Based on the discovery of Tannhauser Gate in the wake of my Wolf 259 entry...
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Jump Gates
An early attempt of recreating the handwavium technologies that make up the Tannhauser Gate Stargate lead to the creation of the Jump Gates.
Being funded by just about everyone in Fenspace interested in these Gates, there was a lot of trouble getting a shape to build them. After a large amount of haggling it was decided to build a 4 kilometer diameter ring with four struts intersecting it as a sort of guidance system. Some Fen see a resemblance to the Acceleration Gates of 'X3: Terran Conflict'.
However the handwavium based circuicy contains a quirk that quickly became apparent after activating it the first time.
Without a station on the other end, the wormhole only became active for a time measured in Plank Time, while consuming an extreme amount of energy.
For testing purposes another station was established in Alpha Centauri A and the wormhole activated for a second time. This time the wormhole established for a second before becoming unstable and nearly destroying both Gate structures.
A reason was quickly found. The gates needed to be placed in a gravitationally stable position in or near a Lagrange Point of a planet to create a gravimetric anchor.
Moving to the Sol side to the L4 of the Jupiter-Sol gravity system and the other end into the L4 between Alpha Centauri and Epimetheus, the experiment was repeated, leading to a stable wormhole.
Again problems arouse. The wormhole could not be disengaged, neither could it be moved or the Jump Gate removed without destroying both the Gate and the wormhole.
As such the Earth Pandora Jump Gate remains a permanent fixture and links Sol to Alpha Centauri. Later it was seen as a good idea to keep them open, as they allow faster trafic and permanent comminication between systems.
Known Quirks:
'Only so many': Depending on the size of the Star and the size of its largest planets only a number of Jump Gates can be places in a given system. The current max number is Sol with four Jump Gates at the L4 and L5 point of Jupiter and Saturn.
'Those Gates are not cheap, ya know?': Hard to impossible to close a wormhole again. Doing so would destroy both the wormhole and the gate on both sides.
Hmmmmm...
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Mal might have plans for the wormhole gates... or he might not. I wouldn't want to step on his toes...
Mal?
Edited for table-breakage.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Mal-3 was in the IRC when we Warringer wrote this first.
He said that he liked the idea at least... Through I don't know if hey they get a 'go ahead'. Especially with Henning planning is Mass Relays. :p
One of the ideas that came to me when I saw M Fnord's model (half remembering the stargate maps) was
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn#Nor ... ud_pattern"So
THAT'S what that is!"[link]
More seriously, I think the Fen would be better served trying to reproduce Night's Door at Zeta 1 Reticulli, but I concede that may take a long time.
As it stands, I'm forseeing at least three gate types in total:
Stargates: An artificial wormhole generating device created by an unknown civilisation, they can connect to each other and allow the movement across vast distances.
I figure these will be more useful in the long term. And they can lead to more stories.
Jumpgates: These are point-to-point versions of Stargates, opening a permanent wormhole with another gate.
How do the gate's get paired? Do they have a connection range? Would it be worth building one, transporting it to Delta Pavonis, through the Tannhauser Gate to Zeta 1 Reticulli and activating there?
Spacegates: A side benefit of work on the other gate types, they are not wormholes as such (connecting two points in space via a conduit that exists outside conventional spacetime). The spacegate opens a portal MOSTLY out of conventional spacetime, meaning the vessel that passes through has to navigate as normal. The advantage is that because of the disassociation from normal spacetime, ships can go MUCH faster (up to 5c depending on the drive). The downside is that you can't interact with normal spacetime, so you need another spacegate to bring you back to normal space.
Think the gates in Cowboy Bebop from these. I've been playing with the idea for TSIR, but couldn't get it to work.
I would say the first version of the Mass Relays could be just an external oversized drive that throws the ship across interstellar distances. Because the drive has not to move itself, the "drive to mass" ratio becomes more than one, which could allow a higher speed.
But I am not really "planning" Mass Effect Relays" at the moment, they are still a distant dream I would like to do. ^^
Additional thoughts in the Jump Gates:
I think that they are build from pure Fenspace Handwavium with a good amount of data gleamed from the Fenspace Catalogue, so they work differently from the Stargates.
And I think their connection range should be toned down to a distance of 10 ly max.
And the Mass Relays would be rather close to the Spacegates. :p
Indeed, I see the Mass Relay as a much faster (nearly instantaneous) version of a Space Gate. Probably won't happen for a hundred years or so, bare minimum.
