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Description
The second great wave of space exploration left behind several “jump off” planets that had once been the new frontier but now had very much reduced populations as everyone wanted to sample the newer worlds. All that remained on some of the old frontier moons and planets were ship yards, engineering technical centres and maintenance units. Alongside these organisations there were some thriving communities as there was money to be made and quite a lot of it involved scrap and refurbishment.

No matter where you are in the universe, if there are people into engines then there are people building home brews and risking everything at race meetings once a month. It’s a need for speed and you either get it or you don’t. If you do you probably love to tinker as well and so if your world is largely made up of obsolete and broken tech designed to allow a body to move very quickly then you are going to have some fun building your very own junk racer.

It’s a thing that has a history that goes directly back to the Hot Rods way back when on Earth and of course within the genre there are sub genres, one of which is shock riding. By the late 22nd century shock riding is very popular and a great deal of moneny can be made if you survive the ride.

Lets face it, going fast is great. Making a hell of a noise is great too but doing them both at the same time is awesome. So, the aim of the shock rider is to create a sonic boom and ride with it over a set course. Now you might think that’s going to be easy in the late 22nd century but, like now, there are rules and in the main these are overseen by the Private Atmosphere and Vacuum vehicle administration.

The PAVVA bill was a much needed piece of legislation introduced to control the use of high energy thrust technology and associated hardware along with a whole host of tech deemed unsuitable for private use.

Some examples:
Atmosphere rated Ion thrusters are OK, Helium-3 reactors in an EMFEM containment field are not. Reaction field and Field envelopment tech OK, Parallel Space Transit Compression Field Generators – absolutely not.

The average junk racer, as pictured above, consists of a surface rated energy/EMFEM generator and slave unit with T coil power conditioning. This will give you sufficient power for front and rear reaction field generators to keep you off the ground, manoeuvre, keep you stable and stop ... eventually.

The remaining power output is used for Ionic thrust and that all important field envelopment that will help you glide through the air like a hot knife through butter. To keep all the above functioning as it should, system monitoring hardware such as the Teranavia SYSMON 200 range is used. Some Junk jockeys run without field envelopment as they love building old school aerodynamic vehicles. Most of these guys have letters after their names, mostly R.I.P.

Finally, by law, you will need a means of escape in the event of the vehicle becoming uncontrollable. Most Junk racers have separating cockpits that make use of exploding bolt separation and low altitude thrusters and parachute. A helmet is recommended.

There are of course many rules and regulations governing all race meetings which is beyond the scope of this article but of course there are some creative interpretations made that make life interesting.

Shock riding: if you’re gonna go then go with a bang!

Description
The second great wave of space exploration left behind several “jump off” planets that had once been the new frontier but now had very much reduced populations as everyone wanted to sample the newer worlds. All that remained on some of the old frontier moons and planets were ship yards, engineering technical centres and maintenance units. Alongside these organisations there were some thriving communities as there was money to be made and quite a lot of it involved scrap and refurbishment.

No matter where you are in the universe, if there are people into engines then there are people building home brews and risking everything at race meetings once a month. It’s a need for speed and you either get it or you don’t. If you do you probably love to tinker as well and so if your world is largely made up of obsolete and broken tech designed to allow a body to move very quickly then you are going to have some fun building your very own junk racer.

It’s a thing that has a history that goes directly back to the Hot Rods way back when on Earth and of course within the genre there are sub genres, one of which is shock riding. By the late 22nd century shock riding is very popular and a great deal of moneny can be made if you survive the ride.

Lets face it, going fast is great. Making a hell of a noise is great too but doing them both at the same time is awesome. So, the aim of the shock rider is to create a sonic boom and ride with it over a set course. Now you might think that’s going to be easy in the late 22nd century but, like now, there are rules and in the main these are overseen by the Private Atmosphere and Vacuum vehicle administration.

The PAVVA bill was a much needed piece of legislation introduced to control the use of high energy thrust technology and associated hardware along with a whole host of tech deemed unsuitable for private use.

Some examples:
Atmosphere rated Ion thrusters are OK, Helium-3 reactors in an EMFEM containment field are not. Reaction field and Field envelopment tech OK, Parallel Space Transit Compression Field Generators – absolutely not.

The average junk racer, as pictured above, consists of a surface rated energy/EMFEM generator and slave unit with T coil power conditioning. This will give you sufficient power for front and rear reaction field generators to keep you off the ground, manoeuvre, keep you stable and stop ... eventually.

The remaining power output is used for Ionic thrust and that all important field envelopment that will help you glide through the air like a hot knife through butter. To keep all the above functioning as it should, system monitoring hardware such as the Teranavia SYSMON 200 range is used. Some Junk jockeys run without field envelopment as they love building old school aerodynamic vehicles. Most of these guys have letters after their names, mostly R.I.P.

Finally, by law, you will need a means of escape in the event of the vehicle becoming uncontrollable. Most Junk racers have separating cockpits that make use of exploding bolt separation and low altitude thrusters and parachute. A helmet is recommended.

There are of course many rules and regulations governing all race meetings which is beyond the scope of this article but of course there are some creative interpretations made that make life interesting.

Shock riding: if you’re gonna go then go with a bang!