Greetings Jonathan,

It sounds like someone modified a grav belt to be a floating shopping bag
because the wife/girlfriend went shopping. Some developer spotted it and
the rest is history.

In service,
Clifford Linehan
Traveller: The Core Route Projects
�Traveller is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2016

On Tue, 10 Jan 2017 19:02:31 -0500 Jonathan Clark <xxxxxx@att.net>
writes:
> One of the things I like to do in my campaigns is to come up with
> some applications of
> technology which people might use in everyday life (rather than just
> a More Bigger
> Pointier Stick (tm)).
>
> Here's a little gadget that I whipped up for my current campaign. If
> you like it, feel
> free to use it. If you don't, ignore it. Redistribution rights
> granted, providing correct
> attribution is maintained. Please note that I am not a gearhead so
> any questions to me
> about design sequences are pointless. (If anyone else wants to do
> this, be my guest.)
> Also I only use the canon TU as background, not as gospel. My TU
> is... highly variant.
>
> A Grav Handle is a pocket-sized device designed to carry objects
> which are bulky, or heavy,
> but not large/massive enough to need a full-sized grav floater. It
> also allows you to carry
> items while keeping your hands free for other uses. It's a great
> thing to have on you when
> you're doing the weekly shopping. (How many times have the crew of
> the tramp freighter in
> *your* campaign had to pass up a great deal on 50 kilos of frozen
> groat steaks because they
> didn't have any way to get them back to the ship on time? :-) ).
>
> It's basically a teeny-tiny grav drive, a battery, a control unit,
> and a device for connecting
> it to the object being carried (I used a carabiner for this).
>
> How does it work? Well, if you have to transport something then you
> hook the object up to the
> Handle (eg by putting the handles of the bag it came in or you put
> it in through the carabiner,
> or by using straps around it and hooking it up ditto, or whatever),
> and turn the device on.
> This then lifts up, cargo and all, until the cargo is 10cm or so off
> the ground. You then use
> the control unit to drive it along to where you're going (probably
> your ground vehicle, but
> could be taxi, subway, anything). Simple, no?
>
> Some side notes and safety features, in no particular order.
>
> There's a trade-off between carrying capacity and battery life. I
> hand-waved this at 50kg for
> half an hour, or 100kg for 15 minutes. There would certainly be a
> realtime readout available
> of the amount of battery life remaining at current load and speed.
> See discussion below.
>
> There is a potential 'pendulum' problem with the basic model
> described above - the bag is
> going to swing. More advanced models might have four, or six, even
> teenier grav drives attached
> to the main unit on retractable cables. Each separate sub-unit pulls
> out and is clipped to
> a separate corner of the cargo. These work together to damp down any
> swing, pitch, roll, and
> yaw. The cables supply power and control.
>
> You can lift the cargo more than 10cm, but not more than 30cm, off
> the ground (eg for rough
> terrain, flooding, steps, and so on). You can adjust the attitude
> (eg for going up steps you
> might want the angle of the cargo to match the angle of the steps).
> For safety reasons, the
> control unit won't go more than 2 metres off the ground.
>
> I figured that the control unit might have a 3D joystick or
> something on it for control.
> Perhaps this is also on a retractable cord, so you can hand-hold it,
> for convenience.
> There's a "dead-man switch" on the Handle, for safety reasons. Or
> you can drive it from
> your comm (your hand computer - everybody has one). Again, for
> safety reasons, if the Handle
> gets out of range (2 metres), or if you let go of the control, then
> it stops moving and
> sets down. Or you can set it to 'follow me' mode, and it will follow
> your comm. If it goes
> out of range, it just stops, and will need another command to start
> moving again. If the
> battery runs out, same thing.
>
> Background notes and assumptions.
>
> My TU is a pretty high-tech one - TL16 is common, and some planets
> are just about at TL18
> (which I interpret as TL15/16 in parts, and TL20 in parts). Also my
> civilized societies tend
> to be fairly legalistic: safety (at least of the public) is a major
> consideration. (Note to
> sadistic GMs: some players can find built-in and
> not-easily-overridden safety features very
> frustrating...)
>
> An interesting question is 'so what Tech level does this item appear
> at?'. My answer is 'make
> your own decision'. According to T5 (since I have the book handy),
> Gravitics comes in at TL9,
> and drives large (and energy-efficient) enough to lift loads to
> orbit come along at TL10. My
> guess is that something like a Grav Handle is commonly available at
> TL13 or TL14, but I won't
> come after you if you slot it into your TU at TL16, or anywhere
> else.
>
> An associated question is 'what sort of battery?'. Again, my answer
> is 'any sort you want',
> but in my TU I have anti-matter batteries as mainstream. These are
> rechargeable, off any
> standard power outlet. If you want to scoff at this and invent a
> specialist store where you
> drop off your batteries to be recharged and picked up later, or
> where you turn in your batteries,
> pay a small fee, and walk out with the same number of the same type,
> freshly recharged (cf
> propane tanks in the US), go ahead. If you decide that these
> batteries are throw-aways, go for it.
>
> I posit that however a grav drive works, it doesn't affect the
> content of the matter around it
> significantly (if you see what I mean). You could built a Handle
> with a rocket motor, but I don't
> think that your purchases would look too good when you turned it off
> again - and neither would you.
>
> Anyway, hope this is useful, or thought-provoking, to some of you
> out there. Comments welcome.
>
> Any other handy-dandy devices out there that people would like to
> share?
>
> Jonathan
>
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