Extended Jumps

[Ran Targas]

Glad for the input and conversation ...

First, by the time we are able to launch any type of interstellar scouting mission (say 100 years just for fun), pretty much every star within tens of light years will be charted by terrestrial and space based telescopes. Current and future telescopes will see farther with greater detail than we will ever be able to outpace with a physical presence. Of the worlds we will discover, those with the greatest potential for exploitable resources or human habitation will be the first targeted for investigation. If we already had this catalog and the capability to launch long range missions, we wouldn't be concerned with what lies between unless it posed a danger to the mission. Whole systems with no apparent worth would be passed by if only because they aren't the big prize staring humanity in the face.

The jump paradigm in Trav causes GGs to have greater significance than they might otherwise and forces civilizations relying on jump tech to inhabit chains of systems only a few parsecs apart, where otherwise they might have ignored them. Not that I don't think humans will be living under plexiglass and steel or in spin-habs in this universe, but given the chance to live in a more appealing environment, with a financial or scientific reason to be there, most humans would gravitate towards more Terran like environments and away from the need for expensive life support or stressful living conditions.

And we are discussing specifically the big space operations that garner political and corporate sponsorship (like in Alien and Aliens), there's still plenty of room in the gaps for those who live on the fringe. Where the OTU has a sentient presence in a significant percentage of known space, largely because of the jump paradigm, this universe would only have major populations where it's cheapest or financially viable to support them. The rest would be largely empty of any human population, at least them that play well with others.

 

[tim_manley]

I was actually spending some mental time (i.e. commuting) thinking about this method of space travel.

The concept that you presented, as I understand it, is that your jump drive is used to punch into N space (Jump space, hyper space, etc.). You stay in N space as long as you want, only leaving when you decide to "shut off" your FTL drive, and then you emerge at a location you chose. The distance travelled is still the same, 1 parsec per week per Jump #.

This brings up some interesting concepts:

• If my assumption is correct then ships cannot be "adrift" in N space forever. Once their power-plants die, they are out of fuel, they will drop out of N space and then drift in real space.
• When interstellar empires go to war there is no longer territory that has to be taken and fought over. A flotilla of enemy ships can travel the distance and appear at their target.
• There will still be a need for exploration, survey, commercial ventures, etc. But what this does do is makes that gigantic J1 ore hauler valuable outside of a collection of systems that are all within 1 jump of each other.

 

[Vladika]

I believe the mental light bulb just came on for me.

Do I get this right? A Jump Drive 3 with 30% of hull tonnage devoted to that drive will allow:

1) Jump 3 (or less) parsecs in 1 week.
2) Jump 6 (or less) parsecs in 2 weeks.
3) Jump 9 (or less) parsecs in 3 weeks.

Fuel for the jump 9 is still only 30% but takes 3 weeks to complete? I like it!

And a J1 ship can go 6 parsecs in 6 weeks?

 

[tim_manley]

The idea is Ran Targas'

But from what I understand the fuel rules don't change, jus the process of jump space. Per his idea you use the jump drive to enter jump space, thus consuming your fuel for the jump, then travel whatever distance you desire, the only cost is time, and power plant fuel, life support, food, water, etc.

So your J1 free trader can punch into jump space, spend 6 weeks there, and come out 6 parsecs away, having consumed the normal amount of fuel for a jump per standard rules.

This method would also make low berthing far more common IMO as you can spend a long time in jump space.

You still have lay-over an fueling requirements because your powerplant consumes fuel jus to operate.

 

[Ran Targas]

Vlad/Tim - yes, that is how I picture it. A mining colony is 24 parsecs from a major importer of processed ore. The market system is a straight shot from the colony, across a small rift. They load up two ships, a J2 bulk carrier and J3 spec trader, who launch within minutes of each other. Both ships set course for the market system and jump after reaching the 100D limit. Everyone goes to sleep except the ship's computer and the android posing as a crewman. Eight weeks later, the crew of the spec trader wake up in the market system, are met by a broker, and unload their cargo. Four weeks after that, the bulk carrier arrives and offloads its cargo at the going rate.

As long as both craft had sufficient fuel to open a jump window and keep the drive operating during the jump, both travel the distance at the drive's rated parsec/week speed without having to leave jump space.

Now, if something happens along the way and power to the drive is interrupted or disrupt the jump field (e.g. a sufficiently massive object close to the flight path), the field collapses and the ship is thrown into normal space along the route. This may also be caused by secret instructions written into the computer at the last stop.

 

[tim_manley]

"These aren't our stars."

"Why did we leave jump?"

"Don't know, the computer brought us out."

"Well, we need to refuel, set course for that gas giant."

