/(Introduction to Prof. James Ama's standard work on popular gravitics, "The borrowed miracle. An introduction to gravitics as the basis of interstellar society.", Core Books Press, Capital/Core, 131-1116.)/
Most people take gravitics for granted: Cheap, seemingly energy-efficient space transportation from ground to orbit, silently flying vehicles for everybody, artificial gravity onboard spaceships, all that and more is enabled by the mastery of gravity.
But surprisingly few people, even surprisingly few technically apt people, truly understand what it takes to make gravitics work. Of those who do know, most tend to forget in their day-to-day work and travel. This is not just a pity - it is, in fact, dangerous.
During the Long Night, more than a millenium ago, space travel virtually stopped in much of what is today Imperial space. When historians talk about this episode in history and its causes, they tend to emphasize the social aspects of the era and how they hindered space travel. But to those who understand gravitics, the more important part of the answer is the one thing that makes all civilization thrive or fail: Infrastructure.
When you engage a starship's maneuver drive, activate your grav belt or fly an air/raft across the continent, that requires an energy supply. Physicists will tell you, however, that the power that an air/raft's reactor or battery provides is orders of magnitude below what would be needed for the vehicle to actually fly. For a spaceship, the power of the ship's reactor is only the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the power needed to accelerate the ship to speeds that we all take for granted. The ancient equation "E=1/2m*v²" is a merciless, cold companion of any spacefarer.
Fortunately, the ancient Vilani found a solution for this a very, very long time ago: They built giant space stations in orbit around many stars to collect stellar energy, convert that energy into gravitons and feed those into jump space.
What your gravitic device at home does is no more than open a tiny, tiny rift towards jump space to siphon off some of those gravitons, which are then used for the actual work. (This, by the way, is also the main reason why most Major races discovered gravitics before jump drive: These technologies are very related.)
When local jump space is saturated, the gravitons spread throughout jump space at about the speed of a basic jump drive - which is why many star systems neither have nor need their own gravitic collector stations, as they benefit from close (or not so close, but old) neighbors. This is why we can use exploratory ships many parsecs beyond the last stations, though beyond the edge of Charted Space, their maneuver drives do become weaker.
Gravitic collector stations are no small facilities. Their energy conversion ability is in the range of thousands, in some cases even millions of Zetawatts. They are expensive to build, maintain, and repair. They absolutely need interstellar societies to finance them, as much as interstellar societies need the stations.
This, more than the invention of the jump drive, was the basis and justification for the Vilani Hegemony and the First Imperium, the Ziru Sirka. It built, maintained and expanded the gravitic collector station network without which so many of our daily activities would be impossible. When the Grand Empire fell to the Vargr, the Terrans and others, the maintenance of these stations was more and more neglected - at first because the new rulers had no good understanding of gravitic infrastructure requirements, and later because of cascade effects, economic necessities and, to some extent, simply because the stations, by then many thousands of years old, had outlived their lifetimes. Hence, the Long Night began, with small pockets of interstellar civilization surviving only where newer or more durable stations persisted.
When the Sylean Federation became the Third Imperium, reestablishing such a network with new stations was its primary task. Ever since then, even during the terrible Civil War, gravitic stations have been carefully guarded and attended to.
Fortunately, the stable and immovable nature of the mighty Third Imperium, the biggest and mightiest human star empire in history, ensures that nothing will ever cost us the benefit of gravitic infrastructure again. No neglect, no lack of funding, no terrorism and certainly no fleet of starships will be allowed to harm our network of gravitic collector stations. Our neighboring interstellar powers, small and big alike, follow a similar reasoning. Not even during the most bitter wars has any side violated this mostly unspoken agreement. And of course: Only madmen would want to create the chaos and total collapse that would be the inevitable result of the loss of the collectors. Without collectors, regular ship traffic would consume the gravitons in local jump space within a few weeks, rendering all ships in local normal space immobile.
This book is both a contribution to education of the public and a safeguard. It provides historical context, physics explanations and basic engineering information about not only gravitic devices, but especially about the collector stations that make it all possible. Unlikely as it may seem, maybe one day, in a thousand years or so, such a book will be direly needed. Hopefully not, though. Hopefully, this book will never be more than education for interested laymen, and not the required manual for restarting interstellar society.
Most people take gravitics for granted: Cheap, seemingly energy-efficient space transportation from ground to orbit, silently flying vehicles for everybody, artificial gravity onboard spaceships, all that and more is enabled by the mastery of gravity.
But surprisingly few people, even surprisingly few technically apt people, truly understand what it takes to make gravitics work. Of those who do know, most tend to forget in their day-to-day work and travel. This is not just a pity - it is, in fact, dangerous.
During the Long Night, more than a millenium ago, space travel virtually stopped in much of what is today Imperial space. When historians talk about this episode in history and its causes, they tend to emphasize the social aspects of the era and how they hindered space travel. But to those who understand gravitics, the more important part of the answer is the one thing that makes all civilization thrive or fail: Infrastructure.
When you engage a starship's maneuver drive, activate your grav belt or fly an air/raft across the continent, that requires an energy supply. Physicists will tell you, however, that the power that an air/raft's reactor or battery provides is orders of magnitude below what would be needed for the vehicle to actually fly. For a spaceship, the power of the ship's reactor is only the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the power needed to accelerate the ship to speeds that we all take for granted. The ancient equation "E=1/2m*v²" is a merciless, cold companion of any spacefarer.
Fortunately, the ancient Vilani found a solution for this a very, very long time ago: They built giant space stations in orbit around many stars to collect stellar energy, convert that energy into gravitons and feed those into jump space.
What your gravitic device at home does is no more than open a tiny, tiny rift towards jump space to siphon off some of those gravitons, which are then used for the actual work. (This, by the way, is also the main reason why most Major races discovered gravitics before jump drive: These technologies are very related.)
When local jump space is saturated, the gravitons spread throughout jump space at about the speed of a basic jump drive - which is why many star systems neither have nor need their own gravitic collector stations, as they benefit from close (or not so close, but old) neighbors. This is why we can use exploratory ships many parsecs beyond the last stations, though beyond the edge of Charted Space, their maneuver drives do become weaker.
Gravitic collector stations are no small facilities. Their energy conversion ability is in the range of thousands, in some cases even millions of Zetawatts. They are expensive to build, maintain, and repair. They absolutely need interstellar societies to finance them, as much as interstellar societies need the stations.
This, more than the invention of the jump drive, was the basis and justification for the Vilani Hegemony and the First Imperium, the Ziru Sirka. It built, maintained and expanded the gravitic collector station network without which so many of our daily activities would be impossible. When the Grand Empire fell to the Vargr, the Terrans and others, the maintenance of these stations was more and more neglected - at first because the new rulers had no good understanding of gravitic infrastructure requirements, and later because of cascade effects, economic necessities and, to some extent, simply because the stations, by then many thousands of years old, had outlived their lifetimes. Hence, the Long Night began, with small pockets of interstellar civilization surviving only where newer or more durable stations persisted.
When the Sylean Federation became the Third Imperium, reestablishing such a network with new stations was its primary task. Ever since then, even during the terrible Civil War, gravitic stations have been carefully guarded and attended to.
Fortunately, the stable and immovable nature of the mighty Third Imperium, the biggest and mightiest human star empire in history, ensures that nothing will ever cost us the benefit of gravitic infrastructure again. No neglect, no lack of funding, no terrorism and certainly no fleet of starships will be allowed to harm our network of gravitic collector stations. Our neighboring interstellar powers, small and big alike, follow a similar reasoning. Not even during the most bitter wars has any side violated this mostly unspoken agreement. And of course: Only madmen would want to create the chaos and total collapse that would be the inevitable result of the loss of the collectors. Without collectors, regular ship traffic would consume the gravitons in local jump space within a few weeks, rendering all ships in local normal space immobile.
This book is both a contribution to education of the public and a safeguard. It provides historical context, physics explanations and basic engineering information about not only gravitic devices, but especially about the collector stations that make it all possible. Unlikely as it may seem, maybe one day, in a thousand years or so, such a book will be direly needed. Hopefully not, though. Hopefully, this book will never be more than education for interested laymen, and not the required manual for restarting interstellar society.
