On 6/28/2020 5:49 AM, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 11:26 PM Thomas Jones-Low <xxxxxx@gmail.com
> <mailto:xxxxxx@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> This is brilliant.
>
> The other thing to keep in mind is developing the Jump Drive is a difficult
> challenge. It’s only been done seven times in in the history of Charted Space.
>
>
> Not counting the Aslan! ;)
My seven count is (in no specific order): Ancients / Droyne, Vilani, Zhodani,
Vargr, Solomani, K'kree, and Hiver. There are, that I know of, three instances
of reverse engineering the jump drive: Genoee, Aslan, and one group in the
Island Cluster. Everyone else was simply given the whole kit.
I've see it argued that the Vilani, Zhodani, Vargr, and Solomani invention was
reverse engineering an Ancients device rather than true first invention. But,
unlike the Aslan, have managed to hide the evidence better.
The initial Hiver jump drive was an interesting setup. It would melt itself
into slag after a few jumps. It was only sometime later they managed to
buy/steal a more conventional, longer lasting, design.
This leave the K'kree. Has anyone really understood how their Drive actually
works?
>
> Based on the outcomes of the misjumps and a few other statements, the
> process of entering jump space is an unstable, chaotic one. You, the
> Astrogator and the computer system you are using need to know a number of
> factors to a high degree accuracy.
>
>
> Some number of ships are considered 'destroyed'. What evidence is there, I
> wonder, of that? If there is no evidence, then are they just 'missing,
> considered destroyed' or are marked 'destroyed' by virtue of some theory of jump
> science that doesn't result in verifiable outcomes...?
>
> Maybe there are aspects of jump space still not understood that would explain
> the losses (and whether they are losses - or hopped in time, space, or to a
> different reality).
>
> I haven't seen any discussion that would indicate they had forensic evidence for
> a lot of the lost ships.... it seems more likely not seeing them turn up
> anywhere means they are considered 'lost/destroyed'.
>
>
This largely depends on the circumstances. If the ship was off exploring in
uncharted space, then the ship not reappearing would accounted to "misjump or
other accident". In a civilized system you would see a jump exit flash with no
ship. That would be the sign something went horribly wrong, and some detective
work could track down.
That would make an interesting adventure. Characters are approached by Patron
looking to find the fate of a small ship. Several MCr on the line as a insurance
payout. Traffic control on a world has an unexplained jump flash with no ship
emergence. But no one knows which ship is missing or where it came from. The
Characters track the ships both forward and backwards to a secret pirate base
hidden in a deep space object between two systems.
> Factors would include the gravitational stress at the point on entrance (
> the 100D limit), exit (same as before), the stability of the field generated
> for entrance, and any known potential masses along the flight path.
>
>
> Though for jump entry, there seems to still be a lot of discussion as to whether
> the sun constitutes a 100D limit or is not relevant - it is convenient to ignore
> the sun, but its just another body in space with gravity and mass so I'm not
> sure why it would be ignored.
>
As Robert Boleyn pointed out the 1977 version of the Traveller rules includes
the sun. T5 re-affirms this by stating any object larger than your ship may
cause jump failures. The 100D limit on a Tigress-class Dreadnought is 12km.
For an extended treatise on this I refer you to GT:Far Trader, pg. 58-63 and a
discussion of the effects Jump Masking on interstellar trade.
One reason people feel they can ignore it is for most stars (GKM class main
sequence stars) the 100D limit of the star is inside the habitable zone. Make
the 100D limit on the main world and you're free to go. Even with the A and F
class main sequence stars, the time required to get to the 100D limit of the
star and the world are not that much different. A few hours with a 1G or 2G
drive. It adds a lot of calculations that makes no difference. Rather the Pilot
and Astrogator would know about the 100D limit on the star and plot a course
accordingly. But the Players don't need to be aware if that detail.
There are stars where this starts to make a huge difference. The Type II and
Type Ia / Ib giant stars. The time from the habitable zone to the 100D limit on
the star is measured in months. The fact these star's won't have habitable
planets is another discussion entirely.
>
> The use of unrefined fuel causes fluctuations in the power output of the
> BHHR, or in the density of the bubble. Which causes the jump field to
> fluctuate, and cause the misjumps. Scout and military ships avoid the
> problem simply by overbuilding the power systems and overcharging the hull
> grid.
>
>
> But not enough to use the capacitors as combat energy storage to power weapons,
> etc. though under some circumstances, if you have a fancy 'black/white' globe,
> you might be able to use that power somehow to somehow help ??? in a jump.
>
One system that explicitly mentions the Jump Capacitors is High Guard in
relation to the Black Globe generators. And you can use that power for maneuver
drive, agility, weapons, or powering the jump. But the Jump Capacitors won't
hold a charge for long (1 or 2 turns).
The only other place I've seen this discussed is in GT:Starships, which uses
GURPS Vehicles as a base, one of the most detailed vehicle design systems ever
produced. Here all of the energy weapons have large capacitors to allow reducing
the size of the main power plant, and the jump drive has it's own set of
capacitors, as does the Maneuver drive, and the Black Globe will feed the power
grid on the ship.
The only group of people I've seen interested in doing power management at this
level are Star Fleet Battles players.
>
> In some cases the misjumps cause the field to collapse. In others the
> unstable wormhole leaps off in an unexpected direction through space time.
> The reason you can’t just repeat the misjump to extend the range of a normal
> jump is the initial conditions are not known with enough accuracy to safely
> replicate. And get them a little wrong, and you end up as a spray of quarks
> at the far end.
