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Old 11-16-2018, 09:20 AM   #61
TGLS
 
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Default Re: How do time-travelers calculate the date?

Why not fly to where you want your satellite in the present, then jump back to when you want it, deploy it there and jump forward again?
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Old 11-16-2018, 09:29 AM   #62
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Default Re: How do time-travelers calculate the date?

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Originally Posted by TGLS View Post
Why not fly to where you want your satellite in the present, then jump back to when you want it, deploy it there and jump forward again?
Depends on the mechanics of the time travel. I'd imagine you wouldn't be in the necessary Earth-reference frame. I guess at worst you'd be in the sun's reference frame, at a random point on Earth's orbit, so it might still be easy enough to then fly to the L-point you want.
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Old 11-16-2018, 12:33 PM   #63
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Default Re: How do time-travelers calculate the date?

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
I wouldn't mess around with Lagrange points. If people could possibly pick up your signal at all, you're in a time period with newspapers, clocks, and globe-trotting transportation who are actually likely to speak your language, so the satellite is less useful.



On the other hand, you'll want to clean up your satellite mess, which is actually fairly difficult. I do not regard creating a cloud of metallic space-junk at a Lagrange point to be "keeping the secret" or "preserving the timeline". You'll want to burn the satellite up in an atmosphere, so you may as well keep it reasonably close to earth.
The benefit of the Lagrange point is that if something can be made which will last hundreds or millions of years, it can float out there with much greater stability than close to earth. The expense of cleanup is probably smaller than replacing satellites every few dozen or hundred years.

I see Three viable cleanup strategies:

1: Time travel it to the future past when it's discovery is a problem.

2: Disguise it as a meteor and knock it toward the sun. Even if it's spotted in the next decade, it's not a concern.

3: Use option 2 decades ahead of when it could be a problem and use satellites to fill in the gap years.
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Old 11-16-2018, 12:44 PM   #64
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: How do time-travelers calculate the date?

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Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
The benefit of the Lagrange point is that if something can be made which will last hundreds or millions of years, it can float out there with much greater stability than close to earth. The expense of cleanup is probably smaller than replacing satellites every few dozen or hundred years.
.
If I were doing this that satelite constellation would be doing survellance/recording history as well as acting as a beacon system for travellers. Periodic collection of the data would be necessary and you'd service the satelites then too. When they wore out you'd take them back to the furure with you.

Of course, why you're using human time travelers with such a system is a good question. I'd use the satelite ssytem to prevent human time travel just to stop all the doofusses who want to get a date with Cleopatra.
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Old 11-16-2018, 03:23 PM   #65
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Default Re: How do time-travelers calculate the date?

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If I were doing this that satelite constellation would be doing survellance/recording history as well as acting as a beacon system for travellers. Periodic collection of the data would be necessary and you'd service the satelites then too. When they wore out you'd take them back to the furure with you.

Of course, why you're using human time travelers with such a system is a good question. I'd use the satelite ssytem to prevent human time travel just to stop all the doofusses who want to get a date with Cleopatra.
That probably makes sense for HISTORY, but for pre-history? 2 billion years of daily satellite sweeps seems like a lot of useless data. maybe they would be useful for finding humans doing what they shouldn't and sending the timecops <Vanne-Damme Splits Emoji>

But we've wandered pretty far afield. I think we can agree that for a well-established time-travel culture, some form of space-based transmitter is totally plausible up to about 1900. If we want to keep talking about the details, we should probably create a spinoff thread.
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