RE: To Grav or not to Grav?

Actually, an interesting thing popped up like this in the Isaac Asimov
story
"The Billiard Ball". An engineer built a device creating a perfect
no-gravity field in a small circle in the middle of a pool table. The
engineer assumed that that it would only counteract the earth's pull
(think
'rubber-sheet universe' model). But he didn't take into effect the fact
that
the earth is moving too, as well as the solar system, and the galaxy,
and
the entire universe...

I think that grav vechiles would operate by creating a psudogravity
field in
the opposite direction to the nearest source, probably co-ordinated by a
computer. However, this means that a grav vechile would be unable to
work in
microgravity (space, high orbit) as its fields would be too weak to move
the
vechile and overcome its intertia. Hence, this limits the vechile to an
atmospheric envelope for any serious operations.

Hydrogen is easy to obtain, however. Equip the vechile with solar panels
and
an elecrolyser, and the crew can refuel during movement or breaks in
combat.

Maybe the vechiles need better internal structuaral support to hold the
grav
generators in the hull. Don't forget what happened to the SDF-1 in the
first
ep of Robotech... turned on the drives, and the drive units ripped
themselves out of the hull and went up in the air...

--------------------------------------------
You received this from Alister Crowe
URL: http://www.users.bigpond.com/croweall/
ICQ: 77614478
AIM: Zeruelofmecha
--------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
[mailto:owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU]On Behalf Of Bell, Brian K
(Contractor)
Sent: Thursday, 15 November 2001 11:20 PM
To: 'gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu'
Subject: RE: To Grav or not to Grav?

Grav is gee-whiz tech, so you can model it in quite a few ways.

I like the idea of limiting the armor. Maxing it out at 1 less than size
(but all can cary at least Armor/1) would be a good way to indicate that
the
armor was spread over the underside of the vehicle as well.

Grav units may be subject to the same air-hocky-puck effect that GEVs
face
(i.e. if the energy of a shell impact exceeds the inertia (standing or
moving) of the GEV, the GEV is "pushed" by the impact).

But the biggest drawback to them may be (depending on PSB) the extended
maintenance required to keep them operational. I would think that
spaceships
have redundant systems and the ones off-line are in a constant state of
maintainence (except in battle) to keep them functioning properly. Grav
vehicles probably face the same effect of some of our high tech planes
do
today. That is for every hour of operation, they spend 2 hours in
maintainence.

On Fusion Power, fusion provides a lot of power. However, Grav units use
a
LOT of power. And they use it all the time they are operational. They
use it
hovering, moving and firing. Also, many of the weapons (HELs, MDC) use a
HUGE amount of power (hence the powerplant limitations). It is
reasonable to
assume that a Grav unit would need fresh fuel packs as often as a
chemical
tank would need fuel.

On the Grav suspension, itself, it may be VERY different from a
starship.
Starship grav drives may be "Pull" oriented (easier to amplify gravity
than
to reverse gravity). They may line up the engines to a stellar object in
the
correct direction and amplify the pull of that oject as if it were only
miles away rather than billions of miles (pulling the ship toward the
much
more massive star). Grav deckplates do roughly the same thing amplifying
the
gravity between objects above them and the deck plates themselves (every
other deck may be upside down to avoid having to develop unidirectional
gravity). Grav suspension of vehicles may be entirely different.
Creating
antigravity may be much more inefficient. It may also lessen with
distance,
so as the grav tank rises, it has to use more and more power.
 But, you say, couldn't the grav tank also latch onto stars to pull it
upward? Yes, but it would require a much more sophisticated drive
computer
(files would have to be updated for each planet and date/time) and
precise
timekeeping. A momentary loss of power could put the grav tank out of
sync
with the stars, making its drive system inefficient or unusable until it
could be recalibrated. Also, interveining terrain (mountains, etc.)
would
make it more difficult to "pull" on stars just above the horizon. Also,
"pull" type propulsion may have unwanted effects on the atmosphere of
planets (every time the tank moves, atmosphere equal to the mass of the
vehicle is pulled into space toward the star). For these reason, I
prefer
the less efficient "push" grav drive for grav tanks.

---
Brian Bell
bbell1@insight.rr.com
ICQ: 12848051
AIM: Rlyehable
YIM: Rlyehable
The Full Thrust Ship Registry:
http://www.ftsr.org
---