RE: To Grav or not to Grav?

--- Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:

> At exactly what rate does fusion burn up the
> hydrogen (sorry its been way > too long since my
astronomy classes to remember)?

Not sure.  I was running off the old Traveller
numbers, which are probably far too cheerful.  I'm not
sure anyone actually knows since we don't have a
self-sustaining controllable fusion reaction to check
the gas mileage off of.

> OK dumb question, but why have different designs at
> all? If they've broken > with the effect of gravity
to a large extent then > does it really matter if
> they're streamlined or not? Why not just use exactly
> the same kit for > everything from shuttle to tank?

Because a specialized vehicle will beat a
non-specialized vehicle in that vehicle's specialty. 
A dedicated fighter would be a better dogfighter than
a generic vehicle in the upper atmosphere, while a
dedicated tank would beat a generic vehicle down on
the ground.  Over-generalization is a curse which
allows one vehicle to be mediocre at everything and
excell at nothing.

> Assuming you're on a world with free standing water
> ;)

If you're not, what's there to fight over?  You have
to have water supplies to have a population, and if
you have water supplies available and tanks to take it
with, you don't have a problem.

> Assuming you've got a pilots licence too - which is
> pretty safe bet if > they've been "flown down" from
a space ship in the > first place. I was just
> imagining a whole group of tanks flying over the
> Himalayas....

Possible.  

> >  They could not operate in an intense enemy air
> > defense environment, and take heavy casualties if
> air
> > assaulted directly into contact.  
> 
> Do you think the grav vehicles would also suffer
> from this, or would they
> armoured nature make them more immune?

It gets pretty heavy to armor just the frontal arc and
put lighter armor on the sides.  If you try to armor
up the entire vehicle evenly, you end up with
something that's just too heavy to work.

> Why, if they're sealed and have such a good energy
> plant? On top of that
> advances in algal scrubbers etc could see even
> biologically based life
> support units being tiny in the not too distant
> future.

Two reasons.  First is water supplies.	Second is crew
comfort.  I've spent too much time in the back of an
armored vehicle to have any desire to ride in one for
12-24 hours.  And self-deployment around a planet may
take 3-4 days for certain regions.

> Assuming the gee-whiz gizmo that keeps the thingimee
> going on the do-dat of > the grav tank isn't
impossibly hard to get in the > boon docks and can't
be
> easily replaced with a bullet casing or some such.

That's what your PLL stocks are for.  You take spares.

> The one thing growing up > on a farm taught me was
that the more "techo" stuff > got the more it was
> likely to be %^&@# useless if something went wrong
> in the bush. 

It's a matter of technology maturity.  Take a look at
how long it took tracked vehicles to mature from
useless experiments to conquering Poland.  Then
consider we've had almost 3 times that long to develop
grav vehicles by 2183.

John

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