The Eldraeverse

…building civilizations with my space elves in space.

Tag Archives: starships

All Alone in the Dark

Leave a Comment Posted by on October 23, 2012

“If you’d ever been in a ship with no power, you wouldn’t ask that question. Reactor quenched, mains down, auxiliaries down, accumulator backups down. Out in the black without the life support systems running, it’s blacker in there than Lumenna’s own hell. No lights, no sun, no planetglow to keep you company, not below decks or in the deep. No sound. The murmur of the engines, gone. The whisper of the vents, gone. No mesh, all wireless whispers dead. And, of course, not even any gravity to give you a directional cue. Just floating there, in silence and darkness and creeping cold, isolation more complete than anything outside an AI with no sense-channels wired up.”

“And that’s when you start reaching for a mindcast transmitter – but the substrate can’t accept you without power, and communications died with the rest of the ship.”

“But you’ve got time to stop panicking. After all, no-one’s going anywhere. Nothing’s calling for your attention. And you’ve got air enough to last for a while – a little more if you’re drifting, a little less if you’re still.”

“Do you know how to find an emergency panel by touch? And keep something to throw always to hand?”

“Well, I always do. Now. Then –”

“Two days can be longer than all the rest of your life.”

Fic-a-Day , , , , ,

Trope-a-Day: Dilating Door

Leave a Comment Posted by on October 9, 2012

Dilating Door: Actually, most doors are regular doors, except for doors in space – because of the whole opening/closing against pressure issue – which tend to be cog-doors that roll into place.  (In addition to the pressure advantage, they’re also relatively easy to open or close when the power is out, by disconnecting the actuator arm and cranking them manually, or rolling them physically.)

There are also doors which melt to let people through, except since they’re actually the power of Sufficiently Advanced Nanotech walls to reshape themselves any way they feel like, and the doors aren’t bound to appear in any particular position, well…  (These are mostly the province of the absurdly wealthy who just hate messing up the nice sleek lines of their space yacht with overt door openings.)

And the people heavily into organic technology for houses and starship interiors (see that trope) and other such things generally have “doors” that are actually sphincters, or heart valves writ large.  The effect is much the same.

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How Unlikely Are We?

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 28, 2012

“The difficulties of interstellar travel are widely underestimated.  Within the stargate plexus, even simple ships — capable of only relatively low accelerations, capable of being built by cultures little more capable than those which have developed orbital flight, and requiring no extraordinary skill for a single sophont to pilot and maintain — can travel between star systems in a matter of weeks or months.  The capital and operating costs of such ships are high, but are not out of reach of a small consortium or well-off individual entrepreneur.  As such, worlds and cultures throughout the constellations connected by the plexus have blossomed, spreading civilization across the Associated Worlds and out into the Expansion Regions; and those cultures and their people which possess basic spaceflight capability can indulge freely in interstellar travel freely for colonization, trade, exploration, even tourism, at costs which are low enough to keep it from being the exclusive preserve of an elite, wealthy class.”

“Further, the stargate plexus binds the Associated Worlds together, in what may be an even more significant way, by acting as a carrier for the extranet.  While not instantaneous, since the Luminal Limit still applies between gates in the same system, communications can cross the entire width of the plexus in a matter of weeks rather than centuries, and most delays within polities are mere hours or days, even if not ameliorated by broadcatching, caching, and the use of AI and fork agent-proxies.  While light-lag and other delays and inconveniences in communications maintain separate cultural regions even within individual systems, as well as across the Worlds as a whole, that such communication, broadcast of media, and free exchange of information are possible and within the ready grasp of almost anyone in the Worlds with access to any sort of terminal does a great deal to create a common metaculture and understanding from core to Periphery.  (An effect which is only enhanced in those polities whose citizens have access to and cultural mores permitting the use of mindcasting to travel as data, at extranet speeds.)”

“All of this is to forget that in order for this to be possible, the stargate plexus had to exist already.  Let us examine how unlikely this truly is: the construction of artificial wormholes requires simultaneously an advanced scientific and technological culture, enough wealth to invest in the construction of multi-trillion-exval stargates and the new industries required to enable their construction, an adequately long-term viewpoint to make such investments seem viable, an existing lighthugger technology able to transport the distal wormhole terminus to its destination, and, most unlikely of all, such a multi-millennial genius as Imogen Andracanth to make the particular breakthrough permitting controlled wormhole inflation and stabilization without first possessing a mature ontotechnology.  Of all the thousands of civilizations known in the Associated Worlds and beyond, only two have ever made this discovery independently – the Empire, and the Voniensa Republic.”