>
>
> Could also be that inherently SOME of the things you need to know are subject to
> chaos and thus are not guaranteed to be stable enough to depend upon for
> to-the-microsecond accuracy or better and that could explain misjumps even when
> you should be able to have all the data otherwise.
>
>
> This is in fact the reason it’s so difficult to build a jump drive. The
> basic equations applied show the process won’t work. It’s not stable, and
> very dangerous.
>
>
> I wouldn't say 'won't work' or it can't exist. I'd say the drive is always
> subject to not being able to have every bit of information at the right moment.
> Usually, the lack of some small amounts of information might lead to a slightly
> bumpiness or some time variability. In other cases, some misjump effects could
> ensue. In the worst case, maybe a ship is lost.
>
In the initial stage of going from physics equations to engineering designs the
physics says creating a wormhole is unstable and unusable. Figuring out what the
initial parameter values should be requires both persistence and luck. Its not
obvious until you do a lot of math and most physicists, especially ones who are
unaware of the existing of the jump drive, will look at the equations and
conclude, no that won't work.
Operation of the jump drive is refining the values of these parameters for
existing local conditions.
> Unrefined fuel, being inherently less predictable than the refined stuff, is one
> contributing factor. Simple uncertainties of position, velocity, etc. could
> account for the others or something more in the nature of the tearing holes
> between universes may cover the chaos side of things and the error bars on some
> of the measured quantities that are inputs to the jump.
>
>
> There was a discussion earlier about aliens being amazed at the risks humans
> would take. Jump Drives are a version of that. No one who understands the
> jump space equations ever wants to fly in a ship, the margin for error is
> just too small.
>
>
> And yet, the volume of traffic around for strangely non-essential travel seems
> to suggest it can't be too bad.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 3:46 PM Jeff Zeitlin <xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
> <mailto:xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com>> wrote:
>
> I don't claim to have The Answer, but here's how I sorta reconciled all the
> various aspects and descriptions of the jump drive.
>
> First, there is textev for the following components for the Jump Drive:
>
> 1. The Drive itself. This is a big bulky piece of equipment that we know
> for sure has...
> 2. ...Jump Coils in it. There are also associated with it...
> 3. ...Zuchai Crystals, and...
> 4. ...Jump Capacitors.
> 5. There is also a "Jump grid" embedded in the hull, of which Lanthanum is
> a component. Except in some older Vargr implementations, which use
> Barium instead.
>
> We also know that 'fuel' is used in large quantities. Very large
> quantities. This 'fuel' is canonically liquid hydrogen.
>
>
>
> OK, here's my take on what happens, step by step:
>
> 0. INFORMATION: The Jump Drive's four most important components are [in no
> particular order] (a) a Big Honking Handwavium-based Reactor (BHHR),
> (b) the Zuchai Crystals, (c) the Jump Coils, which in some designs
> surround the Zuchai crystals and in others are surrounded by the
> crystals, and (d) the Jump Capacitors
>
> 1. The course is programmed into the computer. This causes some field
> and/or beam generators surrounding the Zuchai crystals to align
> themselves and set prospective power levels, and also sets a sequence of
> changes therein. If there is a jump grid, it also specifies energization
> levels and sequences for the segments of the grid.
>
> 2. When the command to jump is given, the BHHR goes into operation at its
> maximum possible rate. This causes energy to be generated.
>
> 3. Most of this energy is sent to the Capacitors for storage. The
> capacitors can take in the energy at least as fast as the BHHR can
> generate it. A comparatively small amount is diverted to the field and
> beam generators.
>
> 4. The fields and beams interact with the Zuchai crystals as described in
> the General Field Theory of Mumble and Inaudible. This generates a
> spherical field potential - not yet an actual field - around the ship.
>
> 5. If there is a jump grid, its various segments are energised per the
> computer instructions. This allows the field potential to be reshaped to
> conform more closely to the ship's surface.
>
> 6. The fully-charged capacitors discharge into the Jump Coils. This causes
> the field _potential_ to become an actual field that "opens" a "hole"
> from normal space into the non-space called jump space. The hole almost
> immediately closes, but the ship is now in jump space. The duration and
> exit point of the jump are now committed; the only thing that can change
> them is a failure of the field - which will destroy the ship.
>
> 7. The BHHR is 'stepped down' to provide a low level of energy to keep the
> field and beam generators and the jump grid energised, and thus
> maintaining the field. This prevents jump space from interacting with
> the matter of the ship, which is fatal to the matter.
>
> 8. At the appointed time, the field, which has been receiving a steady
> input of energy, "pulses" entirely out of the control of the ship. This
> opens the hole back to normal space, and when it closes (again, almost
> immediately), the ship is back in normal space. The field and beam
> generators and the jump grid de-energise, and the field and field
> potential drop to null. Jump is complete.
>
>
>
>
> Articles like my Color of Jumpspace suggest that the statement about
> commitment in 6. above may not be entirely accurate, and it says nothing
> about whether there is a hydrogen "bubble" within the field and around the
> ship (but perhaps that's a 'safety' feature, on the theory that if there's
> a field failure, _maybe_ having the hydrogen 'protecting' the ship itself
> will give the crew a chance to restore the field before jumpspace interacts
> with the hull itself...). Or maybe the jump engineer that explained it to
> me dumbed it down a bit too much, and it's oversimplified. Or something.
>
> ®Traveller is a registered trademark of
> Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2020. Use of
> the trademark in this notice and in the
> referenced materials is not intended to
> infringe or devalue the trademark.
>
> --
> Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
> Freelance Traveller
> The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
> xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com <mailto:xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com>
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> Thomas Jones-Low
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Work: xxxxxx@softstart.com
Home: xxxxxx@gmail.com
