materials in traveller

[The Thing]

I try to avoid using blatantly impossible materials and such in my SF games, so no "adamantium", for example.

In traveller, i assume a lot of stuff is made from beryllium alloy as it's an incredibly light and strong metal, and with a whole galaxy to mine it would not be in short supply. I also use plausible material like carbon 60 and advanced, nanoformed composites.

I was wondering if there was any official word on what materials were mostly used in traveller. I think that during the interstellar wars period the terrans were using a lot of iridium based on some things I heard about having kids collect old ball point pens for the iridium balls in them. But generally I haven't hard much about the kinds of materials used in the traveller era and wondered if a grognard could help me out.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

I think you're right on the iridium bit. Superdense is a common starship material - super condensed matter - but I don't remember its starting element.

Wasn't beryllium what the sphere was made of in Galaxy Quest?

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

Beside the statements in the known design sequences I know no reference to actual materials used in the TU. And even here the properties of those hull materials are very unspecific.
Well, Striker gives a bit more detail, when its about armor and penetration values.
Yes, and we know about the Iridium throne.

Now, thats perhaps a good thing, as it leave the space to fill it up with real world or theoretical materials.
IMHO there is no need for other "magical stuff" here.

TheThing already gave a pretty list of some materials.
I would add the bionics branch of re-engineered materials from good old nature, ceramics, enhanced plastics or bioplastics (growing materials - we had this topic lately) and the big big family of composite materials.

My interpretation of "superdense" hull material is, that this is in fact an outcome of new production methods, forcing the atoms in a innatural but hopefully stable high density grid structure. Its a very hypothetical material, but hey its about TL 12.
Bonded superdense is IMHO a very cool step towards "active" materials, which need some input from outside in order to provide their advanced properties (I always have the picture in my mind of a starship, which decomposes as the energy runs out).

IMHO hulls in Traveller mostly appear to be monolithic, thick and heavy. Well this is perhaps a bit outdated, as most hull concepts for space faring craft are based on lightweight composites (o.k. they are not designed for laser weapon combat).

Personally I believe, that the workhorse materials of future technolgy are indeed carbon-nanotube based composites. Well, I would have to add: in a future, where the energy creation problem is solved.
Otherwise a great great chance lies within bionics/evolution optimized stuff.

A really good inspiration for Traveller stuff is IMHO the master topic bionics and bionicle engineering, not because of the functional aspects, but also because of the beauty of the solutions.

Hu, so many aspects here ....

Regards,

TE

 

[aramis]

striker discusses "aligned crystaline steel", and the outgrowth of superdense from that. MT uses the striker armor materials.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

FF&S2 has a good list of different materials.

 

[Scott Martin]

FF&S2 has a good list of different materials.

Most of which are actually less effective than some existing materials: cast aluminum with tungsten fibers springs to mind (think "fiberglass" with tungsten and aluminum instead of glass fiber and epoxy resin) as do the advanced carbon fiber laminates and new composite ceramics.

IMO one of the nice things about FF&S is the ability to just drop in other materials (and if they happen to be "real world" materials then so much the better).

HG was abstract enough that the hull materials were "unobtainuim-1" to "unobtainum-4" with no details that anal-retentive types like myself could pick apart and say "why don't they just use material XYZ instead?" The more I look at Traveller, the more I realize how many cans of worms Striker opened.

Scott Martin

 

[Golan2072]

I also use plausible material like carbon 60 and advanced, nanoformed composites.

A question about such materials: is it feasible to use them (or similar materials) to construct such wonders as skyhooks, "beanstalks" and, on the other scale of things, monowire "variable swords"?

 

[Spinward Scout]

Don't forget:

Synthetic Spider Silk (minus the sticktuitiveness) - strong enough that a pencil thickness strand could stop a 747. Imagine if you intertwine that with Carbon NanoTubes. That'd be some serious combat armor, I would think.

Transparent Aluminum (about as hard as sapphire) - it's not just for Star Trek Engineers anymore.

and technically, you could introduce Neutronium even tho it's only theoretical.

Spinward Scout

 

[Ishmael]

I just read a bit in popular science where a materials was 'designed' that was almost as incompressable as diamond and could actually scratch a diamond.

 

[Hemdian]

Its a little old now but check out this link.

Regards PLST

 

[Straybow]

I try to avoid using blatantly impossible materials and such in my SF games, so no "adamantium", for example.

In traveller, i assume a lot of stuff is made from beryllium alloy as it's an incredibly light and strong metal, and with a whole galaxy to mine it would not be in short supply.

Incredibly light and strong, and also incredibly poisonous. I can't recall the lethal dose level, but it is very low. I know the primary danger is respiratory ingestion of dust. The dust created by friction of light everyday use (eg, an airlock door sliding open and shut) would be enough to contaminate the air inside the ship and around a ship parked on the surface.

MatSci types have looked at using beryllium fibers in composites, but the material simply can't be safely worked at this tech level. Even if fabrication and wear-related dust problems can be overcome one last factor would prohibit use. The oxidized particles resulting from combat would be more lethal than combat itself. Re-entry friction is also something impossible to wave off.

 

[Gadrin]

Incredibly light and strong, and also incredibly poisonous. I can't recall the lethal dose level, but it is very low. I know the primary danger is respiratory ingestion of dust. The dust created by friction of light everyday use (eg, an airlock door sliding open and shut) would be enough to contaminate the air inside the ship and around a ship parked on the surface.

