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Old 02-17-2020, 08:56 AM   #1
Mavelic
 
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Default Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

Hi,
I need help to create Eagle like shuttle from Cosmos 1999 show, using Spaceship book rules.
I can't figure out what thrusters using ! -_-
Thanks for your help and ideas.
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Old 02-17-2020, 11:19 AM   #2
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

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Originally Posted by Mavelic View Post
Hi,
I need help to create Eagle like shuttle from Cosmos 1999 show, using Spaceship book rules.
I can't figure out what thrusters using ! -_-
Thanks for your help and ideas.
If this is the old TV show generally known in English as Space:1999 (whihc di8d indeed have a type of craft known as the Eagle) then there are only a few known things.

It has thrust more than the lunar surface (.16 G). It may have more than that. It was a very long time ago and I don't remember if an Eagle ever landed in heavier gravity.

It does not have large obvious fuel tanks.

Just the first datum would greatly limit your choices. Even if those tilting "pods" or whatever they were are each a separate engine you've eliminated all engine types with less than 0.05 Gs per system.

Then if you add in posible fuel use you're left with some type of reactionless engine.

You could have skipped my reasoning and gone straight to reactionless. Virtually no TV show or movie ever allow for enough fuel for a hard scicne engine.
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Old 02-17-2020, 12:12 PM   #3
Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2
 
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Default Re: Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

Look here.

The blueprints linked at the top of the page give numbers for maximum speed (0.15c) and endurance (96 hours). The math can be done easily enough. All the other information for Spaceships conversion should be available there as well.
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Old 02-17-2020, 12:34 PM   #4
johndallman
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Default Re: Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

Cosmos 1999 is the French title of Space: 1999.

The distance and speeds in the source series don't make any sense. The Moon is supposedly travelling at speeds that let them have an encounter with an Earthlike solar system every few months for the characters, implying hundreds of times the speed of light. Nonetheless, the Eagle shuttles, built for use on the Moon, are apparently able to slow down, land on bodies in those systems, and then catch up with the Moon, without any sense of time pressure.

Spaceships is far too hard-science for a campaign in this setting. Don't try to use it, you'll just be making life hard for yourself.

Last edited by johndallman; 02-17-2020 at 05:05 PM. Reason: Markup
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Old 02-17-2020, 06:21 PM   #5
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

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Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2 View Post
Look here.

The blueprints linked at the top of the page give numbers for maximum speed (0.15c) and endurance (96 hours). The math can be done easily enough. All the other information for Spaceships conversion should be available there as well.
This is math that will prove that no fuel using drive except the Total Conversion Torch (or Super Torch) can meet these standards. 0.15c (accel and decel) is 55,878 miles per second and at 10,000 mps per tank you'll need 5 tanks.

The not so good news is that reaching 0.15c with the Super Total Conversion Torch in 48 hours will take 2 engine ssytems to give you 100 Gs of accel/decel.

Not sure why so much speed and so little endurance.....
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Old 02-17-2020, 07:09 PM   #6
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Default Re: Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

This sounds like a job for reactionless engines.
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Old 02-17-2020, 08:53 PM   #7
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Default Re: Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Cosmos 1999 is the French title of Space: 1999.

The distance and speeds in the source series don't make any sense. The Moon is supposedly travelling at speeds that let them have an encounter with an Earthlike solar system every few months for the characters, implying hundreds of times the speed of light. Nonetheless, the Eagle shuttles, built for use on the Moon, are apparently able to slow down, land on bodies in those systems, and then catch up with the Moon, without any sense of time pressure.

Spaceships is far too hard-science for a campaign in this setting. Don't try to use it, you'll just be making life hard for yourself.
The best justification I can come up with for that is to ignore what's supposed to be happening, and postulate that the Moon periodically teleports or falls through wormholes, and does so in a sufficiently predictable fashion with enough delay in between that there's no appearance of a time crunch. If I were running a game version of it, I'd probably give them a semi-random teleportation device, so that they can control when they go, but have little influence on where (they're hoping against hope that their next leap will be the leap home).
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Last edited by Prince Charon; 02-18-2020 at 11:55 AM.
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Old 02-17-2020, 09:15 PM   #8
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Default Re: Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
The distance and speeds in the source series don't make any sense.
That was noted at the time. Any explosion big enough to push the Moon out of orbit would have torn it apart. Best idea is to just go with it.
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Old 02-17-2020, 09:39 PM   #9
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Default Re: Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

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e. Any explosion big enough to push the Moon out of orbit would have torn it apart.
By a large margin. You'd only have to add 1.6 miles per second to the Moon's mass to make the Moon's pieces fly apart. It'd take 26 miles per second to make the Moon fly out of the Solar System and you wouldn't get anywhere in particular in a human lifetime.

Periodic space-warps or something similar are an absolute necessity to the premise.
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Old 02-18-2020, 03:54 AM   #10
Mavelic
 
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Default Re: Eagle shuttle from Cosmos 1999

Many thanks for your comments.
I have now all the elements I need to make my own "Eagle" spaceship, with more realistic values (no need of speed 0.15c or 4 days endurance, for example).
I just like a lot the "Apollo" look of this shuttle as it will fit very well in my SF setting. I'll give it all statistics I think necessary even if that doesn't fit perfectly with Spaceship RAW (but trying to be close to a certain reality).
Regards.
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