Dear Folks –

Jim asked:
> Suppose you're flying a very high-end gravcar, such as the Naasirka
Kinnuki

The Mongoose description says it can achieve orbit in 25% of the normal
time, which presumably is 2 hours, assuming Mongoose has retained "8 hours
for an air/raft to reach orbit" as "normal".

I think it should be a little quicker than this.

Let's assume a Terran-sized (size 8) world is "normal" for Mongoose's
purposes.

Now take a look at the Normal Space Flight calculations from the fabled
Starship Operator's Manual.

Standard orbit for a size 8 world is 160 km up. However, the SOM procedure
says to multiply this distance by the Atmosphere value (in this case 6,
standard) to account for the effects of atmosphere: 160 x 6 = 960 km
effective distance.

Cross-checking against our typical air/raft, travelling at 120 kph (max)
will take it 960/120 = surprise, surprise, 8 hours to reach orbit. QED.

So looking at the Naasirka Kinnuki speeder, it ought to take 960/6000 = _9.6
minutes_ to reach orbit (rather than the 2 hours suggested by Mongoose). Of
course, at those speeds, it'll arrive fully cooked. ;-) ;-)

As a referee, you may need to add a ruling for such edge cases. I mean, the
Blackbird didn't fly at its top speed until it was above 50,000 ft.

Even so, if you were flying the trendi Vector Mk IV (max speed 4770 kph), it
would only take 12 minutes to orbit. Remember it only used to take the Space
Shuttle 8½ minutes. The recent _Artemis 1_ took 8 minutes and 20 seconds to
reach a height of 162 km (100.6 miles) above Earth.

So it goes back to you as a referee: what prompted the question? Are the PCs
in trouble? (Don't answer that - the answer's always "YES!") Do they need to
bug out in a big hurry? Well, if they want to steal a Kinnuki, they can, but
let's hope they only have 4 people in their party! :-)

I'll leave you with the Orbit Table so you can make your own calculations.

ORBIT TABLE (in km)
World    Std     High
Size     Orbit   Orbit
0        5       25
1        20      100
2        40      200
3        60      300
4        80      400
5        100     500
6        120     600
7        140     700
8        160     800
9        180     900
A        200    1000
Sml GG   800    4000
Lge GG  1600    8000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                    xxxxxx@pcug.org.au
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"