opening doors in jump space

[hirch duckfinder]

what happens when you open a door into jump space and something or someone drops out ???


recently , as my characters' ship was leaving liar's oath , i had a desire to rid myself of any connection to the place and eject a man wearing an orange sash out of the airlock in jump space .

i didn't do it .

anyone got an opinion , or even better a canonical explaination of what would have happened if i did ???


thanks in advance .
hirch .

 

[mike wightman]

Well the guy pushed out would probably be dead and the ship may run the risk of a misjump, IMHO.

According to the Starship Operator's Manual getting too close to the jump field barrier causes insanity, temporary to permanent depending on exposure time and proximity to the actual barrier. There was a TAS news item about someone surviving exposure to jumpspace but the plot was never elaborated AFAIK.

The T4 adventures Long way home and Gateway have some interesting things happen in jumpspace

 

[jfwking]

As the jump field sits above the hull it is possible to exit the ship and stay close to the hull without having part of you sucked into the great grey void.
I can remember several mentions of this but as I am in the process of moving my traveller books are in a box somewhere in a pile of boxes and I realy cannot be bothered to find them.
Going by memory however there was at least one mention of doing this in the Starship ops book as sigg said. One of the adventures also had this going on and I'm sure it was mentioned somewhere else with someone telling a story about having dont it.

In terms of a missjump, only if he was realy overwieght. Unless something is a fair fraction of the mass of the ship I don't see it causing a missjump when it passes through the field.

Of course thats not to say that opening an airlock in jump is safe. There are things that live in jump space, creatures, if you look into the jump void you see them staring back, they wisper to you when you sleep in jump, sometimes they tap on the hull. You know they are there, you know what I'm talking about. If you open the airlock they may get in.......

Hirch, give in to the temptation. DO IT.
No one here will ever tell

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"If you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-- F. Nietzsche

Some examples from my games:

1. D'yan, the mad Vargr ex-Scout blamed her madness on peeking out of the window too often while alone in jump.

2. A couple of bored ex-Marines spent half an hour sitting in an airlock throwing melons at the jump field (!), just to see what would happen. They spent the rest of the week in sickbay.

3. An engineer had to go outside to perform emergency repairs on the jump grid. He was never quite the same after.

Jumpspace is hypnotic, with swirly colours like a soap bubble (although cameras just see "the colour of a TV tuned to a dead channel", implying a psionic effect). Looking at it too much can cause insanity. Anything touching it...goes away.

 

[Straybow]

I'm not sure who the fellow with the orange sash might be, but if you're determined to rid yourself of his presence his compartment can be depressurized. The body can be jettisoned upon return to normal space (proper use of thrusters and a length of rope will vaporise the evidence).

 

[kafka47]

One could employ the Fading Suns plot device called the Sathra Effect which was responsible for bringing demons back into the world to explain what would happen to individuals exposed to Jump Space.

Traveller had a more scientific explaination when it coined the term HiPPes for phenomena that is akin to Ghosts that occur in Jump Space.

Security Link magazine postulated that their might be islands within Jumpspace where habitable worlds might reside.

My own Traveller universe, I have used Swycaffer's idea of a FTL communication system existing in a stable Jump Space portal and also be inspired by B5 which is to say that there Shadows (not neccessarily B5 Shadows) residing in Jump Space but there are artifacts that date from the time of Ancients and before.

If we understand Jump Space to be a higher dimension than our own perception of 3. Then we would be no better than an inhabitant of Flatland looking at the Apple when we try to explain Jump Space.

 

[kaladorn]

To my mind, your jump field is created at time of normalspace-jumpspace interface. It locks in a wee bit of your universe. It does not allow you to interact with Jumpspace, nor it with you.

Consequently, in the situation in question, you could open the doors, probably depressuring the room. The target would be cast out. But he would remain within the jumpspace bubble with your ship. Upon reemergence, he would be there too.

 

[Elliot]

Its like that Black Sabbath song, you know: Into the Void.....

 

[Jamus]

Jump space seems a awful lot like wh40,000 warp space especially if there are entities living in the warp that can cause insanity.

 

[far-trader]

The whole idea of Jumpspace Entities, we called 'em Jennies when I was in the service, is just an old superstition. There is not a shread of credible evidence in existance and I personally dealt with the IN boys of Project Gray Area* on a couple of occassions.

There are also some unclassified IN files dealing with attempts to launch craft while in Jumpspace. All attempts produced catastrophic results, typically resulting in the total destruction of both the launched and launching craft. The research was abandoned. Any Normalspace matter contacting the Jumpspace field barrier is annihilated in an explosion much like that of a matter-antimatter collision.

* Project Gray Area was set up by the Imperial Navy to investigate claims of abnormal Jumpspace phenomenon, both military and civilian.

 

[hirch duckfinder]

far-trader wrote
" Any Normalspace matter contacting the Jumpspace field barrier is annihilated in an explosion much like that of a matter-antimatter collision."

now that's close to what i had in mind for him.....

 

[Straybow]

Matter annihilation would make sabotage too easy: a tiny 1 kg robot programmed to climb on at a starport and then jet off once in jump space could kill a zillion-ton ship with a 20MT explosion a hundred meters from the hull.

That guy with the orange sash would deliver a gigaton of revenge for being ejected from the airlock.

Bye, bye!

 

[Liam Devlin]

Well Hirch, I daresay those of us here will keep mum if the orange sash guy does an unassited suit walk in J-space!

AFAIK, the antimatter-matter problem is pretty much how I learned it. You touch something of real space to J-Space-it is disntegrated (ala the ADnD spell).
Thrust your hand in..lose a hand.

Toss Orange-boy (Why I sound so festive about tossin this chap, I cannae say why? The color Orange mayhap? <evil laugh>)
and No body!

Bryan Gibson ran a group who managed to have to create their own death scenario after bilking hundreds of folks out of low berth fees, then ejecting the bodies into J-space.

They of course did this havoc on a one way trip towards the Imperial Border.
Faked their deaths, changed IDentities, and ships..and were never seen again.

...But I digress!
Slainte!

 

[Liam Devlin]

Well Hirch, I daresay those of us here will keep mum if the orange sash guy does an unassited suit walk in J-space!

AFAIK, the antimatter-matter problem is pretty much how I learned it. You touch something of real space to J-Space-it is disntegrated (ala the ADnD spell).
Thrust your hand in..lose a hand.

Toss Orange-boy (Why I sound so festive about tossin this chap, I cannae say why? The color Orange mayhap? <evil laugh>)
and No body!

Bryan Gibson ran a group who managed to have to create their own death scenario after bilking hundreds of folks out of low berth fees, then ejecting the bodies into J-space.

They of course did this havoc on a one way trip towards the Imperial Border.
Faked their deaths, changed IDentities, and ships..and were never seen again.

...But I digress!
Slainte!

 

[Straybow]

I suspect more people are concerned about relatives jetisoned than the paltry 1000 Cr. What idiot would kill for so little?

If I were that GM I'd arrange to have a group of superdoods sniffing on the PCs' trail, relatives who disbelieve the reports of death and are determined to bring the rats to justice.

In fact, I'd try to find a separate group of players to put in that role!

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Straybow:
Matter annihilation would make sabotage too easy: a tiny 1 kg robot programmed to climb on at a starport and then jet off once in jump space could kill a zillion-ton ship with a 20MT explosion a hundred meters from the hull.

That guy with the orange sash would deliver a gigaton of revenge for being ejected from the airlock.

Bye, bye!

I only said "much like that of a matter-antimatter collision" Straybow. It wouldn't have quite the same punch but the explosion would be significant, probably doing damage to the ship in the area around the airlock he was tossed out of and/or at the very least imposing an increased chance of misjump. A large enough mass is going to do a lot of damage, and if its enough to destroy a significant percentage of the jump grid you could lose the whole ship.

Sure such tactics as you suggest could and probably have been used. It would be rare that it was done though and probably rarer yet that it would actually work. The device you suggest would have to be small enough and cleverly engineered enough to avoid detection (unless the crew is lazy). As well it has to be sturdy enough to survive the huge energy surge/emp that is going to wash over it when the grid is powered up (at which time the computer is going to give the crew another chance to notice an anomaly in the energy field produced by the extra bit on the hull and decide to abort the Jump or take their chances).

At least that's how I'd do it, ymmv, whatever works for you is the right way

Hmm, I do kind of like the idea of a gigaton of revenge from the grave

 

[Andrew Boulton]

IMTU there's a burst of radiation when something hits the jump bubble, but unless the object is very large it's not enough to do any damage.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

IMTU:

An object that leaves the ship and remains within 1D meters of the hull will travel with the ship and precipitate into normal space unharmed.

An object that leaves the ship and goes beyond the 1D meter limit has exited the jump field, and will immediately precipitate into normal space. Unfortunately, since this is not a controlled precipitation, the object will enter realspace at such a high velocity that it is immediately converted to energy - gamma radiation, specifically. This is the reason for a lot of those Gamma Ray Bursters" that astronomers have been talking about (Unless the ship's exit point was the same as it's entry point, however).

This would be the ultimate energy weapon - a Gamma Ray Burst near a planet or ship would fry all life and most electronics. The trouble is that such a shot would be done blind - no way to tell where you are in jumpspace relative to realspace objects.

KR

 

[DaveChase]

Originally posted by Keklas Rekobah:
IMTU:
This would be the ultimate energy weapon - a Gamma Ray Burst near a planet or ship would fry all life and most electronics. The trouble is that such a shot would be done blind - no way to tell where you are in jumpspace relative to realspace objects.

KR

What about if you calculate Jump 1 and a Jump 2 and make sure that Jump 2 just follows the same line that Jump 1 does. Jump 1 is calculated to put you next to the planet. Then you actually do Jump 2 with a missile (object) launch at the point you would normally come out of the Jump 1.

Near miss with Nuclear is still a hit

I like the way Babylon 5 handles the jumps. Any space ship can travel through but only the big ones can form jump points.

Dave

 

[TheDS]

Well, if we're going to talk jump, I like limiting it to solar poles. It keeps the outer system mysterious and inaccessible and makes free fuel from comets usually not worth the effort, plus, a defense force actually has a chance to meet an enemy before it reaches the target planet; no more jumping to Oort cloud and accelerating an iceball to -0.1 dBc crap. Gas giants are now useful again, but only if they are closer to the sun than the mainworld (or if the mainworld orbits one) and going out to outer planets and belts is expensive. Why go to another system when you can just go further out in your own system and build a space station? With helio-centric jump points, it's cheaper to go to another system than to go out into the cold depths of your own system. Plus, no worries about relative velocity; you pick up the velocity of the star you jumped to.

But as to the topic, I think the SOM was the best source of info on this, and I continue to think of it as one of the best explanations for TU, irregardless of its decanonization.

In short, the jump field hovers 1 meter above the ship's surface. If there is a hole 1 meter or more in diameter, the field intrudes on the hull. Anything that gets expeled into jumpspace is simply lost forever. There are implications that the object does not actually vanish, but since jumpspace is effectively a universe where our natural laws are not necessarily observed, those things are probably coverted into gamma rays and dumped back into our universe somewhere.

If you toss something out and then retrieve it, like your hand while still attached to you, or something attached to a lanyard, it will come back unrecognizeable, if at all. There is an adventure somewhere, I think it was a TNE adventure (probably in Challenge), in which the players are on a ship which has a misjump, and there are several "paradoxes" caused by the jumpspace intruding on the hull or something.

Proximity to jumpspace makes you insane. It is generally permanent, and very bad if exposure is worsened. Usually you die, but insanity is a way to "survive" it. There's a group of people who supposedly charter ships and sit in the hold and watch jumpspace. I think this was in Regency Guide.

But anyway, take a look at SOM if you can; it's got a lot of nifty stuff in it. Other than that, well, it's hard to say. MWM has changed his mind about this stuff so often (or just plain forgot; it happens to us all) that no one really knows what "will" happen. Maybe you can Ask Avery?