Morning Phil, Catherine, and Bill,

In my reply to Bill's question about scavenging parts from another vessel I used the generic term of component to leave wiggle room to use what has been mentioned in Traveller or whatever Bill came up with for the scenario.  IIRC a gaming source has away to generate technobabble using Star Trek's Scotty as an example the problem is I cannot recall the title.

Phil, I am the poster about the timeline for the development of the J2 drive. According to CT Alien Module 6 page 5 the first encounter with the "Vilani Empire" came in "2096"/-2,422 when an US Space Force's expedition from a stopover/refueling point "about one parsec" out jumped to Barnard's Star and "encountered an alien culture".  Unfortunately, CT as far as I've found does not provide any indication of when Terrans developed a J2 and we vaguely know that the J3 drive was developed sometime around the 8th Interstellar War and used effectively during the 9th Interstellar War. MT provides more hints with more hints found in GURPS Traveller.

Tom Rux
On October 8, 2019 at 2:44 AM "Phil Pugliese (via tml list)" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

 
I can't really see what difference canon/non-canon makes anymore.

There's so much contradictory material that's piled up over 40+ years that just about anything can be 'found' & once 'found' contradicted.

Even the timeline is sketchy.

Recently a TL was posted here that indicated that the Terran were still at J1 when the 1st Interstellar War began.

Well that was news to me as everything I've ever read about that has indicated that the terrans didn't contact the 1I till they already had J2!

Canon doesn't really mean anything anymore, IMO.
More of an affectation than anything else.
Gives someone a chance to puff-up their chest.

I say, "Just take what you like & dump what you don't".
IMO, that pretty much sums up what a whole lot of writers, esp the later ones, have been doing all along anyway.
Heck, even MM himself, has done it & did so 'way back when'.