Perhaps. I think I understand why the LBBs were LBBs. Not a knock, just an observation. I really had fun with Traveller, but was perplexed by a distinct lack of astrophysics other than starship refueling and other operational or player minutiae.
Updating the maps, or stars do move.
- Thread starter tjoneslo
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Okay, back on topic;
I came across Youtube describing a NEO called "Apophis", whose orbit was said to intersect with Earth's in 2029, with a possible impact event (which would be majorly catastrophic beyond belief; we're talking beyond dinosaur extinction territory).
On the upside, it actually flew past us last year, coming within 5.6 Earth diameters of the planet. The downside was that it came in 2013, 20 years before it was supposed to, and came within 5.6 Earth diameters (5.6 SFB hexes?) of the planet.
We're talking the kind of even where even if you're in a submarine at crush depth at the north pole, you're not safe.
I think your standard stellar TL world could handle it simply by destroying the thing; cutting it up with lasers, pulverizing it with missiles, or just shoving it with grav tech or something. But poor worlds without local navy or subsector navy access might be subject to this kind of threat.
Another threat is a Thea scenario; where Thea is a theorized near Earth sized rogue world that struck Earth during it's formation, the resultant impact of which created our moon. I think even high TL15 or TL16/TL17 experimental Imperial tech would have a hard time dealing with this, but, there might be some kind of "solution" somewhere akin to Darrien science.
Where this falls more in line with Aramis's "evac time", and where it does dip into the fantastic, in terms of natural astronomical history, it has happened, and may be something worth contemplating in an off handed sort of way.
Just for the record, I'm glad Traveller stuck with geo-politics, sociology/crime, and never hooked into traditional sci-fi tropes of giant monsters, super aliens, time-travel and what not. It keeps the game grounded, and I think that's why people like me have stuck with it so much. But there's always been a temptation on my part to see how players might react to unique situations that come out of left field in terms of Traveller; i.e. your players have successfully thwarted or dealt with a terrorist attack, but as they leave the starport and exit orbit a massive abandoned alien complex suddenly materializes. How do your combat rifleman skills and mechanical / computer skills deal wit something like that?
Anyway, sorry for getting all negative. I like Traveller a great deal, and hope this thread helps enhances player experiences.
I came across Youtube describing a NEO called "Apophis", whose orbit was said to intersect with Earth's in 2029, with a possible impact event (which would be majorly catastrophic beyond belief; we're talking beyond dinosaur extinction territory).
On the upside, it actually flew past us last year, coming within 5.6 Earth diameters of the planet. The downside was that it came in 2013, 20 years before it was supposed to, and came within 5.6 Earth diameters (5.6 SFB hexes?) of the planet.
We're talking the kind of even where even if you're in a submarine at crush depth at the north pole, you're not safe.
I think your standard stellar TL world could handle it simply by destroying the thing; cutting it up with lasers, pulverizing it with missiles, or just shoving it with grav tech or something. But poor worlds without local navy or subsector navy access might be subject to this kind of threat.
Another threat is a Thea scenario; where Thea is a theorized near Earth sized rogue world that struck Earth during it's formation, the resultant impact of which created our moon. I think even high TL15 or TL16/TL17 experimental Imperial tech would have a hard time dealing with this, but, there might be some kind of "solution" somewhere akin to Darrien science.
Where this falls more in line with Aramis's "evac time", and where it does dip into the fantastic, in terms of natural astronomical history, it has happened, and may be something worth contemplating in an off handed sort of way.
Just for the record, I'm glad Traveller stuck with geo-politics, sociology/crime, and never hooked into traditional sci-fi tropes of giant monsters, super aliens, time-travel and what not. It keeps the game grounded, and I think that's why people like me have stuck with it so much. But there's always been a temptation on my part to see how players might react to unique situations that come out of left field in terms of Traveller; i.e. your players have successfully thwarted or dealt with a terrorist attack, but as they leave the starport and exit orbit a massive abandoned alien complex suddenly materializes. How do your combat rifleman skills and mechanical / computer skills deal wit something like that?
