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Going Interstellar for the Fan on a Budget
Going Interstellar for the Fan on a Budget
#1
(Posting in installments stuff that will eventually end up in the Gazetteer, posted here for commentary and flan. New installments will be posted as my addled brain comes up with them.)

Tired of the glories of the Solar System? Or maybe you want to really go where no one's gone before? Either way, the only solution is to pack up your bags, fly past the Cochrane Line and head for the stars. Thanks to handwavium, interstellar flight is within the reach of the dedicated fan, but to do it and then successfully come back to gloat about it requires not just dedication, but careful planning.
1.0: A Short History of Interstellar Flight
The majority of us have dreamed about interstellar flight since we first got hooked on science fiction. We dream about zipping through the stars on warp drive, blasting away into hyperspace, etc. The idea of being able to go to the stars and back within our lifetimes is just as much part of Fandom as the general idea of spaceflight. We want it with a burning passion.
When fen first started to filter out into space in '07, one of the first things tried was faster-than-light travel. All of the early attempts to engage warp speed or jump to hyperspace failed; nowadays we know why, but at the time the First Fen figured it was a limitation on the 'wave. So instead of immediately leaving for the stars they started building in the Solar System, leading to the creation of Fenspace as we know it.
It was a couple of years later, when the Trekkies and the Warsies really started moving out in force, that we finally figured out 'wavetech FTL. It was a team of Trekkie mad scientists and their ship (the Phoenix, naturally) who stumbled over the secret. They'd been on a Starfleet research mission to Sedna when they realized that they were moving a hell of a lot faster once they'd crossed Pluto's orbit. A few experiments later and they realized that about 40 astronomical units (5,983,920,000 km) away from the sun, their drive speeds shot up, way up. Crossing the 40 AU line made all that speed vanish, pulling the ship back down to it's top-rated velocity of 6% lightspeed.
Having proved that it could be done, the Trekkies then set out to make a serious interstellar voyage. The Trekkies aimed Phoenix at Proxima Centauri and opened up the throttles. Three and a half days later, they were there. Not that there was much in orbiting Proxima of interest, but hey. They spent a week surveying, turned right around and came back to acclaim from the entirety of Fenspace.
The Phoenix expedition was only the beginning. While Fenspace didn't have - still doesn't, really - the resources and manpower necessary to do a proper exploration of the nearby stars, small Lewis & Clark-style missions have hit many of the closest promising targets. The Phoenix went back to the Centauri trisystem, the Explain Star explored the Tau Ceti and Epsilon Indi systems, the Juraiians sent one of their wooden boats to Sigma Draconis, and so on. Even with this activity, there's still a hell of a lot of stars nearby for the enterprising fan to explore for the first time.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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Re: Going Interstellar for the Fan on a Budget
#2
looks good, maybe post a note about the Hades research station.
Oh and this hasn't been discused but I figure I might as well bring it up, any objetions to moving the limit to around 32 AU? That way something at the L3 point of pluto would swing in and out of the Limit at 2012, and I like that position for Hades station. I only figured out how much it was of by when I looked up plutos current position, before this I was using the semi-major axsis of 39.4 AU as a base distane mesurment.
We can always claim that the limit is not a hard limit but instead stretches for several AU and that some engines are able to go superliminal deeper inside the limit than others. (And that the best so far managed has been at 32 AU, the next best was at 37 or so AU.
Then again we could keep it at 40 AU and I could just move Hades station. I am really torn about this, I don't want to move the limit inward and I don't want to move the station. Any sugestions? Prefferences?
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
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Re: Going Interstellar for the Fan on a Budget
#3
Problems with moving the limit: We won't be recalculating top speeds (too much work) so the amount of time it takes to clear the limit drops by a fifth.
Problems with moving the station: Not as cool as being able to use the Pluto L2 point.
Problems with somewhat variable limit: Err... don't see any, and it is pretty in-theme.
(EDIT because I hadn't read the station description. Oops.)
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Re: Going Interstellar for the Fan on a Budget
#4
2.0: FTL Basics
The thing you need to know about interstellar travel is that it takes forever to do. Given that a lightweight vehicle can make the Earth-Mars run in less than six hours even during opposition, a lot of fen don't realize that making a jump outside the Solar System is a very long haul.
Part of that is the Limit. Cochrane's Line, whatever you want to call it, it's the boundary inside of which FTL is - for now - impossible. Nobody's entirely sure why this is, but the best theory so far says that it's the sun's gravity that keeps the 'wave engines from forming a proper gravity warp in which the normal laws of physics take a hike. The Limit doesn't have a sharply defined "line," instead being a fuzzy zone between 35 and 40 AU out. The exact point at which FTL becomes possible varies depending on drive design, solar activity and a million other little variables. For simplicity's sake, just figure that getting 40 AU out is the minimum.
