On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 5:13 PM, Bruce  Johnson
<xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:
>
>
> If we were suddenly knocked back to TL3, yeah maybe, but a TL 8 world in the
> former 1st Imperium which would likely have existing ships to copy, or at
> least libraries about theory and practice? Pfft. Not simple, but hardly like
> a Pop0 world in the boonies with a pocketknife, some string and aluminum
> foil.
>
>

T5 actually has rules about doing this kind of thing.
In there, you can build a jump drive with TL6 or TL7 parts...  the
efficiency just plain stinks, though.
IIRC, a TL6 Jump drive uses like 17% of the hull for fuel per 0.6
parsec jump....
... but I can picture a design with multiple drop tanks that
eventually delivers a 100dton courier one parsec away after 3 jumps.
Sure, it's a month worth of travel instead of 10 days (jump + normal
space) , but if you're drifting into the Long Night and _need_ to
recontact the next system over to bring back something really
critical, it could be worth it.