“Without these miracles – I do not believe that this understates the case – could an interstellar civilization be possible?  I will not say that it would not; it would be possible to imagine a loose confederation of worlds, or a meta-empire, held together by slow light-bound trickles of information and low-speed lighthuggers bearing high-value data, supremely precious low-mass cargoes, and the occasional colonization mission – at least among the immortal or extremely long-lived.  But with only lighthuggers available – ships the size of mountains available only at high capital cost, requiring millions of tons of antimatter and deuterium to fuel at the cost of billions of exval, with large and skilled crews making much longer commitments in terms of wall-clock time and even more yet in empire time, no thriving, cosmopolitan association such as we now enjoy could have come into being.”

- Linde Valentinarius, An Overview of the Flowering

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Author’s Note: Hey, Y’All, Watch This!

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 24, 2012

For those wondering about some of the technical background:

The chief obstacles to using “normal” computers in space are heat generation (given the average spacecraft’s limited heat budget – disposing of heat in vacuum is hard), cooling (because in microgravity, convection doesn’t work – there go heat-sinks without a lot of active coolant-movement devices), ability to work in low air pressure and/or vacuum if something goes wrong, and the prevalence of ionizing  and other EM radiation, which tends to muck up delicate electronics.  For a large part of history, this was handled by many of the same compromises we made – reduced transistor density, specially hardened chips and designs, magnetic core memory, and so forth.

(Fun fact: this problem was particularly bad back in the Apollo-era equivalents of Projects Phoenix, Oculus, and Silverfall, because they were using Orion-style nuclear pulse drives.  Which is to say, during atmospheric ascent, a crapload of EMP happening right near the flight computers.  Back then, they were using “electron plumbing” machines, because despite their space program being relatively later in their technological timeline and thus having better ICs available, they still were by no means EMP-immune.  ”Electron plumbing” is a technological path we didn’t take – essentially, evolved thermionic valves/vacuum tubes to higher orders of complexity.  Never widely used, because ICs were still a better technology overall, but for this specific use, excellent.)

But in the modern era of spaceflight, they can use standard commercial computers, because those use optronic nanocircs.  Those run cool (no need to wiggle significant electrons about; photons are much easier to handle) inherently, and care much, much less about passing ionizing and other EM radiation.  Also, all but the most cut-down “standard” ML runtimes or hardprocs (a processor that implements the ML runtime directly in hardware) incorporate all the real-time and safety-critical features that you’d need for spaceflight applications, because those features are also used in general automation and robotics and other applications that are pretty close to ubiquitous downside as well.  And so does the standard IIP networking protocol, and so forth, and for much the same reasons.

As for WeaveControl, it’s more formal name is Interweave Command/Control Protocol; for reasons of technological evolution, plus much more prevalent hackerish tendencies in the population, just about every device manufactured – cars, lightbulbs, drink-makers, ovens, coins - comes with an IIP interface and a WeaveControl endpoint, which lets you run all the functions of the device from an external command source.  (It’s become such a ubiquitous open standard that there’s no reason not to spend the couple of micros it takes to install it.)  You really can script just about anything to do anything, or hook it up to interfaces of your choosing on any device you have that can run them.  Things as simple as programming your alarm clock to tell the appropriate devices to make your morning cuppa, lay out suitable clothes according to the weather and the style of the day, cook your breakfast, fetch and program your paper with the morning’s news, order a car to come take you to work, and program its music system with a playlist suitable for your mood are downright commonplace.

But they’re serious about anything/anything compatibility.  You can program your bath from your car, drive your car from your PDA, operate an industrial 3D printer from seat 36B on the sub-ballistic – hell, run your building elevator from your pocket-watch if you can think of any reason why that might be something you’d want to do.

Some of these applications are, ah, less advisable than others!

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Hey, Y’all, Watch This!

1 Comment Posted by on August 24, 2012

“…things have changed since the old days, gentlesophs.  If you were paying attention in history class, you’ll have learned all about the exotica they had to use to compute in the early days of spaceflight, but anything you’ll work with on a starship now will be familiar to you already – optronic nanocircs, ML-based runtimes and hardprocs, IIP networking, WeaveControl command/control protocol, self-organizing technecologies, and so forth.”

“For those of you whose eyes lit up at the mention of WeaveControl – who have doubtless heard all the usual tall tales in spacer bars – yes, this does mean that technically you can fly a ship, from a shuttle to a dreadnought, using a portable slate or even that fob terminal you use to call your car.  If you pass this course with flying colors and buy me a few drinks, I might tell you some true stories about when it’s really been done, and how a few of those people even survived doing it.”