(An important thing to note for interstellar travel is that every star has a different Limit. The Limit around Sol is perfectly spherical, whereas the Limit around Alpha Centauri is more like a giant ameboa 30 AU by almost 90 AU across, or the Limit around a dwarf star like Proxima Centauri is only 5 AU. The Limit around a star like Rigel might be somewhere around 100 to 500 AU, and so it goes.)
Once you're over the Limit, you're home free, right? Not exactly. It turns out that there's a ceiling on FTL travel. Much like nobody's ever managed to get a speed drive to exceed 25% lightspeed inside the Limit, outside the Limit nobody's managed to exceed a top speed of 500c, or five hundred times the speed of light. Now that's nothing to sneeze at, 500c is a hell of a lot faster than any mundane scientist would've ever expected us to travel, but at the same time it's tiny compared to the scale of the galaxy. For example, if you wanted to go to the galactic core, at 500c it'd take you 50 years of nonstop travel to get there.
At least one thing seems to be working in our favor: the mass/speed curve for FTL travel is flat. So instead of larger=slower like in STL travel, everybody can move FTL at the same speed. This is useful to know when planning an interstellar expedition because while a large ship may take longer getting to the Limit, it'll spend the same amount of time in FTL as a smaller ship.
Navigating in interstellar travel is a little tricky. You can't just point your ship at the star and hope for the best. Everything in the galaxy is moving, and that point of light you see doesn't mark where the star is, it marks where the star was however many years ago. Thankfully, most stars don't move that fast, and a half-decent computer armed with shareware science programs can figure out where a particular star's going to be at any point. This is one of those "forewarned is forearmed" situations; get a navigational program built for FTL work off the internet before you start out, otherwise you might end up in the middle of a whole lot of nothing.
2.1: Destination Table
Here's a quick table showing 30 nearby targets of interest and the rough travel time.
Alpha Centauri: 3.21 days
Barnard's Star: 4.34 days
Wolf 359: 5.70 days
Sirius: 6.28 days
Epsilon Eridani: 7.67 days
Procyon: 8.33 days
61 Cygni: 8.35 days
Epsilon Indi: 8.64 days
Tau Ceti: 8.69 days
Luyten's Star: 9.05 days
AX Microscopii: 9.40 days
Omicron (2) Eridani: 12.02 days
70 Ophiuichi: 12.10 days
Altair: 12.25 days
Sigma Draconis: 13.74 days
Eta Cassiopeiae: 14.18 days
36 Ophiuichi: 14.22 days
82 Eridani: 14.44 days
Delta Pavonis: 14.55 days
Xi Bootis: 15.96 days
Fomalhaut: 18.34 days
61 Virginis: 20.31 days
41 Arae: 20.96 days
Beta Coma Berenices: 21.84 days
Alpha Mensae: 24.18 days
Arcturus: 26.81 days
Zeta Reticuli: 28.85 days
47 Ursae Majoris: 33.53 days
Nu (2) Lupi: 34.70 days
51 Pegasi: 36.60 days---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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Re: Going Interstellar for the Fan on a Budget
#5
Quote:
Oh and this hasn't been discused but I figure I might as well bring it up, any objetions to moving the limit to around 32 AU? That way something at the L3 point of pluto would swing in and out of the Limit at 2012, and I like that position for Hades station. I only figured out how much it was of by when I looked up plutos current position, before this I was using the semi-major axsis of 39.4 AU as a base distane mesurment.
We can always claim that the limit is not a hard limit but instead stretches for several AU and that some engines are able to go superliminal deeper inside the limit than others. (And that the best so far managed has been at 32 AU, the next best was at 37 or so AU.
Then again we could keep it at 40 AU and I could just move Hades station. I am really torn about this, I don't want to move the limit inward and I don't want to move the station. Any sugestions? Prefferences?

How about making the limit a geometric variable based on mass of the ship in realation to the mass of the nearest star.
This would give the larger and slower ships a bonus due to their size.
Mind you if you want a ship with a "jump" limit sun side of the belt it would have to have the mass equivalent of Jupiter and Saturn, or more. I'd say a ship with a mass equivalent of Luna (the moon, not the catgirl) should be able to break lume just outside of the orbit of Neptune.
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Re: Going Interstellar for the Fan on a Budget
#6
Quote:
How about making the limit a geometric variable based on mass of the ship in realation to the mass of the nearest star.
Honestly I prefer a Limit that's based on factors completely external to the ship. That way all things are equal when it comes to travel over the Limit.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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Re: Going Interstellar for the Fan on a Budget
#7
Quote:
Oh and this hasn't been discused but I figure I might as well bring it up, any objetions to moving the limit to around 32 AU?
I pegged the original Limit there to have Pluto sometimes inside and sometimes outside. I don't see any major problem changing the exact value (it's an approximation anyway).
I don't like the idea of different ships behaving differently with regard to the Limit (unless there's a good story to it of course), but different stars having different limits makes sense.
The upper speed seems to be about right. Although some ships would have a point-to-point hop ability, so they should have limits that keep them from moving all that far or all that often, keeping them within the restrictions - they can jump one or two light years every day or so, for example.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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