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Setting details

A

Anders

SOC-12
Given the tangent in the "Status" thread, this thread is for minor details of setting that might be useful. Here are a bunch from my campaign:

Le Moonchi: Cute core cartoon character. Its popups are infesting Link systems everywhere. Has a lot of friends – collect them all!

Transvaal Vehicles Inyoni: A Sunbird clone, a quite robust little hovercraft manufactured in Azanian colonies.

CraniYum: nutrient bar crammed with neuroprotectants used to ensure that growing brains are not hurt by adverse conditions. Part of every Zapamoga relief effort. The cheerful packaging also contains various puzzles suitable for children.

Organisation Coloniale D'Assistance Sociale: Colonial welfare association, criticising bad colonisation practices (mainly French, but likely outspoken against any incompetence or abuse)

Choix: International consumer organisation that compiles reports from millions of online subscribers about what they think about things they have bought and then provides authoritative reviews, often with commentaries from experts. Quite influential.

The Foreign Legion military base on Amalthea is located at Lyctos Facula and houses the military prison Mount Aigaion, colloquially known as “Goat Mountain”. It is the most escape-proof prison prison in the solar system: surrounded by vacuum, jovian radiation belts and a major naval base.
 
Catalogs of 2320AD

Cataloguing stars, planets and other bodies was once just a concern for astronomers, but in an interstellar civilization it is important for trade, military projects and public safety.

CaStar catalogs

Most stars lack real names and are known by their catalogue numbers. To complicate things there exist many different stellar catalogs giving stars different numbers, occasionally with errors.

Pre Twilight Catalogs with names still in use:

  • Bayer-Flamsteed: Lists stars as <greek letter><constellation> or <number><constellation>. While hopelessly obsolete, names such as Beta num Venaticorum or 61 Cygni remain widely used.
  • The Henry Draper Catalogue (HD) was the first large-scale sky survey.
  • The Bonner Durchmunsterung (BD) was a pre-photographic survey of much of the sky. It introduced the notation BD<+-declination> <number> that has been used in many other catalogs. Later the Cordoba Durchmunsterung (CD) was introuced. The DM names in the near star map are from these.
  • The Catalogue astrographique (AC) was developed 1900-1950 based on photographic images.
  • The Luyten catalogue (L)
  • Wolf catalog of high proper motion stars.
  • VB (Van Biesbroeck) catalog.
  • Ross (Ross) Catalogue of New Proper Motion Stars

Post-Twilight Catalogs

The Arago Catalogue was developed by astronomers at the Bordeaux Observatory 2094 based on data from the Arago satellite. Largely superseded by further catalogues it was the first catalogue based on space-based observations (the Hipparchos catalog was never completed due to the Twilight war). Arago II and III improved on the precision significantly.

The Laplace Catalogue was the first interstellar baseline catalogue, created using observations from Earth, Tirane and Nyotekundu (later extended by observations from Proxima and Barnard’s Star). Using the independent parallaxes and long baselines between the systems a large number of stars could be located with high precision. This method has since then been extended into numerous sky surveys.

At present the most complete star catalog is the ARI Sternenförmige Objekt Datenbank, ASOD. ASOD is a clearinghouse for other surveys, combining their data, detecting uncertainties and discrepancies, translating between different indices and generally maintaining humanity’s overall picture of the galaxy (and the nearby ones). It contains about twenty billion stars, most fairly remote.

The Argyle Catalog is a high-resolution catalog of nearby stars, their location determined through multi-system observations. A follow-up catalog, the Dearborn catalog, includes most stars within 600 lightyears.

The InterStellar Object database, ISO, is an originally American database of brown dwarves. Due to their strategic importance many known dwarves are not listed or have officially secret coordinates: “Back Door”, called “BD –111 094307” in official documents (a clearly made-up name to any astronomer) has for example just an approximate location given in the entry for ISO 314, its “real” name. ARI and some other astrographical organisations are protesting against the practice (there are rumors that some astronomers are looking for the strategic brown dwarves to publish their location out of sheer spite).


Planets
The International Astronomical Union has final say on naming space geography. It has restricted itself to names for stars, planets, moons, asteroids and other major natural features. Except for the solar system the nomenclature of surface features of planets is left to the discoverers.

The IAU nomenclature database is the “official names” for objects in explored space. This does not mean that they are actually used. It is maintained by the IAU Nomenclature Division and its working groups.

The current convention is that the first survey expedition to reach a system (or send an unmanned probe there) gets to suggest names for its bodies. In many countries a list of “approved options” are supplied to explorers. The IAU then decides on the matter, and the names become official. Usually further discoveries are made and reported by other surveyors. Occasionally conflicts occur (as in the case of the Beta Canum Venaticorum system) and the IAU may adjudicate them.

