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Old 09-08-2018, 10:24 PM   #111
Rupert
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
Default Re: The Stars Our Destination

Quote:
Originally Posted by cptbutton View Post
* I haven't examined it carefully enough to run the numbers, but I suspect Cherryh has the common scale error problem of just not understanding that space is really really big, much bigger than you thought even though you knew it was really, really big.
Such a thing only has to happen once (and probably from the dragged along debris, not a ship itself) to make everyone really paranoid about it. A collision like that with a station would produce secondary fragments that would create a major shipping hazard for some time, and potentially wreck a lot of other orbital infrastructure.
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Old 09-08-2018, 10:39 PM   #112
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: The Stars Our Destination

Relating to the space is really big item, I find that most authors have a problem visualizing the volume within a star system. For example, the volume of space within 40 AU of the Sun is around nine hundred thousand trillion trillion (9×10^29) cubic kilometers. That is enough volume to contain over 800 billion Suns or 800 quadrillion Earths.

Why is this important? There is very little in the way of anything if it is coming in on an oblique angle. While a civilization might have a few polar orbit observational stations orbiting its primary for research and military purposes, that is it except in an unusual star system. Of course the angle of the ecliptic is different for each star system, so what is oblique for one star system might be on the ecliptic of another.
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Old 09-09-2018, 02:53 AM   #113
dcarson
 
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Default Re: The Stars Our Destination

In the Hub stories by Schmitz you can come out of subspace close to a planet, you can even in theory leave direct from the surface. Settled planets have layers of fields in subspace to force ships to drop out a days travel out.

It is also apparently expensive enough in some fashion that transit points in deep space will have a subspace side where ships can dock and transship cargo without having to enter normal space.
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Old 09-11-2018, 03:55 PM   #114
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: The Stars Our Destination

I generally do not like any setting that does not include a natural FTL shadow due to a number of reason, though the primary one is that a natural FTL shadow gives a plausible reason why we have not detected FTL phenomenon, especially if it extends a great distance from the Earth. For example, if the FTL shadow of Sol extends 10 AU, we will likely not even be able to find any evidence of FTL, even by accident, until we establish research laboratories beyond Saturn. If any planetary mass objects also possess a smaller shadow, then it may require the establishment of very remote research stations before anyone stumbles upon evidence of FTL by accident.
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