The Why of the FTL Wave

[mike wightman]

My understanding is the jump plane is 2D.

A ship with a jump 1 drive can enter the jump plane if within 1 parsec of the plane, a ship with a jump 10 drive would need to be within 10 parsecs of the plane.

 

[Grav_Moped]

My understanding is the jump plane is 2D.

A ship with a jump 1 drive can enter the jump plane if within 1 parsec of the plane, a ship with a jump 10 drive would need to be within 10 parsecs of the plane.

This makes space travel weird.

For example, consider two worlds on a line perpendicular to the plane (and on the same side) at distances of 5 and 6 parsecs from it. They are separated by 1 parsec (Jump-1). However, it requires Jump-6 capability to travel between them. Does it also require Jump-6 fuel burn? Likewise for two worlds separated by 1 parsec but each at 6 parsecs from the jump plane.

Also, each incremental increase in Jump capability enables access to additional worlds within and throughout a civilization, not merely faster or farther travel. The frontiers are going to be "up" and "down" as well as on the planar perimiter. Many worlds in the Imperium* cannot have had FTL contact of any kind until perhaps 100 years before the Golden Age, if that, because Jump-6 was not available yet. More would have been inaccessible only until J-5 was possible, and so on.


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*and none anywhere else, since AFAIK the 3I has the highest known TL of an actively-spacefaring current society. (Ancients had a lot better way back when, but nobody else with TL-16+ is out there on a major expansion push...)

 

[Grav_Moped]

Many worlds in the Imperium* cannot have had FTL contact of any kind until perhaps 100 years before the Golden Age, if that, because Jump-6 was not available yet.

And under the LBB5-and-later Jump-TL paradigm, one could establish redoubts on the 6-parsec-up/down worlds that would be inaccessible to anyone without TL-15 (and thus J-6) -- access via serial lower-Jn jumps would fail. (Not under LBB2 though, since J-6 is possible well before then in that system.)

Likewise for shorter distances from the plane at lower tech levels.

 

[Condottiere]

So if you look out of one of the portholes, all you see is a flat line.

I guess a jump bubble is a pimple in hyperspace, waiting to burst forth into Einsteinian universe.

 

[aramis]

Jump space, or the zone of normal space from/within which Jump is possible?

In other words, is the concept that the star maps are a representation of the positional relationships of stars within the 2D jump space -- that is, their positions in 3D space correspond with 2D relative positions within Jumpspace, then the charts are drawn of that?

Or they are an actual representation of the stars that are on the arbitrary 2D plane within 3D normal space between which Jump can happen?

I was running the probabilities of finding straight line courses between stars, the effects of the stellar exclusion zones.

I garnered from the interactions that...

• J-space is a 2-D plane
• The correspondence to N-space is not a direct plane, but a wavy sheet.
• the relationships between worlds are nearly congruent between J-Space and N-Space
• The intervening obstacles are any solid or liquid of larger size than the ship generating the exclusion effect and along the local sheet.

 

[infojunky]

The map as presented is a cartogram of Jump Space in that only shows connections and potential. The Wave as such is a phenomenon while traveling from the core is along the jump potential that one sees as the projected cartogram.

In terms the Jump map as present is a Cartogram that represents time rather than gross distance between points.

And being that the wave is traveling faster than light the Jump network as such looks to be a good conduit of transmission of it.

 

[Condottiere]

If you have a flat plane, you warp it and it becomes a wave form that touches every point.

 

[mike wightman]

It's no longer flat if it is curved, it is a curved plane.

 

[Condottiere]

Bit it's still two dimensional.

 

[kilemall]

Bit it's still two dimensional.

Maybe that’s what is so insanity inducing- looking raw at actual two dimensions drive three d brains crazy.

 

[BackworldTraveller]

Or perhaps you just ignore the OTU's double-talk and make your own explanation.

 

[aramis]

It's no longer flat if it is curved, it is a curved plane.

Only from a 3d point of view.

 

[mike wightman]

Bit it's still two dimensional.

But no longer flat.

 

[mike wightman]

Only from a 3d point of view.

If it is a flat plane then it is flat from a 3D view, if it undulates then to a dweller of 2D space it is still 'flat' to them, but to a 3D observer it is curved.
What is the official answer, is jump space a flat 2D plane or a curved 2D plane?

 

[Condottiere]

Work in progress.

Jump streams are optional, so possibly might be dead areas.

 

[Grav_Moped]

It's no longer flat if it is curved, it is a curved plane.

Only from a 3d point of view.

That is, Jump Space is 2-dimensional, but has a 1:1 (or possibly 1:many, but I'm not sure how that would work) correspondence with 3D real space.

Longer version: J-space is 2-dimensional in that there is no "up or down" to enable going around intervening objects. The "Jump Plane" is an approximately 12-parsec thick zone in "real space" for which all significantly-sized objects have a corresponding polygon and/or vector field in the Jump Space plane, that mostly corresponds with their relative locations in "real space" when viewed from galactic north or south. It is not physically present in "real space" but corresponds to it, and can be accessed through the use of Jump Drives.

Generally available star maps (as represented by TravellerMap, other publications, and manually-created equivalents) are simplified and annotated maps of Jump Space rather than of the "real universe". It is not known why star systems in Jump Space are almost invariably spaced in a pattern that places each star at what would be the center of a hexagon within a pattern of universal tessellation by regular hexagons. (This is another one of the things that drives astronomers and jump-space theoreticians to chemical abuse, madness, and suicide.)

 

[rlmercad069]

From the desk of the chief admin of the Universe, "It's all FM, nothing to see here so just move a long, move a long folks."

 

[Grav_Moped]

From the desk of the chief admin of the Universe, "It's all FM, nothing to see here so just move a long, move a long folks."

The notion that there is an actual Chief Admin of the Universe is what drives 'em to drinking.

 

[mike wightman]

What's to stop an enemy fleet going above or below the jump plane using STL drives? Use drugs or cold sleep to alleviate the boredom.

 

[Spinward Flow]

What's to stop an enemy fleet going above or below the jump plane using STL drives? Use drugs or cold sleep to alleviate the boredom.

The trip would take so long that it renders the maneuver "useless" in an immediacy of timing factor.

Kind of like having an enemy fleet pop up (out of "nowhere") and start attacking DECADES after the war is already over.
If those forces hadn't been "discarded" on this long delayed fleet maneuver, they could have been used (historically) when it might have made a difference to the outcome.

The only way that such a fleet maneuver makes sense is if you want the Current Generation of your military to (surprise) attack a Later Generation of your enemies due to the time lag involved in such STL maneuvering. You're engaging in "generation warfare" at that point, and that requires a pretty zealous mindset to commit to such a scheme (along with a "don't you dare look back" mentality to carry it through).

Not exactly practical for a lot of reasons.
POSSIBLE, sure ... practical, not so much.