[gurps] In space no one can hear you go boom!

[Travis Watkins]

Concern: the gravity drives of some of the remaining refinery stations
tearing up one of their number  while they are all in orbit around a
gas-giant.

Any stations that are large enough to be a significant percentage of
the mass in this situation (since there are only 4 left after the
first one is hit by the comet), would be large enough to tear apart
the gas giant just by being there.

And if they are not a significant part of the mass in the system, then
having one of them get destroyed should have approx 0 effect on the
orbits of the other 4.

Perhaps if the comet plunged through the holding orbits of the
asteroids waiting to be harvested it could cause enough debris to
cause some disruption in those orbits(possibly including throwing
enough stuff at a second station to also disable it as it passes
through the rain of debris following the comet in it's plunge into the
gas giant, but generally speaking, mining gear should be made large
and robust to handle things like sudden vents, jets, or explosions in
the materials being dealt with, especially when dealing with things
that are expected to be as diverse as asteroids.

Unless this comet was a real monster, the mining stations should have
been able to shrug it off(a monster as in several times the size of
the asteroids usually dealt with, perhaps even larger then the mining
station it hit, just carrying the whole thing into the planet).

Come to think of it, the whole scenario becomes much more plausible
with a rogue planet instead of a mere comet, perhaps one that was torn
apart by the gravitational deflection/direction system that the mining
stations use with plenty of large bits to take out one or more
stations as well as throwing the whole ordered system out of whack.

As far as what to fight over: power and control, the same things
humans have been fighting over since time immemorial.  Someone wants
to be in charge and just tell others what to do, but someone else
wants to be in charge as well, so they have their followers fight over
who deserves to be king/has the best plan to save them all/gets the
most functional bits of technology.


On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Nigel McCarty-Eigenmann
<n.mccartyeigenmann at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> > Here is the setting sheet this issue is from
>> >
>> > http://badgerblue.wetpaint.com/page/Clockwork+Moons
>> >
>> > Note: setting is 4 days old, site is an hour old.
>>
>> Hm. Well, given the details here, what you can produce is
>> basically a function of what sorts of feedstock the asteroid
>> processors output (direct handling of an asteroid would be
>> tricky at TL 5). Ammonia (or an ammonia-water mix) is a
>> perfectly plausible output of a processing system;
>> percentage-wise it won't be very much, but there could be
>> ludicrously large amounts of total feedstock on hand, so
>> still plenty of nitrogen.
>
> Good!
>
> What I thought.  I need to justify so posibuility of refreshing the
> biospheres and explosives - I think.
>
> On that note - any glaring points of obvious idiocy?
>
> Lunacy I can live with...
>
>
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-- 
The man that holds fast to his bitterness will eventually be consumed
by it, but if you let it go, your arms will be free to seize the glory
that is life.
-Terwin