On 28Feb2018 1249, Richard Aiken wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 5:03 AM, Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Umm. At 62 mph (which in some editions of Traveller is much lower than the
>> maximum speed) it's only 2-3 hours to LEO.
>
>
> Google tells me that LEO is 1,200 miles up. 1,200 miles divided by 62 mph =
> 19.354 hours.
>
> Maybe you (and canon) are assuming the air/raft goes faster once the
> atmosphere thins out? Or that 62 mph is a measurement of available
> acceleration rather than max speed?

I was assuming a lower orbit - LEO is "up to 1200 miles". Aside from the
lunar trips, nobody has actully gone that high so far. Hubble is about
540km/340 miles up. The International Space Station is 340km/210 miles
up, though it needs periodic boosts to prevent orbital decay from
atmospheric friction.

I assume most permanent stations will be quite high up, outside the
radiation belts, and thus relying on their shielding - very much not
somewhere you want to take an air/raft. However, most ships in LEO will
be, IMO, in rather low orbits because they don't expect to be in them
very long. Also, if an air/raft can't go faster than 100 km/h, getting
to orbit altitudes is basically useless except for docking with a ship
hovering on its thrusters (which is just asking to have something slam
into it at 7 km/s).

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief