Old Man Posted January 26, 2015 Report Share Posted January 26, 2015 Even for relatively crunchy space opera like a Traveller I'd prefer the thruster plates, simply because fusion torches would really complicate planetary operations. It's nice to be able to land without destroying everything within a kilometer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WistfulD Posted January 26, 2015 Report Share Posted January 26, 2015 Even for relatively crunchy space opera like a Traveller I'd prefer the thruster plates, simply because fusion torches would really complicate planetary operations. It's nice to be able to land without destroying everything within a kilometer. Realistically, all ships would use shuttles (since there's no reason to drag the interstellar drive and all that mass up and down out of gravity wells) that would have lifting bodies that could either dead-stick land or switch to atmosphere-moving engines for a low-torching landing. That isn't as much fun as flying an aluminum falcon around with a nice glowing blue patch on the back that makes the thing fly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tasha Posted January 27, 2015 Report Share Posted January 27, 2015 Realistically, all ships would use shuttles (since there's no reason to drag the interstellar drive and all that mass up and down out of gravity wells) that would have lifting bodies that could either dead-stick land or switch to atmosphere-moving engines for a low-torching landing. That isn't as much fun as flying an aluminum falcon around with a nice glowing blue patch on the back that makes the thing fly. Traveller has antigrav so the cost of lifting that mass out of a gravity well isn't very expensive. For Harder SciFi I would agree with you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WistfulD Posted January 27, 2015 Report Share Posted January 27, 2015 Traveller has antigrav so the cost of lifting that mass out of a gravity well isn't very expensive. For Harder SciFi I would agree with you That was pretty much the point I just made, yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clonus Posted February 16, 2015 Report Share Posted February 16, 2015 Oh, not necessarily. Check out "Saturn's Childen" and "Neptune's Brood" by Charles Stross, in which humanity's successors are just as much a bunch of obnoxious a**holes as we are. It was mentioned in the former novel that when the human race went extinct, "human" civilization didn't even miss a beat. (Explanation: humans couldn't figure out how to make a true functional artificial intelligence, so they made self-aware robots by copying human neural structures into synthetic forms.) It isn't really automating when all you've done is make artificial people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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