M-Drive/meta
Notes from Traveller Mailing List/FAQ[edit]
Effects of rocks on Planets[edit]
The reactionless drive postulated in MegaTraveller (Thruster Plates) allows unlimited acceleration times, so long as fuel and power are available. Given this fact, what's to stop players or GMs using asteroids (or small craft such as lifeboats) as relativistic (i.e. near the speed of light) projectiles against unsuspecting worlds? Doesn't this capability give any spacecraft owner access to a weapon of unbelievable power?
Basically, yes. There is no canon reference to this ever having happened, but the physics used in MegaTraveller clearly allows it. Traveller the New Era shied away from this problem by introducing a new, reaction-based drive, HEPlaR (Which, incidentally, has its own problems).
These links are for impact calculators, see for yourself what happens when you crash an near-c rock into a planet.
- EXTERNAL LINK: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
- EXTERNAL LINK: http://down2earth.eu/impact_calculator/
- EXTERNAL LINK: http://what-if.xkcd.com/20/ - 100m diameter diamond at the speed of light.
- - Maksim-Smelchak (talk) 10:43, 23 November 2018 (EST)