Introducing superscience into THS while keeping the feel

[Michael Thayne]

Something I've been thinking about lately: how would you introduce superscience into THS in a way that maintains the "feel" of the setting. "Feel" is meant to be in the first instance an intuitive concept, but I mean something like: it results from incremental progress, and rather than being the logically-consistent magic many medium-hardness SF strives for, it feels like a subtle corner case of known laws. For example, this might mean that Hawking Station finds a way to manufacture tiny amounts of negative mass, not enough to build spaceship-sized traversable wormholes, but enough to invent wormhole-based FTL comm.

I suspect there are other possibilities out there—anyone have suggestions?

[Flyndaran]

Most supersciences not already in the game would mess with the feel for the reason they'd be interesting. They would negate numerous difficulties outright that THS "solves" with transhumanist means.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Most supersciences not already in the game would mess with the feel for the reason they'd be interesting. They would negate numerous difficulties outright that THS "solves" with transhumanist means.

I don't know if that's true. For example, FTL comm but not starships means informorphs dominate interstellar travel. Hawking Station seems to have been very deliberately included to provide a high-verisimilitude way to introduce superscience. And sci-fi authors like Charlie Strauss have mixed superscience and transhumanism in their novels and it works out quite well.

Another thought—the description of the Black Hole Controversy on p. 50 of the main book seems to point to laws of physics that are subtly different than the ones we know in specific ways. Does anyone have any guess at what those ways are?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I don't know if that's true. For example, FTL comm but not starships means informorphs dominate interstellar travel.

There effectively no interstellar travel in TS to matter. Mostly because it would take so long to get any transmitter/receivers and useful sensors into place. It's a TS 2200 question at a minimum.

Find some superscience that would be _useful_.

[Flyndaran]

Effectively instantaneous communication would have social impact on making the outer system more integrated with the inner. That light speed lag makes a difference in situations where seconds matter. And it takes nearly a half hour for signals to go from Mars to Earth, I believe.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

The Earth to Mars radio time varies substantially depending on the relative positions of Earth and Mars. According to this ESA page it is between 4 and 24 minutes:

http://blogs.esa.int/mex/2012/08/05/...ars-and-earth/

A simple rule of thumb is 1 AU equals 500 seconds of lag (one way). You could hit lag-times of a half-hour for Earth-Ceres and round-trip times over an hour for Jupiter and about twice that for Saturn.

Of course, many people headed for the outer system are cultural separatists and trying to get away from Earth.

[Flyndaran]

It would mean even more change and upset if some groups see it as a moderate good and others a major bad. Just like nearly all real technologies, someone's going to hate it.

[Michael Thayne]

I'm also seeing that magnetic monopoles lead to something like total conversion tech, or maybe super-fusion reactors? That seems like if anything it would be more disruptive to the setting than FTL comm. Maybe interesting as something that will mature 30+ years into the future of a long-running game.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I'm also seeing that magnetic monopoles lead to something like total conversion tech, or maybe super-fusion reactors? That seems like if anything it would be more disruptive to the setting than FTL comm. Maybe interesting as something that will mature 30+ years into the future of a long-running game.

Improved space propulsion and unlimited energy might actually be more supportive than disruptive to the setting. Right now there's more space activity and terraforming than the tech really justifies.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Something I've been thinking about lately: how would you introduce superscience into THS in a way that maintains the "feel" of the setting. "Feel" is meant to be in the first instance an intuitive concept, but I mean something like: it results from incremental progress, and rather than being the logically-consistent magic many medium-hardness SF strives for, it feels like a subtle corner case of known laws. For example, this might mean that Hawking Station finds a way to manufacture tiny amounts of negative mass, not enough to build spaceship-sized traversable wormholes, but enough to invent wormhole-based FTL comm.

I suspect there are other possibilities out there—anyone have suggestions?

I don't see a point to FTL com without interstellar travel. The terraforming of Mars is already blatant Star Trek level magic. Some kind limited reactionless drive would give space travel more of a point.