The Long Night?

[Condottiere]

There is a difference between prohibition, and increased chance of a mishap.

 

[GypsyComet]

Now, it could be that the Vilani simply DON'T research it. J2 is "good enough". But it could be an interesting thread for the upstart, free thinking Terrans to be heavily working on it, since they're so hindered by it.

At J2 Terra is on an isolated archipelago of systems and can be locked in with blockades on as few as two systems (Shuruppak and Apishal, or closer, ideally) if surprised. It's a long string of J2s to get to Terra, in nowhere near a straight line.

There is a difference between prohibition, and increased chance of a mishap.

Given the Vilani drive foibles, those mishaps are going to be fatal most of the time. And as noted, their research and computers may simply have not found that solution to jump calculations at all. The Terrans would figure it out, possibly as a later side effect of the research that led to J3. As the range increases so to does the complexity of the math. Computers capable of J3 were also capable of testing deep space jumps, and drives with fuel regulators were more likely to survivie the experiments.

 

[Condottiere]

In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points.

 

[mike wightman]

Now try it on a non-Euclidean surface, and extend it into the hyperspacial jump dimensions, with every object in relative motion and at energy/mass levels where General Relativity must be used to constantly modify the 'surface'.

Here is something to get you thinking, π becomes a variable... (how the ^&*( do you get a symbol for pi)

π

 

[mike wightman]

And as The Terrans would figure it out, possibly as a later side effect of the research that led to J3. As the range increases so to does the complexity of the math. Computers capable of J3 were also capable of testing deep space jumps, and drives with fuel regulators were more likely to survive the experiments.

The Terrans had jump 3 for a thousand years before the events of the exploration of the Dark Nebula would lead to empty hex jump math. Oh, and it wasn't necessarily the Terrans that got it first, the Aslan could have been the ones to make the initial breakthrough.

Note that there were an awful lot of people who didn't like this explanation one bit on the GT ISW playtest.

 

[whulorigan]

Greek Letters - Use Times New Roman Font

... (how the ^&*( do you get a symbol for pi)

I have found that changing the font to Times New Roman (Size = 3) works well for Greek Letters:

" α β γ ζ η λ μ ν π υ ψ ω "

 

[mike wightman]

I have found that changing the font to Times New Roman (Size = 3) works well for Greek Letters:

" α β γ ζ η λ μ ν π υ ψ ω "

Many thanks

 

[Condottiere]

I see two aspects, general and specific.

Generally speaking, astronomy has a million points of light for reference, and millenia worth of observations; you know where they are, and it would surprise everyone if they didn't move as predicted.

That means, the entrance and exit points are ascertainable, even without Gee Pee Ess.

It could be, that you need a discernible gravitational field to exit, and possible for the entrance, as well.

However, this may be edition specific, as the way the jump drive works in the MongoVerse differs, in that once you rip apart spacetime, and the starship disappears down the rabbit hole, the jump drive turns off and you coast to your destination within a jump bubble.

Assumedly, that means, the disintegration of the jump bubble determines the exit point, not whether there is a discernible gravity field.

 

[vegas]

If one stops imagining jump navigation as a 3- or 4-dimensional problem but instead is a 5+ dimensional problem with the undefined complexities of jump space, then explanations like "the math is hard" are fine. We dont need to assume we have any idea what the math is they are doing to make a jump.

 

[Condottiere]

Jump Factor One programme would be an application on your smart phone, and a not particular fast one either.

It becomes a question exactly how many different dimensions are involved, because it's obvious that gravity fields from the Einsteinian universe express themselves in whatever dimension that jumpspace exists, otherwise they wouldn't be speedbumps.

 

[vegas]

Jump Factor One programme would be an application on your smart phone

Canonically that is true, and yet it is also true that no computer on earth today can calculate a Jump Factor Three. It seems there is a bit more going on than triangulation.

(IMTU, I do not allow a smart phone to do the J-1 and force all jump navigation to be on a TL9 computer, same as the J-drive.)

 

[mike wightman]

I keep reading this stuff, that a smart phone can do such and such. If so whey do NASA etc invest so heavily in supercomputer time if they could just use their smartphones? Make yourself rich, mine bitcoins on your smartphone...

A smartphone can not solve the same problems that a supercomputer is used to solve, and plotting a jump through a hyper dimensional space would most certainly require a supercomputer.

 

[BlackBat242]

Just a question, since I haven't dug into my CT books for about a decade (and I don't use klater editions at all):

Does CT say that you can't jump into/out of empty hexes?

