Morrow Aviation Assets

[cosmicfish]

Worst case scenario where everything outside has been destroyed and the Morrow project has to do with the meager stuff they had in their facilities... Spare parts will run out soon. How long can you fly a helicopter without proper maintenance Or even an airplane.

Well, there are a few things going in the Project's favor here. First, fusion reactors are canonically reliable, and replace a lot of the heavy wear parts in aircraft - there are going to be fewer moving parts, and the ones that remain are not the ones most likely to fail. Second, the Project retains not only its own stores but also some manufacturing capacity - once the stores run out they should be able to keep a modest number of aircraft flying for years afterwards by building new parts.

Besides, air vehicles are just too useful to abandon entirely.

[mmartin798]

If you take away the fuel, what you have left is a ducted fan, not a jet - literally. And as odd as it may sound, that jet, even when dominated by fan thrust, changes everything. I started out in aerospace engineering, and the physics of fan propulsion says that ducted fans work best in a pusher configuration and at low speed, as at high speed duct drag dominates. There is a reason you don't really see ducted fan aircraft that don't have that jet running down the center.

And even if you could, why would Morrow want the added complexity Are they really in that much of a hurry

I tend to agree that jets by and large add unnecessary complexity to the Project. To make it work, we have to assume a different design reactor for jet aircraft that generate less electrical power by diverting the heat from the plasma into producing thrust rather than electrical power. This would also require some modification to route a couple of plenums to the reactor, but that shouldn't be that onerous.

A case could be made for the Project's use of jets for priority transport. But this would not require many. Something like a Citation CJ4. Might as well order a couple of those with all those V-150/300s.

[cosmicfish]

I tend to agree that jets by and large add unnecessary complexity to the Project. To make it work, we have to assume a different design reactor for jet aircraft that generate less electrical power by diverting the heat from the plasma into producing thrust rather than electrical power. This would also require some modification to route a couple of plenums to the reactor, but that shouldn't be that onerous.

There's an awful lot of assumptions in that statement all for a single narrow purpose. And if this could work at all, it would certainly be onerous!

A case could be made for the Project's use of jets for priority transport.

So make the case already! Seriously, why move mountains to travel 600mph instead of 500 mph (or whatever speed you think a fusion-powered propeller plane could handle)

[mmartin798]

So make the case already! Seriously, why move mountains to travel 600mph instead of 500 mph (or whatever speed you think a fusion-powered propeller plane could handle)

VIP transport, moving biologic samples with a limited viability from a field base to a central lab facility, moving a critical patient from a field hospital in western NY to an activated Morrow Hospital base in Kansas. There are time critical function that could take advantage of the time saving.

[stormlion1]

OK, lets look at the various Regions the Project is set up over. I will use my home region for this. The Northeast. which is Region Foxtrot. It compromises New Jersey, New York, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania,
Virginia and West Virginia. That's a lot of room to cover.
Now lets say we put the regional Command base in Upstate New York, it has two commercial Lear Jets, the 55's for simplicity's sake.. Left overs from when the Project was in its start up stages. Because the Council of Tomorrow had to get around right They have Five Blackhawks for Security Sweeps, Supply Runs, and for use by the bases MARS Team. That's 4 crew for the two Lears and 10 pilots. The Crew Chiefs and Gunners are not counted. That's 14 pilots right there.

The Supply Hubs have a dozen C-130's with two pilots apiece and a loadmaster. That's 3 crew right there apiece. And these guys are going to be busy! That's 39 crew right there, 24 of whom are pilots. Now we have a dozen Blackhawks doing the midrange supply drops, reinforcements, and going places the C-130's can't. 24 Pilots and another dozen Crew Chiefs right there. Last we have the Little Birds Two Crew apiece. Another 24 Pilots.
Total Number of pilots: 38 and various crew chiefs and Loadmasters and Door Gunners all of whom can be cross trained personnel and have other jobs. Joe the Door Gunner can be Supply Base Security Joe who sits in the coffee room all day.
And they have to cover all of the Foxtrot Region. Now the guys down in Region Bravo have got to cover Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. They have the same amount of gear, pilots, etc. There going to have it somewhat easier but they still have to cover large swathes of ground. But if there is need aircraft and crews can be sent to help the Foxtrot Region when the Prime Base needs them too and there is some slack.

