 December 10, 2016 - 9:54pm | Spent a little time this evening calculating how long it takes for a Knight Hawks ship to accelerate to Void jump speed and back. Using Wolfram Alpha, I put in: "speed under constant acceleration to 0.01c at 9.8m/s^2" which gave me roughly 3.5 days to accelerate from 0km/h to 0.01c. The works quite nicely with the deceleration boxes for Sathar in the Knight Hawks campaign map for Second Sathar War. Using the form, I then put initial speed to 17000mph and recomputed, just to get a feel. It seems if you start from freefall in orbit, at typical Earth orbit speeds, it saves about 13 minutes of acceleration. I also noticed that 12,000,000 km/h is over 0.01c. 0.01c is 10,790,000 km/h... so I am going to read Knight Hawks as saying to jump into the Void, you have to exceed 0.01c and crossover to the void happens around 12,000,000km/h rather than 0.01c. |
 December 28, 2016 - 9:06pm | Then the astrogator makes the call, cuts thrust until everyone is jump ready, and drops the hammer. Considering the time/distance distortions as described by void travel, I would posit that a computer is entrusted to trigger the decel thrusters after a set time in the void since no biological member would be capable of gauging time in such an environment. In my game I have this set at one second of void travel per light year, even though the crew feels nauseous for what seems to be much longer during that brief interspatial experience. |
 December 28, 2016 - 9:14pm | @ExileInParadise, I like how you presented this in comparison to a real world analogy. This is much like I see astrogation. My last Alex Stone story dramatizes this a bit as the ship is pushing up to jump speed and the astrogators are tag teaming the work. However you spurred a thought I hadn't pondered before. The geologists are using measurements of things under the ground and cannot be seen or measured directly. What if astrogation is not all just pointing the ship and looking through telescopes. What if there are pi tachyon measurements of things occurring in the void that they are including in their continuous calculations and analysis? In essence they are listening to the rumblings of the void as well. -iggy |
 December 28, 2016 - 10:43pm | what if the long time requirements are because of union rules? All spacers join the Brotherhood of Spacers it could just be union rules that ensure the job security of the astrogator. That's it! Joe Cabadas |
 December 29, 2016 - 7:32am | what if the long time requirements are because of union rules? All spacers join the Brotherhood of Spacers it could just be union rules that ensure the job security of the astrogator. That's it! Originally my comments were tongue and cheek however: In reality the BoS is a cadre which is significantly different than a union with setting implications that cadres are not above arming and going to war with a mega corp. It's entirely possible that the structure of things is Boss has advocated and helped arrange things to protect spacers and their position in a market place dominated by mega corps to ensure that spacers will not be taken advantage of . It's a combination of legislation and contracts and threat of a strike that could shut down interstellar commerce. Thus spacers are maintained at a hi rate of pay and job perks no one bothers to mess with. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 29, 2016 - 7:35am | Which begs the question: why stay in Space Fleet (or planetary militia) for a lengthy endeavor when you can make the same pay in a much less dangerous situation? |
December 29, 2016 - 10:11am | @iggy why not - given the description in Crash on Volturnus of how it took 20 years to "chart the route" from Truane's to Zebulon, I had the idea that they sent probe, mapped gravitational fields, calculated gravitational changes over time based on the proper motions of all the various Things In Space, etc. Those data build the original model. Then the astrogator had to plug in that data as a baseline, factor in current observations or recent updates from the UPF, and then start simulating the current course/speed vectors through that region of space. In my view, even if the ship drops into subspace to make the Void jump... normal space somehow affects subspace in a 1:1 causal way. Subspace lets you cut the distance over time, but does not let you avoid the masses. This is why routes through dust clouds in normal space still have to be charted and plotted through even if the real trip isn't through normal space, but through subspace itself. I also like the idea of pi-tachyon "radar" of some sort giving the astrogators a view of the "weather" in subspace before the jump. Radio gave rise to radar, subspace radio gives rise to subspace radar? Maybe that's part of that high quality upgrade? Somehow the telescope and subspace radio are linked together and the measurements from both fed into the models and simulations? Could be. Could also be how stations like Doliin Bay detected incoming Sathar so far out? Combine pi-tachyon radar, gravitometrics, optical scopes, etc and you have an Armed Station's basic detector/warning set? Maybe that's why UPF has so many stations around the Frontier just watching nebula. |
 December 29, 2016 - 11:12am | Let me venture an idea of an answer based on what I do at work for a living. I completely agree with your description of what an astrogator is doing during a jump, except...
But why can't computers or even robots do this? A level 6 robot is said to be able to run an automated manufacturing plant and alter the manufacturing process in response to changing economic conditions. Is that not very similar to the role of the astrogator that you outlined above? Change "manufacturing" to "spaceship" and "economic" to "astronomical" and you're nearly there. A level 6 Bureaucracy program can coordinate up to 18 other programs. It will take the data collected and produced by all those programs and take actions throughout its systems based on this information. Is that not exactly what the astrogator is doing? Or are we back to sentient beings having an ineffable je ne sais quois when it comes to interstellar jumps? Please don't get me wrong. I understand, appreciate, and prefer the hands-on approach to technology espoused in Star Frontiers and pre-Computer Age science-fiction. But the technology in Star Frontiers clearly appears to be able to handle this thing all on its own. Why doesn't it? Despite its being a joke, the comment about the astrogator's union has a point: it may be that spaceship builders simply DON'T ALLOW computers or robots to be able to coordinate the calculations needed, because this is a job that philosophically deserves to be done by a sentient being. Not because you'd put astrogators out of a job, but because everyone honestly believes that people OUGHT to do that job. But players being players, they'd want to circumvent this limitation very quickly. P.S.: It's likely that the Marionette in Warriors of White Light is run by robots linked to the computer, which means they've been performing interstellar jumps on their own. Even if the cybot is performing the calculations, a cybot is still just a robot, not a sentient being. And there's no evidence that the cybot is the ship's astrogator. |
December 29, 2016 - 11:46am | Our sun has a ~11 year weather cycle from low activity, to high activity, back to low activity. Each star in the frontier is going to have it's own cycle and this causes ebs and flows in subspace and the void. Part of charting a new route is to learn the subspace and void weather cycle between the two stars. This could take many years to observe and recognize patterns in the weather. There would also be cycles of cycles. Every so many cycles the weather may peak of drop even more due to other influences other than the neighboring stars. I'm searching for an acronym of what pi-tachyon radar could be called. Radar is RAdio Detection And Ranging. -iggy |
December 29, 2016 - 12:29pm | A computer may calculate a jump but it is not going to smoke a jump. The intuition part is missing. Charting a jump route by a computer is a strictly by the numbers game that will take way longer. A military vessel using only computer astrogation is going to be predictable, no twists of strategy and tactics. A weakness for the Marionette. Now to the union or guild argument. Sapients most likely like knowing that the computer astrogation is backed up by another sapient who can spot mistakes that are beyond the programming of the computer. Computers land planes but we still put pilots in the seats for when things go wrong. There is also the benifit of a sapient knowing when to improve upon the calculations and take advantage of situational events and conditions that may not be part of the programming or of lower priority than a sapient may rate it when judged against the values of other sapients and the situation beyond the parameters of astrogation. -iggy |
December 29, 2016 - 1:08pm | @Stormcrow you could also look at it in the way that the Dune series of books do. Initially, only heavily drugged mutant humans, in the form of Navigators, could see the possible futures that led to a successful jump. Eventually the Ixians created a Navigator machine capable of doing the same with the same success rate of a Navigator, after centuries of failures. However, unless you deeply read into the universe, most people miss the point that jumps were possible without a navigator - just far riskier. And go far back enough and you find that people were jumping before the Navigator schools had appeared. The Marionette might be making jumps, but safely? That's the unknown. Risk Jumping where you take shortcuts could be simply re-using previous course and jump data - and it mostly works because of the similarities of the courses and conditions... but cumulative errors can pile up and throw you at some other star system. Ultimately, I think it comes down to Astrogators spend years in school, do some apprenticeship, work there way up in jump school until they do their first peer-reviewed jump and get there certification. All of that trial and error experience isn't captured in software, and is the difference between just coming up with 3 possibly workable models, flipping a coin and using one, and looking at those three models against a screen of past experience and feeling the rightness or fitness of the final solution... then double checking it. It seems to me the Frontier is on the cusp of robotic astrogation - the Marionette is one example, but to me, it seems that ByChem Corp fielding an Astrogator cybot on the Moneyspider was more proof of concept / trial (and we saw how that turned out...) But, the Frontier isn't quite embracing it yet. Anywho, your game, your rules, run it how you like. If you allow machines to self-determine jumps then eventually the Frontier is a sprawling machineworks of automated trade freighters, and no one really travels except for pleasure anymore. That's getting into Solaria territory from the early Robots and Foundation stories. If machines are simply tools in the hands of sentients, then you end up with the more two-fisted view of the Frontier ala E.E. "Doc" Smith and others. Both ways are equally valid and can be fun. What could really make the difference is if you introduce robot or mechanon characters as a playable race, or not - that would sort these issues right out. |
December 29, 2016 - 7:00pm | Could also be how stations like Doliin Bay detected incoming Sathar so far out? Combine pi-tachyon radar, gravitometrics, optical scopes, etc and you have an Armed Station's basic detector/warning set? Maybe that's why UPF has so many stations around the Frontier just watching nebula. I have always posited that stations & planetary bodies are capable of hosting much larger/more powerful radar systems than a considerably smaller ship. Just remember, even a HS:20 dradnaught can still park inside a size 5 or 6 station, so said station can accomodate a lot more mass to pwoer a larger radar. Also, there could be deep space radar stations scattered throughout a system that transmit data back to a civilized world/station. |
December 29, 2016 - 11:46pm | Also, remember that at the distances astrogators are working with all measured data is old. Light is years old for the telescope (1 ly, 2ly, 3ly, etc.). Radar is likewise limited by the speed of light and as old as the light distance away. Pi-tachyon data will be as old as the rate at wich pi-tachyons travel through subspace, not instantanious. So, there is quite a bit of prediction about the space weather and motions involved. Predictions of the future are only as good as the model they are calculated on. How acurate are weather models? Thus a lot of the work of an astrogator is putting extra variables into the astrogation calculations from observations he is making about the current environmental conditions along the desired route while trying to predect future conditions that are far away along the route and must be extrapolated from the most recient measurements. -iggy |
December 30, 2016 - 1:48pm | Psychic drugged navigators predicting possible futures just replaces the ineffable intuitive quality with an ineffable psychic quality. That's not an improvement; that's just magic. That is, I think, why the "ineffable quality" reasoning bothers me so much. It's basically magic. Controlling an interstellar jump requires non-scientific magic. This is not a philosophy used in Star Frontiers. Yes, the Void itself is fictional, but it's a device that renders interstellar travel possible. Given the existence of the Void, Star Frontiers should try to provide a plausible explanation as to why astrogators are needed. Data being old data would be part of the computer models and astrogation charts. There's nothing here that a computer couldn't handle, and better than a sentient being. The more we talk about this, the more I'm convinced that computers could do these jobs. Computers could plot interstellar jumps; computers could pilot ships effectively in combat; computers could aim guns accurately. Robots could man engineering posts. They just don't, because the citizens of the Frontier think sentient beings should do those jobs. So they don't write programs or build robots that do these jobs. Maybe some entities do. Maybe a Frontier corporation has decided to automate some of their ships, so they've written custom computer and robot programs to do these jobs. So... how would the game setting be influenced, if these "robot ships" showed up occasionally? Probably not a lot, if it is part of the ethos of the Frontier that people ought to be doing these jobs. But then we come back to the question of why they let computers and robots do all these jobs in cities but not spaceships... |
December 31, 2016 - 5:00am | Because Space ships are cool. no one says I want to have a city at character creation. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 31, 2016 - 4:58pm | Psychic drugged navigators predicting possible futures just replaces the ineffable intuitive quality with an ineffable psychic quality. That's not an improvement; that's just magic. That is, I think, why the "ineffable quality" reasoning bothers me so much. It's basically magic. Controlling an interstellar jump requires non-scientific magic. This is not a philosophy used in Star Frontiers. Yes, the Void itself is fictional, but it's a device that renders interstellar travel possible. Given the existence of the Void, Star Frontiers should try to provide a plausible explanation as to why astrogators are needed.
That went tangent to what I was trying to describe. Think of the stock market. Computers do that and there are some good returns. Then there are some obvious inabilities to track all the variables. Sapients have hunches and intuition that help them out. Sometimes those turn out realy good and the returns are great. Sometimes realy bad. The best anaolgy I think is the weather prediction introduced above. The models can get very good but they still fall short of 100% acurate. I agree that computers can do the astrogation but for the feel of the game the computer models still have a small percentage risk that no one wants to take when lives are at stake. So maybe what I'm stabbing at is not the capability of the computers but the maturity of the science of void jumping. No scientist or astrogator in the frontier has yet to come up with the 100% acurate model of void astrogation to plug into a computer. Now, for a campaign element there could be that one guy who has figured it all out and now everyone is after his discovery to control it and hold the power that comes from having what everyone else does not. Here is a stab at the question about city computer control over astrogation computer control. Cities are designed and built by sapients. The sapients are thus free to make laws to govern the cities. This is much easier to put into a computer program than something that no one gets to write the laws and rules over. Void astrogation is part of the universe and the laws and rules must be discovered and understood before a sufficient computer program can be written. Like much of physical science there tend to be rules within rules and laws with exceptions that are not expected. Get a bunch of quantum physicists in a room and get them to agree on all the laws and boundaries of the quantum physics are. -iggy |
December 31, 2016 - 5:17pm | @iggy I had only mentioned the dune navigator thing as an example of a task that was "sentients only" that was eventally computerized by the Ixians later... who even kept sentient navigators as backup. The rules rule in astrogators and do not include astrogation software that automatically does the entire job. But... "Bugs in the System" includes a Yazirian cybot Astrogator. Since the Venturi Project was field testing sapes for Renouf Associates, why not also be field testing a cybot astrogator - successfully it seems since the Moneyspider made it to Belnafaer. But the project was keeping it secret since only the captain of the Moneyspider knew. One guess as a reason why was that the Frontier spacers were not quite ready to embrace the idea of cybot astrogators. In the near future of the Frontier, I'd expect that use of cybot astrogators could spread, once evidence from successful secret field trials were complete. But initially have a matching/paired organic astrogator as sidekick, such as Astrogator's Assistant Tak-Arbork (vrusk) on the Moneyspider. |
December 31, 2016 - 11:47pm | Think of the stock market. Computers do that and there are some good returns. Then there are some obvious inabilities to track all the variables. Sapients have hunches and intuition that help them out. Sometimes those turn out realy good and the returns are great. Sometimes realy bad. Computers are perfectly capable of making a profit off the stock market, and they do so all the time. The only thing the humans at the terminals really have to decide is what kind of risk they want to take. If you agreed to let a computer make all your investment decisions, you'd have pretty much the same chance as anyone. There's no magical input there that computer's can't replicate. The best anaolgy I think is the weather prediction introduced above. The models can get very good but they still fall short of 100% acurate. This is a very poor analogy, since neither computers nor people can predict the weather with much accuracy. Here is a stab at the question about city computer control over astrogation computer control. Cities are designed and built by sapients. The sapients are thus free to make laws to govern the cities. This is much easier to put into a computer program than something that no one gets to write the laws and rules over. Frankly, I'd think it was exactly the opposite. Natural, non-sentient phenomena are easier to model and control than the interactions of an entire city's worth of sentient people. Laws need to be judged with morality and empathy, qualities that the almost-but-not-quite-sentient computers and robots of the Frontier must be lacking. But the computer programs and robots given as examples in the rule book mostly aren't dealing with laws; they perform maintenance and run factories and drive cars and provide directions. |