"Computer says there is a distress signal coming from the 4th planet."

.......

 

[Carlobrand]

Glad for the input and conversation ...

First, by the time we are able to launch any type of interstellar scouting mission (say 100 years just for fun), pretty much every star within tens of light years will be charted by terrestrial and space based telescopes. Current and future telescopes will see farther with greater detail than we will ever be able to outpace with a physical presence. Of the worlds we will discover, those with the greatest potential for exploitable resources or human habitation will be the first targeted for investigation. If we already had this catalog and the capability to launch long range missions, we wouldn't be concerned with what lies between unless it posed a danger to the mission. Whole systems with no apparent worth would be passed by if only because they aren't the big prize staring humanity in the face.

... Not that I don't think humans will be living under plexiglass and steel or in spin-habs in this universe, but given the chance to live in a more appealing environment, with a financial or scientific reason to be there, most humans would gravitate towards more Terran like environments and away from the need for expensive life support or stressful living conditions.
...

There is no such thing as a system with no apparent worth.

And, modern experience trends decidedly against your "chance to live in a more appealing environment" hypothesis: more than half the world's population lives in cities, which are a good deal less appealing than the countryside but offer significant advantages in convenience and employment prospects. That percentage is only growing: while those with means and opportunity will seek a more appealing environment, those who want for means will go wherever the jobs are. There's no reason to believe a move to space will change that equation: folk will congregate where the jobs are, the jobs will be where the profitable resources are, and - aside from petroleum, organics and similar such fair - those resources are as likely to be on a barren rock as down on some terrestrial paradise. They'll be easier to reach, to boot, especially if your terrestrial paradise is several times farther away, and there's more free power to be had in vacuum than under the cloud layer of a planet.

I think I calculated some time back that the cost of a Traveller space habitation per square foot was roughly comparable to the cost of a multi-story city building. Yes, it's cheaper to build where the air is free, but we tend to build where the potential profits justify the cost of construction rather than where it's cheapest to build - there are many cities planted firmly on some profitable natural resource in the middle of some otherwise inhospitable stretch of ugliness. I wouldn't count too much on the idea that people are going to avoid the nearer stars just because they don't happen to harbor an earthlike world: there's no reason to believe the nearer systems won't harbor dead worlds with rich veins of uranium or titanium or what-have-you, and if they'll build cities in the north of Alaska, they'll build cities there.

 

[aramis]

There is no such thing as a system with no apparent worth.

Yes there is - any system without planets nor a proto-planetary disk. (Which probably means that it is a massive star that blew it's protoplanetary disk away at ignition.)

Unless, of course, if one uses the GTIW requirement to hit a gravity well, in which case, even those naked stars have a strategic value.

 

[Ran Targas]

Carl, I think your advancing this universe several decades or even centuries past where I am in its history.

In a MTU not as mature as the 3I, I think the population and resource pressures will be different as humans will still be kids in a candy store. Exploration will still be foremost on the agenda. Jobs will be where the corporations decide they will be and that is affected directly by cost. If I have basically reduced the cost of exploiting far off but readily accessible resources (i.e. worlds that have been scoped and show large quantities of something worth chasing), those harder to reach or more difficult to find resources, although they may be closer, become less worth while.

Corps are going to weigh the short and long term expenses and determine what is the best option; if exploiting deep veins of heavy metals on a barren world is economical, then they'll invest in habs, set up power and life support, and start shipping in workers, even if it takes six months to get there. That doesn't mean the workers will be bringing families along or expect to retire at the mine.

 

[Carlobrand]

Yes there is - any system without planets nor a proto-planetary disk. (Which probably means that it is a massive star that blew it's protoplanetary disk away at ignition.)

Unless, of course, if one uses the GTIW requirement to hit a gravity well, in which case, even those naked stars have a strategic value.

GTIW?

I don't know enough about the state of astronomy to know whether such a system would be bereft of all solid matter. And I expect the answer to the next question would be more in the way of an educated guess based on the physics, since we can't see really small objects at that range, but: would we not expect some accretion of Kuiper-like material out in the distant reaches? And, do we have any massive stars in this region? I thought they were safely far away from us.

Carl, I think your advancing this universe several decades or even centuries past where I am in its history. ...

No, and I'm not meaning to cause trouble. I don't think you appreciate how aggressively a big business can pursue profit, nor how quickly a boom town can grow up when there's profit to be had. An Exxon or a Chevron has enormous resources to pursue potential profits, and star systems are very, very big places. Even the small planets are huge. Mars has almost much surface area as the entire land area of Earth. Even little Ceres has as much surface area as India. Unless there's some reason in physics to expect there won't be any valuable minerals to be had under a certain star type - no uranium, no lithium, no high-value gem veins, nothing - it's just plain cheaper to scour the closer system for such finds unless you introduce some third factor that makes it less profitable to make the effort. With a week to the nearest stars at J2, it becomes as reasonable to search them as to search the bodies out beyond Jupiter.

The only thing that holds us back here is the enormous cost of getting off the planet. Traveller offers the assumption that this is no longer an issue, ergo the Ceres-sized asteroids circling some neighboring stars are as accessible as any point in, say, Alaska's north coast.

 

[whulorigan]

GTIW?

GTIW = GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars

 

[Vladika]

Yes there is - any system without planets nor a proto-planetary disk. (Which probably means that it is a massive star that blew it's protoplanetary disk away at ignition.)

Unless, of course, if one uses the GTIW requirement to hit a gravity well, in which case, even those naked stars have a strategic value.

When did we at CotI pay attention to Gurps? Are we claiming it is canon?

 

[Ran Targas]

Carl,I know you're not just causing trouble and I appreciate the responses. My point is that it takes a little longer for the higher hanging fruit to be picked, first picked are the low hangers. Corps aren't going to invest heavily in infrastructure when it's not necessary or where there is no profit (not revenue) to be had. There's is no real magnanimity in the corporate world. Please watch the boardroom scene in Aliens again; absolutely chilling.

To keep with your example, Alaska was, and still is, foreboding enough to prevent massive resource exploitation; it still takes some pretty hearty souls to take advantage of the bounty that Alaska has to offer.

Still, the Alaska of today is very different from two centuries ago. Westerners were just starting to venture into the back woods and there weren't resources in Alaska that you couldn't get further South (say NorCal or Oregon) without the risk of loosing fingers and toes to frostbite or your life to a big grizzly or hungry cat.

So go back to when merchant ships steamed the coast of Alaska, bound for Shanghai or San Fran, and never gave the millions of acres of timber or streams brimming with gold dust a second look. It wasn't because the resources weren't there for the taking, it's just that it wasn't worth it at the time. It took market pressures and resourceful individuals to recognize the potential and determine how best to exploit it.

IMHO, the 3I is played out; there are no real unknowns within the confines of the Imperium anymore. The structure is set and the politics established. So how do you bring back that Wild West or frontier feeling? Like Outland, or Firefly, or Aliens? Give the universe I'm crafting more time and there will be more exploitation of the less sexy systems, particularly when they're discovered to have something unique to offer. My ultimate is to afford my players the opportunity to be those early explorers and entrepreneurs who find the rivers of gold and oil and to forge mega corps and dynasties.

 

[aramis]

When did we at CotI pay attention to Gurps? Are we claiming it is canon?

No. However - a number of players have argued online since the early 90's that jump requires a target mass at the far end. It made it into the GURPS-Canon with GTIW.

 

[Vladika]

No. However - a number of players have argued online since the early 90's that jump requires a target mass at the far end. It made it into the GURPS-Canon with GTIW.

Thanks. I've stayed away from Gurps.

I'd have to disagree with the target mass, otherwise any misjump would precipitate out at a large mass; no deep space crew killers. If it can be done accidentally, it can be duplicated on purpose (at the right TLs of coarse. T5, jumps greater than 6...).

 

[Ran Targas]

Hey, no highjacking my thread you two! Carl and I are discussing important stuff!

 

[Vladika]

Hey, no highjacking my thread you two! Carl and I are discussing important stuff!

And here I though we WERE talking about jump... Now I see we're picking fruit in Alaska.

 

[rancke]

No. However - a number of players have argued online since the early 90's that jump requires a target mass at the far end. It made it into the GURPS-Canon with GTIW.

That wasn't because of any player arguments. That was a not entirely successful attempt to reconcile the movement rules of the Imperium and the Dark Nebula boardgames with the canonical description of jump in the Classic Era (which included deep space jumps with no target mass). IW claims that back during the Interstellar Wars (and for most of the Long Night), jumps required target masses, but that late in the Long Night a technique for jumping to places without target masses was discovered.


Hans

 

[Ran Targas]

And here I though we WERE talking about jump... Now I see we're picking fruit in Alaska.

I was throwing Aramis a big, fat softball thinking he'd lay into it but he just watched it hit the wicket; maybe I misjudged those Alaskan mountain men or maybe you just have to poke them a little harder to get through that tough exterior

 

[Vladika]

I was throwing Aramis a big, fat softball thinking he'd lay into it but he just watched it hit the wicket; maybe I misjudged those Alaskan mountain men or maybe you just have to poke them a little harder to get through that tough exterior

I think they're just coming out of hibernation up there.:devil: