Quote:
Originally Posted by warellis
I just realized but regarding your superscience drives here, how big of a mass limit do they have for expeditionsry work?
I remember there were lots of discussions regarding how much could be taken over for either military or civilian purposes but was it a lot or a little?
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In large part, it's a matter of how much mass the airframe/spaceframe can carry, remembering that the bigger the magic item (or assembly of magic items) the more time/effort is needed to make it work. The more time passes, the more aircraft are converted to spacecraft, and the more new, dedicated spacecraft and aerospacecraft become ready for use. 'No jam today, a little jam tomorrow, a lot of jam the week after next,' so to speak (time units given should be taken as severe understatements). As noted by tshiggins in
Craftsmen, the number of spacecraft available to Inp-USA alone doubles every four months, and that's just what Stp-USA knows about - that number will fluctuate a fair bit as the USSF runs out of older aircraft to convert, and construction of new, purpose-built spacecraft starts ramping up.
By the end of WWII(2), convoys between Earth-1 and Earth-2 will be going back and forth at about the same rate as between the US and UK in our WWII, if not more so (and getting raided by the Axis forces something like as often). As it is, the third Earth-1 expedition to Earth-2 will probably leave Earth-1 orbit before the second (launched in June or July) starts the return journey from Earth-2.
On an unrelated note, a bit of dialogue that might be used at some point:
"It'll all be over by Christmas, you'll see."
"I'm sure it will, but I highly doubt that it will be
this Christmas."