Have we figured out how maneuver might work?

[mike wightman]

I disagree, the magic technology that is reducing inertial mass of the ship, and providing acceleration compensation and producing artificial gravity means your arms and legs behave exactly as if you are in a 1g field.

None of this is remotely possible - decoupling from the Higgs field is totally handwavium - but until someone can actually explain these magical technologies my handwavium is as good as any other

MgT just says the m-drive is gravitic with no further explanation - well sorry but gravity is curved spacetime, so is the MgT m-drive curving spacetime? Where is it getting the mass/energy from required to do that?

Wait - say others - the m-drive amplifies the effect of gravity - so once again how?

We can not explain the m-drive, jump drive, artificial gravity, acceleration compensation using known physics so we may as well just accept the technobabble handwavium that we find reasonable for our setting.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Assuming that a massless graviton actually exists, and that the field it carries is a spin-2 field, any artificially-generated massless spin-2 field would give rise to a force indistinguishable from gravitation. So simply aim your vessel skyward, generate a massless spin-2 field, and Bob's your uncle!

Ref.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton (second paragraph).








(... or not ...)

 

[Condottiere]

The polarity of the graviton spin is reversed.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

The polarity of the graviton spin is reversed.

Are you sure? I always though that reversing the polarity of the plasma injectors while simultaneously polarizing the hull without breaching the annular containment field is what did the trick.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm pretty sure it's done within the gravitational condensators, and then allowed to expand due to the continued built up pressure until it reaches equilibrium with the local gravity.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Kzinti lesson...

'A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive.'

I vaguely remember (this was thirty-five years ago, and it wasn't my copy) the '77 edition of High Guard having a rule for this. Did it?

 

[mike wightman]

1 graviton, 2 quark, 3 neutrino, 4 electron, 5 dark matter, 6 positron
1 spin, 2 charge, 3 flux, 4 density, 5 polarity, 6 gradient
1 manifold, 2 condenser, 3 collimator, 4 aperture, 5 attenuator, 6 distributer

 

[mike wightman]

I vaguely remember (this was thirty-five years ago, and it wasn't my copy) the '77 edition of High Guard having a rule for this. Did it?

Yup, the first edition of High Guard (1979) did have a rule for using a drive as a fusion gun of the same rating as the drive.
A 6g drive functions as a factor 6 fusion gun at close range.

Shame this rule was dropped, a 6g fighter suddenly has a much more effective weapon in its arsenal...

 

[Condottiere]

I don't recall the specifics, but I would suspect that a Tigress doing one gee is a lot different from a Rampart doing six, in terms of energy output.

I think the option was eliminated to prevent spaceships teabagging their opponent's bridge.

 

[Major B]

1 graviton, 2 quark, 3 neutrino, 4 electron, 5 dark matter, 6 positron
1 spin, 2 charge, 3 flux, 4 density, 5 polarity, 6 gradient
1 manifold, 2 condenser, 3 collimator, 4 aperture, 5 attenuator, 6 distributer

I rolled a 1-3-5 so mine is a Graviton Flux Attenuator.

I was hoping for dark matter though, so I'm reversing my roll sequence for a Dark Matter Flux Manifold. Better.

 

[tjoneslo]

One option I've seen tossed around would be a neutrino drive. Like a photon drive, you have the exhaust velocity of c (the speed of light). Unlike photons, the neutrino has very little interaction with normal matter. Which makes them safer than anything else. Note, not completely safe, as neutrino's have some very tiny number of interactions and the number of neutrino's required to get thrust is very large. So there would be some effects in the immediate area of the thrust bell. But you would have the nice blue glow and it would be entirely safe at any reasonable distance from the ship.

The last numbers I saw for the HePLAR drive was the exhaust velocity had to be 1.2c to get the performance numbers as shown in TNE.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Yup, the first edition of High Guard (1979) did have a rule for using a drive as a fusion gun of the same rating as the drive.
A 6g drive functions as a factor 6 fusion gun at close range.

Shame this rule was dropped, a 6g fighter suddenly has a much more effective weapon in its arsenal...

