"No exploration left" vs. Known Space

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by far-trader:


<snip>

I'm rambling, let me finish with "Space is big. Really big. You wouldn't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is." and advise that if you really think there's nothing left to explore, all the frontiers have been conqured, and everywhere you go there's somebody else's bootprints, then you really aren't looking. True today on Earth, even in your own little part of it in all likelyhood, barring you're trapped in a concrete jungle. Hmm still rambling, somebody just hit the add reply button for me alre...

I read in Timothy Ferris', The Whole Shebang (c)1997, that when he attended a cosmology conference in the mid nineties, he met a colleague deep in work on Inflation Theory. His colleague told him their current size estimate for the universe was no longer the old observation-based 12-15 billion lightyears, but rather 10^12^12. Timothy gasped and said, "In what?" The colleague replied, "When you're talking 10^12^12, it doesn't matter what you measure it in." (Though it turned out to be centimeters, it hardly makes a difference between that and lightyears when you talk about a number that big.) Under this theory, light from the far reaches of the universe will simply never get anywhere near us.

That book was published is six years ago now, does anyone know what the current thinking is?

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
His colleague told him their current size estimate for the universe was no longer the old observation-based 12-15 billion lightyears, but rather 10^12^12. Timothy gasped and said, "In what?" The colleague replied, "When you're talking 10^12^12, it doesn't matter what you measure it in."

That really does puts things in perspective doesn't it, love it.

 

[trader jim]

Dats BIG, real BIG.....that means Traveller will be around long, long time!!!....means the Adventures of Trader Jim goes on and on!!!

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
about 50ly radius, it was reaching it's limit in capability, providing a greater radius would have gradually begun stacking some stars on top of each other, blotting out the map's usefulness.

In Traveller, adding a "layer" of a single parsec in size above or below the current layer would create all sorts of chaos. Visually speaking, it is difficult for some people to envision making

In the Full-Thrust Universe (from GZG UK), this problem was encountered. We wanted to (some of us) harmonize the canonical places with the real starmap (no joke, really). One of the fellows who helped us a bit was a fellow named Winchell Chung (I think his name appears on the Ogre original game, or GEV or both). We called him Nyrath the Indispensable (or Nearly Wise). He helped rip through Hipparcos and the other data sources and he developed some sort of stereoscopic two sided starmap. Since I have no stereoscopic vision (an affliction of about 3% of the population), I can't see it. But most people can see the image in 3D, it gives a very good way to visualize relations of planets to one another, and a simple equation for distance between any two points in three-space solves the transit distances.

3D spacemaps take a bit of tech to produce. But it can be done. And the benefits of playing in 3D space are large in several respects.

Tomb

 

[spank]

you can double jump-5 if you use drop tanks, you don't even need to drop them before the jump.

a 1000 ton ship {with tanks} makes a jump-5, blows it's jump tanks it's now a 500 tons ship, and only needs 250 tons of feul to jump again, that leaves 250 tons for the rest of the ship.

60 tons for the j-drives, 20 tons for the plant 10 tons for the drives, 20 for the bridge 22 tons crew accomodations 3 tons for an air lock

that comes to {carry the 5, divide by pi} 135 tons, leaving 115 tons to fill out with weapons, feul armor, additional crew, hangars, ect.

So you could easily explore up to 5 parsecs away without burning all your feul and being stuck on a rockball.

 

[spank]

- 1.5 tons for freshers, oops, almost had a riot on my hands.

 

[Hecateus]

> Here < is a link to Nyrath's 3-d Starmap stuff.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by spank:
you can double jump-5 if you use drop tanks, you don't even need to drop them before the jump.

a 1000 ton ship {with tanks} makes a jump-5, blows it's jump tanks it's now a 500 tons ship, and only needs 250 tons of feul to jump again, that leaves 250 tons for the rest of the ship.

60 tons for the j-drives, 20 tons for the plant 10 tons for the drives, 20 for the bridge 22 tons crew accomodations 3 tons for an air lock

that comes to {carry the 5, divide by pi} 135 tons, leaving 115 tons to fill out with weapons, feul armor, additional crew, hangars, ect.

So you could easily explore up to 5 parsecs away without burning all your feul and being stuck on a rockball.

I guess it'll depend on the design system and how effective a ship you want to send out on a 5 parsec leap but lets see what a couple small (but vital) items do to your options total (not sure how you got the 20 tons and 10 tons for the power and maneuver so I changed it to T20):

computer 5 tons (minimum)

powerplant and fuel 53 tons (minimum for 53 EP - I presume a T20 design based on the 3 ton airlock mentioned, which should really be included in the bridge tonnage for free anyway, but then you did add the fresher, lets make it 2 so the line is shorter )

maneuver drive 20 tons (minimum 1G)

that leaves us only 50 tons for any other goodies to make this a functional ship (if I did my quick design right)

happily that's just right for a 50 ton bay for maximum versatility. Drop in a weapon, or a craft, or whatever the mission calls for.

 

[spank]

If you wanted to get really silly and jump 5 parsec @ jump one, throwing empty feul cans out the window the whole way, you would get there with 584.5 tons remaining, and arrive back home with 345.something tons of ship. of course you would be gone more than 20 weeks but you could do it

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by spank:
If you wanted to get really silly and jump 5 parsec @ jump one, throwing empty feul cans out the window the whole way, you would get there with 584.5 tons remaining, and arrive back home with 345.something tons of ship. of course you would be gone more than 20 weeks but you could do it

That would probably be a better model for a long range exploration ship anyway. I certainly didn't mean to slam your initial design idea, in fact I quite like it. I do think I'm starting to drift this off topic though and I vaguely recall a similar thread earlier

 

[spank]

No slight taken,
It was just a 5 minute idea, I only meant to show that it could be done, and the arguement that you have to have a charted space campaign because of the difficulties of exploration doesn't hold as much water as you might think.

 

[jackleg]

There is plenty to explore in Traveller, but most GM's don't exploit the star systems or the planet where the starport is at. If you look at our planet, sure it has been mapped, but some area's are still unexplored. Even the oceans and jungle still bring surprises.
Let's say a system is like our's. Does the local gas giants have moons that could be explored? Scientist/biologist can make a lifetime career studying just one thing.

Have you player's go to starport and have them hired to explore a gas giant's moon. Yeah everybody has flown past it and the Scout service did an initial survey 200 years ago, but no one has been back since. Who knows what is really there? A new life form, anciet/Ancient artifacts, mineral deposits, or just a secret laboratory. There is still plenty to explore.

 

[spank]

I guess i could go explore behind the dumpster too, I'm sure not everyone has looked there. Not to poke fun at you jackboot more to make the point that sometimes the new and exotic hold more lure

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by spank:
I guess i could go explore behind the dumpster too, I'm sure not everyone has looked there. Not to poke fun at you jackboot more to make the point that sometimes the new and exotic hold more lure

Those places unknown to you, even if ever known to others to whatever degree, are as new and exotic as any undiscovered land.

In addition, false information (incompetently gathered survey data; doctored data, etc.) can create confusion that increases danger.

 

[spank]

I can see that side of it, but I am partial to exploration. It might be a side effect of being an ex dungeon-crawler. I don't think the cannon traveller universe offers enough of this. That might be why I liked TNE so much, alot more room for the unexpected, and the unexplored.

 

[Hecateus]

Opposing Chiral Worlds

> here < is a link on the basics. (it's flash show, so just click the pictures)

Much of this is still not undersood, but basically, the polarizing light from stars in dust clouds seperates organic chemicals of opposing chirality enough for a bias to form. Worlds form with these chemicals; some have life, these break down out the less common chemicals into ordinary atoms which are rebuilt into a homochiral world. Thus there are worlds whose food is incompatible to most Imperial life


Thus I imagine that there are many systems within the Imperium et al which are untouched by the the common races due to their fundamentally incompatible chemistry.

Go explore...but bring your own food.

 

[mad13142000]

Yeah, the sci-fi book I just got done reading had exploration via wormhole (as opposed to jumpdrive). Everytime they traversed one they were inverted by the wormhole effects. Thus, they now had to eat 'left-handed' food (stuff on the ship would be ok because it was mirrored too, but they had to watch out for food on the planets they visited). It was pretty cool...
I have generated an Alien race for the Extents that has the same limitation - They require 'left-handed' food (nearly everyone in the Imperium uses 'right-handed' molecules) and so are bound to their homeworld...
It's a neat parlor trick...
-MADDog

 

[jackleg]

In regards to my earlier post, a gm can tell which worlds are still relatively unexplored. Starport is C or less and a low tech level still plenty to explore on planet and in system. Some of the best scifi stories have taken place in our own solar system.