What does hyperspace look like?

[Sifu Blackirish]

I have made several assumptions in the development and operation of the G-space drives used IMTU. If I give them here, can anyone tell me how it differs from OTU? Just wondering...

G-space drives use an analog principle. Higher jumps mean they are reaching 'less dense' areas. They are also incompatible with the artifact stargates scattered around until they are modified (but PCs don't know this).

It is sort of a 'liquid' medium, with currents, eddies, maybe even reefs and zones. Most people cannot look at G-space for more than a few seconds without becoming violently ill.

The tech curve is not the standard progression. Most ships are still only jump-3 until TL14.5, when the curve starts to climb radically.

Also thinking about introducing a couple of barbarian characters who have an affinity to G-space (they are mutants). It might be quite a surprise for someone to see a navigator consulting his runes and burning incense at a shrine in his quarters before he makes a jump...

 

[Icosahedron]

Dunno about the OTU, but IMTU hyperspace is a separate dimension. When you jump, you effectively enter for a week a pocket universe that contains nothing but your ship and a bubble of space around it. Beyond the ship is nothing, no space, no time, no currents, just absolute black nothing until the J-drive kicks you back into the familiar starry firmament. The slightest hint of claustrophobia could put you in a screaming fit.
Perversely, those used to living underground would be best adjusted to roaming the galaxy.

 

[kafka47]

The gravity drive reminds me of the variant kiloparsec drive. As I variant, it has approval but I wonder if the Ancients could be said to have developed it or was their Pocket Universe Drive just limited to misjumps, which is what actually causes them in the first place in regular TL 10-16 ships, but at TL 17, scientists begin to understand this part of a larger phenomena...

 

[Valarian]

I use the visual concept of jumpspace from Babylon 5 (including the jump points) as most people can relate to this. (So to answer the question - Red and Swirly)

I rationalise the Traveller jump drive rating as the distance (in parsecs) the drive can push the ship through the currents and eddies of jumpspace in a week. If the ship has more than one weeks worth of fuel on board, they don't have to exit jumpspace IMTU.

I've toyed with the idea of including the jump gates as well, with fuel savings for entry/exiting jumpspace using a gate.

 

[stofsk]

Originally posted by Valarian:
I've toyed with the idea of including the jump gates as well, with fuel savings for entry/exiting jumpspace using a gate.

How would that work?

 

[Andrew Boulton]

This is how I described it in my PBEM:

"The outer door refuses to open until you override the safety locks. When the door finally slides open, jumpspace hits you. Your brain wants to crawl out through your ears and hide in your boots. It's vaguely like a curved mirror, covered with swirling rainbow colours like a soap bubble, but the details slither away when you try to focus on them. It glows faintly, partly from its own light, partly from the reflections of the ship's navigation lights and the light escaping from the airlock. It's hypnotic, and it takes you a moment to drag your eyes away."

 

[Scott Martin]

Originally posted by stofsk:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Valarian:
I've toyed with the idea of including the jump gates as well, with fuel savings for entry/exiting jumpspace using a gate.

How would that work? </font>[/QUOTE]IMTU I have systems with penalties for the jump space "gradient" that they are in (look at the bottom of This Page for some details)

In this context "Jump Gates" are used to stabilize an area of space and reduce the energy gradient, which reduces the fuel consumption back to "normal" levels. Theoretically it is possible for this type of gate to reduce energy (and fuel) costs for longer Jumps, but a minimum of 10% of fuel must be expended for any jump (Theoretically at TL-13 anyway). The only jump gates currently extant IMTU are in a scattering of "Shoal" and "Reef" systems originally settled by STL colony ships that have developed fairly large insystem populations to foster interstellar trade. The Jump gates in use IMTU also reduce jump "side effects" (random vector changes, energy transition bleed etc) They do have a horrific energy cost to maintain, and an associated maintenance (O&E) cost that makes them unsuitable for "military" use (their maintenance cost is high enough that you could just buy another battlegroup or two instead...)

In general this type of construct is not cost-efective, since FTL colonization means that systems that are not readily "accessable" tend to be avoided and not colonized: even "garden" planets are generally used as "hunting preserves" and the like, since the cost of a significant colonization effort approaches the cost (and time scale) of terraforming systems with better "Location". It's easier to build nice houses on a rocky outcrop with deep water moorage than to keep a 60 foot channel dug to a desert island...

"Paired" gates would be a real problem to co-ordinate, since you have the issue of timing with a guarenteed week (plus or minus) between calibrations...

