On 16 Feb 2016 at 18:36, Bruce  Johnson wrote:

> > On Feb 16, 2016, at 10:21 AM, Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote:
> >
> > And then the Referee does one of three, er, six things:
> >
> > 1. Everyone climbs into the low berths and waits for the distress call to travel some multiple of 3.26 light years to the nearest world capable of mounting a rescue;

> A good way to keep the characters alive, out of the way and move
> everything ahead 5 or 10 years, along with the ongoing fun around
> "But you were declared dead...", "you walk into the bar and
> conversation suddenly stops....", "your bank account has been a)
> raided, b) closed, c)earned an additional few thousand credits
> interest...", "your bank wants to talk to you about some 5 years of
> mortgage payments¦."

Well, in the TU it's likely that they'll go back to the "at *least* 7
years" bit for declaring a missing person dead.

> > 3. By incredible good fortune, there's an icy body close by for refueling;
>
> Well, make `em work for it...they have to macguyver a long range sensor from some aluminum tent poles, a walkie-talkie, and some window screen :-)

Oh, *finding* it isn't hard. The hard part is mcguyvering some way to
mine and process the ice in microgravity.

We discussed this some years back and it *ain't* easy. One of Ringo's
sequels to "Through the Looking Glass" has a chapter where a starship
crew has to do this. Not fun nor easy.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com