"space highway" from Starrigger

[Blue Ghost]

For those of you who've read the Starrigger series by John DeChancie, what do you think about an interstellar roadway network? Some highway that for intents and purposes, operates like a normal multilane highway system in any nation here on Earth, complete with gravity and perhaps life support, connecting various systems, or perhaps even worlds by way of some form of teleportation "on ramp" and "off ramp" system.

Thoughts?

 

[flykiller]

reminds me of the transport system in "they live".

 

[Blue Ghost]

I never read nor seen "they live", but Starrigger is an interesting trilogy dealing with a highway built by an extremely advanced race as a very inexpensive and efficient means of connecting systems and worlds. And the entire network is not fully explored. I can't recall if it's intergalactic or not in the book.

The stories themselves are exceptionally well written, but somewhat and ever so marginally predictable.

Anyway, I bring it up because it strikes me as a very interesting ATU, and I was wondering if anyone else had read the series or had thoughts on it in relation to a Traveller gaming application.

 

[flykiller]

oh, how did I forget, also reminds me of c. j. cherryh's gate of ivrel, well of shiuan, and fires of azeroth.

I never read nor seen "they live"

"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum." $5 on amazon, or wherever else.

thoughts on it in relation to a Traveller gaming application.

previous threads on "what is traveller" generally reached the conclusion that traveller is mostly 1) jump and somewhat 2) the imperium. take away the imperium and "traveller" starts looking plain vanilla generic template, and take away jump and there's not much left. if this highway exists then jump goes away, and if the highway is freely available then the imperium goes away.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

This sounds like the highway system in the Dragonstar (D&D 3.0) space opera campaign Fantasy Flight Games came out with. An actual highway of some length with on and off-ramps to the rest of a regional capital. At the end of the highway road segment was a very large StarGate, which teleported/transported you to the next road segment which is the next regional capital. You did not have to wait or anything, just keep driving at the posted speed...

 

[shadowlord]

You could also take the approach used in either the Jack Campbell's "Lost Fleet" series or the Kris Longknife series. In Lost fleet the Highway was discovered and was alien in construction. You just sent you destination to the terminus and entered and was deleivered to your destination's system ( astrogation roll?) you still need a jump drive ( not clearly defined to use). there were also naturally occurring jump points in system which you could to transit between systems. The Aliens whoever we still alive and could change your destination without warning and even blow the terminus up remotely.
In the longknife series there are naturally occurring jump points but these were determined to part of a long deceased alien races transport system. As the humans explored they discovered what was called fuzzy jump points. These were supposedly lost/underused jump points.

 

[aramis]

Doohan and Stirling's Flight Commander series used a keyhole drive to access hyperspace strings; there was travel time along the strings, and you could drop in/out only at specific points, but a given jump line might connect several dozen systems. They were not, however, constructed; the warp lines were naturally occurring.

 

[kilemall]

This theory is probably the superhighway you are looking for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnikov_tube

Issue though is in order to maintain such megastructures, you will have to have a very stable government or fiscal/corporate/postal union of some sort. Or at least all parties are horrified at the concept of destroying them or making malicious versions of the technology.

Example, if there doesn't have to be a 'gate' or other mechanism in place to enable the tube at the destination, an empire could have a 'tube gun' that could be firing near-c meteor swarms onto facilities or planets from 3000 light years away.

Heh, such a technology certainly could explain large swaths of 'no intelligent life' and high asteroid belt formation in galactic regions.

 

[kilemall]

Doohan and Stirling's Flight Commander series used a keyhole drive to access hyperspace strings; there was travel time along the strings, and you could drop in/out only at specific points, but a given jump line might connect several dozen systems. They were not, however, constructed; the warp lines were naturally occurring.

The OP could go Forever War with the collapsar-to-collapsar transit, although not sure how much Traveller story/plotline would be functional with the time dilation/generational changes per trip.

 

[savage]

Haven't read star rigger. But there is also slipstream from Andromeda, Hyperspace from B5. I don't see space highways as being a good fit for Traveller even if there a worm hole approach.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Interesting thoughts.

I think in the third book of the Starrigger series starships and starflight without the highway are addressed. In Traveller-speak there are still starships with "jump drives" or "hyper drives" or whatever you want to call it, but travel between stars just seems easier with the highway network.

As for the tube-gun ... yeah, that's something akin to "jump torpedoes". It's a plausible scary tech, but one wonders how practical it is. It might make for a good adventure seed for an ATU scenario to address.