every Traveller book, which is one of the reasons my purchasing of Mongoose Books will be a lot more selective going forward. I am not interested in a charted space where an author can just introduce hyperdrive or some other tech that had no precedent.

That said post Singularity anything can happen, since it could all be a simulation...