Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

I'm betting this a Spaceships conversion of the Advanced Interplanetary Ship that Freeman Dyson and the rest of the Project Orion crew dreamed would be operating in the distant future of 2009.

The Palomar-class seems to be a Star Trek: The Next Generation Galaxy-class starship. The Odyssey, despite the absence of a homicidal AI, looks like the Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Any other easter eggs anyone has noticed?

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

For that, I would have preferred to have seen a TL8 design - something suitable for the Messiah from 1998's Deep Impact, and an example of what we could build right now if we needed to (politics aside).

I'm not that familiar with Blake's Seven; but the quote given makes it highly likely that the Alcatraz is supposed to be the prison transport from which they escaped at the start of the show. Likewise, the Charon-Class Sleeper Ship could very well be the Botany Bay from Star Trek.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

Amusingly, if it is they made a slight error. According to Memory Alpha there were 72 augments in Cryogenic sleep canisters aboard the Botany Bay (the exact amount the Charon has), but 12 more died when their canisters failed, so it had a compliment of at least 84 Hibernation chambers.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

This is one of the times the simplifying assumptions of Spaceships collide with physical reality. An Orion drive is something that's difficult to build small, but gets better with size. A larger ship has a bigger blast plate that catches more of the pulse bomb's blast, and larger nuclear devices are more efficient as well. So we probably could build a huge Orion Drive ship right now, but a smaller one we could not.

In my try at converting the Advanced Interplanetary Ship, I used TL8 materials and a TL10 fission pulse drive to match the ISP that the designers planned for.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

[QUOTE=tratclif;864392]This is one of the times the simplifying assumptions of Spaceships collide with physical reality. An Orion drive is something that's difficult to build small, but gets better with size. /QUOTE]

Note that SPACESHIPS requires a minimum DR for the rear armor, and it is easier to have a higher DR at less mass for big ships, so the performance of Orion drive vessels does tend to scale better with larger size.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

Other SPACESHIPS news:

I submitted the final draft of GURPS Spaceships 7 and the first draft of GURPS Spaceships 8 on Monday.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

That's a good point. Since the Orion drive takes up a HULL space in the Rear Hull, that only leaves 5 spaces for armor to hit the minimum dDR 50. That means the smallest ship that can do that at TL7 is an US SM +9 or SL SM +10. This drops by 1 SM per TL, which means you can't have SM +5 ships with Orion drives until TL11!

Magsails at TL9 change that, of course, but then we're talking about mag-Orion drives, which are technically different animals.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

All good news, though that pretty much wraps up the current plans for the Spaceships series. Might I humbly suggest a GURPS Spaceships 9: Traveller? Covering both the Interstellar Wars and GURPS 3e Eras would be nice.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

Hey! Good idea!

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

Agree, even if I almost never play Traveller games. Not sure how it'd go after they put together a spaceship design system specifically for Traveller: ISW, though.

Oh: And finish Vehicle Design System and Weapon Design System first!