BTW: Why only 5c? There's quite a few fen ships that are capable of greater speed than that (IIRC?) so wouldn't that be more like a step backwards than a step forward?
Quote:BTW: Why only 5c? There's quite a few fen ships that are capable of greater speed than that (IIRC?) so wouldn't that be more like a step backwards than a step forward?
I think Cobalt is talking about a Limit Break here... and, if so, I'll have to ponder it – that changes quite a few story possibilities.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
robkelk Wrote:Quote:BTW: Why only 5c? There's quite a few fen ships that are capable of greater speed than that (IIRC?) so wouldn't that be more like a step backwards than a step forward?
I think Cobalt is talking about a Limit Break here... and, if so, I'll have to ponder it – that changes quite a few story possibilities.
If there will be a first pair of "Mass Relays" one day (which still has to be considered carefully "if" and "when"), it will be most likely placed out of the Limit I think... of course some kind of "limited FTL catapult" inside the limit would be great too, but might be a different system. Or the same, depending on what we decide to do...
Let's be honest here. EVERY version of gate described here is a Limit Break in one way or another. But on a theoretical level they don't break the Limit, they get around it.
The reason I went for the relatively slow value of 5c was something of a limiter on the spacegate system. Being MOSTLY outside normal spacetime would reduce the affects of gravity (depending on your theories of Gravity) and thus allow 'waved drives the ability to go faster. However, the unusual nature of the spacetime on the other side of the spacegate restricts the speed to 5c max. And because you can't interact with normal spacetime it leaves you trapped if you can't get through another spacegate (so even without the limit I imposed, IF you made it outside the Limit and accelerated like normal it wouldn't be useful).
@CG: I think we are talking about different things.
I think so, too.
I like the idea of interstellar Jump Gates working only outside The Limit. First, that keeps the travel times between systems from dropping all the down way to "minutes." Second, there's still a reason for non-scientific stations at or near The Limit (such as Sector General or Ultima) to exist. (While the idea of putting gates on the surface of Earth and Gallifrey and running a rail line through them does have some appeal, it's not something that I think fits into Fenspace...)
In-system Spacegates... hmmmmm... how are they different from speed drives, from handwavium's point of view? (I know that's an extremely difficult question to answer.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Hm, interesting discussion. To add to it, here's some data on the stargate network:
The network is built on a partially-connected mesh topology - some nodes are connected to more than one node in the system, and the only way to figure out which nodes connect where is to reactivate the node (stargate), then poll the routing DB. Reactivating can be done remotely, but getting the DB requires jumping through the active wormhole and querying the new node in person, so to speak. The gate system include a traceroute function, which will allow anybody with the correct addresses to route a wormhole through the network, but this is an advanced function and not available to Fen explorers (for the moment). The people who built them - Space Gods, Space Bats, bug-eyed monsters, whoever - like to place them on Lagrange points for some reason Fen scientists don't quite get. Maybe it's something to do with the way gravitational forces cancel out, or maybe it's just an aesthetic reason. I think that ties in nicely with having the jumpgates balanced at outer system L4-L5 points. Jupiter and Neptune's trojan points are a bit crowded, so maybe at Saturn and Uranus?
As for spacegates, I think the need or lack thereof for them ties back into the ongoing discussion about speed and acceleration drives. As long as we've got spacecraft capable of doing between one and ten percent the speed of light in-system, the need for a spacegate is kind of limited. It's a neat idea, but unless there's heavy traffic between Earth and Pluto, it's speeding up an already speedy trip.
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
@Robkelk/Mal: Could it be that the Interwave delays in
http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... n_Fenspace are all wrong? I tried to calculate the signal delay to Nostromo and got strange values.
My calculation goes this was:
1) light needs a year for a lightyear
2) Interwave speed is 10000c
=> Interwave needs 365 days * 24 hours * 60 minutes / 10000 = 52.56 minutes per lightyear
Which doesn't fit the table at all, I am a little bit puzzled.
There's a simple explanation for that:
The table is wrong.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
I seem to remember in conversation that the rough time of an Earth-Pluto Interwave call was supposed to be about a second. This tallies with a 10,000c speed (Earth-Pluto at opposition is ~40 AU. 1 AU is ~499 Light secs. 40*499 Lsec = 19960 Lsec/10,000c = 1.996 secs one way).
Delta Pavonis is 17 hours 27 mins 14 secs away (roughly) at that speed.