If you'd like a detailed write-up, I'll push that towards the front of my Scottmartin.ca rebuild...

Scott Martin

 

[mike wightman]

IMTU I have two types of jump gate.

First there is the B5 type space based one. This opens the jump portal and provides the "fuel" needed to form the jump bubble.
The ship using the gate still needs a jump engine to maintain the jump bubble for the week spent in jump space.
These become available at TL10 for jump 1, and then follow the normal progression.

The other is a planet based portal that can have a range of up to 36 parsecs, once again the ship needs to have a jump engine.
These are TL22, and the only examples are alien relics. They still work, and the Imperium is trying desperately to unlock their secrets, but even the secret research stations (which can approach TL19 in some tech trees) have failed to do so thus far.

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by Valarian:
If the ship has more than one weeks worth of fuel on board, they don't have to exit jumpspace IMTU.

Now that's a good idea to try, I'm going to borrow it if I may

 

[aramis]

IMTU: As you stare through the hole in the hull, you see an undulating grey mass. You see hints of faces, places, rainbows, and fire. It is rather hypnotic. Please roll Determination, or become entranced. Difficult, fateful, hazardous, instant.

 

[jfetters]

Originally posted by Aramis:
IMTU: As you stare through the hole in the hull, you see an undulating grey mass. You see hints of faces, places, rainbows, and fire. It is rather hypnotic. Please roll Determination, or become entranced. Difficult, fateful, hazardous, instant.

Yeah, that is pretty much how I see it, too. Kind of a visual version of White Noise, where if you listen long enough you start to hear things, but in this case, they are (mostly) visual hallucinations.

 

[Plankowner]

You might also read some of CJ Cherryh's books for an example of how JumpSpace can affect people. In her universe, it is so bad that people routinely take drugs to knock themselves out during the trip. In her Chanur books, she shows how other species react to JumpSpace (some not at all).

There are also the strange individuals that can tolerate JumpSpace. They are on the edge of crazy, but they can sometimes do things that no one else can while in JumpSpace.

In her Foreigner books, she uses a different type of Jump Space that makes everyone feel "MUDGIE" but makes plants grow like crazy...

Just a couple of ideas.

Personally, I figure it looks like B5..

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"The sky outside the ship was the colour of television tuned to a dead channel..."

 

[kafka47]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
"The sky outside the ship was the colour of television tuned to a dead channel..."

I recognize the quote...funny how that has changed with the technology of TV changing. In my current set up you just get a tranquil blue screen as opposed to snow day effect that I think we both attribute to jump space.

 

[Lenadh]

In MTU, J-Space looks like basically a photographic negative of normal space, that shifts through all the colors of the spectrum randomly, sometimes being more then one pattern at once (It is hyperdimensional after all).

Had one person actually stick his hand in it once, through the jump bubble. He has a very nice TL15 cybernetic replacement now....

 

[Zob10701]

Well, all this talk about what jumpspace looks like got my creative juices going so I whipped this up...



Whaddya think?

 

[mike wightman]

Pretty

Why are the thruster plates glowing in jump space?

 

[Zob10701]

'Cause I didn't have time to retouch them off...

I knocked this out right before before I left work and used the the Gionetti from another of my drawings. D'oh!

 

[far-trader]

No no no, see it's like this...

...I was serving on a Gionetti class during The Fifth when we were in this one fight, outnumbered 3 to 1 by the Zho. We managed to hold our own for a while, took out two of them and the third ran. But that last devil ship left a parting hit that had our maneuver drive governor fried while we were burning a full 6 gees. We were a runaway with no way to turn or slow.

It didn't look good, we were piling on the delta vee for deep space with no way to stop until we ran out of fuel. Quick ideas were bandied about. Blow our own fuel, but then we'd still be drifting fast away from help with little life support. Blow our maneuver drives, and we'd still be drifting but we'd have life support, as long as the damage didn't spread to the powerplant or fuel. Then the junior navigator said let's short jump. It didn't make a lot of sense at first but it solved our problems. We'd stop accelerating even with the maneuver buring in J-space. We'd burn a lot of fuel safely in the jump drives. And we'd come out in the system a week later ready to be assisted by the fleet tender. The junior nav figured we'd come out of jump with marginal fuel and he'd plotted a rendevous vector for the fleet tender to match us when we came out again. So we informed the fleet of our plan and jumped with our maneuver burning hot all the way.

 

[Zob10701]

Yeah, what he said...