Wormholes and jumpdrives

[Rooster Cogburn]

I'm contemplating a MTU that utilizies fixed wormholes for interstellar travel and instead of removing jumpdrives from the game, I want to have the jumpdrives be necessary to make the translation through the wormhole.

What I'm stuck on is what would be the benefit of a J2 over a J1? Would it affect the amount of time it took to navigate the entry brane, the actual hole and the exit brane? If so, would it be a matter of days or weeks?

BTW, I'm an accountant not a physicist, so please keep ideas/suggestions on the layman level so I don't have to do too much research to understand.

Thanks.

 

[Whipsnade]

I'm contemplating a MTU that utilizies fixed wormholes for interstellar travel and instead of removing jumpdrives from the game, I want to have the jumpdrives be necessary to make the translation through the wormhole.

Sounds like a variation on the "keyhole" drives from FF&S1. The drive acts like a "key" which opens the wormhole for travel.

What I'm stuck on is what would be the benefit of a J2 over a J1?

Nothing normally unless YTU has a "hierarchy" of wormholes and only certain drives can open open certain holes. Imagine that J1 can open all Class 1 holes, J2 can open all Class 1 and Class 2 holes, J3 all Class 1, 2, and 3 holes, and so forth.

Would it affect the amount of time it took to navigate the entry brane, the actual hole and the exit brane? If so, would it be a matter of days or weeks?

That could be a nice wrinkle. Wormhole travel is usually portrayed as instantaneous or nearly instantaneous so having it last an appreciable period of time could be used to create benefits for higher drive numbers. Imagine again that traversing a wormhole takes a J1 drive 100 hours regardless of length. A J2 can make the transit in 50 hous, J3 in 33.33 hours, J4 in 25 hours, and so on.

Whatever you decide to do be sure and let us all know.

 

[aramis]

Several possible variations for JX Keyhole Drives...

1) Duration of transit*
2) distance from center of keyhole at activation
3) Maximum length of tunnel
4) Fuel use reduction*
5) initiation time reduction
6) more stable configuration (less chance of misjump)

* these two will mess with some of the setting issues badly.

Note that keyhole drives in most fiction using them (including the Honorverse and Vorkosiverse) have pretty fixed transit times, fixed routes, and little jump drive variation.

A few, like Jimmy Doohan's Flight Engineer series, have the keyhole put you into hyperspace tunnels that naturally occur, but your drives actually propels you along them at a speed determined by its rating.

One further warning about keyhole and wormhole drive universes: Piracy is often a local phenomena only - pirates can't normally escape because governments build stations to guard the incoming/outgoing links zealously.

Several decisions to make, too, come to mind...

1. links long term stable or not?
2. multiple links between a given system pair or not?
3. bidirectionality of users - fatal, freaky, usually safe, safe, or impossible?
4. information transmissivity - Transit aboard ship only, special gear needed, only when open but even radio?
5. detectability of wormhole points - Only by triggering a dive in opening range, only by triggering a drive near but not in transit reach, only using special sensor types, or something easier?
6. Duration of transit -
   • how much prep?
   • how long to transit through the warp?
   • is it variable?
   • is it abortable?
7. Fuel - same rates or not?

 

[Omnivore]

A few sf series have wormhole-like FTL - Alderson points (Mote in God's Eye) illustrates one variant. These variants commonly require some type of keyhole drive and connections are, like wormholes, point to point. These can be considered a type of closed wormhole.

Closed wormholes and wormhole-like transit points may prohibit fixed defenses. The transit point may not be in a stable orbit and/or the point may actually be a fairly large region. Other possibilities might include something like a gravity pulse on transition (positive or negative) which would make station keeping more difficult.

If the transit point is actually a region rather than a point higher jump drive numbers might allow for transition further from the center-point. For simplicity, transit point detection (if necessary) could be built in to the drive.

If the average distance from habitable worlds to transit points is on the order of 1 billion km, instantaneous transit plus 1G constant thrust travel between point and world would be roughly equivalent to Traveller's 100D + 1 week jump. This might make it interesting to have low fuel consumption keyhole drives together with some type of reaction drive (fuel consuming) maneuver drive, giving a similar ratio of fuel to ship size as standard Traveller.

 

[madmike]

"Through Struggle the Stars" by John J Lumpkin

http://www.thehumanreach.net/

Ships use a network of artificial wormholes call "keyholes".

The weaknesses in space are detected by explorer ships. The science is well described in the book, including the need for wormhole transit to be balanced, so stations at each end (also anchor the wormholes) ensure that there are equal masses occurring during transit.

Great novel by the way.

 

[ShapeShifter]

I've been contemplating a similar concept, based on the "stargates" seen in the 1979 Buck Rogers TV series. To keep things simple, either a vessel is "stargate capable" (with the proper gearheady stuff onboard), or it isn't. If you're going for a pulpy, action vibe, there's no need for crunchy, fiddly bits to complicate matters. You could think of the stargate hardware to be like a key which allows someone access to certain stargate-types. Some stargates can only require a common, public "key", while others are restricted to govt officials, military vessels, scouts/xboats, etc. There can obviously also be secret stargates kept from general knowledge, or a few which are only used and carefully guarded by merchant guilds. You get the idea.

I don't limit MTU to J6: if the story requires them to get from Point A to Point B a few kiloparsecs away, then it happens with the wave of my magic GM wand. *bling!*