Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
A completely hypothetical question...
A completely hypothetical question...
#1
...and I'm asking because it's been nagging at me a little for the last couple of days:

How badly would you guys kill me if I were to propose a massive retconning and overhaul of the whole Speed/Acceleration drive system and propose a drastic slowdown on travel speeds? I'm guessing that you'd kill me a lot, but I'd like to have confirmation so I can put this aside and get back to something more productive.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Reply
 
#2
It's something I understand. I mean, it suprised me when I worked out that it only takes about 5-6 hours to get to Mars from Earth. A lot of stuff is already done based on these that'll have to be changed. Consider how fast Fenspace closed down on Grovers Corners when it appeared.

Maybe more hard and fast rules about *what* can go fast, and what can't? One of the big things about speed drives is that the bigger you are, the slower you have to go, right? Big bulk carriers and asteroids are going to be outrun by smaller space-cars and buses. The convention's mentioned, but very few seem to have stuck with it. Even GnarlyCurl which is supposed to be "Helluvaslow", can do .02C. A Space Shuttle can only go about twice as fast, despite being a good deal smaller, less massive, and having as much internal space given over to it's engines.

Maybe Something like:
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Reply
 
#3
You can always throw in the 'in order to travel at high speed' option, like traveling at interstate speeds for regular cars, where it's actually somewhat more "fuel efficient" to go at 'cruising speed' (65-70) instead of 'maximum burn' (85-90). So for the important story stuff that happens, like the Grover's Corners launch, people felt it was important enough that they floored it to get there... but most of the time, we all just kinda lope along for the day to day stuff.
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
Reply
 
#4
Quote:A lot of stuff is already done based on these that'll have to be changed.

Which is why this is all strictly hypothetical unless the consensus changes. I've made fiat rulings before, but this is way too big for me to fiat.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Reply
 
#5
Well, this won't effect me a whole lot either way. Most of my stuff is still unwritten and just planned out and can easily be adjusted.

This is something we talked about in IRC. Even .01% of light speed is amazingly fast. And you pointed out then that the colonization patterns make more sense with slower drives.

But I'm not the one that's going to have to rewrite various stories or wiki entries if things change, so I really don't feel right coming out on this either way. Especially considering how new I am to the world.
Reply
 
#6
Maybe if somebody was to draw a few size/speed curves, we might have a better idea of how fast these things are supposed to be able to go. (I have a meeting in less than an hour, so if I'm drawing these curves, it'll be this evening.)

As for dropping the speeds, I wouldn't have to retcon much in http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... roops(%3F)]Entertaining the Troops (?) if the speeds were cut by half, but slower than that might require a massive re-write...
--
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
Reply
 
#7
It's all been pretty much arbitrary, up to now, except for one or two hard-n-fast limits.

Maybe something a little more firm is appropriate.

But I'd like to at least hear what Mal has in mind before we go off into wild speculation.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Reply
 
#8
Remass drives are naturally limited by the amount of mass and energy they can direct through their exhaust nozzles. (When I finally get around to writing it, my launch into space will be driven by a Solid Handwavium-based power supply so obscenely powerful that it can lift a 40' ISO container and assorted contents (over 3.8 tonnes, pre-'wave) with a "remass" of light, but once I reach L3 (after braking to stop at L3), the core Solid implodes like Doug played Who Made Who at it, taking the rest of the power supply with it. If I ever manage to reproduce the power supply, it will mysteriously fail unless it's powering a photon-remass drive and nothing else.)

For Speed drives and more exotic Acceleration drives, perhaps instead of a hard "top speed", above a certain speed/acceleration, energy consumption increases exponentially in relation to the rate, with both the "top efficient rate" and the terms of the fuel-consumption equation above that point being determined, at least in part, by the mass of the vessel. (In case it isn't obvious, this is an extension of JFerio's idea.) (There must be a clearer way of phrasing that, but I seem to have an abnormally low maximum cognitive power today and strained my brain just coming up with it in the first place.)
Reply
 
#9
Okay, here's the retcon in two parts, one that's kinda controversial and one that's really controversial.

First part: We drop the difference between Speed and Acceleration Drives entirely. All engines "accelerate" to move in a straight line. The engines we normally call "speed drives" still have their special space-opera characteristics - reactionless, gleefully ignoring the laws of inertia, stymied by gravity wells, etc. - but they still thrust to get anywhere. This would, IMO, remove an arbitrary distinction between engines that nobody pays any attention to anyway.

Second part: The slowdown. We slow down maximum travel velocities from a ceiling of 20% light speed to (roughly) a band between 0.02% and 2% light speed. The following table I put together to give you a rough idea of the band, in terms of (speculative) boosting power & their times from Earth to Jupiter during opposition:

Vehicle Type Boost (in Gs) Earth-Jupiter Time
-------------------------------------------------------------
RH Asteroid 0.15 18 days 18 hrs

Freighter 0.33 12 days 15 hrs

Standard Fencar 0.5 10 days 6 hrs

Fast Fencar 1.5 5 days 22 hrs

Epsilon Blade 6 2 days 23 hrs

Ptichka 10 2 days 7 hrs

Ga-15 25 1 day 11 hrs

Magnificent Midnight 35 1 day 5 hrs

This wouldn't affect interstellar speeds (still a flat 500c) or interwave communications, of course.

Rationalization: It occurred to me that given the top velocity curve we've got now, the pattern of settlement doesn't make that much sense. Think about it; we've got lots of people settling in cislunar space, not quite as many people around Mars and Venus, about half that in Jupiter and almost nobody past that. If the entire solar system is accessible with 24 hours of flight from Earth, the settlements should be way more diffuse than they actually are. So instead of raising the bridge & screwing up the entire setting, we lower the river and increase travel times.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Reply
 
#10
I have no problems with this.

On the other hand, I've not been one of the more prolific writers in this setting.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Reply
 
#11
Lower the river? sounds like a DAM fine solution.... Just as long as it doesnt break
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-

NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
Reply
 
#12
I always thought the reason for that was the size of fenships. Sure you can go someplace fast, but you can't really take that much with you. The largest things taking off from earth (Unreal estate aside), are usually waved airliners, and such... and not really that many of them. It's still a 6 hour journey to Mars, on average... add in take off and landing and you've got the best part of half a day before you do anything there. Most fen only have the average fencar/bus right?... they can't carry much more than a tent with them. Most fen probably don't have anything but the credits in their pocket to buy passage...

Maybe it's not limited by speed, colonisation is limited by the carrying capacity of most space vehicles. Youre average car can't carry much more than a weeks food and a tent.

Also, travelling to Mars in a fencar is a special kind of hell, if it's going to take 60 hours in conditions that'd make an Apollo astronaut feel claustrophic.

I also quite like the concept of Dublin to Mars being a similar journey time as Dublin to Cork. It feels like *everyone* can go for a visit, but most cars can't carry enough to allow them to stay.

Ships with actual cargo capacity are much rarer. Even you average aircraft won't carry more than fifty tonnes. And since a good chunk of that will have to be taken up with food, water, air and provisions, you're seriously limiting the amount you can carry with you. It takes a lot of cargo runs to keep a colony supported. Take the time to load, takeoff, fly, land unload, refuel into the equation, you're going to be lucky to be making 1 return trip in a day. Out to Jupiter and beyond, it starts becoming every couple of days.

And it starts getting expensive too. When a good deal of your food and water and matériel have to be shipped all the way up from Earth, how much money/barter does that cost? It's still cheaper and easier to get stuff into cislunar space, than it is to get things further out. And most people aren't that adventurous... cislunar space is still pretty safe, and still pretty easy to get back to Earth.

At least, that's my attempt at justification.. I haven't really been here that long

I also quite like the distinction between acceleration and speed drives.... though that's probably only because I tried to use it.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Reply
 
#13
I always thought "Speed Drive" was shorthand for "drive causing the 'Space is a Drag' quirk". Vessels with Speed Drives will start rapidly decelerating, as though in contact with air, water, or a surface, if they lose power or deliberately cut the engines. In fact, they are always subject to that drag, which effectively puts an upper limit on their speed.

Or at least, that's how I've always thought of it. Space Friction is a central trope of Space Opera, after all.
Reply
 
#14
I tend to agree with Dartz for the reasons we have the population distribution we do. I dug up the http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/topic/1665]old Gazetteer thread to look at the travel times table you did. In my opinion, the fencar speed limit of 0.1c makes it more likely for Fen to get up and go to the various places.

OK, now for some specific comments.

Part the first: In principle I see nothing wrong with going all acceleration, but it does limit some options (I mentioned 'side-slip' dodging as part of the capabilities of things like KKVs, for example). I like the Space Friction idea Proginoskes' pointed to for this however.

Part the second: Like I said above, the 0.1c fencar limit makes it more likely for Fen to launch and thus have a reason to stay up. That also plays a part in why the 'Danelaw is so paranoid about the stuff, given its capabilities. Being able to move some larger items quickly also helps from a dramatic standpoint in my opinion.

Sorry, but as it stands I'd vote against it.

That said, being a bit more firm with the speed limits may be a better way to deal with it. Dartz's suggestion about weight-to-speed values got me thinking.

As a suggestion how about flattening the curve out at both ends, with a fairly sharp drop in the middle?

Essentially, without Dramatic Necessity in the way (see below), between about 10 and 200 tonnes mass there is a steep drop in speed from about 0.1c to to about 0.001c. Less than 10 tonnes can get up to 0.2c, but its very hard to do. Over 200 tonnes and the max speed lowers at about 0.00001c per 100 tones.

Dramatic Necessity in this case can be on the positive side things like the craft being specifically built for high speed like a fighter or supercar/bike or speedboat, the engine being specially made for extra power, or some story reason like overloading the engine. Or on the negative side be things like ill repaired or inadequate systems, undersized engines, too much cargo, quirks that are tricky to fulfil limiting the speed, etc...

All the above is my opinion.
Reply
 
#15
I actually like the chart, but then, for some reason I'd always pegged that a freighter like Starbug 1 would be taking several days to get to Jupiter from Earth... which is part of why Jeph built himself the thing in the first place. He knew it would take a while to get back and forth, and wanted to make sure his ride was at least a reasonably comfortable way to have cabin fever. Tongue
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
Reply
 
#16
M Fnord Wrote:First part: We drop the difference between Speed and Acceleration Drives entirely. All engines "accelerate" to move in a straight line. The engines we normally call "speed drives" still have their special space-opera characteristics - reactionless, gleefully ignoring the laws of inertia, stymied by gravity wells, etc. - but they still thrust to get anywhere. This would, IMO, remove an arbitrary distinction between engines that nobody pays any attention to anyway.

I can live with this.

I can also see Noah setting up a gravtech launcher near Stellvia - get the first x amount of acceleration all at once (value of x decreases as your vehicle's mass increases or your courage decreases), for the low low price of... we'll figure something out.

M Fnord Wrote:Second part: The slowdown. We slow down maximum travel velocities from a ceiling of 20% light speed to (roughly) a band between 0.02% and 2% light speed.

Massive re-write time, if this goes ahead... including finding something else for Avril Arrow to do altogether.

Dartz Wrote:I always thought the reason for that was the size of fenships. Sure you can go someplace fast, but you can't really take that much with you. The largest things taking off from earth (Unreal estate aside), are usually waved airliners, and such... and not really that many of them. It's still a 6 hour journey to Mars, on average... add in take off and landing and you've got the best part of half a day before you do anything there. Most fen only have the average fencar/bus right?... they can't carry much more than a tent with them. Most fen probably don't have anything but the credits in their pocket to buy passage...

Maybe it's not limited by speed, colonisation is limited by the carrying capacity of most space vehicles. Youre average car can't carry much more than a weeks food and a tent.

