Okay, this has been bugging me for quite a while. I think I could quite literally say years. Early on, there came about two different vague types of drives; "speed" drives which are reactionless, don't use fuel for the most part, but have some hardish upper limit on velocity, and "reaction" drives which work more like rockets we know, but with the variables fiddled - much much higher specific impulse and usually higher thrust too. But the question that's lingered is, well, what's the point of reaction drives other than flavor?
So here's a thought - what if speed drives are more limited in acceleration? How limited determines some flavor of things; travel times between planets and so on. Say on both drives that the artificial gravity can counteract 1G, and speed drives are limited to a maximum of 20x their maximum speed in acceleration; so something that maxes out at 0.1C can accelerate at 2G and the occupants only feel 1G, or something that can do 0.2C can max out at 4G, of which the occupants feel 3. Which wouldn't be too comfortable obviously. Some very rough math suggests that that would feel a lot more frontier-ey with things being days apart... for an alternative, maybe 100x their maximum speed in acceleration and artificial gravity cuts felt acceleration to 1/10th. So something maxing at 0.1C can do 10G and occupants feel 1G, something maxing 0.2C can do 10G and occupants feel 2G, etc.
Basic principle though is that reaction drives tend to get used by racers, speed freaks, and combat things because the (uncomfortable, punishing, costly-in-fuel) acceleration is useful, whereas most transportation doesn't accelerate as hard and doesn't need to. Further principle is that if things can accelerate too hard, humans aren't going to be able to react fast enough to be useful pilots, and that takes fun out of things. IMO, 10s of Gs would be pretty tough in realistic sense but probably fine, but changing directions over 100Gs would probably be completely impossible for humans to track.
Thoughts? Someone else willing to do at least brief math of transit times? It was suggested on IRC that one guideline might be Earth-Mars in something car-like (0.1C-ish) in one (albeit long) sitting; I leave agreeing with that or not up to the commentors.
So here's a thought - what if speed drives are more limited in acceleration? How limited determines some flavor of things; travel times between planets and so on. Say on both drives that the artificial gravity can counteract 1G, and speed drives are limited to a maximum of 20x their maximum speed in acceleration; so something that maxes out at 0.1C can accelerate at 2G and the occupants only feel 1G, or something that can do 0.2C can max out at 4G, of which the occupants feel 3. Which wouldn't be too comfortable obviously. Some very rough math suggests that that would feel a lot more frontier-ey with things being days apart... for an alternative, maybe 100x their maximum speed in acceleration and artificial gravity cuts felt acceleration to 1/10th. So something maxing at 0.1C can do 10G and occupants feel 1G, something maxing 0.2C can do 10G and occupants feel 2G, etc.
Basic principle though is that reaction drives tend to get used by racers, speed freaks, and combat things because the (uncomfortable, punishing, costly-in-fuel) acceleration is useful, whereas most transportation doesn't accelerate as hard and doesn't need to. Further principle is that if things can accelerate too hard, humans aren't going to be able to react fast enough to be useful pilots, and that takes fun out of things. IMO, 10s of Gs would be pretty tough in realistic sense but probably fine, but changing directions over 100Gs would probably be completely impossible for humans to track.
Thoughts? Someone else willing to do at least brief math of transit times? It was suggested on IRC that one guideline might be Earth-Mars in something car-like (0.1C-ish) in one (albeit long) sitting; I leave agreeing with that or not up to the commentors.