Names for planetary geography are outside the IAU remit (although it occasionally advices); the IAU Planetary Science Division maintains a database of geographical names, coordinates and features but for inhabited worlds the most accurate information is usually the geographical survey agency of the colonizing nation.

Many systems have local notations for asteroids, minor moons or even debris in rings.

The IAU maintains the IAU Object Catalogue which is the master list of data for non-stellar objects. It includes not just planets, asteroids and comets of explored systems but also numerous extrasolar planets that have been observed at a distance.

Navigation databases
Navigation databases require high precision and up-to-data information but cares little for the physical properties of objects as long as they do not impair spaceflight. Most data covers orbits, mass, presence of magnetic fields, documented navigational hazards and legal aspects.

There exist a few “master” navigation databases: the 2320 IAU Object Catalogue, the ESA Carte Astronomique Database (plus Annex I-XIV) and the AECA Atlas. These are the most authoritative lists of what bodies are where when and with what velocities.

Unfortunately they are not directly suitable for the needs of ship captains (and access can cost a pretty penny). Hence many navigation companies produce databases and astrogation software that take inputs from the master databases and local surveys, adds navigational and legal information and puts it all in a nice package.

Some of the most popular are:

Sextant from Washington Astrometrics. Only a navigation database, but very complete and equipped with numerous tools for handling unusual demands.

NaviSys from Bennet, Bedini & Vista. A fully integrated system for navigation and planning.

Renard and Optim from AIS (French). A state of the art combined navigation database and position fitter program, and a system for planning stutterwarp journeys.

MIO from Xian Navigation. Not as reliable or slick as the French navigation software, but cheap and extensible. Widely used by Libertine Traders with their own private navigational libraries.

TriNav from Trilon Naval Data. Not very impressive on its own, but it comes as default (and hard to remove) on most Trilon-built ships, and works extremely well together with other software from TND such as piloting software, comms software, targeting software and geography software.
 
Authors and Other Eccentrics of the American Arm

Travis Canstable - An American author born on King. He is best known for The Mayflower Compact, a novel of about coming of age on King. The principle themes involved a young man in a mining colony coming to terms with the fact that his entire life has been mapped out for him and there are no other options available. By the author's own admission, the story is highly autobiographical.

Critical reaction to this novel in the Core has been very good. On King, it inspired the creation of several literary circles dedicated to the idea that even a mining colony should have a voice of it's own.

Canstable has yet to release a second novel, but his visibility is very high. He is easily the most well-known American author anywhere and practically the only author of note in the entire American Arm.


Digby Spahn - Digby emigrated to Ellis in the land rush of the early 70's. When he got there, he discovered that the land was very much like his native Nevada. In an attempt to improve his lot and make money in the process, he set up an asteroid import business, bringing ice-bearing asteroids from the extensive belts of the outer system.

After several years, he had a small lake and a growing collection of discarded asteroid fragments. In an attempt to make the most of his assets, he decided to build an entire abandoned city on the shore of his lake - something between an art installation, fictional ruins and a theme park. It never occurred to him that people would choose to live there.

Now, Digby's Paradise is a thriving town that is well-known for it's distinctive architecture and benevolent leader.
 
Current Bestsellers

Simon Dechesne, La vie c'est la mer! (”Life’s a beach”) Yet another of the wildly popular humorous and romantic pirate tales set in Dechesne’s “crimson gulf” quasi-fantasy world.

Jacques Brideau, Argent à Dépenser (“Money to burn”) An autobiographical novel about the authors adolescence in Elysia on Joi, the family retreat to Earth and the culture shock as he met Core society. Poetic, critical both of naïve colonial society and ruthless Core society.

Marie Thibodeau, Masculin. Another search for the “real man” of the 24th century. Thibodeau interviews numerous famous or unknown athletes, researchers, politicians, colonists, soldiers and engineers before settling on an unusual choice: an Indian puzzle maker.

Augustine Arnal, Magnétisme animal. Children’s story about the adventures of magnetic animals in a world of metal.

Peter T. Nordman, Xia! Biography about the Manchurian statesman, his legacy and contemporaries. A must for anybody trying to figure out the Central Asian War and its effect on modern Manchurian society.

Zorc Queson, Mulí? Romantic-satirical story set in contemporary Philipine and L4 society. The blend of eroticism, the clash between corporate and catholic faith and loving depictions of tropical nature have seduced millions. The sequel, Baybayin, is already climbing the charts.