January 1, 2017 - 8:15am | The best anaolgy I think is the weather prediction introduced above. The models can get very good but they still fall short of 100% acurate. This is a very poor analogy, since neither computers nor people can predict the weather with much accuracy . Exactly the reason it is a good analogy, neither computers nor people can predict the void with much accuracy. No one knows exactly how the void works, just that at 1% C you can enter it, and if you time deceleration right, fall out of it near a desired distant point. Screw up on any calculations (for timing, direction, speed, or what the rules don't say) and you can be at any star around where you wanted to go including the opposite direction which requires a special kind of stupid as Shadow Shack says. This very much demonstrates a science that is young and not well understood. likely many sapients prefer to stay planet bound rather than test the void or some astrogator and his incomplete computer models of void jumping. -iggy |
January 1, 2017 - 10:13am | The best anaolgy I think is the weather prediction introduced above. The models can get very good but they still fall short of 100% acurate. This is a very poor analogy, since neither computers nor people can predict the weather with much accuracy . Exactly the reason it is a good analogy, neither computers nor people can predict the void with much accuracy. Except astrogators CAN predict known jump routes with 100% accuracy, but they still have to spend 10 hours per light year performing calculations that, for some reason, computers can't do. So which is it? Can jumps be predicted with 100% accuracy, in which case we're talking about requiring ineffable intuition that computers can't reproduce, or can jumps NOT be predicted well, in which case computers and people can do equally badly, so what's stopping computers from doing it? |
January 1, 2017 - 11:50am | Because Space ships are cool. no one says I want to have a city at character creation.
Well, that's how it works in D&D. You aspire to have a castle (and the resulting civilization that settles down nearby). In SF the ship is the castle that characters aspire towards. And if they're really ambitious, a space station to dock it inside.  |
January 1, 2017 - 11:59am | Astrogators can do known jump routes with 100% accuracy if they are left alone to do their job. And, their computers are busy with them for that 10 hours per light year. Put them in a pinch with combat or tying to get done fast or whatever out of the normal and now the skill checks need to be made. The 100% rule makes it easy for the GM and players to just handwave going from point A to point B when it is not part of the plot in the story. When it becomes important to the plot of the story then the GM can easily force skill checks with modifiers due to ODD things happening in the measurements the astrogator is making or the results that the computer is giving the astrogator. A common SF element is the lost and deralect ship. Most freighters and passanger ships are going to take the safest jump possible with plenty of time to do the astrogation uninterrupted. Yet, some of these ships end up lost and later found by pirates and PCs. So, yes a computer can do the calculations and you can risk jumping without an astrogator to review the computer astrogation results but without the astrogator you will never know that your making that one time bad jump without the astrogator there to check it. I imagine that some of those lost freighters with precious cargos to salvage are due to astrogators who have made the same jump hundreds of times and got lax on reviewing and altering the computer results. -iggy |
January 1, 2017 - 12:43pm | I like Iggy's thinking on this. But then I usually do like his thinking. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
January 2, 2017 - 10:13am | Astrogators can do known jump routes with 100% accuracy if they are left alone to do their job. And, their computers are busy with them for that 10 hours per light year. Put them in a pinch with combat or tying to get done fast or whatever out of the normal and now the skill checks need to be made.
That's neither here nor there. By the rules, computers and robots apparently can't do the job of an astrogator AT ALL, even given as much time and peace as they can use. |
January 2, 2017 - 10:37am | Astrogators can do known jump routes with 100% accuracy if they are left alone to do their job. And, their computers are busy with them for that 10 hours per light year. Put them in a pinch with combat or tying to get done fast or whatever out of the normal and now the skill checks need to be made.
