All the discussions between me and <b>Sings-with-Spirits </b>about vehicle specifications really brought home the idea that I wanted to take a look at a couple of things. Sings emphasized the idea that SF is supposed to be "hard science" SF to the greatest extent possible, and I can agree with that. I think the problem that brings up as a side effect though is that the hard science used as a basis is that of the late 70s and early 80s. Lots of the vehicle stats would be considered incredibly advanced by 1980 science, but what about 2016 science?<br /><br />I decided to pick a couple of vehicles as test cases where we already have such vehicles in inventory with the same type of power source. I chose Ground cars and Ground Cycles and did some research. Where applicable, I used standard physics calculators and converted to SF notation. If I leave a blank, I could not find the relevent information to convert.<br /><br /><b>Ground Car<br /></b><i>Tesla S85D</i> <i>Ground Car</i><br />Top Speed 417m/t 175m/t<br />Turn Speed - 80m/t<br />Acc 40 m/t 60m/t<br />Dec - 40m/t<br />Range 460km 1000km<br />Pass 1+4 1+4 <br />Cargo 433kg, .9 cubic m 150kg, 1 cubic m<br /><br /><b>Ground Cycle<br /></b><i>Zero DSR </i> <i>Ground Cycle</i><br />Top Speed 263m/t 200m/t<br />Turn Speed - 100m/t<br />Acc 37m/t 100m/t<br />Dec - 40m/t<br />Range 290km 1,000km<br />Pass 1 1<br />Cargo - 20kg, .5 cubic m<br /><br />As you can see, outside of range and some aspects of performance, the centuries advanced Frontier technology is at best close equivalent to, or inferior to 2016 tech. The Zeerust is setting in.<br /><br />Is it time to update? (I know it'll never get published outside our own circles, unfortunately.) Or should we shrug and just let it lie? <br /><br /><br />
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