[Space] [Spaceships] : Mapping Hyperspace onto Truespace . . .

[downer]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

An exit/entry sphere is a sphere with a Truespace diameter that corresponds to the largest dimension of a ship in Hyperspace. This is important because if two ships try to simultaneously (or in quick succession) enter Hyperspace while in each other's spheres, they will suddenly occupy the same volume in Hyperspace, which will result either in a collision or in fusion (or some other nasty reaction, definitely not healthy for the ships/crew).

So, I did get you right. But if that's a known problem, people will learn to work around it, and navigators will be mighty careful to stay out of each other's spheres.

And as I mentioned before, 20K km is not a flyspeck - it is 1/10,000 of an AU, or roughly 1½ the diameter of Terra. On a busy orbit around a planet, it's quite a volume (things get easier in the Oort, though). And remember, this is if ships can attain 1K mps. If ship engines cannot attain that speed (but the setting demands HS travel to be as fast), then an even more drastic ratio is required.

Yeah, right. 1.5 earth diameters is still very much in the "aw cute" range for celestial bodies. Unless dozens of ships arrive* or leave at the same time, it won't even crowd the orbit. It hurts my brain to calculate how many ships could jump between the orbits of Earth and Mars at any one moment, but it must be 6 digit numbers, even if you don't go for 3 dimensions. Ships will simply be spending quite some time in realspace going for their actual destinations, or there will have to be some kind of tugboat service. Hyperspace ship comes in, drops cargo, moves 20K clicks, hops out. Tugboat comes in, picks up cargo, takes it to planet.

*Actually, I realised that arrival is unproblematic. Since two arriving ships always have different HS coordinates (unless they crashed in HS), they will arrive at least 20K km apart.