[cosmicfish]

VIP transport

Why I honestly cannot think of any VIP's that are that urgent to move.

moving biologic samples with a limited viability from a field base to a central lab facility

Isn't that what the Science Teams are for And what are the odds that the time for this trip (or any other, for that matter) isn't dominated by the need then to first get the sample to the airstrip where your high speed plane is located... if one even exists in the area Even ignoring propulsion, I cannot think of any high-speed aircraft that can operate from a dirt field, and without that it seems like a slightly slower aircraft that can land nearby is superior to a faster aircraft that you have to traverse a hundred miles in a random direction just to reach!

moving a critical patient from a field hospital in western NY to an activated Morrow Hospital base in Kansas.

Why is this person so important that an entire engineering team needs to devote massive pre-war resources against the possibility of their survival And how is it that they can survive a 2-hour trip with Morrow's massive medical technology base, but not a 3-hour trip

There are time critical function that could take advantage of the time saving.

If that time saving didn't come with massive costs, sure... but it does. Engineering another vehicle with specialized and not-currently-extant engines, creating and maintaining the support including parts and staff, and either somehow creating a dirt-strip, high-speed aircraft or else ensuring a network of conveniently placed landing strips. That's a lot of work for little justification.

[cosmicfish]

Now lets say we put the regional Command base in Upstate New York, it has two commercial Lear Jets, the 55's for simplicity's sake.. Left overs from when the Project was in its start up stages. Because the Council of Tomorrow had to get around right

First, why would these be Morrow assets, and not part of the corporations that the CoT was drawn from Second, to the best of my knowledge the CoT were not frozen with the Project (if at all) so why would the Project have their planes Third, why would they all be the same, when each CoT member was likely to have different needs that they would need to justify to their corporations Last, even if they were commandeered, how do you justify the supply chain and personnel, like fuel, jet parts, and turbine technicians

They have Five Blackhawks for Security Sweeps, Supply Runs, and for use by the bases MARS Team. That's 4 crew for the two Lears and 10 pilots. The Crew Chiefs and Gunners are not counted. That's 14 pilots right there.

Per region, are you going with the canonical ten regions

The Supply Hubs have a dozen C-130's with two pilots apiece and a loadmaster. That's 3 crew right there apiece. And these guys are going to be busy! That's 39 crew right there, 24 of whom are pilots. Now we have a dozen Blackhawks doing the midrange supply drops, reinforcements, and going places the C-130's can't. 24 Pilots and another dozen Crew Chiefs right there. Last we have the Little Birds Two Crew apiece. Another 24 Pilots.
Total Number of pilots: 38 and various crew chiefs and Loadmasters and Door Gunners all of whom can be cross trained personnel and have other jobs. Joe the Door Gunner can be Supply Base Security Joe who sits in the coffee room all day.

The only place I have seen that kind of ratio of aircraft to personnel is for experimental units where the expectation is that most days any given aircraft is under modification. Seriously, you have the expense of acquiring and supporting all those aircraft, and your best case scenario has 2/3 of them idle for lack of pilots What happens when one or more of your pilots gets killed

Ignoring all that, with ten regions, ignoring the Prime Base contingent, you have 520 pilots, 170 crew chiefs, an unknown number of non-flying technical and support staff, and 430 aircraft. In case you are wondering, that is about 1/13 of the USAF, an organization that has about 500,000 full-time personnel (and admittedly more duties than just operating aircraft, but that is their primary mission!). Heck, acquiring the aircraft alone is going to be well more than $10B, not counting parts, training, storage, or conversion!

How big do you see the Project as being, overall

[mmartin798]

Why I honestly cannot think of any VIP's that are that urgent to move.


Isn't that what the Science Teams are for And what are the odds that the time for this trip (or any other, for that matter) isn't dominated by the need then to first get the sample to the airstrip where your high speed plane is located... if one even exists in the area Even ignoring propulsion, I cannot think of any high-speed aircraft that can operate from a dirt field, and without that it seems like a slightly slower aircraft that can land nearby is superior to a faster aircraft that you have to traverse a hundred miles in a random direction just to reach!

Science teams in the field would be able to collect and do some limited analysis in the field. But if they need the results of a GC, HPLC or to grow cultures in a controlled environment, then they need a lab. As for jets that can operate from a gravel runway, there is the Boeing 737 and a large number of Russian MIGs. It's just a matter of getting the intakes high enough above the ground.

Why is this person so important that an entire engineering team needs to devote massive pre-war resources against the possibility of their survival And how is it that they can survive a 2-hour trip with Morrow's massive medical technology base, but not a 3-hour trip

Dying warlord, whose survival at the hands of the Morrow Project could stabilize the political climate in a large area, there by contributing to the mission of restoring the CONUS and allowing the redistribution of MARS assets to more other unstable regions.

If that time saving didn't come with massive costs, sure... but it does. Engineering another vehicle with specialized and not-currently-extant engines, creating and maintaining the support including parts and staff, and either somehow creating a dirt-strip, high-speed aircraft or else ensuring a network of conveniently placed landing strips. That's a lot of work for little justification.

Much of that engineering is already done. The US was flying bombers using fission powered jets in the 1950's. Using those engine designs and adapting the plenums from blowing the cold air through the fission fuel rods to cool them and create the superheated air that goes out the other plenum to create the thrust is not like making this thing from scratch. Modify the fusion reactor to express the heat more directly rather than driving the thermoelectric generators that would usually be there to produce electricity and rely on the electron capture only for on-board electrical power. Granted, that last part assumes a great deal about Project reactors that to my knowledge does not exist in canon, but which has been discussed here at great length in another thread.

I am not saying that the jet powered aircraft would be everywhere, but a small number would be useful.

[cosmicfish]

Science teams in the field would be able to collect and do some limited analysis in the field. But if they need the results of a GC, HPLC or to grow cultures in a controlled environment, then they need a lab.

But the only option is transport by jet They can't be preprocessed by the Science Team, or transported by prop plane I worked in a biochem lab years ago (dark, dark days) and I'm having trouble remembering anything other than an organ that was anywhere close to that time sensitive.

As for jets that can operate from a gravel runway, there is the Boeing 737 and a large number of Russian MIGs. It's just a matter of getting the intakes high enough above the ground.

Actually, it is more than that. There is also the issue of debris damaging other vulnerable parts of the plane, for example. For the 737 at least it also still requires a very long, wide, flat, compacted surface - a good engineering team with lots of equipment might prep an acceptable strip in a few weeks (a lot faster than tarmac!) but that doesn't work so well in an emergency. The idea of using things like C-130's was always that even their relatively mild runway requirements still made them impractical without massive amounts of preparatory work, and even with that infrastructure built it is still not particularly conducive to the kind of tasks you are describing.

Dying warlord, whose survival at the hands of the Morrow Project could stabilize the political climate in a large area, there by contributing to the mission of restoring the CONUS and allowing the redistribution of MARS assets to more other unstable regions.

I'm having trouble imagining someone starting this discussion in a pre-war planning meeting and not finding themselves reassigned to fund-raising or some other affair. It's a huge reach, and even you add all the huge reaches together they don't justify anything.

Much of that engineering is already done. The US was flying bombers using fission powered jets in the 1950's. Using those engine designs and adapting the plenums from blowing the cold air through the fission fuel rods to cool them and create the superheated air that goes out the other plenum to create the thrust is not like making this thing from scratch. Modify the fusion reactor to express the heat more directly rather than driving the thermoelectric generators that would usually be there to produce electricity and rely on the electron capture only for on-board electrical power. Granted, that last part assumes a great deal about Project reactors that to my knowledge does not exist in canon, but which has been discussed here at great length in another thread.

No nuclear-powered aircraft has ever been built, much less flown. The US and Russia both built conventionally-powered aircraft that carried fission reactors, to study the feasibility of nuclear bombers, but the reactors were never connected to anything. There were prototype jets created, but they were never flown - the aircraft I was discussing were propeller planes.

I am not saying that the jet powered aircraft would be everywhere, but a small number would be useful.

But they wouldn't. The expense and difficulty of creating even one would be huge (all that development work!), and operating it requires a huge infrastructure, especially if you want it to go more than a couple of places. The infrastructure that TMP can support is exactly the infrastructure that kills any advantage of these aircraft.

[nuke11]

Here's a few questions; If you are converting all of these to some sort of fusion, how do you keep the players flying in the general vicinity of the expected game As a PD you better have the entire continent fleshed out as the players are going to get the bright idea that hay they are fusion I can fly this all day. And this is where the Prime Base module lost me, a fusion power C-130 is a really bad idea.

Then how do you convert these to fusion in the first place Also what did the project do before the 1987 attempted fusion refit All of the infrastructure to be abandoned that support the pre-fusion project

The 1987 date and the 1989 expected war date are hard targets that are known. How much time does it take to go from a plan to a working fusion engine that firstly fits in a vehicle and then has to be modified and made light enough to fit into an airframe. There is some 2 years before the drop dead date and there is a lot of equipment that needs to be re-worked and de-deployed throughout the entire project.

[nuke11]

No nuclear-powered aircraft has ever been built, much less flown. The US and Russia both built conventionally-powered aircraft that carried fission reactors, to study the feasibility of nuclear bombers, but the reactors were never connected to anything. There were prototype jets created, but they were never flown - the aircraft I was discussing were propeller planes.

This wiki page has a few interesting projects that did show results : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft

[cosmicfish]

If you are converting all of these to some sort of fusion, how do you keep the players flying in the general vicinity of the expected game

Ideally, by not introducing aircraft to the characters prior to Prime Base. Seriously, they should be pretty high-level assets, not something the team can just have. And by the time the team has restored the Project they will either have nationwide issues to deal with (if they are in charge) or else will be subservient to some other group (like Phoenix) that controls the aircraft.

And this is where the Prime Base module lost me, a fusion power C-130 is a really bad idea.

I think it's a really good idea. As I said before, aircraft are too useful for the Project to not have any.

Then how do you convert these to fusion in the first place Also what did the project do before the 1987 attempted fusion refit All of the infrastructure to be abandoned that support the pre-fusion project

Answer that for the rest of the Morrow vehicle fleet! Seriously, if they can do it for all the V-150's or Strykers or whatever vehicles are being used then they can do it for some helicopters and a few planes as well.

The 1987 date and the 1989 expected war date are hard targets that are known. How much time does it take to go from a plan to a working fusion engine that firstly fits in a vehicle and then has to be modified and made light enough to fit into an airframe. There is some 2 years before the drop dead date and there is a lot of equipment that needs to be re-worked and de-deployed throughout the entire project.

Yeah, well, the back story was never really well thought through...

[cosmicfish]

This wiki page has a few interesting projects that did show results : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft

Yes and no. They developed some conceptual engines, and they built a fission reactor into a plane without actually connecting it to anything. They were extremely preliminary results.

That having been said, I knew that the planes were not really nuclear but I was surprised to see how far they got with nuclear propulsion. I still don't think it really helps the Project, however - the infrastructure required for jet aircraft (nuclear or not) is simply beyond what the Project can support for a benefit they don't really need.

[nuke11]

Answer that for the rest of the Morrow vehicle fleet! Seriously, if they can do it for all the V-150's or Strykers or whatever vehicles are being used then they can do it for some helicopters and a few planes as well.

Yeah, well, the back story was never really well thought through...

I have talked with all of the original designers and writers of TMP and Kevin came up with the idea of fusion powered vehicles, so the game wouldn't turn into a Mad Max Road Warrior search for gasoline game. The idea of fusion was to unshackle the players from a constant search for fuel, that's it. The rest of the premise evolved out of the fusion power premise. The glaring holes where never filled in as there was no need to, as anything pre-fusion was glossed over or ignored completely.

So anyone that read the game and played it, the first thing that was changed was the war date. Most increased the date to allow more time for the fusion switch over or to add the new weapons coming out in the 80's and 90's. My group we changed the date to one in the mid 1990's and then a last change to the year 2000.

For either series of games 1st/2nd/3rd or 4th edition the 1987 and 1989 dates are all that are common and are fixed in time.

As to how the project converted from petroleum to fusion is for another thread, but from the 1st/2nd/3rd editions we start sometime in the late 60's to 1987 and the 4th edition we start sometime in the mid 70's to 1987 as well.

[cosmicfish]

I have talked with all of the original designers and writers of TMP and Kevin came up with the idea of fusion powered vehicles, so the game wouldn't turn into a Mad Max Road Warrior search for gasoline game. The idea of fusion was to unshackle the players from a constant search for fuel, that's it. The rest of the premise evolved out of the fusion power premise. The glaring holes where never filled in as there was no need to, as anything pre-fusion was glossed over or ignored completely.

My point was simply that the problem with the introduction with fusion does not really apply preferentially to one type of vehicle or another - if you can gloss over ignore the way the Project created a fusion ground fleet, then gloss over or ignore that they were able to do so for aircraft as well. And if you have an alternate explanation, then use that alternate explanation for aircraft as well.

Personally, I think that there are better ways to handle the backstory that would lead to a better foundation for the game... but who doesn't Regardless, as you suggested, anything not related to aircraft should really be in another thread.