Anyway, sorry for getting all negative. I like Traveller a great deal, and hope this thread helps enhances player experiences.
You're overestimating the effectiveness of cutting it up, etc. If it is on an impact trajectory, 2013 was our best hope for removal - a single nuke then could alter it's 2029 pass by several light minutes.
The mass is estimated to be 4x10^10 kg - about 40x the largest Traveller warships. with a gravitic drive, ala Traveller, at TL 12+, moving it is not that hard... the problem being that, for any reaction mass based society, without 10+ year lead times, t's a potential death sentence.
Oh, and slicing it up doesn't significantly reduce the energy input to a body... it just distributes it either into multiple smaller events (think: 100 different super-Tugusta-Event impacts, over 2 days) or into a million meteors in the same span... that much energy dump will have effects. And it's moving fast enough to stay in solar orbit and to not be captured as a new moon... so it will be faster than geosynch orbit speed (because it's going to be crossing inside Geosynch altitude!).
Also, Apophis was known to be coming by in 2013. It's that it's supposed to get far closer still (less than 20,000 miles) in 2029, and that distance is less than the margin of error on the position calculations. It was then recalculated based upon the 2013 pass and realized that the error meant it wasn't likely at all to hit earth, but there was a significant (~3%) chance it would be hitting a particular gravity interaction to put it into a 7-year rendezvous with earth... but further measurements since have reduced that considerably. In 2029, it will be a naked-eye, daytime visible event. But, barring something hitting it before then, it should miss earth by just about 19000 miles.
The SFB hex, by the way, is 10,000km. Earth is roughly 12,700 km diameter.
The mass is estimated to be 4x10^10 kg - about 40x the largest Traveller warships. with a gravitic drive, ala Traveller, at TL 12+, moving it is not that hard... the problem being that, for any reaction mass based society, without 10+ year lead times, t's a potential death sentence.
Oh, and slicing it up doesn't significantly reduce the energy input to a body... it just distributes it either into multiple smaller events (think: 100 different super-Tugusta-Event impacts, over 2 days) or into a million meteors in the same span... that much energy dump will have effects. And it's moving fast enough to stay in solar orbit and to not be captured as a new moon... so it will be faster than geosynch orbit speed (because it's going to be crossing inside Geosynch altitude!).
Also, Apophis was known to be coming by in 2013. It's that it's supposed to get far closer still (less than 20,000 miles) in 2029, and that distance is less than the margin of error on the position calculations. It was then recalculated based upon the 2013 pass and realized that the error meant it wasn't likely at all to hit earth, but there was a significant (~3%) chance it would be hitting a particular gravity interaction to put it into a 7-year rendezvous with earth... but further measurements since have reduced that considerably. In 2029, it will be a naked-eye, daytime visible event. But, barring something hitting it before then, it should miss earth by just about 19000 miles.
The SFB hex, by the way, is 10,000km. Earth is roughly 12,700 km diameter.
Interesting clarification on Apophis. When I think of slicing it up, I guess I had this image of slicing it up into digestible chunks that the planet's atmosphere could incinerate, and not so much into "smaller" yet still dangerous space rocks. I figured that as the body approached, after a starship's laser barbette hacked it up, the thing would approach as an aggregate instead of a single solid mass.
I guess I had this notion where a captain could order his vessel to chop it up into rubble or maybe "car" sized or moving box sized chunks. Such that as the mass approached a planet, it would literally fall apart, and just wind up as a spectacular sky show instead of the bringer of extinction that it might have posed.
What do you think?
I guess I had this notion where a captain could order his vessel to chop it up into rubble or maybe "car" sized or moving box sized chunks. Such that as the mass approached a planet, it would literally fall apart, and just wind up as a spectacular sky show instead of the bringer of extinction that it might have posed.
What do you think?
Documentaries, for the public, on astrophysics weren't that prevalent back in the 1970s nor 1980s. Well, on the tv stations I was watching they weren't. Watching them, and ones on things like quarks, was my hobby for years.
There are a larger number of these types of documentaries on Discovery Science channel and some on History channel. 'How the Earth was Made' and a number of others are being shown.
That is true, Jim. It may be for a newer supplement to tackle astronomy and astrophysics to inject some good blood into our beloved passtime.
Hi !
I've noticed Dr. Kaku's shows are very popular, so popular, he goes to sf conventions and answers questions about possible things like faster than light travel from people dressed as D&D warriors and ST troopers.
Evidently some don't take him seriously because of those conventions, but he is one of the top experimental physicists.
I've noticed Dr. Kaku's shows are very popular, so popular, he goes to sf conventions and answers questions about possible things like faster than light travel from people dressed as D&D warriors and ST troopers.
Evidently some don't take him seriously because of those conventions, but he is one of the top experimental physicists.
The problem is all the mass is still there. It really doesn't matter if it's one chunk or a billion. Having the that mass hit the atmosphere (and ground) will still cause an extinction level event. The form of the extinction may be a little different, but will be just as bad in either case.
I like him and Brian Greene. He's got lots of good lay person explanations on things. I have one of his books from the early 90s on Hyperspace. Very interesting stuff. I'm not qualified, but I think it would be interesting if he collaborated with someone on a Traveller supplement; "Traveller; Astrophysics", complete with solar coronal events, gamma ray bursts, extinction meteors, or the "refueling your ship by shoveling snow topic" I started either last year or the year before last
I'd buy a copy.
I guess I had it in my mind that if it was sliced up, then the piece closer to the planet would be drawn away from the main mass, and you'd get a kind of "splayed out" rock strewn in thousands or millions of pieces instead of a giant "lump sum", so to speak. You would get a cascade of meteorlettes instead of a giant meteor. Not a good idea? :CoW:
Those "digestible chunks" are going to bake the surface, according to NASA predictions. You're still dumping the same amount of KE over the same 2 days, but now you are heating the air directly, rather than dumping in into the crust. Less nuclear winter, more "glowing red-hot sky kills everything underneath it"... and more metal oxide fallout.
Frankymole
SOC-12
When I was converting the near star coordinates to get a 3D map of local space, I had to use proper motions work out the nearest star's movement over the millennia up to the Third Imperium, which was a nuisance. For farther ones it doesn't really matter.
I wonder how it would manifest, if true.
The sky heated by millions of tons of rock and metal creating a layer of glowing plasma much lower and denser than normal atmospheric plasma (the aurorae). Lots of nickel-oxide and silcon-dioxide. It only takes about 350° C for a few minutes to result in massive wildfires (most green wood autoignites between 350° and 500° C; grass fires only need about 250° to 350°)...
Imagine living in your household oven for a two day period.
A few hours, and that wood starts burning.
Tuguska was a massive fire following the initial blast - and it's estimated to have been about 60m diameter at entry. It created mid-latitude aurorae visible even in twilight for 3 days, and bright enough to read by in many places, throughout the northern hemisphere. And it suspended extra dust for a month...
Apophis is about 325km diameter. we're talking 158x the volume, roughly. We get a fierce glow for a day or two... and a month or two of noonday twilight. If that radiant glow dumps enough energy low enough, it bakes the trees underneath, and those ignite, and add lower level soot...
2-3 months of global dimming won't be the end of life on Earth, but it will certainly crash the current crops, result in massive famines, and anyone with compromised immune systems is unlikely to survive the nutritional stresses. Animal diversity will plummet, as most large herbivores die from lack of forage.
If we get temperatures at surface of 100°C from skyglow for a day, we basically kill almost all above ground mammals. The Hippos take over. We also add steam to the light blocking. If we get to 200°C, for even a couple hours, we get almost all croplands burning, and almost all wildlands, and probably also lose most of the available fresh water.
Any remaining large chunks also hit and cause typical cratering events... but those actually eat a lot of the energy; I've read that unless they reveal the molten mantle (IE; 3-4 km deep), they take more energy than the ejecta releases.
Apophis is just small enough that a singular impact may be survivable on it's own. If it hits land. Sure, whichever continent gets hit with 450—5000 megatons, plus ejecta and revealed smoke side effects.
If it hits water, the tsunami will wipe out the coasts to 50+ miles inland... 2-3 times... the initial outflow wave, the secondary rebound as the void created rushes in, mounds to 10km then flows back, and possibly a tertiary rebound. Plus, it creates a crater which may also trigger a water detonation event on the initial rebound.
I'm thinking about it, but that worst case scenario is still premised on the notion that all that mass comes in at the same time.
I guess to get back on topic, one wonders if there isn't a playable scenario with rogue NEO like bodies around ... hell, I don't know, ... one of the Sword Worlds or someplace that has access to enough firepower to make an effort worthwhile, but not insuring a guarantee.
I'm gong to have to bone up on my astronomy.
Not to underscore it too much, but this is kind of why I wanted the OTU to open up a bit more on what the powers that be considered hard science. You say that there is a chance, impact depending, that a Apophis impact may be just survivable. I think the question then becomes the players might push that adjective from "might" to "doable".
The ramifications of failure you've outlined, and it's a scary picture. I'm not ashamed to admit that I had a bit of a chill when I came across that Youtube video (it wasn't a doc, by the way, just another one of those top ten list thing, which made me go to NASA's website to confirm). I mean, if that's something that our TL6-7-8 civ can't deal with, but had fore-knoweldge, and perhaps even a crack at addressing, then there's got to be a playable scenario for a TL higher.
I guess to get back on topic, one wonders if there isn't a playable scenario with rogue NEO like bodies around ... hell, I don't know, ... one of the Sword Worlds or someplace that has access to enough firepower to make an effort worthwhile, but not insuring a guarantee.
I'm gong to have to bone up on my astronomy.
Not to underscore it too much, but this is kind of why I wanted the OTU to open up a bit more on what the powers that be considered hard science. You say that there is a chance, impact depending, that a Apophis impact may be just survivable. I think the question then becomes the players might push that adjective from "might" to "doable".
The ramifications of failure you've outlined, and it's a scary picture. I'm not ashamed to admit that I had a bit of a chill when I came across that Youtube video (it wasn't a doc, by the way, just another one of those top ten list thing, which made me go to NASA's website to confirm). I mean, if that's something that our TL6-7-8 civ can't deal with, but had fore-knoweldge, and perhaps even a crack at addressing, then there's got to be a playable scenario for a TL higher.
Journal of the Traveller Aid Issue 20 - Amber zone called Critical Vector was an exploration of this idea. Players jump into a small, isolated system and find an inbound asteroid. The solutions in the article were either to 1) use a number of nuclear weapons to push the rock out of the way, or 2) be complete bastards and haul whomever could pay the most out system and let everyone else bake.
Interesting. Did the JTAS article say how big the object was?
I wanted to respond to this properly; I think a new thread is needed, and I'll probably create one in due course regarding "fantasy" Traveller verse "improbable" or "unlikely" Traveller.
One of the things that's bugged me about hard science based sci-fi is how much handwave to inject into the OTU. I bring it up in this thread because MTs PC game; "MT 2; Quest for the Ancients" had Pink Slime threatening a well known Marches world.
So, to relate it to the thread, assuming you fail in your task to save that planet, do you update the map by saying Rhylanor is covered in Pink Slime, or what?
I'll start a new thread later on.
I never played them, so they never entered my thought process. My friends who did play MT2 all panned it as a reskinned D&D adventure. Perhaps the slime you mention is why.
Why not? The pink slime comes from an Ancient facility. The facility fulfils the basic purpose of Ancient sites: Industrial strength handwaving to get a plot going. It's a terraforming device. The slime will (unless stopped by the PCs) cover the entire surface of Rhylanor and lie there for a time, terraforming its metaphorical heart out according to the ineffable purpose of a 300,000 year absent Ancient.
All very Traveller. And old-school Traveller at that.
I don't know about updating the map. Rhylanor will still be there. You'd need to update the UWP, though.
Hans
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