[Space] FTL Ideas/Thoughts

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Alternatively, merchant lanes are patrolled by rescue ships that pop out of hyperspace and back every so often to listen for stranded merchants. Going off the patrolled lanes with a portal incapable ship is pure stupidity though.

That's going to depend heavily on how long the lanes are, and how many patrol ships you can afford to spend on them. With one hour stops to listen for distress signals (allowing you to detect signals from up to 1 light-hour away), you have to make a stop every 2 light-hours or so to ensure you don't miss something. Ignoring transit time, that means one ship would take a year to patrol two light-years of space. If the maximum acceptable time for a ship to be stranded is about a week (~1/50th of a year), that means you need about 25 patrol ships working 24/7 for every light year of distance. Assuming I've done the math right, that is. You can cut that down to 6 ships per light-year if a month is an acceptable time to be stranded.

[ericthered]

The length of the lanes, the traffic on the lanes, the cost of the traffic, and how frequent mishaps are.

If stasis pods are a viable technology, as seems to be indicated by the OP in an earlier statement, then wait times of a year or two to be rescued are perfectly acceptable.

Of course, you only have the year/two light years ratio if you are relying on a single distress beacon burst. If the ship gives out a burst every ten minutes, you only have to wait in place for 10 minutes for each stretch of the detection range. Which then means you need to know how far away you can detect the distress call, and how much power the distress call takes.

Given that the alpha-centauri to earth jaunt takes two months at FTL-3, I'm going to guess a month stranded is fine.

Actually, given that stasis pods are confirmed by the OP to be available, There's a cheaper (relatively) tactic: send a few tight beam transmissions to places you know to have people listening, climb into your pods, and wake up a year or two later when you get picked up (most routes should have viable radio targets within a light-year). Yeah, you wake up a year behind, but you did kind of a multi-month break out of you life in the first place. Its a lot better than a couple of decades.

[scc]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The length of the lanes, the traffic on the lanes, the cost of the traffic, and how frequent mishaps are.

If stasis pods are a viable technology, as seems to be indicated by the OP in an earlier statement, then wait times of a year or two to be rescued are perfectly acceptable.

I sort of assume that the first wave of colonization was conducted with FTL-1 and it's 5 times multiplier at best and colony ships aren't normally speedsters, so that puts even Alpha Centauri several years travel away. Also I thinking portals came first, so to a certain extent the colony ships were one way

Originally Posted by ericthered

Of course, you only have the year/two light years ratio if you are relying on a single distress beacon burst. If the ship gives out a burst every ten minutes, you only have to wait in place for 10 minutes for each stretch of the detection range. Which then means you need to know how far away you can detect the distress call, and how much power the distress call takes.

Given that the alpha-centauri to earth jaunt takes two months at FTL-3, I'm going to guess a month stranded is fine.

Actually, given that stasis pods are confirmed by the OP to be available, There's a cheaper (relatively) tactic: send a few tight beam transmissions to places you know to have people listening, climb into your pods, and wake up a year or two later when you get picked up (most routes should have viable radio targets within a light-year). Yeah, you wake up a year behind, but you did kind of a multi-month break out of you life in the first place. Its a lot better than a couple of decades.

Why aren't you putting out a continuous signal? And remember FTL-3 can only be used until the first hop. Chances are a SAR group isn't going to be dispatched until they think a ship missing

[scc]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Assuming one habitable world in each K-, G-, or F-class star* that is far enough away from a companion to have planets in the habitable zone?

Alpha Centauri A (4.39 ly)
Alpha Centauri B (4.39 ly)
Epsilon Eridani (10.5 ly)
Procyon (11.4 ly)
61 Cygni A (11.4 ly)
61 Cygni B (11.4 ly)
Epsilon Indi (11.8 ly)
Tau Ceti (11.9 ly)**
Groombridge 1618 (15.9 ly)

That's 9 possibles on a very optimistic scale; reality is probably limited to about half those.


* I don't consider M-class red dwarfs suitable due to the high probabilities of tide-locking and flares frying most planets that would be in the life zone.

K-class = orange dwarf
G-class = yellow dwarf
F-class = yellow-white

** It is possible that Tau Ceti has two planets in its habitable zone, but I only counted it once above.

Sorry for the late reply,n but if it helps I've got a system built with Space with two habitable around a F9 and three each around a G0 and a G4

[doulos05]

Originally Posted by scc

Which is why it's white-listed to species that are needed (Pretty much all food ones) or that the government isn't going to be able to get away with banning (Comfort animals)

NASA does crazy, crazy things to it's spacecraft to sanitize them before it launches them, doubly so if they're going to another planet (because they don't want to "find life" on Mars only to discover it's because some tech sneezed on the sensor), and large numbers of micro-organisms get through anyway.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by scc

three [habitable] each around a G0 and a G4

I'm morbidly curious as to how this happened, as I've never gotten that kind of system built....

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

I'm morbidly curious as to how this happened, as I've never gotten that kind of system built....

I once randomly rolled a trinary star system with four habitable planets using Brett's charts. Naturally my computer crashed and I can't remember the set numbers to recreate it.

[scc]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

I'm morbidly curious as to how this happened, as I've never gotten that kind of system built....

Hard Sci Fi idea, something a bit like Firefly (Or at least too early for FTL) so the results were massaged a bit to get that many habitables, all the physical parameters are valid, but the whole thing falls into the category of possible but highly improbable

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by scc

Hard Sci Fi idea, something a bit like Firefly (Or at least too early for FTL) so the results were massaged a bit to get that many habitables, all the physical parameters are valid, but the whole thing falls into the category of possible but highly improbable

If your willing to "cheat" a bit, you can always put a gas giant(s) in the habitable zone and then max out on planet-sized moons.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

If your willing to "cheat" a bit, you can always put a gas giant(s) in the habitable zone and then max out on planet-sized moons.

I've done this in my space pirate game in the past. It's not unheard of in fiction, either, so it probably won't strain anyone's suspension of disbelief (for example, the fourth moon of the gas giant Yavin in Star Wars was habitable, though whether it came by it naturally or was terraformed to such in the ancient past is up to debate).