• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

Space Dangers and Disasters

Blue Ghost

Blue Ghost

SOC-14 5K
Knight
So, this is an outcrop of the previous thread, meant to help referees put a little more space flavor in their gaming sessions.

We discussed rogue planets, rogue stars, and even a rogue black hole and meteor strike. Might there be others (real or imagined) that could still ride Travellers' hard-science emphasis, yet still prove mortal danger for players?

I will start out with a solar flare activity. Apparently there are different types, each with different orders of magnitude. If you're habitable colony world is like Earth, and orbiting at 1 AU, like Earth, then I guess you're okay. But, if you're world is a little closer, like in Venus territory, but still very Earth like, then you may have some probs.

Discuss! :D

Other dangers?

ADDENDUM; linky; http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/the-classification-of-solar-flares
 
Blue Ghost said:
So, this is an outcrop of the previous thread, meant to help referees put a little more space flavor in their gaming sessions.

We discussed rogue planets, rogue stars, and even a rogue black hole and meteor strike. Might there be others (real or imagined) that could still ride Travellers' hard-science emphasis, yet still prove mortal danger for players?

I will start out with a solar flare activity. Apparently there are different types, each with different orders of magnitude. If you're habitable colony world is like Earth, and orbiting at 1 AU, like Earth, then I guess you're okay. But, if you're world is a little closer, like in Venus territory, but still very Earth like, then you may have some probs.

Discuss! :D

Other dangers?

ADDENDUM; linky; http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/the-classification-of-solar-flares
Click to expand...

Solar flares will be a common issue in Traveller, with so many "habitable" worlds circling small red stars. These can be variables, including UV Ceti-type stars. Such stars emit sufficient X-rays to make life as we know it difficult on a planet's surface.

More serious flares could include coronal mass ejection. Obviously rare, imagine what happens when a star responsible for your environment fires a giant plasma blast at you?
 
Coronal Mass Ejections aren't all that rare.
from a low of 1 per week to a high of 3 per day for Sol...

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/CMEs.shtml

And they look to be about 30° in diameter... which would make the odds of a particular burst being at you about 1/600.

So, about 3.6 per week on average, 52 weeks per year... about 190 CME's a year average, so a ship should expect a hit about every 3 years & 2 months...

CME's are pretty low threat for planetary populations with magnetospheres and atmospheres...

Yes, close in, the radiation surge is deadly; the plasma, however, is pretty thin.
 
from Google;

Space Junk/Debris

Moon/Planet Dust (so fine and abrasive, can cause allergies...)

Static Electricity (could a strong charge de-stabilize a jump grid enough to charge correctly?)
 
I'd hate to be refueling at a Brown Dwarf Gas Giant (or anywhere in the vicinity) when it finally picks up enough mass to become a star.

I'd also hate to be prospecting on an asteroid when two other asteroids nearby collide and send a chunk right towards my ship (or outpost).

Those could ruin someone's day.
 
Carlobrand said:
Was that supposed to be 30 degrees or 30 minutes?
Click to expand...

Degrees, as marked. Earth catches a CME about once every 2 years, by the way. Sometimes more often... They're common. Only the ones where the hit's pretty direct are major issues to earth.
 
One I used to isolate my version of the Foreven sector from the Imps/Zho was a binary pair of neutron stars. The gravity waves they spat out made attempts at safely jumping through a parts of the sector a nightmare, nicely providing a barrier and chokepoints.

Another neutron star event is the 'starquake' when a magnatar (magnetic neutron star) 'realigns', sending out a massive gamma ray burst.
Eg SGR_1806-20. Anyone in range of the burst in in for a bad day.

Any binary star system with a close white dwarf (and Trav has a lot of those) is a supernova waiting to happen. Just a matter of timescale.

And are you talking about natural disasters or artificial ones (eg: Mr Terrorist giving an asteroid a nudge)
 
Wow, that's pretty clever. I had not thought about twin neutron stars. You ought to write that up and submit it to Mongoose. That's a good idea that I think lots of referees would have a field day with. And yeah, gamma ray bursts from stars is not a good thing.

I've often wondered if anyone here has had players try to navigate a pulsar star.

