Jump Drives and Jump Space

[Scarecrow]

Out of interest, in your Traveller universe, how do Jump drives work?

I personally favour either the Traveller:2300 method of the stutterwarp which I thought was a fabulous idea.

Or maybe on higher tech levels the Trek idea of generating a huge energy exchange to warp space/time itself.

Further, what in your Traveller universe does Jump Space look like? Normal? Trekky starstreaks? B5 red clouds? Star Wars tunnel? Other?

Crow

 

[Vorlanth]

I largely rely on the canon explanation of Jump, but visualize it in two ways. To explain the effect of gravity to my players, I use the metaphor of a submarine, having to get to deep water (minial gravitic stresses on local space) to submerge and being forced to surface when the bottom gets shallow (a strong gravity field). To understand Jump Depth (i.e. 1-6) I conceptualize it like a river, with placid current (Jump 1) close to shore and fast moving ones (Jump 6) in the center. It takes more effort to paddle out to the fast flowing current (higher fuel requirements) but the speed gain can be worth it.

One of the additions I made to the jump drive is an internal component termed a jump lattice, essentially a power regulator of sorts. The higher the Jump number the better alignment your lattice must be in accordance to an absolute specification. So a trusty Jump 1 drive is like a hardworking diesel engine that takes a licking and keeps on ticking. It can be almost an inch out of alignment and still function fine. But a highly finiky Jump 6 drive has a alignment requirement within microns of the specification and drives engineers crazy by having to be realigned or "retuned" after every Jump and frequently after combat or atmospheric entry/exit. That's why it's still so infrequently used and so expensive to maintain. In fact the way I work it is that the higher Jump number drives has significantly increasing maintainance requirements. And anything above a Jump 4 can't even use unrefined fuel without assured catastrophic results (even a Jump 4 makes using unrefined fuel chancy). But a Jump 1 can use it for a couple Jumps without a problem.

 

[cgriffen]

Originally posted by Scarecrow:
Further, what in your Traveller universe does Jump Space look like? Normal? Trekky starstreaks? B5 red clouds? Star Wars tunnel? Other?

According to the MegaTraveller Starship Operator's Manual, jump space appears to be a blank, gray void.

As you enter and exit jump the jump lattice on your ship glows bright blue. I would imagine coming out of jump would look rather spectacular as the gray gives way to the stark blackness of space, peppered with millions of stars.

 

[tjoneslo]

Originally posted by Scarecrow:
Out of interest, in your Traveller universe, how do Jump drives work?
Crow

IMTU: Jump Drive technology is a combination of two poorly understood effects: Grandfathers pocket universe creations and a truly powerful Grav drive effect. The jump drive drops the ship into a small pocket universe which is then propelled through "Normal" space by a Grav Drive pulse. The Pocket universe generated has a fixed time before it collapses and expells the ship. (Same effect is used by the Meson guns). And the Grav drive pulse determines how far you get. Because the Pocket universe is a space warp, gravity (which is also a space warping) effects the way the bubble is formed and moves once formed. Only when you reach TL17-18 does a proper understand of the physics allow user to shove an engine thrust though the pocket for true navigation in space.

The edge of the pocket universe has the same look as looking at something with the blind spot of your eye. Usually your vision can't go that far through the hydrogen plasma used to maintain the bubble around the ship, which has an odd grey-blue look to it. The Hydrogen Jump fuel is turned into a low temprature plasma and used to maintain the jump bubble, and is absorbed through the barrier and scattered along the "Flight Path" of the ship. Except if you misjump with unrefined fuel. Then you start to see lightning as the uneven effects of the larger atoms dispersing across the barrier build uneven charges which begin arcing.