The Long Night?

[Grav_Moped]

Of course, without a jump-governor, the empty hex problem is fatal!

Not necessarily. Just carry fuel for two jumps (and that might include twice the four-week power plant allocation).

In retrospect (though I haven't seen any confirmation of this), it's why the Type Y Yacht has fuel for two consecutive jumps, and why Annic Nova has two separate Jump Drives.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

Okay, now I get why the Model One computer keeps getting referred to as technological level five, from Classic High Guard.

At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves. Initially the only devices available were germanium point-contact transistors, less reliable than the valves they replaced but which consumed far less power.[127] Their first transistorised computer, and the first in the world, was operational by 1953,[128] and a second version was completed there in April 1955.[129] The 1955 version used 200 transistors, 1,300 solid-state diodes, and had a power consumption of 150 watts. However, the machine did make use of valves to generate its 125 kHz clock waveforms and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory, so it was not the first completely transistorized computer.

That distinction goes to the Harwell CADET of 1955,[130] built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. The design featured a 64-kilobyte magnetic drum memory store with multiple moving heads that had been designed at the National Physical Laboratory, UK. By 1953 this team had transistor circuits operating to read and write on a smaller magnetic drum from the Royal Radar Establishment. The machine used a low clock speed of only 58 kHz to avoid having to use any valves to generate the clock waveforms.[131][130]

If this is the case, I suspect the Apple Watch can be programmed with Jump Control One.

Apple watch handling Jump-1.... yeah....
Spent some time reading NASA's familiarization documents for Gemini and the Space Shuttle and ISS.
The average cell phone has more computing mojo.
For example, the storage for the Shuttle's software (OS, applications) was 600kb.
This did get upgraded later, but still....

 

[BackworldTraveller]

Okay, now I get why the Model One computer keeps getting referred to as technological level five, from Classic High Guard.

At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves. Initially the only devices available were germanium point-contact transistors, less reliable than the valves they replaced but which consumed far less power.[127] Their first transistorised computer, and the first in the world, was operational by 1953,[128] and a second version was completed there in April 1955.[129] The 1955 version used 200 transistors, 1,300 solid-state diodes, and had a power consumption of 150 watts. However, the machine did make use of valves to generate its 125 kHz clock waveforms and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory, so it was not the first completely transistorized computer.

That distinction goes to the Harwell CADET of 1955,[130] built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. The design featured a 64-kilobyte magnetic drum memory store with multiple moving heads that had been designed at the National Physical Laboratory, UK. By 1953 this team had transistor circuits operating to read and write on a smaller magnetic drum from the Royal Radar Establishment. The machine used a low clock speed of only 58 kHz to avoid having to use any valves to generate the clock waveforms.[131][130]

If this is the case, I suspect the Apple Watch can be programmed with Jump Control One.

One of my university lecturer's first jobs was to push a shopping-trolley like affair up and down the racks of the computer to swap out the valves...When he said he started IN computers he really meant it!

The computer concerned could be out performed by a Cassio Watch by the 1980s. Apple Watches are Waaaaay more sophisticated.

Except of course, the majority of computers at that time were the PEOPLE who checked that the machine had the right answer!

 

[Condottiere]

This would be where you shoehorn in the human element in astrogation.

 

[coliver988]

Apple watch handling Jump-1.... yeah....
Spent some time reading NASA's familiarization documents for Gemini and the Space Shuttle and ISS.
The average cell phone has more computing mojo.
For example, the storage for the Shuttle's software (OS, applications) was 600kb.
This did get upgraded later, but still....

It was also older equipment that had layers of radiation protection and other things. Circuits are not great with radiation...

Pretty sure things are better/more up to date now, but if I recall it took years to certify computers for space use.

Anyway, a b it of history here for computers in space: https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/computers-and-space-exploration/

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

Catching up a little bit:

An interesting argument. I will hold to my statement that the borders were leaky, though. Some traffic was flowing across those borders even as they supposedly contracted.

I agree with you, and I never said it was an either/or situation. The Yileans benefited from full membership in the Ziru Sirka, and they benefited again by using what they learned to forge a sizable rump empire out of the crumbling remains.

Keep in mind, however, that stories of 'leaking' technology are told from the perspective of the Ziru Sirka, and the Vilani have an exceptionally rigid concept of intellectual property rights. If they invented a technology, they are the only legitimate owners of it; anyone else is either a licensee or a thief. The Yileans and Bwaps were almost certainly regarded as licensees, while the Vargr, Terrans and more radical Vilani breakaways (Sindalians, for example) were thieves.

There is one problem with invoking the Luriani - they are not CT canon, and nor are they unique canon in that there are at least three different versions of them...

Well, they are canon, regardless of which edition they showed up in. Traveller canon, according to The Powers That Be, works backwards from the most recent edition, so the -4100 contact between the Luriani and the Zhodani stands, as that has never been superceded.

I bring this up not to pick squabble over canon, but to allow me to note the interesting fact (at least to me) that the Zhodani are officially recorded as making initial contact with the Vilani in -2000, over 2000 years after they first learned of their existence. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that -2000 is just after declaration of the founding of the Rule of Man in -2004, meaning that the Zhodani waited until after the Ziru Sirka was no longer in the picture before letting the other major human races know of their existence.

Or I suppose it could be that -2000 is just the date that knowledge of the existence of the Zhodani first leaked out from formerly proprietary First Imperium Bureau (Makhidkarun) sources. Makhidkarun does often come off as the most insular and secretive of the three former bureaux.

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

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.

That only points to when deep space jump techniques were invented in Dark Nebula Sector; it does not establish that nobody else had figured it out elsewhere in Charted Space. Others, including the Solomani, could have come up with it in any one of the shrinking pockets of technological civilization scattered throughout former imperial space, and nobody else more than a dozen parsecs away or so would be any the wiser for it. Information exchange travels by jump, and the literature makes it abundantly clear that jump travel had completely broken down by -1526 ('9pm'), the early dark of the Long Night.

We also do not know how long outsiders like the Zhodani, Vargr and Hivers have been able to do it. The Zhodani certainly have strong impetus to figure it out (the Core Expeditions), and if they had gotten it down, then the Vargr likely swiped it from them with the rest of the jump tech that they stole. And if the Vargr had it, then it probably made it to the former imperial worlds they were harassing in what was once Makhidkarun space.

If this is the case, I suspect the Apple Watch can be programmed with Jump Control One.

You are making the assumption that the algorithms required to calculate jump are solvable by the kind of computers that are ubiquitous today. If jump navigation requires something like quantum gravity modeling, n-body interaction predictions or brute force, hendecadimensional, random walk route calculations, then your Apple watch is not going to be able to cut it, because there's not enough time in the universe for a classical computer of any power to do it. For that, you would need a quantum computer.

And at the moment, there's no indication that you could ever build a quantum computer small enough to fit on a desktop. The insulation requirements to keep the qbits isolated and error free alone could account for a lot of the displacement requirements of the rigs that Traveller starships run on.

 

[Condottiere]

So this would be an alternate timeline, like Batman the Animated Series, where Turing invents the quantum computer to decode the Enigma machines.

I can deal with a steampunk aesthetic.

 

[GypsyComet]

Or I suppose it could be that -2000 is just the date that knowledge of the existence of the Zhodani first leaked out from formerly proprietary First Imperium Bureau (Makhidkarun) sources. Makhidkarun does often come off as the most insular and secretive of the three former bureaux.

Cue the recommendation to read Agent of the Imperium and its additional chapter, for those who haven't yet.

 

[whulorigan]

Cue the recommendation to read Agent of the Imperium and its additional chapter, for those who haven't yet.

To what are you referring when you say: "Its additional chapter"?

 

[kilemall]

1. I didn't think anyone would make a challenge on this, but, okay:

Auto-Plotted Jumps

For unknown reasons, automated jumps are prone to an increased risk of misjump. A jump plotted by the automatic systems without the involvement of a sentient astrogator is subject to the same DM-4 as all other fully automated actions. For this reason, if just one skilled crewmembers is carried it is usually an astrogator. A jump plotted in semi-automatic mode by someone without the Astrogator skill but with a basic understanding of the concepts involved suffers DM-2. It is thought that a machine will produce several apparently equal solutions to the same jump plot and cannot distinguish between them but a sentient mind somehow ‘feels’ which one is slightly better than the others. Even someone who is not a trained astrogator can do this to some extent and if one is available they can oversee the plot. Their Astrogator skill applies in this case and the DM-2 is not suffered.

Attempting to send a ship through jumpspace without people on board enormously increases the risk of misjump, for reasons unknown. In addition to the DM-4 for the autoplot, a vessel suffers an additional DM-4 if there are no conscious minds aboard. Low berth passengers are by definition not conscious and experiments with highly intelligent but non-sentient minds have produced wildly differing results.

pages 236-7 ALIENS OF CHARTED SPACE VOLUME 2

Sounds almost as though Astrogation jump accuracy is a matter of a minor trained psionics talent.


Or that they need Spice....

 

[kilemall]

[FONT=arial,helvetica]Which sort of trivializes jump control programmes computer processing powers, since I'll assume the technological nine model can easily deal with jump control six, though the textual implications are it automatically would know it, or at least, be included in any update.[/FONT]

Fair chance a Jump-6 is exponentially more difficult a calculation then a Jump-1.


The more interesting question is why is so much fuel required for it?

 

[Condottiere]

1. Latent psionic talent; certainly tones of the Butlerian Jihad where human involvement is a requirement.

2. The primary taste of Coca-Cola is thought to come from vanilla and cinnamon, with trace amounts of essential oils, and spices such as nutmeg.

3. If the bandwidth of jump control six is thirty, Core forty (bis) would have a reserved bandwidth of thirty reserved exclusively for jump control programmes; I'd rather have that thirty for seventy total general utility bandwidth, and buy the jump control programmes as required.

4. Outside of game balance, I've come to the conclusion it's part of an alchemistical process.

 

[GypsyComet]

To what are you referring when you say: "Its additional chapter"?

There was a Baen anthology released online a few months ago. Marc submitted an Agent chapter to it that isn't in the book.

https://www.baen.com/free-stories-2...bIX9iorzoyFtkzEgRsOBd1OBmTmKGfXjjWxzXAB9bvRFo

As Marc said on fb, this is best read after the book.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

Computers "more up to date now" - yeah, laptops on the ISS for example. Or, in a bigger way, compare the UI for the Dragon to the Shuttle.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Fair chance a Jump-6 is exponentially more difficult a calculation then a Jump-1.


The more interesting question is why is so much fuel required for it?

Out-of-universe, it's a performance-limiting game mechanic -- especially in LBB2, and most particularly in 2nd Edition. Restricts the highest jump numbers to higher tech levels (due to fixed-size components, and drive power scaling by TL), in a way that would become formalized in High Guard. High Guard's drop tanks can almost entirely decouple (core) ship size and Jump capability. (Minimum stripped-down J6 xboat is about 150Td without drop tanks, minimum J-6 ship is 100Td with a lot of payload capacity and maneuver capability if drop tanks are used.)

EDIT TO ADD: The other thing the 10%/Jn factor does is create a rules-based "physical" limit to Jn. In LBB2 2nd Ed, it's not possible to build a J7 ship because the drives and fuel won't fit, even using the magically effective Size Z drives. Drop tanks break this limitation, but HG replaces the "it can't be built" constraint with a "nobody knows how to build it yet" (tech level) limitation.

In-universe, it's because you need to get to a higher level of Jump Space to get the additional distance, which takes more energy (and thus fuel) to reach.

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

So this would be an alternate timeline, like Batman the Animated Series, where Turing invents the quantum computer to decode the Enigma machines.

I can deal with a steampunk aesthetic.

That works too, but I was thinking more along the lines of once quantum computers become a mature technology, later Brilliant Minds might come up with ways to build less sophisticated (but still useful) ones at lower Tech Levels. After all, no edition of Traveller ever specifies what type of computer runs a starship. Admittedly, this is largely because hardly anyone had even conceived of a quantum computer before the 1990s, but that doesn't mean that that couldn't be what High Guard meant all along, retroactively speaking. After all, brown dwarfs were barely more than theory in the 1970s, too.

Cue the recommendation to read Agent of the Imperium and its additional chapter, for those who haven't yet.

I read the 'extra chapter', but I haven't read 'Agent' yet. Is there weird Makhidkarun related stuff in there or other Ziru Sirka stuff worth knowing about?

The one thing I got from the short story, besides learning about the existence of creepy-deepy organitech aliens (Essaray again?) lurking about in Vargr space, was the offhand remark that there's an example of functioning pre-Grandfather(?!) ultratech chugging away somewhere in Deneb Sector.

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

Sounds almost as though Astrogation jump accuracy is a matter of a minor trained psionics talent.

Unlikely, as there is at least one race (Hivers) who have managed to master jump travel despite virtually no aptitude for psionics.

I think, perhaps, it has something to do with the fact that every instance of jump travel is a concrete example of Schodinger's Box in action, and as such it needs a literal observer to complete its function. Without some qualified observer of the phenomenon, the contents of the 'box' (in this case a starship) cannot either collapse into a single defined state (under Copenhagen interpretation) or manifest into its multiple possibilities (under the Many Worlds interpretation). The end result, from the outside universe's point of view, is that the jump fails somehow, quite often catastrophically.

So, what qualifies as an observer? Obviously, humans and other sentient beings do. But how low does it go? Do dogs, cats and lizards qualify? Ants and cockroaches? Divorce attorneys and social media influencers?

Nobody has ever figured that part out for certain, except that standard issue AI's (like robots and ship's computer systems) don't count, as well as most incarnations of the mysterious Essaray. Tech derived from naturally evolved silicon life (Virus) seems to work, although that is small comfort to the rest of us in Charted Space.

 

[GypsyComet]

I read the 'extra chapter', but I haven't read 'Agent' yet. Is there weird Makhidkarun related stuff in there or other Ziru Sirka stuff worth knowing about?

The one thing I got from the short story, besides learning about the existence of creepy-deepy organitech aliens (Essaray again?) lurking about in Vargr space, was the offhand remark that there's an example of functioning pre-Grandfather(?!) ultratech chugging away somewhere in Deneb Sector.

Apropos to this discussion is the conversation the Agent has with the Comms guy at the end of that story. It needs the book to be in full context, though.

 

[Condottiere]

It leaves us with a lot of dead Aslan.

MongoVerse assumption is more sentient intuition as to the correct course of action, or just course, of course, to avoid going off course.

Coarsely speaking.