When was jump-5 and jump-6 invented?

[rancke]

I know, I know. 700 and 1000 when the Imperium achieved TL14 and 15, right?

I don't believe this is so. 700 and 1000 are the dates where Classic Era historians draw a line and say "This was when the Imperium had enough J5 respectively J6 ships to qualify as effectively TL14 respecitvely TL15". This is not the same date as the date the first successful jump-5 respectively jump-6 jumps were performed.

So how much before 700 and 1000 were those successful jumps? In my opinion there are two different time spans involved in each case.

I believe that the Imperial Navy classified the jump-5 drive as a military secret when it was invented and kept it classified as long as it could. Other governments and organizations did there own research and once enough of them had invented jump-5 on thier own, it was declassified. Once declassified, TL14 worlds began building up the jump-5 merchant fleet and by 700 the Imperium was considered to have reached TL14.

(The same thing happened with the invention of the jump-6 drive).

But how much earlier? How long would you guesstimate it would take for the drives to be declassified and how long would it take for the Imperium to have enough ships to make them more than just prototypes?

(I plan to take whatever timespans I eventually settle on and randomize them a bit (probably by adding one D10 and subtracting another D10 from the number of years).


Hans

 

[atpollard]

From other sources come general guidelines on TL ... Prototype = 1 TL before common use (so a TL 15 J6 prototype could be built at TL 14 ... year 700 per your post), and theoretical research = 2 TL before common use (TL 15 J6 experiments were possible at TL 13 ... at some deep space military research facility like the city built for the Manhattan Project).

I would further posit that the possibility of J6 was being debated by mathematicians and theoretical physicists at TL 12 ... probably in terms of was there a J6 absolute limit or was J7 possible ... a debate still waiting on a new Jump Theory at TL 15 since J6 is the absolute maximum - except for a J36 misjump! The lack of reference to a J7 theory or J7 availability (even prototype) at TL 16 [Darrians] suggests that J7 theory is at least TL 17+ with a prototype at TL 18+ and commercial application at TL 19+ ... quite a ways from TL 15.

Those are my thoughts - use or ignore as you please.

 

[robject]

As AT says. T5 has tech stages for research and development purposes. So potentially there could have been one unique, experimental Jump-5 drive at TL11, a half-dozen prototypes at TL12, and a number of early models in TL13.