Guillermo Gómez Rivera, Announcing the Extinction: Lipski’s Ten Flights. Unsparing look on one of the bloodier battles during the Kafer War, centered around Eugen Lipski’s heroism and sacrifice.

Maria Bennoune, Metacritique. Overview of metareviewing and how it can improve hobby performance and intrinsic social network curvature. A must for people serious about their amateur lives.

Sir Ian W. Exlake, Make a Dawn. Colonial-political manifesto by the governor of New Albion on the Kafer war and how the French Arm ought to be rebuilt. A dull sleeping pill, but since everybody says it is the most perceptive pro-colonial analysis around it is on every coffee table among people styling themselves colonialist.

Miguel G. Sanchez, Mom and Appelcake: A History. About the history of the most American of all dishes and how it links up with key points in American history. Somewhat controversial for its treatment of New America cuisine.

Tahar Khadda, The Labyrinth of Convenience. Analysis of the “labyrinth of convenience” modern humans are trapped in, and how various trends conspire to prevent any possibility of authentic escape. The pessimistic young philosopher has been an instant sensation among French public intellectuals.

Majida Zimmerman, Rhythm, Song and Politics: Dancing the Bond. Popular introduction to local artistic activism in the French Empire, especially for people wanting to start their own activist aesthete network.

Abela Tejada, Solidarity in Orbit: Permanent War Economy and the Modern State. Heavy-hitting criticism of the international military-industrial complex and how it controls most Tier 1 and 2 nations. Raised a stir by arguing that the French government is deliberately formenting unrest on the French Arm to motivate the enormous military budget.
 
Kormoran (82 Eridani) Tourist Sites

This is a very interesting thread and I would like to add some tidbits from my own notes. I was at one time planning on writing a 2300ad novel and I've just dug those drafts and notes out of storage. Setting was in 2306.

1. A fellow by the name of R. B. Kerchner started a cargo airship service base out of New Austin. The drylake bed that was being used as a starport for that town was being developed even more after the events in the Ranger module. A large hanger was now built out there with a red and white checkerboard pattern and in big black letters, the name KERCHNER printed on both sides of the hanger. His daughter Karen Kerchner is the pilot of their main airship, the Antilles.

On another part of the spaceport area, the Texas Navy was setting up ammo bunkers, POL storage, and bunkers to park several space fighters that are currently docked in the orbital station. Mostly the F-127 Shillelaghs assigned to that solar system.

2. Fast food restruants Sonic and Dairy Queen managed to survive the Twilight War to restart themselves and to spread out to the colonies by the 24th century. :-)

3. (Back on Earth) The Americans still use the Pentagon. Texas has a similar building known as the "horseshoe" because the building is 'U' shape and located in Austin, Texas. New governor Samuel Albert Norville. Chief of Staff of the Texas Armada (wet surface navy) is Admiral John Nixon. The Txas Armada operate mostly handme down subs from the US Navy including one submarine aircraft carrier - TAS Commodore Edwin Moore. General Maggie McClain was in charge of the Texas Air Force. Admiral Jeff Lewis was the head honcho for the Texas Space Navy. Commander of the Texas Army is General Randy Gilliam. [NOTE: this is from the 3rd draft and the names are subject to change.]

4. Now, the TAS Commodore Edwin Moore is about the size of the old Russian Typhoon class subs and its airwing is 80% uavs that are launched like cruise missiles and then if they survive the mission, return to the water and make a soft landing. the sub is still underwater and the uavs flood their ballast tanks to sink and they are recovered by scuba teams. But there are some operations that require manned vehile flights (like helicopters and VTOLS). The sub surfaces for those flight operations.

5. A old BC-4 frieghter, the Dover Maiden, was hijacked by Chinese pirates and the crew/passengers were spaced. IT was refitted as a Q-ship and used as a raider for a few years until there was a run-in with the TNS Fort Brown which left both ships severly damaged. The crew of the Fort Brown (ala Flight of the Phoenix) combined parts fo both ships to create one ship and it was renamed as TNS Invinicible. The cargo modules are large enough to hold the F-127 Shillelaghs.

Thats all for now.
 
Earth's Strange Exports

Sichuan Dragon - A certain variety of silk manufactured in a few select valleys in Sichuan have abruptly found their value going up so high it's unimaginable. Libertine Merchants and everyone else are coming down and buying every single scrap of as they can with vicious verbal sparring and occasionally even mild sabotage of competitors. Le Monde finally cracked the case by following some of these silk exporters and paying a small fortune in bribes. It seems that the this silk is wildly popular amongst the Eber who find its lovely colors and shimmering serpentine patterns nearly hypnotic and it has become the material of choice for formal dinners, certain stages of Eber courtship, and for wearing at events with certain members of the extended family at rituals. The problem is that humans have no idea what it is about the silk from that particular valley that is unique - the human eye is unable to discern the difference between silk made in that area and anywhere else or synthetic silk for that matter. All that's know is the Ebers can identify the "real thing" unerringly and have described the difference as "obvious" to them. Xenobiologists believe some subtle microscopic patterning on that particular silk reacts with how the Eber mind processes visual data.

Dash! Smartwine - Zero calorie wine synthesized by a beverage division of the Trillon Corporation, the wine has been enormously popular amongst Earth's young people for years now (especially amongst the upper middle class of France, where part of the fun of drinking it is the enjoying the revolted expression of older people) - typical of such trends, it's even not popular at all on Alpha Centauri or anywhere else human space, but is quite popular on Earth for whatever reason ... and Stark. Available in a number of flavors and in alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions. The Sung, always disappointed by the lack of human technology sharing were reportedly overjoyed when they attempted to purchase bulk orders of Dash! Smartwine in Wellon Watermelon flavor and found the manufacturer willing to sell as much as the Sung wanted to them without export restrictions. In 2317, a Manchurian Xenobiologist passing through Stark noticed what appeared to be a very familiar hue in an IV lifesupport drip for a critically ill Sung youngster. He'd seen his daughter on Earth drinking it. He spoke with the Sung physicists who were excited told him that the Sung were grateful for the rock-bottom prices Earth was willing to give them on such important medical goods, cheap enough to make it available in quantity to even the poorest Sung nations...cheap enough for them to forgive that the manufacturer wouldn't share the secret of manufacture with them. It seems that the Wellon Watermelon flavor in particular by happenstance contains a number of complex sugars that the Sung body can easily metabolize and that other additives serve as an effective but mild antibiotic, while the preservatives in wine help to relax certain kinds of immune responses all of which make the wine perfect for treating a short-term illness roughly analogous to diabetes in humans that occurs in Sung, particular their young. Incidentally, the Sung apparently find the taste of the stuff bitter and unpalatable, which led the Manchurian physicist to wryly observe that while alien, the Sung were not devoid of good taste.
 
Fabricators

Everything is manufactured somewhere, by someone. Across human space, most manufactured good are produced by fabricators.

A fabricator is a device that can be best described as a 3-d printer. Using special plastics (or other materials), it can grow durable objects to an amazing degree of precision within the space of hours. As one would expect, the larger and more complex an object, the longer it takes to fabricate. Built properly, a fabricator can create organic materials, microelectronics, plastics, metals, foodstuffs and fabrics.

Most items are fabricated from pre-created models. A major growth industry is the creation of commercial fabrication models. Concurrent with this is a persistent grumbling about the illegal transfer and reuse of licensed models. With enough money and the right resources, a model for almost anything can be found. Obviously, information resources in the frontier will be extremely limited.

In fact, a severe lack of variety in stock inventories gives everything in the frontier a distinct sameness. There is actually a chair called "Standard British Colonial Meeting House Chair." Art supplies are largely seen as luxury in a place where every fabricator is needed to make the tools of survival. However, artistic types have adapted by gravitating to trades that allow them to tweak stock models just before fabrication. Customized detailing is a luxury that people understand.

The frontier only sees the more exotic designer inventories that are commonplace in the core only in special circumstances. A welcome sight in many rural communities across the frontier are the travelers. These are usually specialists who use a self-propelled kleinfabriken to bring the "latest in core fashions" to the people who live in the boonies. Part carnival, part fashion show, part theater troupe, part traveling brothel (depending on the locality), part saloon, part concert hall, all palace of wonders; groups with good reputations are happily received where ever they go. They represent a break for homesteaders, a vacation for people who cannot afford to take one very often.

Fabricators are prominent in colonial history, which is as it should be. Fabricators represent infrastructure. One of the most ubiquitous appliances in the frontier is the desktop fabricator. Given enough raw materials, a desktop fabricator can (eventually) build anything. In theory, a fleet of desktop fabricators can build almost anything that a growing colony needs, including larger fabricators.

Before the war, Kimanjano had produced nearly 8% of the fabrication raw materials in use on the Core worlds, and over 20% in use along the French Arm of space. With the Kafers came an unexpected drop in raw materials. This has had obvious consequences to the market. Botany Bay has found their raw materials in demand and they are growing to be a powerhouse outside the American Arm. Scientists on Chengdu are experimenting with breaking down Cold Mountain organisms into raw materials suitable for fabrication. If a mass-production process could be developed, Cold Mountain could easily corner the market on raw materials in the Chinese Arm.