That's neither here nor there. By the rules, computers and robots apparently can't do the job of an astrogator AT ALL, even given as much time and peace as they can use. Unless a referee rules that it is allowed in his game universe. One does need to give some credence to the idea that robots/cyborgs can be astrogators due to the "Bugs in the System" module. I don't think the rules, as presented, ban that idea. Oh, here's another thing, according to the Volturnus modules, Truane's Star sent a robotic probe to the Zebulon star system. This was, of course, a work written before the Knight Hawks rules were published, but it all comes down to what kind of game you want to have and what limitations you, as the referee, want in it. Joe Cabadas |
January 2, 2017 - 12:56pm | Unless a referee rules that it is allowed in his game universe. One does need to give some credence to the idea that robots/cyborgs can be astrogators My limited cybot rules have the organic brain of said robot retaining all the skills of the former biological host. As such, if the 'bot was utilizing a former astrogator's brain than it too had astrogator skills equal to the former bio-unit's level. As such, a cybernetic brain robot would tend to have exceptional skills from its former genius-grade bio-unit's former brain whereas a more "standard" cybernetic combat robot would be using the brain of a former soldier possessing either a single basic combat skill from a recruit or a higher ranking officers wide array of skills. It should also be noted that cybernetics is an illegal practice in the Frontier in my game, although sathar regularly utilize the tech as do the occasional pirate factions operating outside the Frontier (popular rumor has it the Malthar was also dabbling in cybernetics although no evidence of this was found on Darkworld Station). |
January 2, 2017 - 3:03pm | Astrogators can do known jump routes with 100% accuracy if they are left alone to do their job. And, their computers are busy with them for that 10 hours per light year. Put them in a pinch with combat or tying to get done fast or whatever out of the normal and now the skill checks need to be made.
That's neither here nor there. By the rules, computers and robots apparently can't do the job of an astrogator AT ALL, even given as much time and peace as they can use. Unless a referee rules that it is allowed in his game universe. That's true of everything. I could rule that only purple elephants can be astrogators; it doesn't inform this topic. One does need to give some credence to the idea that robots/cyborgs can be astrogators due to the "Bugs in the System" module. I don't think the rules, as presented, ban that idea. The actual purpose of cybots is not explained in Alpha Dawn. They exist and they're exactly as capable—and limited—as their non-organic counterparts, so why one would want one is unexplained. My impression is that they are not true androids, robots that look just like people. The cybot in "Bugs in the System" is described as being "unlike normal robots," and the writer was not part of the original design team, so I hesitate to consider that as normal, or even intended by the rules. I wonder if the "Bugs" cybot is actually evidence AGAINST robotic astrogators. It takes a cybot "unlike normal robots" to manage it. |
January 2, 2017 - 4:20pm | As I speculated before, the cybot Baralou Ap-Reaverchan may have been experimental and the Venturi project was already a testbed for Renouf's Sape field tests. Just because the writer wasn't on the original team, many of the module writers may not have been, since I believe the original writing was David "Zeb" Cook and Larry Schick. Everyone else was TSR staff that came later... including the UK group. The Bugs in the System module is not the only evidence of robot astrogation in the core canon. As others pointed out in this thread, the Puppetmaster cybot aboard the Marionette in SFKH0 also navigated a robot only freighter across the void - Delta Subsection 1 on page 11 says "a fast freighter drops out of the Void" after saying that the spaceship is operated entirely by robots. Knight Hawks Campaign book p53 also introduces the possibility of "Robot Ships" which is probably the genesis of the scenario in Warriors of White Light. So ultimately, I think it could be either way - rules as written say "Astrogator requires time, ship requires computer" and there are examples to support robot astrogator... but this is not commonplace across the Frontier (yet? ever?) and whether they do become commonplace is really up to the referee. The original purpose of the post was to test the waters around the basic math. It seems to me from that, any Void jump < 7-8 light years could be calculated pretty much completely during the ~1g acceleration time outbound, especially with an Assistant Navigator (like the Moneyspider's) to keep calculations going and keep the computers on track while the prime astrogator is racked. Jumps from 8 LY or more could accelerate less than 1g