13 December 2023

But Where Are You Getting Stable Neutronium

Like dogs returning to their vomit, FuzzyGeff and I keep circling back to the apparent operation of physics violating drives in Traveller.

Whether they intended it or not, the maneuver drive in LBB Traveller moves a volume at a given acceleration regardless of mass.

Later versions applied a thrust to the mass, so a heavier ship will accelerate more slowly with a given drive than a lighter one.

LBB Traveller's drive allows something with normal physics thanks to how it seems to behave.

You can get a pretty massive mass going quite a clip with the maneuver drive.

Steer it into some magnetic loops and collect the energy of slowing it down.

You get an energy profit from this.

We know this because we know how much hydrogen is consumed in the power plant running that maneuver drive.

And this is just one of the simpler ways of getting free power out of the maneuver drive.

When you break physics there are implications beyond the effect you're looking to achieve.

If you want out of the hard equations you need to break physics.

Hard science fiction lacks a certain flare that space opera has in metric bucket loads.

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