On 13 Apr 2016 at 22:38, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:

> On 12 Apr 2016 at 20:32, Kelly St. Clair wrote:
> > On 4/12/2016 7:36 PM, Rob Davenport wrote:
> >
> > > This was impressive.   And made me think of the A. Bertram Chandler
> > > "John Grimes" novels I recently discovered - classic 50s ships
> > > riding down on flames and landing and settling to stand vertically.
> >
> > "as God and Robert Heinlein intended" was how I heard this phrased
> > semi-recently.
>
> Some of my players said all kinds of unkind things about tail-landers a while back. In
> revenge their next ship was a traditional rocketship in shape - in fact I described it as
> "You know the rocket in 'Destination Moon', the Tintin comic? That's what she looks
> like."

I once started to design a Type S variant that was a tail sitter. A
bit like the DC-X.

I was going to go with a sort of paraboloid shape. For ease of
drawing, calculating, etc, I was going to take a cone, chop off the
pointy part and stick hemisphere on the top instead.

The hemispherical bit would be the control room. Made of something
transparent and strong (transparent aluminum? :-)

That'd give great visibility. Have the inside coated with something
that can opaque it, and also serve as a display.

And years back on the list we had a few discussions about PCs in need
of a ship and digging thru the local "junkyard" (someplace in orbit,
or on an airless body). They find an *ancient* ship. Not much wrong
with it, except that it doesn't have a jump drive.

Fortunately, there's another ship that's about the same shape, and
about all that's salvageable from *it* is the j-drive and lanthanum
grid.

Their engineer figures they can get a working ship out of it. Just
one *teeny*, tiny problem. It's a rocket. A fission powered rocket.
Heats LH2 to insane temps in the reactor and feeds it to the exhaust
nozzle. Due to advanced materials, it can get much better performance
than a NERVA engine (say an ISP in the thousands). And the exhaust
isn't at all radioactive. Just hot as hell.

So they still have decent cargo space. But they won't be boosting all
the way to or from the jump limit. On the plus side, she can do mopre
than 6g when boosting at full power. Say as much as 15? Can't do it
for long, but it'll definitely ruin the targeting solution of anybody
shooting at them.

No artificial gravity or g-comp, but they acceleration couches are
designed for that sort of acceleration. And the ship *is* rigged for
long term zero-g  use.

They *can* get fuel for the reactor (fission reactors are useful,
even if you have fusion). Heck, maybe somebody slapped a nuclear
damper on the reactor as part of mothballing it.

Finding out that it only has to be refueled every 10 years is good.
Though you still need to do annual maintence on the drive.

It's weird, it's wacky. But with some work, they can get *out* of
this backwater system.

Another fun idea was a party of PCs hired to ferry a "collector''s
item" to another system. I was thinking of something like the Space
Shuttle, with a jump drive in the cargo section (use a "net" grid
like one CT "tug" design).

Luckily, it's already in orbit and there's an external tank available
(remember, in *our* program the tanks were to be taken into orbit and
used for building a station or something. But the funding didn't work
so we dumped them in a way that's make them burn up on re-entry)

So they get to use the RCS thrusters to get enough gee to settle the
LOX and LH2 in the ET, fire the main engines to get into a an orbit
that'll get you to the 100 diameter limit in a reasonable time.

Shut down, open the bay doors (they have to be open for the life
support cooling to work), do an EVA to deploy the lanthanum "net".

Then once you get past 100 diameters, you fire up the jump drive.

After the week in jump, you recover the drive net, fire the RCS, fire
the main engines to get into an orbit that'll reach the destination,
and then either fire again to cfhange to a parking orbit, or wait for
the tugs.

Collect your money and swear you'll never take another job that crazy
no matter *how* good the pay is.

What? the collector has a line on another old ship? And he's offering
*how* much?

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com