Because of the rise in raw material prices, there has been a growing trend on many colonies have to proactively recycle broken or outdated equipment. It used to be that if a frontier citizen that wanted something not in the standard homestead inventory (which is amazingly diverse), he would send an email to the general store and go down to pick it up when it was ready (for a fee, of course). Now, most stores would prefer to send qualified technicians to troubleshoot and determine if the part is really necessary.

One of the things that makes the frontier the frontier is a massive lack of stuff. On the streets of London or Far London, a citizen can find a store for every imaginable niche. Not so on the frontier, although there are exceptions. New Cornwall on Joi has become somewhat of a tourist destination due to the relative amount of luxury goods available for purchase. In contrast, Crater's political problems stem directly from the serious lack of fabricators - which is ironic, considering the wealth of mineral resources.

In the initial fifty years of settlement on Kwangtung, colonists were (in)famously issued the following: one desktop fabricator, four 50-gallon drums of raw material, 50 pounds of rice, a draft animal and a cart. A laptop with a full suite of homestead models and instructional materials was also issued. One of the manuals in the suite explained how to build a short wave radio that could interface with the laptop for long-range communications.

The Xixiang Project on Dukou nearly failed until the need for more fabricators was recognized. From this, it was calculated that a 1:1 fabricator to human ratio was sufficient for sustainment. The greater the ratio, the better the chances of real growth become.

Nibelungen built their entire colonial infrastructure around the production of fabricators for nascent colonies further down the arm. The kleinfabriken concept is a shipping-container-sized box that can produce a wide variety of objects from an inventory of models. These come with a team that can operate and repair the fabricator as well as assemble anything that it produces.

There are a wide variety of kleinfabriken models, to cover the spectrum of what can be fabricated. There are microelectronics (so-called "Botany Bay models"), bioorganics, food-stuff (used by Food Extruders throughout human space), light industry, medium industry, and construction fabricators.

Construction fabricators can be tailored to build many different kinds of things - road infrastructure, ore processing plants, residential buildings, commercial buildings, light vehicles, heavy vehicle factories, stutterwarp drives and satellites. Many companies on Nibelungen are actively engaged in developing custom kleinfabriken to suit the needs of all kinds of organizations.

Nibelungen kleinfabriken can be found across the frontier:

The Pengtao Center for the Performing Arts on Kwangtung has a custom kleinfabrik that enables troupes to construct intricate sets for their largest performance festivals.

A heroic amount of homestead fabricators were issued on Ellis, which many point to as the reason why the colony was so effective in such a short time.

Factory-building kleinfabriken were used to build the first Mule factory on Hermes.

Sentinels built on Aurore during the long years of the Kafer siege were the product of every spare fabricator, no matter how small.

Despite the array of fabricators available, there are never enough to go around, which is a direct cause for the frontier concept of "doing without." A common theme in colonial literature is the homestead fabricator breaking down.

In the core, the idea of giving everyone their own fabricator is of deep concern to the commercial apparat at the grassroots level. Accordingly, fabricator ownership is licensed and controlled. Fabricators have been thoroughly integrated into the design and production process, but access is filtered through the everyday mechanism of capitalism. Among core observers, the frontier's haphazard distribution of the means of production is seen as messy at best and dangerous at worst.
 
Famous unsolved crimes

The 2297 Olympic Team Kidnapping: The ship transporting the participants from Kwantung to the olympic games disappeared without trace. Although officially regarded as a tragic space accident, many blame Provolution for it and suspect they may have hijacked the ship to start using the team as test subjects, breeding material or for ransom.

The Premiere Diamond Heist. Just as Beta Canum was invaded by the Kafers February 18 2302 someone broke into the vault of Bank of Premiere and stole a safe deposit box with diamonds worth 50 million Lv. The perpetrators or diamonds have not been found so far.

The Assassination of General Victor Adolphe Bourguignon. One of the leading men in the French junta, he was instrumental in the transition to civilian government and retired from public life with honor and wealth intact. In 2305 a sniper assassinated him outside his Provence manor. Despite a major investigation the case remains open. Favorite theories involve the Emperor, other ex-junta elements worried he was going to reveal sensitive information, victims of the military security forces or German agents.

The Lomonosov Tantalum Heist: A load of refined tantalum from King arriving at the Lomonosov orbital works in 2308 was found to have been replaced with inert ingots. Investigations by US agencies discovered that the replacement occurred sometime during the Seurier-Barnard leg of the trip. One of the ship engineers, William Tuan, left the ship at Barnard due to a medical emergency. He got better amazingly fast, and quickly joined the crew of the Inca Republic-registered cargo ship Pedro Vicente Maldonado bound for Rho Eridani, where he disembarked. All further traces cease there, but the US suspicions against the Heidelsheimat government are pretty clear.

The Barton-Pellegrini Hack: the largest economic swindle and hacking attack ever. In 2310 the Tirane finance and banking concern Baron-Pellegrini announced that it had been swindled over 2 billion Lv through an elaborate infiltration, siphoning off money through false investments in off-world companies. Although several bank insiders and outside agents were eventually apprehended, these were just low-level operatives with no idea of who was truly behind the operation. The mysterious “Benefactor” and his (?) organisation could not be traced. While some think the Freihafen Blackhand were involved, others point at Japanese banks and mobsters, Indian rogue security agencies or even the Elysian government.

The Sophia Antipolis Raid: In 2315 Provolution agents raided Technocentre Sophia Antipolis, probably stealing something from the biotech complex before blowing it up. French police authorities pursued the agents vigorously, but did not catch any of them – most fleeing craft were decoys. Exactly what was stolen remains sealed under national security, but speculation is rife with everything from deadly bioweapons to eternal youth drugs to a clone of the Emperor.

The Clavus Identity Theft: Clavus Corporation was managing insurance details for 43 million German and other ESA citizens. In 2316 it was penetrated by outside hackers helped by an insider, Dr Peter Tiefenthaler, and they made away with the database entries of at least 20 million people. The theft remained undiscovered for over a year, and would likely never have been discovered if Dr Tiefenthaler had not disappeared. A relative discovered the stolen information among his files. Police has been unable to track the other people in the operation, but believe the Clavus information was used to both perform identity theft on Earth and in the Colonies, as well as enable the creation of numerous false identities. Dr Tiefenthaler has never been found.

The Vincente Auer murder: Vincente Auer was a music superstar throughout the noughts across the Core, and still remains popular in the colonies. In 2316 he was found dead in his Denver villa, killed by his home robotics. Forensic investigations discovered that the murderer had used a hardware override likely inserted into the house electronics during the party the night before. The list of suspects involved not just staff but many of America’s jet set, giving the whole affair tremendous media coverage. After a dramatic trial where Auer’s manager Leonid Berg was acquited, the case has entered the public mind as the perennial late evening speculation about which celebrity did it.

Theft of Jack the Tipper: A luxury space yacht owned by the Australian multibillionarie Mal Kanitz was stolen when undergoing minor refitting at L5. Apparently the skeleton crew had been replaced with agents or suborned, and the ship quietly left dock February 5 2318 without anybody noticing anything amiss. It then set off towards Tirane, and disappeared. It is believed that the audacious trick was perpetrated by smugglers or pirates, who wanted a fast and comfortable ship. Most likely it actually hid in the asteroid belt where the identity transponders were replaced, and then quietly moved out into one of the arms.

[ I'm not 100% sure which year the olympic kidnapping occured, it is mentioned briefly somewhere in the old 2300 books. ]
 
Re: Fabricators
The "Templates", that are necessary for the unit to work, are very heavily copy protected (in some cases they will physically "self-destruct").
In the case of "promotional/demo" templates, they only work for a finite, fixed number of times (usually single digits & in extreme cases, only once...).
Needless to say, anyone that can supply a "cracked" version of these templates, especially if it's of a newer device/artifact, to a Non-Core colony world, will recieve a very warm welcome from the colonists...
 
[Building on the excellent ideas in the kleinfabriken subthread. ]

Roboxes

Robots are devices that sense and interact with their environment. The kind of robots that most people recognize move around the environment doing useful tasks. But many robots instead contain their environment. They are “roboxes” in the parlance of automation engineers.

The typical robox is a fabricator (alias “kleinfabriken”) that contains tools, actuators and sensors that allow it to build useful objects. But roboxes are found in homes, labs, hospitals and spaceliner kitchens. Their main utility comes from their ability to control and continously scan their internal environment exactly, without the uncertainties of acting in the real world.

3D printers and autolathes are among the simplest roboxes. They have no real sensors, just simple actuators that put together pieces (or drill away) to make objects. Such devices are limited in the kinds of material they can work on (such as plastic, metal, composites or ceramics), but can make nearly any shape needed. Core home 3D printers make toys, novelty cutlery, game pieces or other non-durable goods, while workshop autolathes and other numerical control devices manufacture metal replacement parts or new tools.

High-end confection systems can make intricate confectionery out of ingredients such as sugar, chocolate, marzipan, syrup etc. This is especially effective for “microgravity desserts”, one of the special treats of luxury spaceliners where the regions of microgravity are used to make lavish and unusual desserts. In everyday hotel kitchens food printers are also common, making everything from personalised cakes to automated dish extrusion. Even the humble FoodExtruders™ outlets are a form of simple roboxes.

