1950's Spaceships

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

The nuclear saltwater rocket is already considered to be cinematically efficient. You might tone down its risky side effects (ie, Volatile system and fuel, dangerous exhaust)... or maybe not. In fact, I think a 1950's-era cavalier attitude towards radiation fits perfectly with it, even if the engine itself is potentially quite dangerous.

What about the program where they secretly gave pregnant women radioactive iodine isotopes? Yeah the '50s attitude toward radiation pretty much allows salt-water rockets to take off every hour from every major city's downtown spaceport.

[Earther]

I was going to mention Atomic Horror for ideas. But you mentioned you're using 4e rules.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

What about the program where they secretly gave pregnant women radioactive iodine isotopes? Yeah the '50s attitude toward radiation pretty much allows salt-water rockets to take off every hour from every major city's downtown spaceport.

I've heard it suggested that this attitude may stem from our experiences in the World Wars, where the US lost over half a million people in total; world wide, more than 70 million people were killed in those two wars. So following WWII, life was relatively "cheap", especially when faced with the Cold War and the potential for an even more devastating nuclear apocalypse. Our military and government took risks with people's lives that would not be considered today. I suppose the turning point may have been the Vietnam war, which led to such public outcry against what was seen (on those newfangled color TVs) as senseless violence. But anyways, this is straying from the topic at hand. Yes, Americans in the 50's, especially in the military, displayed a very different attitude towards risk, from a combination of recent cultural memories, an underestimate of what the risks actually were, and the Cold War spurring them on one-up their Communist counterparts, even if it cost them health or life.

[Robbo]

I was going to mention Atomic Horror for ideas. But you mentioned you're using 4e rules.

I like the fast and easy design of 4 ed. Spaceships. I am having trouble getting it to correspond with earlier design systems, the WW2 MVDS and GURPS: Traveller for example. Has anyone done anything towards conversions?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Robbo

I like the fast and easy design of 4 ed. Spaceships. I am having trouble getting it to correspond with earlier design systems, the WW2 MVDS and GURPS: Traveller for example. Has anyone done anything towards conversions?

Don't try and match exact numerical values. It just won't come out right,

Start over from scratch in Spaceships and try and build a ship that has the same general features and fills the same general role.

Even David Pulver author of Ve2 and most of the modular systems that spawned from it, Transhuman Space, the whole Spaceships system and the speicifically Spaceships 8 which converted all TS ships from earlier works into the Spaceships system did his conversions quite loosely.

I was in then playtests for most of those works after Ve2 and am comfortable with msot of the systems and I wouldn't have done any differently that David did either.

One of the reasons is that Ve2 and it's' stepchildren track both volume and mass while Spaceships tracks mass only. The G:Traveller system was made to emulate the orignal Traveller system (which was based alsmot entriely on volume) as closely as possible.

Try and follow all that and you'll tie yourself in knots. Just start over.

[tratclif]

For high-thrust nuclear thermal rockets, I was thinking of the solid core Project Dumbo from the 1950s and Project Timberwind from the late 1980s.

If the OP hasn't found Atomic Rockets yet I highly recommend it.

[Robbo]

If the OP hasn't found Atomic Rockets yet I highly recommend it.

I go through regular cycles of almost living on that site. :-)