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Showing posts from August, 2018

The Branes Behind Deep Space Exploration

How prevalent are hyperspace membranes? In my example I said they were created by the fusion reactions of stars. That means the smallest body that could generate one would be a brown dwarf (abut 12-13 Jupiter masses) that can fuse deuterium. In other words there could be rogue planets in deep space that are nearly unreachable using FTL. These planets might hold all manner of interesting people, places or things, just looking to keep a low profile. What about white dwarfs, neutron stars and blackholes? Perhaps the membranes their reactions created could persist for millions of years after they died out. In the case of these massive objects the membranes might break the normal convention of brane sizes and be perilously close to the hyper mass objects. They might be in a state of flux as they slowly decay with no energy being put into them or pulsate, changing in size over days or hours, in which case a badly timed jump could put your ship in great danger. As for multiple star system

There is No Stealth in Space, But There is Surprise!

By and large there is no stealth in space. You can take extreme steps and dodge the many sensors and AIs that labor to catalogue anything bigger than a couple of molecules in an orbit. But it never works for long. Even Borsten's Landing with a substandard port facility would usually get hours of warning about any ship thrusting for it. They could track the numerous Belter ships, record their engine emissions and then after a mining trip compare those engine emissions to the previous ones to determine how much more mass they had in a hold for tax purposes. Not that they found a way to tax the Belters. Belters had nukes and the port officials had zilch beyond their own sphere of influence. The last expedition against the belters was a subject of tavern jokes . A major problem was smuggling, and it was done in a very overt fashion. Since the Landing was situated ideally between two pockets of commerce ships were already passing through rather than taking the 'long' way ar

Weaponizing Geometry Part 2

Kyle Shuant pointed out he had already established what it took me some bathing and an online geometry number cruncher to figure out: it sucks to practice pirating anywhere near a main world. In SF terms it is the equivalent of the daylight bank robbery in a western. In the movies you see the desperadoes rob the bank and get away where as in real life they would probably be shot to pieces the moment they went out the door. Yes, I know that historically most Western towns didn't allow open carrying of firearms but that didn't mean people couldn't get to them quickly and send the desperadoes to walk the streets of Glory. I digress. There are spots for piracy of course. Star systems are not a main world plus an encounter table. There are belters seeking their fortunes, more marginal worlds that have inhabitants for various reasons, defense installations and administrative facilities (prisons!) They all need to be supplied. For that matter ever since CT we knew there we

Weaponizing Geometry

If you played the earliest iterations of Traveller you soon realized there wasn't a lot different between a warship and a commercial vessel, design wise. Okay sure, the warship didn't need to justify its existence and could use space for drives and weapon turrets a civilian ship would use for cargo. But what if some naughty people, say I dunno, pirates get hold of a 600 ton merchant. They stick as many turrets as they can onto the vessel and then run up against a 400 ton Patrol cruiser (go Patrol!) The Patrol ship has but four turrets. Surely the brave Patrol men are doomed! Nope. The Patrol vessel has state of the art software, for targeting and to avoid being targeted. They can use their lasers to explode the corsairs' missiles. Indeed in short order the Pirates must strike their colors, jettison the turrets and surrender. Software makes the difference, and the military guards its 'ware jealously. But military ships also need to get to the fight. If a pirate l