“Real” roboxes like kleinfabriken both have more autonomy and internal sensors. They can make objects according to templates, but also clean themselves, do simple self-repair and work on supplied materials rather than rely on perfectly standardized feedstocks. Often they are run in “hands on mode” where a technician gives instructions, but programmable roboxes can be set to learn a process and then just repeat it quickly. The real importance of the built-in sensors lie in detecting when something goes wrong, at which point the robox either stops or (if it is a simple problem) fixes it. Most automation technicians have amusing, scary or plain tiresome anecdotes about all the way manufacturing roboxes can misfunction: automation does not mean they are flawless, and high-end “adaptive” roboxes that tries to solve problems on their own often mess things up much worse than simple devices that just reset themselves. General-purpose roboxes are also less effective at manufacturing than single-purpose systems, but greatly increase the versatility of a skilled or creative engineer. They are especially useful on starships and in situations where there are too many kinds of repair to do to stock up on spare parts.

Lab roboxes can run tests and experiments on their contents. Some are tiny, like microelectronic roboxes, while others may contain entire rooms with test animals or bulky scanner equipment. Many lab roboxes keep noxious chemicals or biological agents sealed in, or contain protective atmospheres or low temperatures that keep sensitive samples fresh. They can be used to perform standardized testing or set up new experiments that can be run quickly. Some can run investigations on their own, performing simple scientific induction on a sample.

Autodocs are among the most sophisticated and regulated roboxes. The scanning and planning equipment is top-notch, and they have a wide variety of safety features. They are programmed to be highly conservative, preferring to do nothing rather than harm the patient. In practice this means that a medical professional has to stand by and order/approve every intervention. In some places or situations this is too cumbersome, and people make (often illegal) overrides to give the autodoc greater autonomy. While convenient and often more effective it runs the risk of causing treatment harm, especially if the autodoc runs into something unexpected.

Autodocs can also be run in “telemode”, where they are slaved to an expert somewhere else who performs the surgery or treatment. Many military forces have telemedical units who perform battlefield surgery by telepresence from afar; this uses particular medical frequencies or Link-protocols that it is a war crime to jam, intercept or otherwise use.

Wear and tear has led to a thriving market for replacement tools, actuators and spare parts, especially in the colonies. Even if a manufacturing robox lacks some actuators it might be used for new purposes: a broken repair robox can be repurposed for surface finishing, or an old lab robox used to run a chemical synthesis.

Some of the major robox manufacturers are Sortech, Trilon, Endomatique, FDK Gmbh, Otaru Robotics, Tunghus Robotics and Zho Automation. Grenda Control and Mouvement Harmonique SA are less well known, but make most of the motion control and low-level tool software for most robox models – their standards battles have caused endless grief among engineers and colonial users. Some notable kleinfabrik or heavy robox manufacturers are Gorman Systems Ltd, Sandvik, Pichot Industries, Pfahlwerke and Morioka Tools. Rychrome, Axilog and Emerson Autonics make lighter or precision engineering roboxes. Jonquieres & Rydbaum are the premier food robotics manufacturers. They also make various advanced kitchen appliances sold under the brand DeliciT. Serotech, Bauman Analytique and Integrated Environments are major manufacturers of lab roboxes. Aucor, Synartia, Eusomics, PsiTechCorp and Apelle Médical make autodocs.
 
Does toast fall buttered side down on all planets? The classic paper on the subject is R A J Matthews paper Tumbling toast, Murphy's Law and the fundamental constants, Eur. J. Phys. 16 172-176 1995. He shows that for a straight fall the key issue is just the static friction and the height of the table relative to the width of the toast, which are presumably the same across human space.

However, if a toast is swept off a table the speed relative to gravity matters: a projectile toast has time for many rotations. The critical speed scales with the square root of gravity, which means that for high gravity worlds this rarely happens (the toast needs to move faster than 1.6 sqrt(g) m/s where g is the gravity in Gs). Even on most light gravity worlds (~0.6 G) this is a minor effect (but people on Daikoku swear they notice it) but on rho Eridany and in space "lucky" toast is common.

Matthews's paper argued theoretically that most humanoid intelligent table-using species would suffer from butter down toast. Beside humans Kafers, Sung and Ebers are known to use tables for eating. Kafer dining is a messy affair but if they have a counterpart to toast it is likely to fall on the wrong side, no doubt angering them. Civilized Ebers sometimes use multilevel tables that can cause lucky toast falls from the higher levels (at which point a small ritual of Recognizing Trivial Luck is performed). The Sung have very low tables and tend to suffer toast landing on its side, at which point the exact covering matters for the outcome. However, many Sung like to eat at a high altitude outside, producing occasional extremely long falls - daredevil young sung sometimes try to catch their falling toast, which has led to tragic accidents (older Sung know they cannot outfall a sandwich).
 