“But there’s a reason they give the flight-control chairs those surround displays and fancy hand-rigs, and for that same reason, if I catch any of you trying it during this course, however high your rating from flight school or even if you are Ithával’s own special gift to piloting, you’re going to be spending the rest of your time here cleaning the airlocks from the outside.  That’s because I’m old and kind, and you’ll be young and stupid.  What your future employers, insurers, space-control authorities and the gods who look after fools and spacers will do to you if you try it after graduation without your bridge and auxiliaries both being shot off first won’t be nearly so nice.”

- introduction to ‘Introduction to Starship Computers’, Academician Airin Silverfall-ith-Adae

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When Space Gives You Lemons

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 23, 2012

“Minley Traveler, you are denied landing permission at Qechra Down, technical eval.  Maintain standard orbit, eight of twelve.  Do you desire re-routing to Qechra Orbital?  Qechra Local, over.”

“Ah, Qechra Local, clarify technical eval?  Minley Traveler, over.”

“Minley Traveler, we have low confidence in your structural fitness for re-entry.  Qechra Local, over.”

“Qechra Local, we may not be a standard class, but if you check our spec plat, we are well within spec for re-entry on this world.  Minley Traveler, over.”

“Minley Traveler, by your spec plat, we read you as a half-Hargis and half-Karakrayt slice-and-splice.  And that doesn’t disqualify you from landing, no, but I can see the weld lines on your hull from here by eyeball.  Qechra Local, over.”

“Local, we got here in one piece, didn’t we?  Over.”

“Traveler, just ’cause Athnéël smiled enough to let that piece of kveth-lakh stand up to thrust ’til now doesn’t mean she’s going to keep doing it, so bring it in to Orbital under cold-gas or take it elsewhere.  She blinks at max Q, you’re looking for two landing spots and not likely to pay for either.  Not in my atmosphere, you don’t.  Qechra Local, clear.”

- overheard on local space-control channel, Qechra

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Trope-a-Day: Cool Starship

2 Comments Posted by on August 19, 2012

Cool Starship: Basically, see Cool Chair, only slightly less prevalent due to starships being more expensive.  And, in fairness, most starships are functional things.

But there are a lot of custom jobs floating around there.  But of particular note, probably, are the Celerissima-class yachts, the smallest and least practical lighthuggers ever made for meat intelligences; the God of War, as mentioned under Deus Est Machina; and Sovereign of Stars, largest of the Imperial Primes, which is basically a medium-sized palace and its grounds fitted out with life support, engines, and other spacegoing appurtenances.

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I Want a Happy Ship

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 19, 2012

happy board: A term used in starships to describe a system status board indicating all systems operating correctly.  While status lights use the same blue-crimson or blue-amber-crimson encoding as other bistate or tristate indicators, studies have shown that most sophonts respond quickly and accurately to emotional inputs, and process these particularly well when communicated by primary body language, such as facial expressions.  As such, computerized system status boards are programmed to supplement the blue color indicator for “operational/running” with a smiling or equivalent expression emoticon, hence the term.  See also sad board.

sad board: A term used in starships to describe a system status board indicating at least one system not operating correctly.  For reasons as described under happy board, which see, computerized system status boards are programmed to supplement the crimson color indicator for “fault state/stopped” with a frowning or equivalent expression emoticon, hence the term.

- Blackjacket’s Dictionary, Imperial Navy Press

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Trope-a-Day: Command Roster

Leave a Comment Posted by on July 31, 2012

(With many thanks to Atomic Rocket and Raymond McVay of Blue Max Studios, whose Mission Control Model I drew upon heavily for inspiration while working out this alternate-style command structure.)

Command Roster: The command roster of an Imperial starship, civilian or military, looks something like this – with variations, as specialized ships require:

(Above this entire structure, potentially, a Mission Commander (Admiral, Commodore, etc.), in charge of a task force of multiple ships.)

Flight Commander: The overall director of the operation, the big boss. In charge of everything.

  1. Flight Executive (Exec)
    In charge of supervising all exterior and interior communications (the bridge between the ship’s Shipboard Information System, the ship’s crew, other ships, and the other departments; the equivalent of a Naval vessel’s executive officer, without their administrative role, which is the responsibility of the Flight Administrator. Since there is only one Flight Commander per ship, the officers in the role of Exec serve as officer of the deck when the FC is not present; other posts tend to have a first, second, and third occupying them.