To respond to your last question; I'm thinking more or less natural disasters, but a terrorist who had enough hardware to guide a meteor or something would be a darn good adventure seed.
 
Blue Ghost said:
Wow, that's pretty clever. I had not thought about twin neutron stars. You ought to write that up and submit it to Mongoose.
Click to expand...

It was mainly a way to explain why the Imps/Zhos weren't swarming over Foreven using it to invade each other, and to give myself a 'badlands' region for not so law abiding citizens to hide (I threw out the Imperalines map completely). The neutron stars also 'swept' their polar beams in chaotic patters across the region making life even more difficult.

As for writing it up. I wouldn't even know where to start and would cause the editor to have a seizure on observing my writing skills. :)

To respond to your last question; I'm thinking more or less natural disasters, but a terrorist who had enough hardware to guide a meteor or something would be a darn good adventure seed.
Click to expand...

I was thinking more along the line of a scenario from Mass Effect - Bring Down the Sky.

A colony planet was moving a large asteroid into world orbit to use as a mining/refining facility and to turn into a future highport. Terrorists hijacked the asteroid command centre just before it had arrived in orbit and kept the engines running (when they should have shut off for orbital insertion) meaning the new orbital altitude would be 0 meters.
 
Lycanorukke said:
Any binary star system with a close white dwarf (and Trav has a lot of those) is a supernova waiting to happen. Just a matter of timescale.
Click to expand...

Well a nova anyways. Not quite on the scale of a supernova, but still enough to ruin the day of everyone in the system.

It gives a real reason for being there through, as the event would seed the planets (such as there are left in the system) with pretty unique heavy elements, and accessible quantities of rarer lighter ones.

The other place to be would be in a system undergoing initial formation. The central star has ignited. The dust cloud has condensed into ~1000 asteroid to Mars sized object all in random orbits. They will spend the next million years or so colliding or being ejected from the system.

Want to have that Star Wars style piloting chase through the asteroid belt? This is the system.

Not to mention the star is still pretty variable, with some random coughs as the core settles into it's normal fusion cycle.
 
Lycanorukke; if you like, I can write it up for you so you can submit it to Mongoose or JTAS. Still a pretty cool setup :)

tjoneslo; that would be something to experience, although how do you propose the players survive? :)
 
Blue Ghost said:
tjoneslo; that would be something to experience, although how do you propose the players survive? :)
Click to expand...

A nova? The shadow of a planet would be sufficient, assuming they have warning, and pay attention to them.

The system wide asteroid belt with crashing, still melted planets? The radiation from the star shouldn't generally be beyond what would be found in other systems. You just need to have a good pilot, and an accurate plot of all the system objects.
 
There was one in a manga comic that had a gravity lens act like a magnifying glass and destroyed a planet. Not sure if that's possible or not.
 
Spinward Scout said:
There was one in a manga comic that had a gravity lens act like a magnifying glass and destroyed a planet. Not sure if that's possible or not.
Click to expand...

There is also a John Ringo book which uses a series of mirrors to concentrate sunlight into a weapon. It works, but slowly.

The second law of thermodynamics states the spot of light won't be any hotter than the surface of the star. Our sun is 5,778K, which is hot enough to melt rock or most starship hulls, but not enough energy to vaporized things like a real weapon might.
 
tjoneslo said:
The second law of thermodynamics states the spot of light won't be any hotter than the surface of the star. Our sun is 5,778K, which is hot enough to melt rock or most starship hulls, but not enough energy to vaporized things like a real weapon might.
Click to expand...

And that's one of the many reasons this board is awesome. Thanks!
 
Spinward Scout said:
I'd hate to be refueling at a Brown Dwarf Gas Giant (or anywhere in the vicinity) when it finally picks up enough mass to become a star.
Click to expand...

The flaw there is thinking of that as an instantaneous event in time. It would be a very very gradual process as this source of mass slowly seeps into the atmosphere, the gravity slowly contracts the brown dwarf until the very core of it starts to fuse, then years as the heat generated slowly makes its way up into the upper atmosphere, disapating for eons into planetary weather until finally slowly beginning to radiate into the solar system.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

K
IMTU: Single System Traveller
Replies
4
Views
2K
mike wightman
mike wightman
Back
Top