and time things to get to Void speed around the time the calculations finish up. For example, a 14ly jump (140 hours) means you could accelerate at possibly as little as 0.5g and still end up at the needed velocity to Jump just as the calculations finish up. There's probably some magic formula for Wolfram that would calculate the constant acceleration needed to reach Void speed just about the time the 10 hours + light year + rack time had passed but I think its beyond me to sort out. The Knight Hawks formula is far more interesting than the Alpha Dawn rule (1 day per light year) and I think tying the acceleration needed to the calculation time can provide interesting variation of the timing and far less static or rigidly defined as the Traveller "jumps take 168 hours unless something went wrong" |
 January 2, 2017 - 6:46pm | Every time someone says that computers can predict the stock market I roll my eyes. Doesn't anyone remember their history anymore? Look up Long-Term Capital Management. The most dangerous thing in investing outside deliberate fraud is a quant with an investment portfolio to play with. As for the repeating question of "what does the astrogator do?" Several people have already ansered it: they are the ones inputting the data and formula into the astrogation program. Star Frontiers computers are very good at reliably doing the same thing over and over accurately, but they can't create new programming themselves, nor change the perameters of existing programming. Not that they need to really. Astrophysics and stellar cartography are pretty "slot a, tab b". "Stellar body A is in position B and is C light years away which means it is actually in position D presently and will be in position E by the time we get there". The astrogation program just crunches the numbers. |
January 3, 2017 - 8:05am | Every time someone says that computers can predict the stock market I roll my eyes. Say not that computers can predict the stock market. Say rather that computers can predict the stock market better than people do on average. And I mean people who are not guessing and getting lucky, but people who are trying to perform an actual analysis. As for the repeating question of "what does the astrogator do?" Several people have already ansered it: they are the ones inputting the data and formula into the astrogation program. Star Frontiers computers are very good at reliably doing the same thing over and over accurately, but they can't create new programming themselves, nor change the perameters of existing programming. "Level 6 robots are self-programming." But costly. Not that they need to really. Astrophysics and stellar cartography are pretty "slot a, tab b". "Stellar body A is in position B and is C light years away which means it is actually in position D presently and will be in position E by the time we get there". The astrogation program just crunches the numbers.
Okay, so a robot can take the astrogator's place. |
January 4, 2017 - 4:49am | Every time someone says that computers can predict the stock market I roll my eyes. Say not that computers can predict the stock market. Say rather that computers can predict the stock market better than people do on average. And I mean people who are not guessing and getting lucky, but people who are trying to perform an actual analysis. I can't agree with that. Computers can crunch the numbers and show graphs of the result, etc, but that's no "predicting" anything. That's number crunching. That's what happened to LTCM, and happened again on a much bigger scale in the Meltdown. The computers said nothing whatsoever was wrong right up to the moment the bottom fell out. Part of that is the persistence of the homo econimicus model of human financial behavior: utterly unemotional and completely rational. This is a myth based on Enlightenment thinking, which turned out to be wrong. Human thinking is based on and heavily infulenced by the biological processes of the body that affect the human mind. As for the repeating question of "what does the astrogator do?" Several people have already ansered it: they are the ones inputting the data and formula into the astrogation program. Star Frontiers computers are very good at reliably doing the same thing over and over accurately, but they can't create new programming themselves, nor change the perameters of existing programming. "Level 6 robots are self-programming." But costly. Not that they need to really. Astrophysics and stellar cartography are pretty "slot a, tab b". "Stellar body A is in position B and is C light years away which means it is actually in position D presently and will be in position E by the time we get there". The astrogation program just crunches the numbers.
Okay, so a robot can take the astrogator's place. Ok, I'll grant you that that might be true, but as you point out, theyre rare and costly. A trained human astrogator would be cheaper, and (bonus) would still be able to plot a functional course by hand if the computer went down. |
