 October 26, 2014 - 11:51am | I think I know the scientific answer to this but want to explore the subject with everyone. I'm thinking of an amateur astronomer watching starships thrusting out of a system or breaking on the way into a system. Would the exhaust of the engines be visible to the astronomer with some nice telescopes? I'm thinking the guy knows when in the year the common trajectories of ships along the jump routes are within observational range of him for the planet or moon he is on as the ships go to and from the major planet in the system. He is not on the major planet. -iggy |
 November 14, 2014 - 7:23pm | I'm unsure of what use dumping the PCs in the middle of the black with nothing to visit would be? Unless the purpose is to isolate them with nothing but the ship? Personally, I think its better to have a near by gravity well for the PCs to investigate. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 November 14, 2014 - 9:44pm | yeah if for narative purpose you need to isolate them... or have them stumble into something unknown out in the middle of the black. ----------------------------------------------- |
 November 15, 2014 - 9:05am | You guys might find Compact/Alliance Spaceships interesting here is a quick description of them from Wikipedia: "There are three main kinds of space ships in Compact's employ: surface-to-orbit shuttles, miners, and jump ships. The first and the second use only reaction engines for propulsion; shuttles can land on planets while miners and jump ships need space stations to dock. Only the jump ships can cross interstellar distances by using jump drive. They are also the fastest in-system transports because they can move at sub-light speeds without entering a jump. Most of these are traders and freighters; some are heavily armed hunter-ships. The Compact ships do not enter hyperspace proper; they aim at a star and "glide" along the so-called interface between space and hyperspace until the mass at the other end of the jump goal makes them drop out. They exit at light speed and must dump velocity with help of the same jump engine; a ship failing to do so is doomed, and usually a high hazard. There is a limit on maximum jump distance, depending on the ship's drive power and mass; a ship over stretching a jump may "fade", never exiting it. A jump takes several weeks of objective time. Subjectively it can take hours or even several days; this tends to exhaust the body, and the crews need to take rest between jumps." Alliance Spaceships: "When ships jump, they shift into a space parallel to normal space and appear to move at faster-than-light velocity until they re-enter normal space via their trajectory encountering a star-sized mass. Ships emerging from jump possess a large velocity relative to and pointed at the target mass; the jump drive is also used to lower this velocity to more reasonable levels. Jumps of larger than a few light-years result in the destruction of the jumping ship, so ships' courses hop between stars and other nearby stars or jump points, large collections of matter that are not large enough to achieve fusion. Jumps appear to take days to weeks from the perspective of the crew of the ship, but weeks to months from the perspective of the residents of stations and planets." Different species tolerating jumping differently in the novels... some do okay but stressed, some can survive it but are a mess, others need drugs or to be in stasis, & still others are not affected. I think C.J. Cherryh's ideas are a pretty close fit to SF as far as "void" space and navigation goes. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 November 27, 2014 - 8:30pm | That's good info on gravity wells affecting the void. Thanks for referencing. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 November 30, 2014 - 10:00am | My current favorite theory as to how the Void works, to make all the contradictory rules in the books work together, is as follows: Stars and other massive objects produce "troughs," or paths of lowered potential, in the Void. Each star theoretically has a trough leading to every other star. The closer the two stars, the deeper the trough between them, so practically speaking only the closest stars have noticeable troughs between them. Furthermore, troughs can criss-cross. A ship that enters the Void travels through one of these troughs from one gravity well to another. Entry into the Void requires more energy the shallower the trough you're trying to enter. Thus, entering a trough between stars four light years apart requires less energy than entering a trough between stars ten light years apart; the four-light-year trough is deeper and easier to enter. The energy needed to enter the Void comes from the speed of the spaceship relative to the nearby star. Thus you accelerate toward the destination to enter the Void. It just so happens that, accelerating at 1g, it takes about 20 hours per light year to achieve the speed necessary to enter the Void. Entering the Void happens at different speeds depending on which trough you're entering. Astrogation calculations occur as per the book, and occur during acceleration. If you reach the correct speed to enter the Void before the calculations are done, you coast until they're done. All this explains why it takes 1 day per light year to both travel and calculate, and even why you arrive at a different, random star on a misjump: you slipped into another trough and got pulled into its potential path. |
 November 30, 2014 - 4:06pm | I like this and am going to pick at it a bit. What are the calculations for? Where the trough is? How to enter it? Is something needed to trigger trough entry? Also, I'd make it 10 hours/ly of acceleration at 1 g needed. Then you'd have to slow down by just as much at the other end. Othewise you still have 20 hr/ly of slowdown on the other side making the jumps take 2 days/lightyear total. Or do you come out at the other end very near your destination and with little to no speed? If the latter is true, that would have some interesting implications depending on how close and how slow. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
November 30, 2014 - 5:55pm | Oops! I meant 10 hours per light year to reach jump speed, of course. The rule book says that when a ship—not an object, a ship—reaches 1% the speed of light it enters the Void. We may suppose that properties of a ship—its metal hull, its electrical system, whatever—are what cause it to enter the Void when it reaches the correct speed. There is no triggering mechanism. IF you are on a relatively correct vector toward your destination, you WILL enter the Void; whether you end up where you wanted to or not depends on how accurately you aimed your ship and timed your decleration out of the Void. Be slightly off and you may wobble up and down the sides of the trough-potential and take a side-trough to the wrong star. As to what exactly the calculations are for, that can remain just as vague as in the official rules. Aside from the usual suspects of making sure you're pointed in exactly the right direction and accounting for gravitational effects of various bodies in the system, perhaps the trough potentials aren't straight lines. Physics in the Void is different than in normal space, so we can get away with almost anything here. Perhaps the troughs shift as stars and planets move relative to each other. Perhaps the astrogator has to measure Void-potential paths or something. I don't think a serious explanation of this needs to be created. Non-straight paths through the Void would help with one problem: you wouldn't be able to predict where the Sathar were coming from when they emerged from the Void. Their origins are supposed to be mysterious; if you can just observe them decelerating toward a system you can calculate their journey backward and determine where they came from. But if Void-paths shift in ways difficult to predict, a ship could emerge from the Void in just about any direction. By all means, continue to pick at this idea. :) |