    1. Spacecraft Communications (Comms)
      Communicator between the spacecraft and other ships or stations; also in charge of tangle communications and cryptography.
    2. Docks and Locks (Locks)
      On ships large enough to have other vessels docking to them and thus requiring the eponymous department, in charge of docking cradles, airlocks, shuttle bays, and the associated requirements in terms of atmosphere management and body shops. If the ship has no dedicated Small Craft Operations officer, also looks after what small craft there are, if any – i.e., carried cutters.
    3. Small Craft Operations (Air)
      On carriers (or megafreighters using the LASH model), in charge of carried interceptors, lighters, and other small craft and their operations.
  2. Flight Director (Flight)
    In overall charge of navigating the ship and engaging in flight operations as the FC and/or exec direct.

    1. Pilot/Sailing Master (Helm)
      Actively pilots the spacecraft, performing maneuvers and managing the attitude control systems.
    2. Astrogation and Guidance (Guidance)
      Navigates the spacecraft, operates the flight computers – and monitors their continued correct operation – and inertial/star tracking platforms, maintains position records, plots courses and orbits, and so forth.
    3. Relativistics (Time)
      Manages the ship’s timebase and maintains the systems that properly compensate for relativistic variation, including maintaining lock on the empire time/wall-clock time differential and other reference frame corrections.
    4. Sensor Operations (Sensory)
      In charge of all non-navigational sensors (and non-navigational uses of the navigational sensors), and maintaining the current picture of near space; this requires considerable creative interpolation to overcome light-lag, which is Sensory’s job.
    5. Tactical/Payload Operations (Guns – even on non-military vessels)
      On military vessels, in charge of weapons and firing them at the enemy; and defenses and using them against incoming fire. On all vessels, in charge of operating any and all modules plugged into the ship and any “active cargo” being carried.
    6. Data Operations (Data)
      In charge of setting up whatever programs or other complex computations the rest of the bridge officers need, ad hoc, critical path management, resource allocation, the ship’s library, etc.
  3. Flight Engineer (Chief)
    In overall charge of all engineering systems.

    1. Propulsion Engineer (Drive)
      In charge of the entire spacecraft propulsion system, from propellant to nacelle, including navigation hardware. Also responsible for tracking remaining Δv capacity.
    2. Power Engineer (Power)
      Responsible for power plant, power plant fuel supply, electrical systems, other power systems, and also monitoring internally-generated radiation if relevant.
    3. Thermal Engineer (Heat)
      In charge of all thermal control systems, including but not limited to heat sinks, radiators, heat pumps, and other thermal transfer systems.
    4. Data Systems Engineer (Comps)
      In charge of the ship’s primary data systems, including the Shipboard Information Service.
    5. Mechanical Arms and Non-Sophont Crew Engineer (Mechs)
      Responsible for the maintenance of all the ship’s robotic arms, robots, cyberswarms, and associated systems.
    6. Sensory and Guidance Systems Engineer (Systems)
      Responsible for all the sensory and guidance systems hardware; flight computers, laser grid, telescopes, radar, star-tracking platform, etc., etc.
    7. Environmental Engineer (Life)
      In overall charge of all life-support systems.

      1. Closed-Ecology Life Support Systems Manager
        Responsible for the environmental systems; heat, air, water, recycling, and the ongoing provision of same.
      2. Galley Manager
        Responsible for the carniculture vats, hydroponic systems, and other on-board food production equipment, as well as the galleys and other means of cooking it, and the slop chest.
    8. Auxiliary Systems Engineer (Aux)
      Responsible for maintenance and upkeep of all other ship’s systems, and general maintenance and stores, including the ship’s locker.
  4. Flight Administrator (Admin)
    In charge of all administrative details, ship’s paperwork, and discipline among the other departments.

    1. Cargomaster (Cargo)
      In charge of loading and unloading cargo; also in charge of ensuring that the cargo is stored in a proper balanced manner, center-of-mass-and-moment-of-inertia-wise.
    2. Purser
      In charge of self-mobile cargo; i.e., passengers and all their foibles.
    3. Flight Surgeon (Doc)
      Medical officer. In charge of dealing with disease, injury, ship’s cleanliness, and environmental radiation.

The usual bridge crew/command conference, in which the posts are filled for each watch, consists of the Captain/Flight Commander, the Flight Executive and his immediate subordinates, the Flight Director and his immediate subordinates, the Flight Engineer, and the Flight Administrator.

Lesser positions may be merged, either with each other or their superior position, on smaller ships.  Minimum crew size for anything above a small craft is four; one Captain/Flight Commander, three Flight Directors (one per watch, assuming necessary sleep patterns; only one digisapient FD would be permissible, for example) – if maintenance and operational requirements can be met.