Re: last post
A intresting point, is just what happens when toast falls in a spin habitat, such as a "Squirrel/Hamster Cage", common to most luxury civilian vessels, such as liners...
To a observer "on the ground", so to speak, the toast may appear to fall in a normal manner, abeit at a apparent surface gravity, that said spin habitat emulates...
However to a external observer, say anchored to the central "axle" of said habitat, the toast will appear to fall in a helical spiral, in a similar fashion to a Terran sycamore seed.
This is mainly due to the Corolis force, generated by the habitat's rotation...
 
G. Fieendish said:
To a observer "on the ground", so to speak, the toast may appear to fall in a normal manner, abeit at a apparent surface gravity, that said spin habitat emulates...
However to a external observer, say anchored to the central "axle" of said habitat, the toast will appear to fall in a helical spiral, in a similar fashion to a Terran sycamore seed.
This is mainly due to the Corolis force, generated by the habitat's rotation...
Click to expand...

Actually, it is the reverse.

First let us assume no air friction or anything, just a toast that just started freely falling off a table of height h standing a distance R from the habitat axis. Looking at this from the outside of the habitat, at rest relative to the stars it is a simple situation: up until a moment ago the toast was rotating around the axis at distance R-h, now it just follows a straight trajectory tangential to the previous circular motion. If the habitat has a rotation period P the toast was (and is) moving at speed 2pi(R-h)/P. It will hit the floor after having travelled straight (as seen by you) for sqrt(2Rh-h^2) meters (draw a diagram and use Pythagoras). The trip takes P*sqrt(2Rh-h^2)/[2pi(R-h)] seconds.

From the perspective of someone sitting at the table the toast acquires a antispinward horizontal velocity and follows a curved path (I think it might even be a cycloid, but I can't be bothered to do the coordinate transforms right now). The speed difference between the table and floor radii is 2pi*h/P, so the toast ends up h*sqrt(2Rh-h^2)/(R-h) meters away. Note that this is independent of P and the experienced gravity!

The nice thing with the above calculations is that I do not need to include any Coriolis force (which I never remember the formula for anyway).

Let's assume a R=100 m habitat with a 3 rpm period (P=20 seconds); this has almost exactly 1 g "gravity". If we let h=1.1 meters I get a toast speed of 31.1 m/s (as seen from the outside) travelling 14.8 m before hitting the floor after 0.47 seconds (practically indistinguishable from real 1 g gravity), ending up 16.5 cm away from vertical. In a 50 m habitat with 4.29 rpm period (also 1 g) the distance has increased to 23.5 cm. In a 25 m habitat it is 33.7 cm.

Since the time taken to fall is equal to the time in a real 1 g field the buttered side ends up down. But, as the above pretty large R show, most spaceships go for lower gravity (especially since Coriolis starts to become really troubling beyond 3 rpm) which means a better chance for a complete butter-avoidant rotation.

However, if we want to get really exact we ought to consider the air resistance. The Reynolds number is around ~1 so Stokes drag equation is applicable - assuming a spherical toast (!) I get a drag constant of 0.002, which means normal toast doesn't have the time to get seriously dragged. Terminal velocity for a 0.1 m object is around 28.5 m/s, which will happen after about three seconds of fall. This means air resistance and drag will matter only if toast is thrown or dropped close to the rotation axis so it will be moving slowly, but it will not matter at normal breakfast unless a food fight takes place.

[ I got to assume a spherical toast and use the term "butter-avoidant rotation". This made my day. :-) ]
 
Re: last post
But what happens if something like jam, marmalade or (in some cases) lemon curd is "added to the equation", so to speak...?
To what effect will this additional substance have on the toast's dynamics under such conditions...?
(Evil thought, has someone already done a serious scientific paper/study dealing with this potential topic/subject, or are we potentially the first to even consider this...?).
 
You need a lot of jelly to move the centre of mass so much that the behaviour is not well approximated by a rectangular box. If there is a lot on top, then I would expect the initial torque when the toast is sliding off the table to be larger (longer momentum arm), and hence the rotation rate higher. This might reduce the butter down probability slightly.

However, this depends on whether the tensile strength of the jam is great enough to hold it in place during a full rotation - I think there is a good chance that it simply slips off producing a double mess. Maybe peanut butter has enough strength? I couldn't find any data on it in my materials textbooks, but I think it exists somewhere in the literature.
 
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