marginaleye
SOC-12
I noticed something peculiar about the history of the Islands cluster in the Great Rift, and was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the matter.
The three ESA colony ships were launched in 2050.
The Terrans invented their first jump-capable ships just 39 years later, in 2089 CE.
The distance from Terra to New Home is about 154 parsecs, or about 502 light years.
The C-Jammer reached New Home in 4512 CE, so the voyage took 2423 years.
C-Jammer's average speed, therefore, was about 0.21c.
The expedition would, therefore, be a mere 2.5 parsecs from Terra when the jump drive was invented, and a mere 3 parsecs from Terra when first contact was made with the Vilani in 2096.
Surely, either one of these events would have been grounds for immediately altering the mission. When jump drive was developed, the sensible course of action would have been to instruct the colonists to lock onto the first hospitable-looking planet along their current trajectory, decelerate, and just set up shop there, but that didn't happen -- the three ships continued their long slow trudge through the rimward part of the Zira Sirku, towards the Great Rift.
Adventure 5 says that "the ships' computers ultimately found, and locked onto, a suitable group of worlds and designated them the mission destination."
Granted, the UWPs of New Home and Amondiage look both reasonably hospitable, but surely the expedition would have encountered many, many Earthlike worlds along the way.
The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the expedition was aware of the Zira Sirku (they would have noticed all the radio transmissions), and they were deliberately avoiding planets which were already inhabited.
The Terrans would have discovered the limitations of jump technology reasonably quickly, and could have instructed the mission (perhaps by a tightly-focused laser communicator) to revise its destination-selection criteria to only consider uninhabited planets that are inaccessible to starships limited to 2-parsec jumps.
Here's the problem: why would the ESA mission have been designed, from the very start, for a voyage lasting thousands of years? Ships capable of reaching 0.21c could have reached Prometheus (orbiting Alpha Centauri), a very Earthlike planet, in a mere 20.8 years. The colonists might have wanted a make a fresh start far away from Earth, but for a civilization limited to a single star system, one would think that any interstellar voyage, however short, would provide a comfortable sense of separative and distance. Any interstellar expedition would, at that point, have been a significant challenge, and designing ships capable of making a non-stop unsupported voyage of two millennia or more would have multiplied the difficulties many-fold -- why not learn to crawl across the room before trying to run a marathon?
The only explanation that makes any sense to me is that (at least some of) the Terrans were already aware of the Zira Sirku in 2050. Presumably, the contours of the Rifts could be mapped from the Sol system by the middle of the OTU's mid-21st century, and the positions of isolated star clusters within the Rifts would have been determined with deep-space telescopes. If the Terrans who were responsible for planning the ESA mission knew about the Zira Sirku, and knew something about the capabilities and limitations of its jump drives, then the Islands cluster would have been an attractive destination.
It's interesting that Adventure 5 explicitly says that the colony ships were "fitted with reaction drives," too. Perhaps this was intended to make them "stealthier." Suppose the colony ships accelerated up to 0.21c during a short "boost phase," limited to just the first few months or years of the mission. By the time they entered Vilani space, they would be passively coasting, and would thus much harder to detect.
The biggest problem with this theory is the sheer size of the expedition -- three ships, with 101,000 people aboard each one (an initial crew of 1,000, plus another 100,000 in low berths). This must have been a very expensive expedition, and it would have attracted a lot of attention, both public and administrative. How would the organizers of the mission have answered the inevitable question: "So why are you planning such a long-range voyage? Why not just go to Alpha Centauri?" How would so many colonists have been recruited without revealing the real reason for the mission's distant destination? It's canon that first contact with Vilani prospectors on Ember (orbiting Barnard's Star) surprised (at least some of) the Terrans, so if "out-flanking the Zira Sirku and finding an inaccessible refuge" was the real rationale for the mission, then the cat must have somehow been kept in the bag.
The three ESA colony ships were launched in 2050.
The Terrans invented their first jump-capable ships just 39 years later, in 2089 CE.
The distance from Terra to New Home is about 154 parsecs, or about 502 light years.
The C-Jammer reached New Home in 4512 CE, so the voyage took 2423 years.
C-Jammer's average speed, therefore, was about 0.21c.
The expedition would, therefore, be a mere 2.5 parsecs from Terra when the jump drive was invented, and a mere 3 parsecs from Terra when first contact was made with the Vilani in 2096.
Surely, either one of these events would have been grounds for immediately altering the mission. When jump drive was developed, the sensible course of action would have been to instruct the colonists to lock onto the first hospitable-looking planet along their current trajectory, decelerate, and just set up shop there, but that didn't happen -- the three ships continued their long slow trudge through the rimward part of the Zira Sirku, towards the Great Rift.
Adventure 5 says that "the ships' computers ultimately found, and locked onto, a suitable group of worlds and designated them the mission destination."
Granted, the UWPs of New Home and Amondiage look both reasonably hospitable, but surely the expedition would have encountered many, many Earthlike worlds along the way.
The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the expedition was aware of the Zira Sirku (they would have noticed all the radio transmissions), and they were deliberately avoiding planets which were already inhabited.
The Terrans would have discovered the limitations of jump technology reasonably quickly, and could have instructed the mission (perhaps by a tightly-focused laser communicator) to revise its destination-selection criteria to only consider uninhabited planets that are inaccessible to starships limited to 2-parsec jumps.
Here's the problem: why would the ESA mission have been designed, from the very start, for a voyage lasting thousands of years? Ships capable of reaching 0.21c could have reached Prometheus (orbiting Alpha Centauri), a very Earthlike planet, in a mere 20.8 years. The colonists might have wanted a make a fresh start far away from Earth, but for a civilization limited to a single star system, one would think that any interstellar voyage, however short, would provide a comfortable sense of separative and distance. Any interstellar expedition would, at that point, have been a significant challenge, and designing ships capable of making a non-stop unsupported voyage of two millennia or more would have multiplied the difficulties many-fold -- why not learn to crawl across the room before trying to run a marathon?
The only explanation that makes any sense to me is that (at least some of) the Terrans were already aware of the Zira Sirku in 2050. Presumably, the contours of the Rifts could be mapped from the Sol system by the middle of the OTU's mid-21st century, and the positions of isolated star clusters within the Rifts would have been determined with deep-space telescopes. If the Terrans who were responsible for planning the ESA mission knew about the Zira Sirku, and knew something about the capabilities and limitations of its jump drives, then the Islands cluster would have been an attractive destination.
It's interesting that Adventure 5 explicitly says that the colony ships were "fitted with reaction drives," too. Perhaps this was intended to make them "stealthier." Suppose the colony ships accelerated up to 0.21c during a short "boost phase," limited to just the first few months or years of the mission. By the time they entered Vilani space, they would be passively coasting, and would thus much harder to detect.
The biggest problem with this theory is the sheer size of the expedition -- three ships, with 101,000 people aboard each one (an initial crew of 1,000, plus another 100,000 in low berths). This must have been a very expensive expedition, and it would have attracted a lot of attention, both public and administrative. How would the organizers of the mission have answered the inevitable question: "So why are you planning such a long-range voyage? Why not just go to Alpha Centauri?" How would so many colonists have been recruited without revealing the real reason for the mission's distant destination? It's canon that first contact with Vilani prospectors on Ember (orbiting Barnard's Star) surprised (at least some of) the Terrans, so if "out-flanking the Zira Sirku and finding an inaccessible refuge" was the real rationale for the mission, then the cat must have somehow been kept in the bag.
