Misjump - where the heck are we?

[Straybow]

If your ship has a turret laser, it has a 250MW narrow-beam one-way optical communicator with a high-precision aiming system.

Nearly all ships will have detectors for near-visible-light radiation at that frequency. It's the "hey, they're shooting a laser at us!" sensor.

Hmmm, I dunno the math that governs laser diffraction, but I'm fairly sure the laser beam from a light year away is going to be too weak to set off a defense warning. Otherwise every bored kid shining a laser pointer out the window of a space station or asteroid mine would be setting off alarms all over the solar system.

 

[Straybow]

A few years ago, an international organization (I forget who) announced that everyone was going to cease monitoring radio frequencies for Morse code SOS signals. By the time that announcement came out there were only a handful of stations left around the North Atlantic dedicated to SOS monitoring. There was always a chance somebody would hear an SOS if their radio was on the frequency, but also a chance that nobody was listening.

Just because spacers are supposed to answer distress calls doesn't mean they're particularly diligent about it. Even some spaceports and naval stations could fall into a lackadaisical attitude about it.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Hmmm, I dunno the math that governs laser diffraction, but I'm fairly sure the laser beam from a light year away is going to be too weak to set off a defense warning. Otherwise every bored kid shining a laser pointer out the window of a space station or asteroid mine would be setting off alarms all over the solar system.

I agree there has to be a noise filter on it. But using a turret laser as a distress signal is obvious enough that the laser-detector noise filter ought to include a check for repeating patterns (SOS in Morse Code or GK in whatever binary code the Vilani use).

There shouldn't be any message traffic on weapons laser frequencies at all.

 

[Straybow]

Sure, let's assume comm lasers would be standardized visible light frequencies and weapons lasers would be other freqencies. I believe the ABL used a UV laser. Every lasing medium has its characteristic frequency, and some will be more suited to weapons than others. UV would have the advantage of not showing visible scattering when used in atmosphere, so it would be less likely to give away your position.

Mining lasers, cutting lasers for EVA repair work, and many other applications could use the same laser tech, but at lower power and no fancy controls to help the laser be more concentrated at targets thousands of km away. Traveller doesn't mention it, but even small pop systems should have hundreds of asteroid mines at work. People living in remote habitats (such as those mines) would be doing their own repair work with the tools they have.

And, yes, some teenagers might be building UV lasers (or whatever) from scavenged parts, just for the challenge of making it work and the fun of target shooting. That would produce lots of scattered beams to tickle the detectors.


Using a turret laser to flash a Morse code SOS to the nearest inhabited system is no guarantee of rescue response.

 

[whartung]

It interesting, I would think that a high powered communication laser would be, for lack of a better word, "down tuned" in order to not make it a "dual use" technology.

Maybe it would pulse at different intervals, or simply not focus at tightly in order to not be useful as a weapon.

At very close ranges, sure, "dangerous", like RADAR can be, but not necessarily at intership combat ranges.

 

[Proneutron]

It interesting, I would think that a high powered communication laser would be, for lack of a better word, "down tuned" in order to not make it a "dual use" technology.

It either has a certain power level or it doesn't. If you defocus you ruin it for long range comm. Changing wavelength will probably change its effectiveness as a weapon against certain materials. Wavelength also determines how fast it scatters I think.

Found it: The divergence of a laser beam is proportional to its wavelength and inversely proportional to the diameter of the beam at its narrowest point.

 

[aramis]

It interesting, I would think that a high powered communication laser would be, for lack of a better word, "down tuned" in order to not make it a "dual use" technology.

Maybe it would pulse at different intervals, or simply not focus at tightly in order to not be useful as a weapon.

At very close ranges, sure, "dangerous", like RADAR can be, but not necessarily at intership combat ranges.

To get a certain range, it has to be able to hit that range with sufficient watts per cm to trigger the receiver circuits, and demodulate the data.

Note that the 30m scopes can send and receive data to >108AU. (Voyager probes.)

the inverse square law of propagation of waves applies.

 

[whartung]

Note that the 30m scopes can send and receive data to >108AU. (Voyager probes.)

I've had the fortune to be able to tour Goldstone and walk in to the base of one of those scopes.

Goldstone is in the middle of Ft. Irwin here in So Cal, and a main reason for that is to have controlled air space to blast MWs of transmission power in to deep space (they don't want to accidentally fry a plane or something over head).

Meanwhile, at the base of the scope, is (I think) a fragment of ruby or sapphire floating in a something akin to liquid helium, used to try and make sense of the nano-watts of energy coming back from Voyager and turn it in to something sensible.

 

[coliver988]

I've had the fortune to be able to tour Goldstone and walk in to the base of one of those scopes.

Goldstone is in the middle of Ft. Irwin here in So Cal, and a main reason for that is to have controlled air space to blast MWs of transmission power in to deep space (they don't want to accidentally fry a plane or something over head).