Edit: The Earth-Pluto thing is on the pages abount Interwave.
Okay, somebody's going to have to double-check all of the math in that table (and the similar tables on the pages for Beta Hydri, Zeta Tucane, and other systems), and the references to the speed of the Interwave on every other FenWiki page.
Because of a family emergency, that somebody cannot be me, this week.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Ngh.
When we kicked interwave around the first time I'd swear I set it at 100,000c. That's what the tables on the wiki are calculated to. Thankfully it's an easy enough fix if we want to stick with the 10K speed, just drop a decimal point.
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Quote:When we kicked interwave around the first time I'd swear I set it at 100,000c. That's what the tables on the wiki are calculated to. Thankfully it's an easy enough fix if we want to stick with the 10K speed, just drop a decimal point.
Let's pick a number, then: 10k or 100k?
There are pros and cons for either, but the most important factor is whether anyone has a story that depends on one or the other value being the "true" one.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
I am okay both with 10k and 100k c for Interwave speed. We just should pick a number and stick with it until we decide something "new" happened and a better Interwave tech was developed.
Okay, based on an IRC poll and the lack of responses here, I'ma make a ruling. *ahem*
Interwave speeds are pegged at 10,000c from here on out. This does not effect any future developments in FTL communications, just current Interwave.
Updates to all affected wiki pages are inbound. That is all, England prevails.
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
The Iconian Gate.... because I've got that on the boil.
First mapped by the USS Enterprise in 2015, it had long been known that something was strange about the Epsilon Eridani system. The inner planet, named Arcadia, supported a Devonian biosphere with a fully developed aquatic ecosystem, with seed bearing plants having recently colonised the surface. The planet was covered in lush green forests and vast grasslands.
Only, by all rights, it shouldn't have been. Arcadia achieved in 500 million years, what too the Earth over 4 Billion.
To study this system, Starfleet Command initiated Project Genesis. Starbase Three was constructed, orbiting Epsilon Eridani b, the base being completed in [spam]. The Starfleet began quietly mapping the system, searching for evidence to explain the advanced state of life on Arcadia. Specifically, they suspected that there was another Tannhauser Gate somewhere in-system. Or had been at some stage. Initially, the Gas-giants were suspected, as Arcadia had only a single moon.
At the same time, Arcadia quickly became a popular holiday destination for the first big interplanetary cruise lines. A week's cruise on-ship, a week on planet, a week's cruise back home. It made for the perfect itinerary.
In late 2022, a group of anonymous tourists travelling by themselves discovered what appeared to be metal objects on the surface of Arcadia, just offshore in shallow water from what would later be named 'Ford Island'. Initially suspecting them to be debris dropped by tourists, or from an orbiting spacecraft, they paid them little attention, bringing the objects to Starbase Three in the hope that Starfleet might be able to find which cruise line dropped them....
Initial tests however, told a different story.
The sample of metal was much older than seven years. It matched the composition of the Tannhauser Gate and Night's Door. Radiative decay testing suggested that it had a similar construction date. It was clear that whatever Gate had been orbiting Arcadia had been of the same time as the two known gates, and had somehow been knocked out of orbit and broken up before, either before or during re-entry.
Starfleet's biggest worry, was that the remains of the gate would become a mecca for scavengers eager to loot themselves a piece of verifiable alien technology, at the expense of the Arcadian biosphere and possibly costing humanity the chance to understand more about the gates functions. The discovery was classified Top Secret and disseminated solely among high-ranking members of major factions SMoF, while they decided what would happen to the thing and how it would be approached. (Is this valid, or should it be made public like the other two?)
The gate's discoverers meanwhile, were equally keen to remain anonymous for their own safety.
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Stealing a 14km-wide gate is tough. Mining chunks of one smeared across the surface of a planet is less-so..... and not nearly as good for the planet.
The anonymous tourists.... well, it should be obvious who they are..... everyone needs a holiday (Unless anyone else wants it). And they're smart enough to know that even being suspected of holding valuable alien technology makes them a target of avaricious eyes. They really wouldn't be able to defend themselves against that kind of attack.
While the Trekkies get most of the samples from them... Mackie, who found the thing by running into it with a jet-ski, takes just enough home with him that he can try leech the ancient wavium out of it, then see what happens when he starts poking it.
Oh.... and share shards of gate-material with anyone who wants it, and who has reason to think Jet/Mackie would quietly send pieces them when she got back. (If they don't have any from the other two already, that is)
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?