Hyperspace for dummies

[MrBackman]

Hello
I have just posted an article about my take on the various issues regarding hyperspace travel. I have tried to explain/rationalise/handwave things said about hyperspace and hyperjumping in the traveller canon and elsewhere.

Take a look, there might be something you can use for your own campaign but be warned; it contradicts some GURPS Traveller notions such as jump masking when a star is merely blocking the path.

Anyhow, you can find the post here.

[ak_aramis]

Several of your decisions contradict prior and present canon; namely, the T5 playtest explicitly states all fuel for jump is consumed by the drive plant itself at jump, as did MT sources; CT and TNE sources merely imply strongly. (while many TNE fans came up with the hydrogen bubble thing...)

Further, CT, MT, and T5 state that the jump drive is in fact a form of fusion reactor; albeit it's more a module attached to the main plant than an actual plant itself, if one goes by the CT mechanics and T5 mechanics. In MT, the Jump Drive takes no external power source, but the rest of the ship does need power, and the Jump drive operates for mere minutes. JTAS 24 notes that the hydrogen is NOT required for jump, and other similar power sources can be utilized instead. DA1 Annic Nova also has a fuel-less jump drive.

Jump Dimming in CT and MT was explained: The initiation energy for jump engine function was at the very limits of the PP to produce, and all energy was needed for jump transition.

Jumpspace has been repeatedly described in canon as an undulating gray wall, 1m from the hull of the ship.

GT didn't add the blocking rules, Marc Miller did. Back in the 1980's. In a magazine article.

[MrBackman]

Well, I should have mentioned that I tried to reconsile the things said about hyperspace and jumpdrives in canon in a way that made sense to me, real world or gameplay wise. Most, if not all, of my 'explanations' differ from canon, that was the reason for posting; to make sense out of the many disparate, contradictory and sometimes silly remarks from canon.

I should also have stated that canon to me stopped when Megatraveller was published. Old testament Traveller if you like.

Well, you have been doubly warned now ;)

[MrBackman]

Jump Dimming in CT and MT was explained: The initiation energy for jump engine function was at the very limits of the PP to produce, and all energy was needed for jump transition.

Am I the only one to find the above explanation silly in the extreme?

My 'explanation' tried to, in a similar vein as my 'explanation' to the 100 diameters rule, pretend that the canon explanations were in fact the layman versions told in school books and popular science articles. Along the lines of 'atoms are like miniature solar systems where the electrons orbit the nucleus like planets around a sun'.

This way I could keep the canon explanations for nonscientific players and have a more believable (to me at least) explanation for the scientifically inclined I usually have as players (ie my kids and my girlfriend).

Have the cake yet eat it too.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Jump Dimming in CT and MT was explained: The initiation energy for jump engine function was at the very limits of the PP to produce, and all energy was needed for jump transition.

Mind you, the "explanation" requires us to believe that every single one of those old-time Vilani ship designers were absolute morons.

I've always gone with the idea that the explanation is folk mythology. The true reason? I've no idea.

Jump Dimming: The practice, followed by some starship pilots, of dimming the ship's interior and exterior lights before going into jump. Lights on a ship are typically dimmed for a period of about two minutes; the lights are brought back up to full strength as soon as the ship is in jumpspace.

According to an old Vilani superstition, this custom arose out of the need for most of the ship's power to be diverted into the computer and jump-drive systems, so that the jump drive could be guided into creating the jump field properly, something that has never actually been necessary and would have taken more than two minutes if it had. Non-Vilani pilots do not follow this tradition.

The above is from an article about various myths and legends of the 3rd Imperium that I'm working on.


Hans

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

Mind you, the "explanation" requires us to believe that every single one of those old-time Vilani ship designers were absolute morons.

I've always gone with the idea that the explanation is folk mythology. The true reason? I've no idea.

Jump Dimming: The practice, followed by some starship pilots, of dimming the ship's interior and exterior lights before going into jump. Lights on a ship are typically dimmed for a period of about two minutes; the lights are brought back up to full strength as soon as the ship is in jumpspace.

According to an old Vilani superstition, this custom arose out of the need for most of the ship's power to be diverted into the computer and jump-drive systems, so that the jump drive could be guided into creating the jump field properly, something that has never actually been necessary and would have taken more than two minutes if it had. Non-Vilani pilots do not follow this tradition.

The above is from an article about various myths and legends of the 3rd Imperium that I'm working on.


Hans

That works very well, and adds a little charm of Mythopoeia to TTU. I have often thought there wasn't enough and have put a bit IMTU.

[Werekoala]

I assumed the fuel was consumed pre-jump to charge capacitors that were then discharged to activate the jump drive in one energetic burst, so I come down on the "no fuel in jumpspace" side I guess. It would also (kinda) help explain the Jump Dimming tradition, if you go with the "we need all our energy output at the moment of jump" crowd.

Bear in mind that (in my experience), when an airliner preparing to leave the gate switches from the external generators to internal power, the lights in the cabin will dim or go off for a couple of seconds - this might be the real-world origin of the "tradition" in Traveller. At least, that's what it reminded me of in a small way.

Just a thought.

[Malenfant]

The only way that the jump bubble concept makes any kind of sense to me is if the jump grid on the ship's hull is pumping out hydrogen continually for the week that the ship is in jump to make the "bubble" (actually a very thin hydrogen atmosphere around the ship that needs to be continuously replenished because jumpspace is destroying the hydrogen).

Of course that also means that if the hull is damaged, then so too is the jump grid, and that means the ship shouldn't be able to jump without being destroyed in jumpspace because there will be patches on the hull that aren't covered by the jump grid.

[MrBackman]

Originally posted by Werekoala
I assumed the fuel was consumed pre-jump to charge capacitors that were then discharged to activate the jump drive in one energetic burst, so I come down on the "no fuel in jumpspace" side I guess. It would also (kinda) help explain the Jump Dimming tradition, if you go with the "we need all our energy output at the moment of jump" crowd.

That would mean that jumpdrives are insanely powerful fusion reactors and one wonders why the Navy doesn't use them to power their weaponry for short bursts? A fusion drive consume 1% per week EP (250 MW in the official Traveller universe) per 100 dTon. A jumpdrive consume 10% in less than an hour.

You are probably right about the real world origin of the jump dimming idea.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

It's jumpspace, not hyperspace.

Originally Posted by Werekoala

I assumed the fuel was consumed pre-jump to charge capacitors that were then discharged to activate the jump drive in one energetic burst, so I come down on the "no fuel in jumpspace" side I guess.

All the fuel is expended prior to jump initiation. You can't have drop tanks if that is not true. Unless Mongoose has retconned drop tanks out of existence, any description that has some of the fuel expended during jump is in direct an unreconcilable contradiction to another part of canon.

A minor additional indication is the canonical instances of jumps that have taken considerably more than the normal maximum of 185 hours. There are examples of ships returning to real space after spending centuries in jumpspace. If you need a steady supply of hydrogen to protect the ship and if a standard supply is exhausted after a week, such extended sojourns in jumpspace would have destroyed the ships.

Also, if a normal supply of hydrogen protects the ship for, say, 185 hours, then the average jump (168 hours) will result in the ship arriving with several tons of hydrogen still left in the tanks, enough to affect the economics of starship travel.

OTOH, the amount of energy you get out of a full load of jump fuel is either insanely high or the fusion process is unbelievably inefficient. Also, if the jump drive is simply a fusion plant, how come it doesn't improve with tech level? (That is to say, a TL15 J1 drive ought to use a lot less fuel than a TL9 J1 drive).

My own suggestion for an explanation, which I've been promulgating for over a decade now, is this:

Jumpspace is dense. How dense? Just dense enough to produce the effect described below. If you just open a hole into jumpspace and shove a starship across the dimensional barrier, you get much the same effect you get if something strikes a water surface at high speed: The water can't get away in time and the object might as well have struck a concrete surface.

So what a jump drive does, is open a small aperture into jumpspace, and then pump in a lot of hydrogen. This process takes 20 minutes and results in the adjacent area of jumpspace temporarily becoming a lot softer, more diluted. The ship is the propelled across the interdimensional barrier, which closes behind it. If the ship doesn't cross the barrrier fast, the hydrogen will disperse and entry once again becomes impractical.

Higher levels of jumpspace are denser and require greater amounts of hydrogen.

It would also (kinda) help explain the Jump Dimming tradition, if you go with the "we need all our energy output at the moment of jump" crowd.

No, it would not. The amount of energy you get out of dimming the lights for two minutes is utterly insignificant, as is the cost of installing enough extra capacity to keep them burning.

Bear in mind that (in my experience), when an airliner preparing to leave the gate switches from the external generators to internal power, the lights in the cabin will dim or go off for a couple of seconds - this might be the real-world origin of the "tradition" in Traveller.

Boxer01 (post #10 of this thread) already gave the correct explanation.


Hans