Meanwhile, at the base of the scope, is (I think) a fragment of ruby or sapphire floating in a something akin to liquid helium, used to try and make sense of the nano-watts of energy coming back from Voyager and turn it in to something sensible.

that's really cool. and now to have a floating ruby in liquid helium as part of the system. no wonder maintenance gets so expensive!

 

[Straybow]

Back to the notion of absurd misjump distances, how does that not invalidate the jump fuel requirements?


The jump drive suffers a non-destructive malfunction. I don't think anything in the LBBs says misjump damages the drive in anyway. A ship executes a J1 with unrefined fuel and misjumps > 1 pc. Only 0.1M fuel is consumed, since nothing indicates otherwise. In fact, the ship may not have any more fuel than that. How did the ship go so far on just that amount of fuel?

 

[Spenser TR]

I don't think jumpsace needs to follow the same rules our normal space does, that x amount of fuel pushes you y amount of distance, along a straight line in the direction of travel.

From my reading of different versions it seems if something nudges you "deeper" or into a different band or tier of jumpspace, you can go further than expected, and not in a straight line with your original plot.

 

[Proneutron]

From my reading of different versions it seems if something nudges you "deeper" or into a different band or tier of jumpspace, you can go further than expected, and not in a straight line with your original plot.

That would be in the MTs Star ship Operations Manual.

 

[whartung]

My understanding is the jump fuel is used to ENTER jump space, not to maintain it during the journey, or to exit. If a mishap happens during entry, there's no reason for extra fuel to be consumed since it's the actual jump space / space ship relationship that's messed up here.

 

[mike wightman]

Back to the notion of absurd misjump distances, how does that not invalidate the jump fuel requirements?


The jump drive suffers a non-destructive malfunction. I don't think anything in the LBBs says misjump damages the drive in anyway. A ship executes a J1 with unrefined fuel and misjumps > 1 pc. Only 0.1M fuel is consumed, since nothing indicates otherwise. In fact, the ship may not have any more fuel than that. How did the ship go so far on just that amount of fuel?

Probably because the malfunctioning jump drive has accessed a hop dimension rather than a jump dimension.

Somewhere (JTAS?)there is an article that mentions Imperial research into controlled misjumps, it could be argued in light of what we learn from T5 that such research may lead to the discovery of the hop drive, or it may not, it is for the referee to decide.

 

[Grav_Moped]

My understanding is the jump fuel is used to ENTER jump space, not to maintain it during the journey, or to exit. If a mishap happens during entry, there's no reason for extra fuel to be consumed since it's the actual jump space / space ship relationship that's messed up here.

The only extra fuel requirement is from the misjumping ship possibly being stuck in jumpspace for an additional 2-5 weeks and having to burn powerplant fuel to keep the jump field from collapsing. And I'm not sure even that is necessary.

My headcanon is that power is only fed into the jump drive for 151.2 hours (the minimum duration of a jump) at which point the field is allowed to dissipate. It will then do so at some random time during the following 33.6 hours (up to the maximum duration of a jump). A misjump means the jump bubble (5 times out of 6) doesn't "pop" as scheduled, but doesn't need any additional power to stay intact.

The other alternative is that the field has to be powered for the full duration of jump, and it collapses at 168 +/-10% hours no matter what. This suggests that some of the "ship destroyed" results on the misjump table are from the ship running out of fuel mid-misjump, but there's no indication on the table that having more power plant fuel could prevent that result.

 

[Condottiere]

Probably edition specific.

I'd assume the Classic presumption is that the jump drive continues to hum during transition.

In the MongoVerse, it's shut down during transition.

 

[Straybow]

I don't think jumpsace needs to follow the same rules our normal space does, that x amount of fuel pushes you y amount of distance, along a straight line in the direction of travel.

No, but 1 pc = 0.1M fuel, 2 pc = 0.2M...

 

[Straybow]

Probably because the malfunctioning jump drive has accessed a hop dimension rather than a jump dimension.

Somewhere (JTAS?)there is an article that mentions Imperial research into controlled misjumps, it could be argued in light of what we learn from T5 that such research may lead to the discovery of the hop drive, or it may not, it is for the referee to decide.

I would militate vehemently against any idea that extradimensional "space" could be accessed by accident.

 

[mike wightman]

I would militate vehemently against any idea that extradimensional "space" could be accessed by accident.

Why not? The Terran discovery of jump drive may have been an accidental outcome of gravitic maneuver drive research according to canon.
And anyway, a psionic teleporter can access extradimensional space by pure strength of mind

 

[whulorigan]

You could further make the observation that operation of the OTU Jump Drive is at least in some manner affected by Quantum Mechanical considerations (e.g jump precipitation +/- a random space/time element, normal-universe distance independent, etc.), so a "long-shot" (i.e. Low-probability) jump transition might occasionally occur under the proper set of circumstances.