MatSci types have looked at using beryllium fibers in composites, but the material simply can't be safely worked at this tech level. Even if fabrication and wear-related dust problems can be overcome one last factor would prohibit use. The oxidized particles resulting from combat would be more lethal than combat itself. Re-entry friction is also something impossible to wave off.

hmmm, sound like this might link to the "Terrorism" thread. How long before the onset of death ?

 

[Jame]

A question about such materials: is it feasible to use them (or similar materials) to construct such wonders as skyhooks, "beanstalks" and, on the other scale of things, monowire "variable swords"?

As I understand it, these materials would be the best things for the beanstalks themselves (and I would allow for making a beanstalk have several stalks in a group for quicker turnaround time!); the skyhooks would be cities or other structures (or even built-up asteroids) which act as anchors.

The monowire variable swords would, IMTU, be normal swords with some of these materials strung along the edge like in Shadowrun (4e), and they would have better armor mods than normal swords.

I would put these materials at TL 9-10, with them becoming cheaper at higher TLs.

 

[Icosahedron]

Incredibly light and strong, and also incredibly poisonous.

Something that was mentioned in a thread here some time ago keeps rolling around my head - the concept that humans in the 53rd century (or whenever) are a genetically engineered species that are hardier than 21st century humans in many ways, and this is what enables them to thrive in space and on alien worlds, tolerant of levels of radiation, biological and chemical contamination that would prove fatal today. (Anyone recall whose idea it was?)

Perhaps these future humans could be made tolerant of beryllium dust too?

 

[tinker123]

Please excuse the dumb question from a non-scientist, but if carbon makes such neat, lightweight, strong molecules, couldn't you get higher-density equivalents out of silicon? I'd expect it to need more energy to get there, of course, but this is sci-fi and energy is plentiful.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi tinker !

No dumb question, but just a very correct thought
While its not about the higher density, its about other properties of C and Si which work together in a very positve way.
You can use a C/Si mixed polymeres to create ceramic matrix composites, carbon fiber enhanced Silicium-Carbids and other highly specializes materials, which are already used in general spacecraft construction, heat shielding, blanket material etc ....
So thats just plain real world high tech stuff

Regards,

TE

 

[Ptah]

I try to avoid using blatantly impossible materials and such in my SF games, so no "adamantium", for example.

In traveller, i assume a lot of stuff is made from beryllium alloy as it's an incredibly light and strong metal, and with a whole galaxy to mine it would not be in short supply. I also use plausible material like carbon 60 and advanced, nanoformed composites.

I was wondering if there was any official word on what materials were mostly used in traveller. I think that during the interstellar wars period the terrans were using a lot of iridium based on some things I heard about having kids collect old ball point pens for the iridium balls in them. But generally I haven't hard much about the kinds of materials used in the traveller era and wondered if a grognard could help me out.

Canonically, there can be no carbon 60, or many other composite materials in Traveller as they were not even invented/discovered yet so could not have been in the concept of the game designers. And Smalley even got a Nobel prize for the carbon 60 work.

Let's go utside the standard periodic table for a moment. Neutronium is a good one, but I'd say high, high TL just because I think it would be so dense that it woudl be hard to work with without killing yourself. I wouldn't call it theoeretical since I believe we have detected rotating neutron stars.

Another group of matrials would be those found around the "island of stability" far out on the periodic table. Unfortunately we don't have the energy/tech to makes these but I bet a supernova could. Here is a wiki link on these elements that appears reliable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability

I would say that nuclear chemists feel strongly that these elements can and probably do exist somewhere. At least that is what I was taught by Darleane Hoffman and was the view of Seaborg.

I always took superdense to be one of those elements, but I doubt MWM and company knew anything about them.

 

[far-trader]

Something that was mentioned in a thread here some time ago keeps rolling around my head - the concept that humans in the 53rd century (or whenever) are a genetically engineered species that are hardier than 21st century humans in many ways, and this is what enables them to thrive in space and on alien worlds, tolerant of levels of radiation, biological and chemical contamination that would prove fatal today. (Anyone recall whose idea it was?)

Perhaps these future humans could be made tolerant of beryllium dust too?

Sounds like a Golden Age Sci-Fi idea. Probably from one of the giants. Asimov, Clarke, or one such. It does sound familiar but I can't place it.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Let's go utside the standard periodic table for a moment. Neutronium is a good one, but I'd say high, high TL just because I think it would be so dense that it woudl be hard to work with without killing yourself. I wouldn't call it theoeretical since I believe we have detected rotating neutron stars.

Well, we have detected the neutron stars, but Neutronium is the material theorized to exist at the core of those stars. It explains it in this article on Neutronium.

Stable, non-radioactive Neutronium of course sounds like it would be 'handwavium' or 'unobtanium'.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

IMTUs, material science starts becoming capable of creating more of the fantastic materials after TL 12, and in mass quantities after TL13. That corresponds with the inventions of nuclear damper and meson screen technology which would allow you to create materials which had been made with modifications to their structure by manipulating the material's strong and weak nuclear forces at the atomic level. Unobtanium becomes available, but expensive due to the manufacturing process.