Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

TTB, p87: air rafts are TL8. Grav Vehicles (big line) TL10. Identical to Bk3 p15.

All it proves is that TL8 air rafts are possible, not that they are gravitic at that TL. (Tho', digging through striker errata says yes, TL8 gravitic lift.) They might be fusion powered vectored thrust. Along with G-Carriers. (Much like what we see in Blade Runner or Albedo.) It's sloppy.

MT is explicit, however, No Artificial gravity until TL10. TNE as well, plus no compensation til TL10.

Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

Blade runner Spinners are definately not vectored thrust for lift, they seem to use it for acceleration only which very much fit my Floater vehicles; some tech thing that negates all gravity but you still need expell gas or whatever to go somewhere. Kind of like the Watto character in the latest (bad) Star Wars movies. He has wings for sure but only a retard would think they generate his lift, he probably has some Floater gravbelt hidden away on his person and uses the wings to move about.

Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

If you'll examine the chart carefully, you'll see that Air/Rafts are located under the "Transportation -- Air" column. The big line at TL10 indicates that Grav Vehicles become standard for water and land transportation as well. This parallels the text on p. 22: "Beyond tech level 10, other vehicle types are rarely seen except in a few specialized situations."

The text on pp. 22-23 lists all three vehicles and the Grav Belt under "Grav Vehicles."

So CT is not "actual GDW Traveller"?

Hmmm.

Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

Now, now, Chris. Wil is merely selecting the official source of information that makes the most sense to him. ;-)


Hans

Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

Then they don't float. From the perspective of the planet you are on they accelerate, possibly rather violently, along some vector combination of outsystem, rimward and away from Andromedia.

Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

The earth pulls us towards its center at 1G, the moon and the sun pulls with some really puny acceleration, the rest is so insanely weak it doesn't matter at all. Sure, a floater unattended longe enough would float away from the earth from centrifugal force of the earth's rotation around it's axis. Much longer term it would start moving away from the sun as it would continue along a tangent while earth would still circle around the sun, etc etc.

Do the math Sir!

Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

I would assume that air/rafts are typically enclosed, simply vs. weather. Much like modern cars out here in the real world.

Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

Air-rafts according to canon text and illustrations are all open topped vehicles. You'll need a vacc suit to do the orbit thing.

Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

Actually, you can't tell that, because for the larger structures, like say our supercluster, you have nothing fixed to measure against. Everything we see could be gravitationally accelerating at a billion gravities in some direction and we couldn't tell, and in any case have to account for the as yet not well defined repulsive effect at very large scales, which may or may not be be altered by contragravity.

For the Sol system the effects we can account for are fairly low (the centripetal force of the rotation of the Earth is about 0.03 m/s^2, for the orbit about the sun 6x10^-3 m/s^2, for the galaxy about 2x10^-10 m/s^2; and 3x10^-5 m/s^2 for the moon) but of course that doesn't have to be the case in other star system - many worlds in Traveller have shorter days or are a lot closer to their primaries. And isn't really negligible here on Earth either, leave your contragravity on an hour and 0.03 m/s^2 has given you a 250 mile per hour velocity in some direction you didn't intend to go. This isn't terrible for a vehicle, though you have to have an engine you can run constantly and which can thrust in all directions, on a continuously changing basis to compensate for it, but it isn't negligible. And it does pretty well simplify the reach orbit with the air-raft problem. Turn off the compensating thruster and in a couple hundred hours you'll have reached a point your inherent velocity puts you in some sort of orbit, then you turn off the contragravity. Admittedly it'll probably be a pretty elliptical orbit.

Re: Reaching orbit with Air-raft
 

Standard Grav thrust is available at TL9 in MT. RM p65 and p66.

It's only artificial grav plating that is limited from TL10 up RM p81. Anti grav thrust is good from TL9, (or TL8 via government resurach and development).

Regards,

Ewan