Gravity, Tech & others (was Re: Orbits, etc)

In a message dated 98-07-04 00:04:23 EDT, Richard S. writes:

<< You manage to rationalize FTL drives and non reaction mass normal 
 drives, so give limited contra inertia (not grav) effects on ships a 
 chance perhaps? 1G acceleration from purely accelerating can be 
 thought of as different from the 1G force upon you from stading on 
 earth. One is cause by gravity, the action of a very big mass. The 
 other because of inertia. So you don't need gravity control exactly, 
 just a way of divorcing the interial frame (PBS abounds). I'm not 
 advocating inertialess ships just partially inertial compensated. It 
 cuts down on inertial superweapons. >>

     True - my rationalizations tend to be specific to my tastes :). 
But I do
see your point.  My distaste for artificial internal gravity comes more
from a
desire for space combat to be a bit different than wet-navy combat.  The
vector-movement helps a lot (I got my FB!).  Internal artificial gravity
also
shows some design flaws - if it fails on a standard
decks-parallel-to-thrust
ship, you're screwed.  Climb the floor and celings, and the bulkheads
are the
floors, right.	On a decks-perpendicular-to-thrust ship, if the floor
grav
plates fail, you are still able to manuver somewhat, as the ship is
designed
for that situation.  
     Actually, reactionless drives are OK, but I prefer a really high-
efficiency drive (ion, nuke-pulse, etc).  Some of my house rules
actually
include burn elements, and fuel limitations - run forever now,
monkey-boy!
     The kinetic-kill-vehicle problem is quite familiar to me, as a
Brilliant
Lances/Battle Rider player.  Somebody figured out that a standard KKV
missile
impacting on a standard Traveller cruiser (50,000 tonnes mass) would
pretty
much blow it in half.  Beams become much less attractive.  
     I can rationalize it out as this: Beams are c (speed o' light)
speed
weapons - there is little target movement between firing & impact,
compared
to, say, a railgun.  Missiles carry bomb-pumped lasers, and fighters
have
little beams, or maybe plasma/fusion weapons.  Sub-c-speed weapons
(railguns,
plasma/fusion weapons, KKVs) have much lower velocities, and there will
be
significant target movement between firing and impact.	Missiles will
also
have trouble actually hitting a manuvering target, due to last-second
corrections and such.  They are more damaging, but have lower ranges. 
ECM,
evasive manuvers, and the difficulty of pinning down such a small object
in a
vast area will affect accuracy as well.  In my personal GZG-ish mileu,
beams
(standard & HBW) and railguns are limited only by mass of ship and
money.
After a while, they become one-arc only weapons (spinal), but are the
'big
guns' of space.  I'm thinking of doing KKMs, but they're going to be a
little
too powerful so far.
     
>Hrrm, if we change 1MU=1,000km to 10,000km earth sized planets become 
>an inch across :( but hey, jupiter will be 8" instead of 80", the sun 
>will be 70" instead of 700" ;)

>If we change the timescale to 1.5 minutes, there are ten turns per 
>stargrunt/dirtside turn :(

Keep turns @ 15 mins, make 1 MU = 7,500 km.  This should keep 1 thrust =
1 g.
and Terra is 2", Jupiter 16", etc.  I think this might work for you.

>Trouble is, at such low accelerations, it takes FOREVER to get
>between planets inside a solar system. <doublecheck> um, wait, you
>can use FTL inside systems with FT can't you, just as long as you
>are sufficiently far from the planetary surface / gravity well. Has
>that distance been quantified? 

     100 diameter safe, 10 diameters....uh, wait a minute.  That's been
used.
How about 0.1 g?  1 m/s/s?  That will be on most tables even with MU =
1000km.
I also figure with weak drives, a good, efficient, cheap FTL is a
necessity.
One thing that Traveller seemed to forget when it went to fuel-limited
reation
drives, is that even at 6 gs, it takes FOREVER to get from Terra to
Jupiter to
refuel.

     OK, there is a bit of PSB here :), but no too bad.  Now if you'll
excuse
me, I have some inertial frames to hang and straighten...

Noah