I don't recall the specifics, but I would suspect that a Tigress doing one gee is a lot different from a Rampart doing six, in terms of energy output.

I think the option was eliminated to prevent spaceships teabagging their opponent's bridge.

Scale it by equivalent input power rather than drive rating, and break that into batteries capped at Factor 9 but only roll once to hit for all of them simultaneously. +DM for Pilot and Ship's Tactics rather than Gunner.

Could a second maneuver drive be installed as a spinal mount fusion gun?

Or, conversely, could fusion guns not targeted against hostiles or missiles be used to add to agility?

Then again, imagine what kind of damage you could do if you could aim the exhaust from a Jump Drive -- assuming the reaction force didn't punch the entire drive bay out through the front of the hull, or that trying to contain the exhaust didn't blow the drive to smithereens...

 

[jcrocker]

TNE said that fusion drives shouldn't be used within X distance of worlds, lest they spread hot radiation everywhere. So take-offs and landing with grav lifters only please!

 

[BwapTED]

I confess, I've been reading Atomic Rocket lately. I regret doing so.

Disclaimer: I am not a gearhead. But, the gearheads do intimidate me, and they say that reactionless drives are a no-no.

So, maneuver drive isn't reactionless, is it? All those rocket nozzles in the backs of ships seem to suggest it.

And no, I don't think they're fusion rockets or high-energy plasma rockets. But they are emitting something that's not particularly destructive but still enough to warrant nozzles.

I do think maneuver drives are gravitic in nature, which means they push and pull against local gravity sources.

But that's as far as I've gotten.

Gravitic, with rocketlike emitters of some sort, but not a fusion/plasma torch.

http://hardmaths.blogspot.com/2017/02/ad-astra-gravitic-propulsion.html

Maybe like this guy's take on reaction engines with gravitic compression.

 

[kilemall]

http://hardmaths.blogspot.com/2017/02/ad-astra-gravitic-propulsion.html

Maybe like this guy's take on reaction engines with gravitic compression.

That's what I have been busy imagineering, I call it the Gravpulse drive.

 

[BwapTED]

How do you guys deal with Jon's Law and relativistic planet crackers?
Or is that a tangential topic better suited to a new thread?

 

[Juums]

How do you guys deal with Jon's Law and relativistic planet crackers?
Or is that a tangential topic better suited to a new thread?

A new thread would probably be appropriate, but in a setting where you've got Traveller's M-Drives and J-Drives, there's a fairly small window when M-Drive-boosted c-frac planet-crackers can really work as intended. As the functionally infinite acceleration afforded by M-Drives makes relativistic kill vehicles valid, the invention of the J-Drive concurrently or shortly thereafter neuters their existential overtones. The several decades of warning an RKV's initial burn provides -- even one powered by an M-Drive -- also mean that it's entirely possible for a targeted world with Jump-capability to launch a counter-first-strike against the launching world while the RKV is still in flight.

 

[kilemall]

How do you guys deal with Jon's Law and relativistic planet crackers?
Or is that a tangential topic better suited to a new thread?

There was a thread on that within the past few months.

 

[Adam Dray]

Here: Crashing Ships as Weapons

 

[Straybow]

MgT just says the m-drive is gravitic with no further explanation - well sorry but gravity is curved spacetime, so is the MgT m-drive curving spacetime? Where is it getting the mass/energy from required to do that?

No, it's just that the math used to describe gravity (imperfectly) seems to describe curved space-time. It also describes conditions where time-like and space-like dimensions become entangled or even swapped, which militates against curvature and becomes something entirely different. EM describes something other than curvature of space-time, since only charged particles see any effect. It also describes photons that have mass-energy and may therefore contribute to curvature, if gravity were curvature. The forces could be some variant of string theory...

Assuming that a massless graviton actually exists, and that the field it carries is a spin-2 field, any artificially-generated massless spin-2 field would give rise to a force indistinguishable from gravitation. So simply aim your vessel skyward, generate a massless spin-2 field, and Bob's your uncle!

Artificial gravity need not be a particle-moderated effect, but rather a virtual particle effect. It could be spin independent, or challenge the current understanding of spin interaction.
:CoW: