Canonically, depending upon which edition's canon you choose, either Oort cloud to Oort cloud (3j1), rogue asteroid, or via a brown dwarf (2j1).
OTU Only: Vland Imperium
- Thread starter Timerover51
- Start date
Where (which traveller book) is a J2 world to world listed as being J1 oort cloud to oort cloud?
Does that work out mathematically?
(I knew oort clouds were far away, but 1/2 parsec?)
Oort clouds are estimated to extend out to approximately between 1 and 2 lightyears from their primary (1pc is the more conservative estimate).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud
So you theoretically could jump from a system primary to an object in its own Oort cloud, from that object to an object in the destination's Oort cloud, and from the destination Oort cloud object to the final destination. Total travel time: 3 weeks. This would depend of course on exactly how big the two particular Oort clouds are, and where the two systems actually are located within the volume of each of their respective "hexes". Of course, detecting a suitable object in both the originating and destination system might prove challenging.
So it might work for some 2pc gaps, and not for others.
CT AM Solomani is fairly vague on the matter:
The range of the jump-I drives first developed by UNSCA was insufficient to reach the nearest star — Alpha Centauri. It took several years before a US.Space Force team based on Luna tried a mission which, in several trips, established an intermediate stopover and refuelling point about one parsec out. For various scientific reasons, the mission was to Barnard's Star instead of Alpha Centauri. (AM5:Solomani p. 4)
The thing is that Barnards is 5.98 LY away...Presuming an oort, and a median distance of 1.5LY for the oort objects... a 1.5 LY jump, a 3 LY jump, and another 1.5 LY jump covers it.
IIRC, S&A specifies a rogue asteroid.
GTIW specifies a rogue planet:
a candidate rogue planet was found, located so that jump-1 starships could reach it from both Sol and Barnard’s Star. (GTIW, p. 129)
(Note: Technically, this would be a planemo, not a planet, due to the lack of a star to orbit and the IAU definition.)Did early starships require vast ammounts of fuel for a J-1 then? Why couldn't they just build the ship with enough fuel for two jumps? It's only 20% of the ship's displacement. For only 40% of the ship's volume, they'd have enough fuel to go there and back again.
It seems to me that the early history of the OTU was designed with a fundamental assumption that J-1 means only ever being able to get to an adjacent hex with a world in it, regardless of ship design or external factors like empty-hex refueling. Either nobody thought of over-stocking ships with fuel for extra jumps, or more likely there was some ulterior setting-design imperative that they wanted rifts wider than prevailing jump technology limits to be impenetrable barriers to travel. Obvious engineering workarounds were just deliberately ignored.
I'm not trying to be complainy or ranty, it's not a big deal to me, I'm just genuinely curious about what the history of this is.
Simon Hibbs
It seems to me that the early history of the OTU was designed with a fundamental assumption that J-1 means only ever being able to get to an adjacent hex with a world in it, regardless of ship design or external factors like empty-hex refueling. Either nobody thought of over-stocking ships with fuel for extra jumps, or more likely there was some ulterior setting-design imperative that they wanted rifts wider than prevailing jump technology limits to be impenetrable barriers to travel. Obvious engineering workarounds were just deliberately ignored.
I'm not trying to be complainy or ranty, it's not a big deal to me, I'm just genuinely curious about what the history of this is.
Simon Hibbs
I get that, but is that a relatively recent justification after the fact, or was it the reason used at the time?
Simon Hibbs
I don't recall ever seeing that limitation prior to GT:IW, but I could be wrong. I believe that it was a relatively recent innovation on the OTU storyline, probably to help justify those astrographically-based barriers to travel.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
It is the direct consequence of trying to adapt a boardgame with a similar but different jump drive into being an historical part of the OTU.
In the Imperium boardgame the Terrans fight a constant series of wars against a province of an Imperium. Ship movement is based on jump routes from world to world, and you have to stick to the jump routes (unless you use STL drives to travel across empty hexes, but that takes years) .
The same boardgame rules were then used in a modified form to describe the Terran/Aslan conflict over the Dark Nebula sector, and this again was 'adapted' to become part of OTU history.
Trouble is that the jump drive of the OTU doesn't work the way it does in those two 'historical' settings.
In the Imperium boardgame the Terrans fight a constant series of wars against a province of an Imperium. Ship movement is based on jump routes from world to world, and you have to stick to the jump routes (unless you use STL drives to travel across empty hexes, but that takes years) .
The same boardgame rules were then used in a modified form to describe the Terran/Aslan conflict over the Dark Nebula sector, and this again was 'adapted' to become part of OTU history.
Trouble is that the jump drive of the OTU doesn't work the way it does in those two 'historical' settings.
A lot of people (probably still a minority) interpreted CT that way. The first place it's explicit that empty hex jumps are allowed is in TTA...
Imperium does indeed predate the OTU, but Dark Nebula is clearly inspired by the OTU and does feature the invention/discovery of a way to change jump.
The trouble is that the handwave complicates other parts of the OTU history, like the Vilani spreading beyond their own main before they invented J2..
Hans
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
As the advent of drop tanks, the ancient Vilani need for dimming, and the documented Hiver dead-end at J2 strongly suggest, jump physics is pliable enough for the practices to have changed over 10,000 years.
So a reasonable progression for the navigation issue might go as follows.
The Vilani needed to find a navigation fix they could jump to and from, regardless of their jump range.
The advent of J2 allowed the Vilani to isolate their subjects in clusters through the enforcement of jump tapes and the expunging of deep space waypoints from "public" navigation records. Follow the routes and keep your tape receipts or get inspected for whatever infractions the local functionary can come up with.
The Terrans come along and develop waypoint jump routes and trip calculations on the fly all on their own. This is only slightly better than the Vilani norm, but enough to get them through the first few conflicts. They also mount survey sensors on their military ships, allowing new waypoints to be developed as they go.
Then two things happen. Some Terran figures out jumps into (and out of) deep space, and also figures out how to exceed J2. As a result the wars start to go very badly for the Vilani, since the Terrans can now be places they shouldn't be able to reach.
The deep space jump is predicated on enough tech assumptions that not everyone can manage it, but it is widespread enough to survive the Long Night, the wars with the Aslan, etc.
So a reasonable progression for the navigation issue might go as follows.
The Vilani needed to find a navigation fix they could jump to and from, regardless of their jump range.
The advent of J2 allowed the Vilani to isolate their subjects in clusters through the enforcement of jump tapes and the expunging of deep space waypoints from "public" navigation records. Follow the routes and keep your tape receipts or get inspected for whatever infractions the local functionary can come up with.
The Terrans come along and develop waypoint jump routes and trip calculations on the fly all on their own. This is only slightly better than the Vilani norm, but enough to get them through the first few conflicts. They also mount survey sensors on their military ships, allowing new waypoints to be developed as they go.
Then two things happen. Some Terran figures out jumps into (and out of) deep space, and also figures out how to exceed J2. As a result the wars start to go very badly for the Vilani, since the Terrans can now be places they shouldn't be able to reach.
The deep space jump is predicated on enough tech assumptions that not everyone can manage it, but it is widespread enough to survive the Long Night, the wars with the Aslan, etc.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Jumping to empty hexes is developed during the Dark Nebula conflict between the Terrans and the Aslan - that's something that happens during the Long Night long after the fall of the Imperium.
The breakthrough is made due to research made possible thanks to relic alien technology.
Isn't it nice that the Terrans or Aslan shared this with the Zhodani, Vargr, Droyne, Hivers, K'kree and not forgetting the Sylean Federation.
Like Hans mentioned upthread, the idea doesn't survive close scrutiny.
The breakthrough is made due to research made possible thanks to relic alien technology.
Isn't it nice that the Terrans or Aslan shared this with the Zhodani, Vargr, Droyne, Hivers, K'kree and not forgetting the Sylean Federation.
Like Hans mentioned upthread, the idea doesn't survive close scrutiny.
Frankymole
SOC-12
Espionage presumably led to the breakthrough leaking out.
This also allows different civilizations to "discover" the techniques whenever fits best in the timeline.
This also allows different civilizations to "discover" the techniques whenever fits best in the timeline.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
If the Vargr were bothering the Ziru Sirka, and the Zhodani met them somewhere out in Gvurrdon, both already had it. Similarly, the Hivers and K'kree already had something or they would never have found each other, and their war is prior to Humaniti's Long Night. Sylea was, per T4, in a constant state of space warfare well before declaring the Imperium, and according to GT was consciously setting aside the technological conservatism of their former Vilani overlords. The only real Canon clash is explaining the Interstellar Wars. Everything else can be explained or written off once we suppress our natural HFY* tendencies just a bit.
We can assume that the Terrans were able to pull "deep space" (actually "deep rock") jumps due to having better sensors and a much more recent tradition of survey astronomy, compared to the Vilani who had done such things thousands of years ago but since abandoned and suppressed the technique in favor of a stable empire. If some experimentation along the lines of deep void jumps was already under way, then it could easily be some chance discovery centuries later during the Aslan incursions that gels the ability for the Solomani and/or Aslan. There aren't any documented old races in Magyar/Daibei to provide an ancient artifact, but there are enough odd races in Reavers Deep and Dark Nebula that the Vilani leakage seen on other fronts could have occurred there post-Consolidation Wars (to the Aslan, a Vilani drive *would* be alien), and the region is also likely to have actual Ancients wreckage, though not necessarily very much.
A discovered drive need not even have been capable of deep void jumps to lead to that development. Looking at *any* alien iteration of an esoteric technology is going to lead to new applications.
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* derived directly from the song in "Team America, World Police", but prevalent in SF since at least Lensman: "Humanity, F___ Yeah!"
Xerxeskingofking
SOC-13
see, my reading of the wiki pages on the IW leads me to interpret that deep space/empty hex jumping was a "thing" in the IW era:
traveller wiki said:
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
My read: The Ziru Sirka fleets brought in a survey ship, found a rock, and built a depot around it.
