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Old 12-14-2020, 07:16 AM   #19
DataPacRat
 
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Niagara, Canada
Default Re: [Vehicles] How big should a self-destruct be?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Upgraded technobabble might be something invovling one of those super-heavy elements from the "island of stability" fissioning from something other than a neutron.
I could work with that.

Say, do any GURPS books mention how heavy and expensive a particle accelerator and collider might be, so I can start estimating what it would take to manufacture this stuff while stuck on some random moon? 3e's Vehicles' fuel-generation gizmo-list mostly concentrates on chemical and physical processes - distillation, metal-oxide reduction, and such - plus a couple of ridiculously-high-TL superscience doodads that aren't particularly relevant, either.

I know that some small-scale particle accelerators can be reasonably cheap even today; and at $1.10 per gram (well, including whatever it's embedded in), the isomer obviously isn't /particularly/ hard to put together with a TL10 economy; but there's a world of difference between paying a buck for a bottle of soda and making some yourself, from scratch.

(I might loosely base my approach on antimatter production, ala https://www.baen.com/Chapters/067187...7187686402.jpg , but I'm open to any reasonably-consistent sets of numbers.)
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