Also, travelling to Mars in a fencar is a special kind of hell, if it's going to take 60 hours in conditions that'd make an Apollo astronaut feel claustrophic.

I think Dartz has the right of it here. Yes, the current setup means you can make it to Mars and back in a day, if you aren't doing anything else while you're there. But you aren't taking anything larger than a bag of groceries with you. If you want to take some colonization gear, you're taking a slower, larger (and more expensive to build) ship. If the average Fan can move into a house in Kandor City today, or move into a house in Helium next week, which is he going to have the patience to do?

(Yes, there will be a few who say "move into a house in Serenity Valley next fortnight", but they're the pioneers - spiritual descendants of the folks who took Conestoga wagons down the Great Appalachian Valley.)
--
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
Reply
 
#17
I'd been assuming that Space Friction came part and parcel with the concept of a Speed-Drive, and was part of what limited their speed. (Heliosphere, atmosphere, etc). When you turn it on, your speed increases fas some function of the output power. When you turn it off, you stop.

I also sort of figured it that the difference between the speed and acceleration drives, was how/when they used the majority of their fuel. Speed drives burn fuel as they are cruising, while acceleration drives burn fuel to accelerate, turn off and coast, then burn again to decelerate. One idea I'd been mucking with based on this, is a stealth ship that uses an acceleration drive to increase it's speed, then cuts it's engines and coasts to minimise it's energy and heat signatures. Whereas a speed drive is always on, and lights up the sky like a Christmas tree (relatively).

Acceleration drives are more efficient, the longer the coasting time can be (Provided you're not some poor sod who has a quirk that requires you to run your engines constantly) . Speed drives are more efficient for shorter journeys. Acceleration drives are also capable of achieving higher speeds than speed drives, but need a massive amount of fuel to do it.

At least, that's based on some stuff I'm doing for the Ciara. That's how they make their way in Fenspace. They're faster than a speed-drive equipped ship of similar size and load carrying capability, and so can deliver fresh foodstuffs from Earth out as far Mars/Venus. While that pays good money, the fuel they burn to accelerate to those speeds costs nearly as much to buy.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Reply
 
#18
Hm. Well, that's about the reaction I expected.

The main reason I floated this idea (aside from perverse impulse to meddle where I shouldn't) is that the way we zip around the solar system kind of robs it of scale, if that makes sense. It's like we've jumped from paddling around in Neolithic canoes all the way up to jet-setting in 747s without any of the intervening steps. Getting to Mars in four hours, or even eight hours feels like cheating, 'cause we're all just too frickin' impatient to handle a couple days' trip. Part of the ain't-it-neat appeal of space is the fact that it's very large, and in a way I think treating it like a drive from Dublin to Cork (or Denver to Albuquerque, or Toronto to Montreal, or whatever) kind of robs the whole experience of majesty. I know this is a minority opinion though, and I'll abide by the consensus.

Anyway, throwing out another table, since I've been crunching numbers most of the evening:

Table: Comparison of an acceleration of 2500 m/s (255G) vs. flat speed of .1c
(NOTE: All distances are from Earth to target at opposition, not mean distance.)

Earth to Target Distance (km) Time (accel) Time (speed)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mercury 219,281,438 5.20 hours 2.03 hours

Venus 264,041,592 5.71 hours 2.45 hours

Luna 384,400 0.22 hours 0.00 hours

Mars 401,186,657 7.04 hours 3.72 hours

Ceres 594,739,367 8.57 hours 5.51 hours

Jupiter 967,727,284 10.93 hours 8.97 hours

Saturn 1,655,090,159 14.29 hours 15.34 hours

Uranus 3,153,114,382 19.73 hours 29.22 hours

Neptune 4,686,151,281 24.05 hours 43.42 hours

Limit 5,235,930,000 25.42 hours 48.51 hours

Pluto 7,518,235,539 30.47 hours 69.66 hours
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Reply
 
#19
So from Sol to Jupiter, Speed drives rule, and beyond Acceleration drives are more common?

Hmmm. At .1 c, a gondolier can do a Saturn run over a weekend...

