Theoretical Sci-fi Physics.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Hilary_155

Suppose you had a 100 ton scout ship riding inside a BIG ship. The BIG ship goes into jump space. What would happen if the scout ship were to power up its jump drive and try to jump?

Canonically? No one ever hears from either ship again.

(At least, I vaguely recall a mention of that kind of experiments, but I can't remember where, so maybe it's not actually canon[*]).

[*] On the gripping hand, it's the sort of thing you'd expect someone to try in the course of 10,000 years and if people don't do it by Imperial Year 1105, it's presumably because it's a Bad Idea. YMMV.

Hans

[freetrav]

Originally Posted by Hilary_155

OK.

Suppose you had a 100 ton scout ship riding inside a BIG ship. The BIG ship goes into jump space. What would happen if the scout ship were to power up its jump drive and try to jump?

This causes the generation and activation of a mysterious mechanism generally called a "plot device". Activation causes completely unpredictable effects, ranging from making a cup of a beverage almost, but not quite entirely, unlike tea, all the way to destroying the universe while leaving the ship intact. The only thing that can be counted on is that activation will cause the effect guaranteed to be most in accordance with the designs of a hypernatural being often called "the GM" or "the Referee".

[rasimus]

Ooo ooo...
It causes the scout ship to jump into real space, but only stay there for 168 hours. At the end of a week, the ship and everything which was originally on said scout vessel to disappear into the dimensional space we traditionally call jump space. Because the former passengers and the scout ship 'vibrate' in the same natural harmonics, they 'snap' on-board the vessel when it spontaneously jumps. They have NO CHOICE but to travel every week, and get thrown into new situations while attempting to wrestle with control over their new situation.

- In week/episode 1, they discover that every jump is a misjump as they understand misjumps, and fear it's only a matter of time before one of the misjumps kills them. They quickly discover that the information about what has happened to them may never catch up with them, unless they happen to jump back across what they hope is the spreading information sphere.
- Food and waste product details are explained and handled in week/episode 2.
- Death and the natural degregation of the jump field harmonics in biological specimens are handled in week/episode 7 when the corpse of a former crew member doesn't enter jump with them.
- Synchronizing and reintegrating new members of the crew are handled at the end of season/semester 1 when a couple new players join the group.
- The start of season/semester 2 sees the ship leave Imperial space and into nearby human controlled space with varying degrees of friendliness towards the Imperium and her personnel.

Of course, these are the real Travellers -- forced to travel across the length of known space and beyond!

[Hilary_155]

LOL

Thanks.

I just wondered if anyone did that before or not. They did do something comparable in Babylon 5... turning on their hyperspace drive while entering a jumpgate or something like that. In B-5 they had wormhole gates as well as hyperspace capable ships AND they had combat in hyperspace.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by freetrav

This causes the generation and activation of a mysterious mechanism generally called a "plot device". Activation causes completely unpredictable effects, ranging from making a cup of a beverage almost, but not quite entirely, unlike tea, all the way to destroying the universe while leaving the ship intact. The only thing that can be counted on is that activation will cause the effect guaranteed to be most in accordance with the designs of a hypernatural being often called "the GM" or "the Referee".

Has the Plot Device Hypothesis been tested or does it remain simply something discussed in journals?

[rasimus]

Originally Posted by Hilary_155

Thanks.

*chortle* I'd started to write up a second possibility involving the jump charging an inactive jump grid while in jump space using all the energy which is normally used to cross the boundary into jump space, to propel the vessel into MUCH deeper jump quanta. Suddenly the scout isn't in a jump 4 quanta, but something on the order of 10^4. The ship is cast tens out thousands of parsecs out of the way, and finds itself in the Magellanic Clouds, or at the far end of the Zhodani Core expedition, or on the other side of the Milky Way in the 'Delta Quadrant'. Of course, because no one has ever made it back from one of these experiments, everyone naturally assumes the result is a misjump that destroys the ship or leaves it stranded in jump space forever.

Of course the whole feel of that campaign would be different. :-)

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by rasimus

*chortle* I'd started to write up a second possibility involving the jump charging an inactive jump grid while in jump space using all the energy which is normally used to cross the boundary into jump space, to propel the vessel into MUCH deeper jump quanta. Suddenly the scout isn't in a jump 4 quanta, but something on the order of 10^4. The ship is cast tens out thousands of parsecs out of the way, and finds itself in the Magellanic Clouds, or at the far end of the Zhodani Core expedition, or on the other side of the Milky Way in the 'Delta Quadrant'. Of course, because no one has ever made it back from one of these experiments, everyone naturally assumes the result is a misjump that destroys the ship or leaves it stranded in jump space forever.

Of course the whole feel of that campaign would be different. :-)

I guess that's proof of the Plot Device Hypothesis.

[Apache]

I'd have them MisJump to Greyhawk.

*blinks*

What? Everybody in the 1980's ran a 'Traveller meets AD&D' game at least once.....

[rasimus]

Originally Posted by Apache

I'd have them MisJump to Greyhawk.

*blinks*

What? Everybody in the 1980's ran a 'Traveller meets AD&D' game at least once.....

Wasn't Expedition to Barrier Peaks just a Greyhawk dungeon crawl in an old Tigress? (Hmmm... would have been better with FGMP requiring rings of fire protection to avoid becoming crispy critters...)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by rasimus

Wasn't Expedition to Barrier Peaks just a Greyhawk dungeon crawl in an old Tigress?

No, it's a variant on the ship from Metamorphosis Alpha.