M Fnord Wrote:First part: We drop the difference between Speed and Acceleration Drives entirely. All engines "accelerate" to move in a straight line. The engines we normally call "speed drives" still have their special space-opera characteristics - reactionless, gleefully ignoring the laws of inertia, stymied by gravity wells, etc. - but they still thrust to get anywhere. This would, IMO, remove an arbitrary distinction between engines that nobody pays any attention to anyway.
I can live with this.
I can also see Noah setting up a gravtech launcher near Stellvia - get the first x amount of acceleration all at once (value of x decreases as your vehicle's mass increases or your courage decreases), for the low low price of... we'll figure something out.
M Fnord Wrote:Second part: The slowdown. We slow down maximum travel velocities from a ceiling of 20% light speed to (roughly) a band between 0.02% and 2% light speed.
Massive re-write time, if this goes ahead... including finding something else for Avril Arrow to do altogether.
Dartz Wrote:I always thought the reason for that was the size of fenships. Sure you can go someplace fast, but you can't really take that much with you. The largest things taking off from earth (Unreal estate aside), are usually waved airliners, and such... and not really that many of them. It's still a 6 hour journey to Mars, on average... add in take off and landing and you've got the best part of half a day before you do anything there. Most fen only have the average fencar/bus right?... they can't carry much more than a tent with them. Most fen probably don't have anything but the credits in their pocket to buy passage...
Maybe it's not limited by speed, colonisation is limited by the carrying capacity of most space vehicles. Youre average car can't carry much more than a weeks food and a tent.
Also, travelling to Mars in a fencar is a special kind of hell, if it's going to take 60 hours in conditions that'd make an Apollo astronaut feel claustrophic.
I think Dartz has the right of it here. Yes, the current setup means you can make it to Mars and back in a day, if you aren't doing anything else while you're there. But you aren't taking anything larger than a bag of groceries with you. If you want to take some colonization gear, you're taking a slower, larger (and more expensive to build) ship. If the average Fan can move into a house in Kandor City today, or move into a house in Helium next week, which is he going to have the patience to do?
(Yes, there will be a few who say "move into a house in Serenity Valley next fortnight", but they're the pioneers - spiritual descendants of the folks who took Conestoga wagons down the Great Appalachian Valley.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012