Re: [FTFB] Not ships, exactally. . .

>Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 10:07:33 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
>From: Keith Watt <kwatt@astro.umd.edu>
>Subject: Re: [FTFB] Not ships, exactally. . .

>Someone please check my math, though, I should know better than to not
do
>it on paper first!

Your math looks good and your physics seem correct, but you may want to
reconsider your assumptions; in FT physics doesn't work quite the same.

In the real world, this is correct:

>Starting from rest and from position zero, the distance travelled under
>constant acceleration is:
>
>s = 1/2 a t^2

But for FT physics, it isn't.  In the real world, a ship that used
continuous acceleration of thrust 8 for one turn from a stationary
position
would only travel 4 mu but would have a speed of 8 at the end of the
turn.

But that is not the case in Full Thrust's vector movement system; the
ship
gets a full 8 mu in the turn it accelerates.  Personally, I prefer this
"Physics Lite" approach since it is easier to keep track of, but it does
make this type of calculation a little more complicated.

For the purposes of getting your scale right, I suggest that you may
want
to use the end-of-turn velocity as your yardstick instead.  Or more
simply,
use the modified formula of:

s = a t^2

Jeff