Real-universe jump distances
- Thread starter Adam Dray
- Start date
It takes about 230 million years for Sol to make one complete orbit about the galactic center.
Well the interesting part about this Jump "height" or whatever, is that it brings up a concept that I saw in a book of "slow" and "fast" space.
Simply, in "fast" space, FTL travel is possible. But us poor people here on Dirt live in "slow" space. That's why we haven't figured it out yet.
Similar thing applies to where Jump is available and where it's not.
Simply, in "fast" space, FTL travel is possible. But us poor people here on Dirt live in "slow" space. That's why we haven't figured it out yet.
Similar thing applies to where Jump is available and where it's not.
You mean like A Fire Upon the Deep?
Interesting storyline.
Back last century I read a short story about a starship crashed on Earth. It was deep in the surface layers so it wasn't found by us.
I don't remember the group's name, so I'll just say Galactic Patrol, knew it was there but put off doing anything about it.
It effected our perseptions, and instruments, measuring the speed of light, and I think some other measurements.
They finally decided to do something about it as there was some sort of ravenous group of beings that were, I think, in another dimension, etc. that could use that ship's field to come across and start devistating our galaxy. With Earth being the first planet and solar system to be destroyed.
So the Patrol showed up on our moon, and after some conversation, mostly about how we would have to rewrite our understanding of physics, but we were primitives so it was okay. They then disrupted that starship's engine.
That aparently caused some earthquakes, etc. but again, it prevented the extra-dimensional beasts from coming through and killing off the civilized planets, Earth people would just have to deal with it.
Sorry, I don't remember the title nor the author's name.
The Patrol's attitude was rather condescending towards us.
Anyone know the title/author ?
Back last century I read a short story about a starship crashed on Earth. It was deep in the surface layers so it wasn't found by us.
I don't remember the group's name, so I'll just say Galactic Patrol, knew it was there but put off doing anything about it.
It effected our perseptions, and instruments, measuring the speed of light, and I think some other measurements.
They finally decided to do something about it as there was some sort of ravenous group of beings that were, I think, in another dimension, etc. that could use that ship's field to come across and start devistating our galaxy. With Earth being the first planet and solar system to be destroyed.
So the Patrol showed up on our moon, and after some conversation, mostly about how we would have to rewrite our understanding of physics, but we were primitives so it was okay. They then disrupted that starship's engine.
That aparently caused some earthquakes, etc. but again, it prevented the extra-dimensional beasts from coming through and killing off the civilized planets, Earth people would just have to deal with it.
Sorry, I don't remember the title nor the author's name.
The Patrol's attitude was rather condescending towards us.
Anyone know the title/author ?
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
Wow... a phenomenally bad idea. I'd suspect retcon to justify sticking with the 2D map.
But, hey, it ain't my game.
Wait, what????
Sorry to be late to this particular party, but this thread was linked elsewhere and I just stumbled across this. So, there could be a system a parsec to galactic north of Regina, with an advanced civilization that could only communicate with the Traveller universe by radio, laser pulse and slow-boat?
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
A retcon is not needed, since Miller has been quite plain in the reasoning for the 2D map.
From a White Dwarf Magazine interview, 1981:
As always, the original Traveller rules were never built to represent "reality." There are built to provide a toolkit to emulate science-fiction adventure tales.
As I note in this blog post, the use of a 2D map has several strong features for RPG play. No, it isn't "space." But it we are not actually going into space. We're looking at a graphic representation of interstellar geography that makes clear relative distances between worlds, fuel, starports, and jump distances.
The 2D map is a tool for playing a game of science-fiction adventure in the far future. Nothing more, nothing less.
Though if aramis wants to have a jump plane for his setting, that is completely up to him. I find it kind of intriguing as the core conceit of a setting. "Why this plane of space. Why is it special? Did someone build it? Could it collapse?" And so on.
Last edited:
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
What was it, the travelling salesman dilemma, trying to find the least time route?
You have to take all those hex paper maps, and compress them into a three dimensional ball, and make all the distances compatible with the two dee version.
You have to take all those hex paper maps, and compress them into a three dimensional ball, and make all the distances compatible with the two dee version.
No, not IMTU. In Marc's TU. I specifically asked during a bit of math work for Marc for T5. Officially, the OTU is 3d, but jumpspace isn't.
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
Cool. And that is stated somewhere in T5? (I ask because I have never read T5.)
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I posted the idea many years ago that Grandfather created jump travel when he conducted an experiment to make the dimensions psionic teleportation uses available to machinery of his design.
He detonated a device that created a wave that spread at light speed, in the wake of the wave-front jump drives could now access the jump dimensions to make FTL travel a possibility.
This wave was at most a few parsecs thick and as a result gave us the 2d map of the universe of the OTU.
Using T5 rules I would call this a utilisation of reality manipulation technology.
The interesting bit is in the far off reaches of the galaxy Grandfather's wave has really upset another advance technology species, who have detonated their own reality manipulation device the result of which is the Empress Wave of TNE...
He detonated a device that created a wave that spread at light speed, in the wake of the wave-front jump drives could now access the jump dimensions to make FTL travel a possibility.
This wave was at most a few parsecs thick and as a result gave us the 2d map of the universe of the OTU.
Using T5 rules I would call this a utilisation of reality manipulation technology.
The interesting bit is in the far off reaches of the galaxy Grandfather's wave has really upset another advance technology species, who have detonated their own reality manipulation device the result of which is the Empress Wave of TNE...
There's nothing special about Terra's galactic position that would make it occupy the only jump plane in the galaxy. That implies there are a number of jump planes layered on each other but mutually inaccessible. That in turn implies there are mutually inaccessible game settings right above and below us. That's actually rather exciting!
Think about it a moment: somewhere above or below the plane of Imperial space, there may be a Suerrat Imperium spread out and dominating its own jump plane, the result of a Suerrat generation-ship colony discovering jump science some time after settling their new world. The Suerrat eventually realize their homeworld is inaccessible on their jump plane, send a sublight expedition home and discover their homeworld is controlled by the Vilani.
The Solomani may have launched a sleeper-ship project centuries back to settle a world on another jump plane in an effort to expand on a plane not threatened by the Vilani. Or, one of the mid 21st century Terran colony ship programs might have colonized a world on a different jump plane.
Suppose the layers are not as inaccessible to each other as we thought: a radical misjump manages to penetrate the barrier to put your players in a setting they know nothing about. Or, a Geonee misjump way back when leads to Geonee colonization and domination of another jump plane.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Canonically Traveller ships can achieve 0.9c
Canonically sensors can gather data from parsecs away.
It may take you a couple of years to change jump planes but you think it would have been worthy of a mention.
Canonically sensors can gather data from parsecs away.
It may take you a couple of years to change jump planes but you think it would have been worthy of a mention.
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
You would think a single jump plane would be worthy of mention as well.
The reason I asked was because of figuring the interactions of Kuiper and Oort clouds on jump, hop, skip, leap, bound, vault, and beyond drives.
as with Mike, IMTU, the jump plane is an artifact of Yaskodray's.
Unlike Mike, I don't presume it to have been reasonably replicated.
It's entirely possible that Hop and Skip didn't exist until post IY 1300, explaining why the Jump Space Institute at Regina didn't find it...
as with Mike, IMTU, the jump plane is an artifact of Yaskodray's.
Unlike Mike, I don't presume it to have been reasonably replicated.
It's entirely possible that Hop and Skip didn't exist until post IY 1300, explaining why the Jump Space Institute at Regina didn't find it...
Well, yeah, but that's kind of the way canon evolves. One day we're all doing fine, the next day we learn that some sort of sapient computer program buggie thingie is going to pretty much eradicate most of everything we ever knew at some point in the not-too-distant future, and some of us buy into it, and some of us say, "Oh hell no."
This is a fairly big change, but it's also fairly innocuous. It's like being told there's been an advanced civilization in one of the Magellanic Clouds all this time. One can see why the news never had any impact before now, and it's not likely to have any impact in future unless someone somewhere decides to make it have an impact.
My explanation in the 80s was that there was an artifact enabling jump travel, but every origin and destination had to be within a parsec or two of an arbitrary radius of the artifact. The position of the artifact and radius limitation were chosen to maximize the accessibility of habitable worlds. All travel was in the outer shell of a sphere, and the map eventually wrapped around on itself.