Lemme go find my old version of the Pinafore writeup...
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
Reply
 
#20
I realized last night that the main reason cislunar is more densely populated than the rest of the system is because we dumped two dozen stations into the L5 zone last month.

Perhaps, instead of changing the speeds of the various ship drives, we move some of those brand-new L5 stations to other locations? That would get rid of the "cislunar is crowded, everywhere else is empty" problem we just created without affecting anything else...
--
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
Reply
 
#21
I can honestly see Mal's point about the matter, but my outlook was a bit more broad range.
I mean, sure, there's plenty of grandeur to behold right at home... but some of the more spectacular sights are going to be extra-solar. And when you have the entire galaxy to play around in, good old Sol System is just your locale neighborhood.
As for the amount of time it takes for humanity to spread it's roots... Actually colonizing these places is taking time because time is what it takes to build proper self-sustaining settlements. Unreal estate is the quick and dirty method, as Bob has proven with Grover's Corners... but even then that takes a lot of time and no small amount of capitol. Just imagine what building a real space-city from the ground up is like!  (Surely the building of Kandor is a story unto itself and one that is begging to be told in the format of that miniseries, America: The Story Of Us.)
Reply
 
#22
Quote:I realized last night that the main reason cislunar is more densely populated than the rest of the system is because we dumped two dozen stations into the L5 zone last month.

No, that's not it, all the population's on Luna.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Reply
 
#23
Here's a thought. Do we have any official population figures for the various major settlements? How many people are living in, say, Crystal Osaka, as of 2012? A couple of thousand? A couple of tens of thousands? How many are serious Sailor Moon fans, and how many are just there because they think living in space is cool?

I know I've described Greenwood as rapidly growing -- I envision it eventually being as well-populated as, say, Macross Frontier, and perhaps operating similarly -- but Fenspace is, what, a million or two people, right now?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Reply
 
#24
Quote:I know I've described Greenwood as rapidly growing -- I envision it eventually being as well-populated as, say, Macross Frontier, and perhaps operating similarly -- but Fenspace is, what, a million or two people, right now?

This is my rough count:

Place Rough Pop Notes
-----------------------------------------------------------
Venus 23,000

Earth-Luna L4 33,700 Concentrated in Greenwood

Earth-Luna L5 39,861 Concentrated in Genaros

Earth Cislunar 1,831

Luna 435,000 Concentrated in Kandor City

Mars 251,250

Phobos 55,000

Deimos 25,000

Belt 27,360

Ganymede 45,000

Callisto 30,000

Titan 100

Mimas 9,500
-----------------------

Total 976,602

So just short of a million.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Reply
 
#25
I believe those numbers are based on some I posted a while back, but with different demographics.

Here we go...

Mercury - 5,000

Venus - 23,000

* Crystal Tokyo - 5,000

Cis-Luna Space - 435,000 (this includes all the stations hanging around)

* Kandor City - 250,000

Mars - 250,000

Phobos - 55,000

The Main Belt - 140,000

Jupiter - 75,000

Saturn - 1,500 (mostly Mimas)

TNO - 500 (Hades + mining operations)

Out-system - 500 (Starbase 2 + Bughunters)

Total: 985,500

Please note the differences in Cis-Luna Space (this was a while ago), the Asteroid Belt, and the Saturn area. Also, the addition of Mercury and things past Neptune.

For practical reasons, I always invisioned something of a VLM (Venus-Luna-Mars) trade triangle between Crystal Seattle (being the largest docks around Venus), Kandor City, and Port Phobos. Because of all the traffic, lots of people have jobs there. Luna (and cis-luna) have the lion's share of the population because it's both closest to Earth (for those who are a little nervous about the whole 'living in space' thing), and it being easier to get a job there. Mars, being much easier to settle than Venus and having a Terraforming project in progress, gets the next largest amount. The Belt and Jupiter the next because there are resources to exploit and sell, then Venus because of the Terraforming projects and being a good way station from Mercury's mines.
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)