Temporary jump blocking?

[Trent]

Is there anything that could make it impossible to jump into or out of a system temporarily? I was wondering if maybe a system orbited some sort of gravitic point source, like a big black hole, in a cometary orbit could the orbit, at closest approach, make it impossible to jump in or out for a month or so, but leave the system jumpable most of the time?

Would that be traveller canon or just BS?

 

[mike wightman]

Well there are very high tech jump dampeners and jump projectors so the mechanism exists to prevent jump entry, so you could have an ancient artefact that blocks traffic to and from a system periodically - the powers that be would surely be investigating that one.

Then there are the various regions where ships disappear...

 

[robject]

Is there anything that could make it impossible to jump into or out of a system temporarily? I was wondering if maybe a system orbited some sort of gravitic point source, like a big black hole, in a cometary orbit could the orbit, at closest approach, make it impossible to jump in or out for a month or so, but leave the system jumpable most of the time?

Would that be traveller canon or just BS?

Mike's suggestions are groovy, but yours may be possible, if that gravitic source is at just the right distance. Tricky, but handy if you've got a story plot in mind.

 

[far-trader]

Well, I'm no expert on jump physics (who is, even the best scientists of the Imperium don't really understand it*) but it would have to be something other than gravity. Mass (implied by gravity) would simply mean you enter or leave jumpspace further away (or misjump). So a gravitic point source wouldn't cut it in my take.

I'd probably go with a "cloud" of some mystery exotic matter that occludes jumpspace with little or no effect on normal space. So all jumps into or out of the "cloud" are misjumps. It would probably be a rip-effect. An open tear in jumpspace leaking the strange physics of it into normal space. With the most obvious effect being jumpdrives don't work right. It could be drifting, or cyclically opening and closing. It could be natural, accidental, or purposeful. Maybe even related to Grandfather's pocket universes.

* which means you can pretty much make stuff up

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Gravi-Tachyon Beams?

Perhaps disrupting the N/J Interface with Tachyon Particle Weapons, charging the ships interface zone with a spray of Tps to throw the Starship's safety systems in to Panic Mode cause an Emergency Shutdown?

 

[Trent]

Well, I'm just looking for an excuse to have a system isloated for about a month or so, and I was thinking that if it hard a cometary orbit around a large black hole it might be unjumpable for a time while at close approach.

It's just for a scenario at a convention that would be better with the system isloated.

 

[Icosahedron]

Off at a tangent, but would a temporary interdiction work?

 

[Gadrin]

Is there anything that could make it impossible to jump into or out of a system temporarily? I was wondering if maybe a system orbited some sort of gravitic point source, like a big black hole, in a cometary orbit could the orbit, at closest approach, make it impossible to jump in or out for a month or so, but leave the system jumpable most of the time?

Would that be traveller canon or just BS?

Probably BS unless you're Marc Miller or one of the original braintrust, whose ideas always get the "Thumbs up" from the crowd.

In the GURPS Interstellar Wars, the Suerrat race are experts with Gravity and Contra-Gravity within the setting, so forward time ahead to say the 1100's and I have them on a Secret Research Center in the Marches developing gravity-ripple comms (GURPS Ultra Tech offers gravity ripple comms which I'm familiar with around TTL-15 or so). My reasoning (which should send you running in horror) is that since gravity can influence ships in jump-space, it's also a way to communicate with them -- so far just one way (normal space to jump-space). As a side-effect the signals also confuse the jump enough that if not compensated for, the ship precipitates out of jump, as it's fooled into thinking there's a planet or other large enough mass out there. I have a high-tech pirate scenario that I'm developing.

So basically if these devices are available and feasible someone could simply "beam the ship" trying to jump with a gravity comm (my idea is they're like Meson Comms) and its sensors don't allow the jump to take place, and keep it local.

YMMV


>

 

[Fritz_Brown]

I have taken this a step further with a pulsar that actually disrupts all jump in an expanding sphere. It's powerful enough to cause a "long night" for several sectors. You might take that down a few notches and only make it powerful enough to disrupt a few parsecs....

 

[far-trader]

I have taken this a step further with a pulsar that actually disrupts all jump in an expanding sphere. It's powerful enough to cause a "long night" for several sectors. You might take that down a few notches and only make it powerful enough to disrupt a few parsecs....

Or maybe even a man-made experimental weapon pulsar like effect (or natural odd solar activity) limited to maybe half a parsec before it fades past the threshold of disrupting jump? At light speed propagation that would put it behind a wall for several months.

Too close to the Maghiz? Exactly the Maghiz?

 

[GypsyComet]

If the concept of Jump Shadows works for you, a system could be somewhat blocked from a particular direction *very* occasionally by either being a far binary system or only being reachable from a far binary. The far companion orbits into line between the two primaries' systems and causes just enough of a shadow that a second jump is required after some maneuver. Make this far binary a tough place to acquire fuel in and you get your month easily.

It's only going to happen *once* though, since the four thousand years it will take to come into alignment again will also have seen the two primaries move...

 

[Commander Truestar]

Looking at this idea, it has to be turned on its head to a level.
That is because using jump inhibiting or jump dispersion tech, if developed, would have to be at the jump-initiation point....not in the isolated system.
The orig poster wants to isolate a system from jump arrivals...not from jump departures.

In most cases, in order to do this you not only have to develop a jump inhibiting technology but then have to deploy it to prevent ships jumping for that system. So you'd have to find every jump initiation point within J-6 and inhibit any jump "aimed" at that system.

On the arrival end, some posters have suggested a "jump dispersion field". But that would have the effect of either forcing ships in jump to stop in that system(exactly the opposite intent) or cause a large scale of mis-jumps for ships in jump to this system or passing it to other local systems(within a parsec).

So in a universe with communications at the speed of travel, you send out word of isolation and then activate the dispersion field. You hope that there are no ships in transit that did not get the word and hope that all ships intending to come to, or near, the area of effect will likely misjump.

Given the sheer numbers of ships that might likely misjump in a well traveled system, such devices are not likely to be usable unless as an act of war, and then by transporting the device to an enemy system and activating it(a la Star Trigger).

Marc

 

[atpollard]

Well, I'm just looking for an excuse to have a system isloated for about a month or so, and I was thinking that if it hard a cometary orbit around a large black hole it might be unjumpable for a time while at close approach.

It's just for a scenario at a convention that would be better with the system isloated.

Rather than an object in real space influencing ships in jumpspace (like orbiting the black hole), what about an object/effect/distortion in jumpspace that masks that portion of normal space.

The mystery would remain unexplainable from a search of normal space. Only a lab ship performing repeated microjumps and 'scanning' jumpspace would find the "object" blocking the entrance to/exit from jumpspace.