I know that CT is set much later than the Long Night... which is when LATER rules sets claim that the problem (which is, as far as I remember, only stated to exist in those later rules sets) was "solved" - but I can't remember anywhere that CT says that you have to have a significant mass to "anchor" your jump with/to.


Now, as far as those "more fuel-hungry" jump drives those early Vilani interstellar ships had... there are several possibilities for alternate Jump drive implementations.

I have had in my TU, for several decades, a proto-Jump Drive - patterned somewhat after the Hyperdrive in Andre Norton's fiction.

With Hyper, there are different drive sizes, but only as related to speed of travel... the distance traveled depends solely on the amount of fuel you have - a ship can stay in "hyper" for one parsec per 12% of tonnage devoted to drive fuel.

A ship with the smallest drive for its hull size (5% of hull mass, TL 9) takes some 10 days to travel one parsec, the next larger size (8%hm, TL 10) takes 7.5 days/parsec, and Hyper 3 (10%hm, TL 11) takes 5 days/parsec.

Therefore, a ship travels more slowly, uses more fuel, and has larger H-drive engine sizes than with Jump tech*... but can travel further distances in a single "hyper-jump" if the life-support & fuel holds out.

By Tl 12 users of Hyper tech have almost always developed Jump tech, which uses less of the ship for the J-drives, and uses less fuel per parsec - at the cost of a more-restrictive operational schedule.


* compared with CT book 5 drives - CT book 3 J-drives are just about the same size as my H-drives.

 

[BlackBat242]

Oh - forgot one thing.

While the H-drive is active, no powerplant fuel is used, as the H-drive also powers the ship's systems (computer, grav plates, life support, etc). There is a system change-over that occurs when the H-drive is activated or deactivated - with all of the attendant risks of power surges, failure to restart the PP, and so on - IF the ship is poorly maintained.

 

[Condottiere]

1. Regarding computing power, the early super computers have been long since surpassed, and I suspect the model is more likely the mainframe.

2. A slight overclocking of an existing computer, the bis variant, allows you to calculate a jump factor two, at technological level seven.

3. As I understand it, cosmic radiation can cause errors, so the reason doesn't use an iPhone in it's probes is because they need a guaranteed robustness in the computer architecture and manufacturing process; I'll assume that the Traveller spaceship default hull provides enough shielding against cosmic radiation, or additionally, you can coat the iphone with material that is cosmic radiation resistant. You could also use multiple copies of the iPhone simultaneously, and pick the resultants that are the same.

 

[mike wightman]

1. Regarding computing power, the early super computers have been long since surpassed, and I suspect the model is more likely the mainframe.

Mainframes can't solve general relativity equations or quantum mechanical equations in realtime - there certainly can't handle hyperdimensional quantum general relativity...

2. A slight overclocking of an existing computer, the bis variant, allows you to calculate a jump factor two, at technological level seven.

No it doesn't. the TL of the drive is TL11 and the controls and computer have to be TL11 too.

3. As I understand it, cosmic radiation can cause errors, so the reason doesn't use an iPhone in it's probes is because they need a guaranteed robustness in the computer architecture and manufacturing process; I'll assume that the Traveller spaceship default hull provides enough shielding against cosmic radiation, or additionally, you can coat the iphone with material that is cosmic radiation resistant. You could also use multiple copies of the iPhone simultaneously, and pick the resultants that are the same.

So I ask again, why do NASA, Space X, drugs companies etc invest in computers when all they need are smartphones running an app...

 

[Condottiere]

Okay, let's take the Cray One:

Manufacturer Cray Research
Designer Seymour Cray
Release date 1975
Units sold Over 80
Price US$7.9 million in 1977 (equivalent to $33.3 million in 2019)
Casing
Dimensions Height: 196 cm (77 in)[1]
Dia. (base): 263 cm (104 in)[1]
Dia. (columns): 145 cm (57 in)[1]
Weight 5.5 tons (Cray-1A)
Power 115 kW @ 208 V 400 Hz[1]
System
Front-end Data General Eclipse
Operating system COS & UNICOS
CPU 64-bit processor @ 80 MHz[1]
Memory 8.39 Megabytes (up to 1 048 576 words)[1]
Storage 303 Megabytes (DD19 Unit)[1]
FLOPS 160 MFLOPS


Compared with the first generation iPhone:

Developer Apple Inc.
Manufacturer Foxconn (contract manufacturer)[1][verification needed]
Slogan
"This is only the beginning."
"Apple reinvents the phone."
Generation 1st
Model A1203[2]
First released June 29, 2007; 13 years ago
Discontinued July 15, 2008; 12 years ago
Units sold 6.1 million
Predecessor Apple Newton, Motorola Rokr E1
Successor iPhone 3G
Related iPad, iPod Touch (comparison)
Type Smartphone
Form factor Slate
Dimensions
115 mm (4.5 in) H
61 mm (2.4 in) W
11.6 mm (0.46 in) D
Mass 135 g (4.8 oz)
Operating system
Original: iPhone OS 1.0
Last: iPhone OS 3.1.3
Released February 2, 2010; 11 years ago
CPU Samsung 32-bit RISC ARM 1176JZ(F)-S v1.0[3] 620 MHz
Underclocked to 412 MHz[4]
GPU PowerVR MBX Lite 3D GPU[5]
Memory 128 MB eDRAM[6]
Storage 4, 8, or 16 GB flash memory
Battery 3.7 V 1400 mAh Lithium-ion battery[7]
Data inputs
Multi-touch touchscreen display
3-axis accelerometer
Proximity sensor
Ambient light sensor
Microphone
Headset controls
Display
90mm (3.5") screen (diagonally)
320×480 pixel resolution at 163 ppi
2:3 aspect ratio
18-bit (262,144-color) LCD
Rear camera 2.0 MP with geotagging (Not GPS-based)
Sound
Single loudspeaker
TRRS headphone jack, 20 Hz to 20 kHz frequency response (internal, headset)
Microphone
Connectivity
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
(850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)
Bluetooth 2.0
USB 2.0/Dock connector[8]


1. We know Apple tends to screw us with as cheap as possible components, but we'll assume their Jump Programmes are as simply elegant as it's possible, making the most efficient use of resources.

2. It comes down to a comparison between a technological level seven eighty megahertz sixty four bit manufactured on what, six micrometres?

3. And a technological level eight thirty two bit underclocked RISC processor at four hundred and twelve megahertz, manufactured at probably forty five nanometres?

4. Against the current Twelve model, with CPU Hexa-core (2x3.1 GHz Firestorm + 4x1.8 GHz Icestorm), at I'll assume five nanometres?

 

[whartung]

So I ask again, why do NASA, Space X, drugs companies etc invest in computers when all they need are smartphones running an app...

We don't know anything about the math involved in a Jump calculation. All we have is canonical reference to "large" computer that we, the playerbase, have projected backwards based on current technology, to be "underpowered" in comparison to today.

But we have no real evidence that this is true outside of arbitrary software requirements that SEEM (to me) quite high for "such a powerful" computer, if for no other reason than many of the programs listed in CT seems quite simple and easily projected to things that we do today.

However, Jump is not one of them.

The reason NASA et al use large arrays of supercomputers is because they are not "calculating" the solution to an equation, they are modeling it.

Many of the advanced math techniques require iterative approaches to try to reduced the solution set and solve the equation.

Next, you add in the large array of real world parameters that explode the equation space, and these models take time to run.

We have no idea what the parameter or modeling space for Jump is.

I always like the anecdote about how weather modeling was actually a "solved" problem back around WWI, but the problem was performing the math on the dataset in a reasonable amount of time. They had the math, they just couldn't gather the data and calculat it faster than the weather coming in.

We could very well do Jump calculations on a smart phone, the issue being that by the time the phone is done calculating, the results of the calculations may no longer be valid.

It's not an issue of knowing the math, it's an issue of solving it fast enough to be effective.

And, in the end, the Book says we need a "large" computer to do Jump calculations, not a smart phone.

It also well explains the idea of Jump tapes.

 

[Condottiere]

1. There is the argument as to what is better, faster speed to get the process finished faster, or broader bandwidth, so that more data can flow through simultaneously.

2. If you focussed entirely on Classic, it's clear that technology level eight smartphones will beat several times over any technological level supercomputer, and we haven't even reached the end of technological level eight development, because in about five years, Apple will have computer chips manufactured at one nanometre.

3. In theory, the only hard part in programming, might be telling the jump drive how to behave during the transition; this becomes edition specific, since in the MongoVerse, the jump drive becomes inert during transition.

4. There is now a mystical element introduced, in that you need a sentient, conscious being onboard the starship, otherwise the chances of mishap increase substantially.

5. And, apparently, you desperately want a sentient being doing the astrogation, otherwise you suffer a hefty penalty there as well; while you might think this could be confined to Hivers only, as I understand it, Hivers are pretty nifty computer manufacturers.

 

[mike wightman]

Now you are just making stuff up.

Show me in canon where it says you need a sentient navigator - you don't need even a navigator in a 100t scout or x-boat.