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Trope-a-Day: Casual Interstellar Travel / Casual Interplanetary Travel

Leave a Comment Posted by on July 9, 2012

Casual Interstellar Travel / Casual Interplanetary Travel: It’s a little complicated.  Technically, yes, you can travel interstellarly fairly casually, since while you have to drag one end of your wormhole at subluminal speed to wherever you want it, interstellar travel to places where you have one already is pretty damn casual.  Step through and you’re there.  Ping.

Of course, wormholes and their associated stargates are Really Damn Expensive, and so is interstellar travel to anywhere that isn’t on the stargate networks involving as it does the many years relativity demands of you even in lighthugger starships, the great expense of said lighthugger, and for that matter, the even greater expense of the thousands or tens of thousands or even, for the largest luggers, hundreds of thousands of tons of antimatter you need to fuel the thing.

Further, and to subvert this slightly, while there’s casual interstellar travel, what there isn’t is casual interplanetary travel (speed-wise; it’s much more casual cost-wise).  No-one’s invented a convenient magical gravity drive that lets you whip up nigh-instantaneous thousands of gravities of acceleration (while there are vector-control drives, neither acceleration nor delta-v are any better, and indeed usually worse, than equivalent reaction drives; blame conservation of mass-energy), so getting anywhere in-system, including out to the stargate, still takes days or weeks, and for interstellar travel, that means on both ends of the wormhole.

This is resubverted for those with the right metaphysical attitude, because if you don’t go into quivering neo-Luddite theofear at the thought of having your mind separated from your body and transmitted elsewhere to be reinstalled in a different one at the far end (and granted, that’s not exactly most people outside the rampaging postsophontist neophile civilizations), then you can just mindcast where you want to go (assuming of course they have the right receiving equipment, which is by no means guaranteed outside the aforementioned civilizations).  Which is substantially quicker and counts as fully casual interplanetary/interstellar travel, because photons and (especially) tangle move a lot faster than your own personal meat/rock can be transported.

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Make Yourself at Home

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 29, 2012

“Welcome to Tessil System Space. You are now entering the Tessil system advisory zone. Contact Tessil SysCon on channel 43.2 and identify. Current ephemerides and system documentation updates are now being transmitted. Procedural control is now in effect.”

“Current alerts: Undocumented debris has been spotted in Adírdis-Celéres brachistochrone route section four, moving at 4.1 miles per second. Subchannel 7 contains continuous loop data on this navigational hazard.”

“Outer system approach vectors between 225+75 and 210+60 have been closed off due to a lighthugger’s deceleration burn. These approach vectors will be cleared for traffic in 27 hours.”

“A hazardous material incident has closed primary docks and locks at Qéral Station, Tessil L4. Duration of closure will be 5.8 hours estimated. Starships and spacecraft arriving at Qéral Station within this window are advised to delay their arrival or divert to alternates. Starships and spacecraft lacking Δv for such maneuvers should contact Tessil SysCon on channel 43.2.”

“New alert: Solar monitoring satellites indicate magnetic flux activity over the acme polar region of the system primary. Estimated time to solar flare is 49 minutes from this mark. Duration estimated at four hours, with peak radiation output of 0.12 Gy per minute. Tessil SysCon recommends all unshielded sophonts seek radiation shelters within the next 30 light-lag adjusted minutes. Solar flare predictions are accurate to +/- 20%.”

“Message repeats. Welcome to Tessil System Space…”

- Tessil-Galáré stargate nav buoy, general broadcast

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Welcome Aboard

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 12, 2012

“Your attention please, gentlesophs and adjuncts, and on behalf of Captain Corrével and the remainder of the crew, welcome aboard the IS Elegant Locus, operating Interstar flight 963 from Mer Dinévál Countermass Station, Seranth, to Star City Highport, Clajdíä.  I am Galry Inurian-ith-Inuriannon, your purser for this flight.”

“At this time, all passengers and freight have been boarded, and the airlock doors have been closed.  We have been given a departure window commencing in one hour, at which time the holds will be sealed for the duration of transit.  If you have special cargo or steerage-class passengers you wish to check upon, please do so at this time.”

“When our departure is announced, please return to the ship’s lounge until we clear the station.  Since we will be in microgravity immediately after departure and for the rest of the voyage, please ensure that all of your luggage and personal chattels are properly stowed and liquid containers sealed previous to this time.  Emesis containers are located in the pocket of each lounge seat, and microgravity adaptation syndrome drugs are available on request from the lounge stewards or other crew members.  For those passengers who are not spacer-certified, Interstar is pleased to offer a complimentary basic class in microgravity navigation and other tasks in the ship’s gymnasium immediately after departure.  Our time of transit to Clajdíä will be approximately eight days.”

“At this time, the Shipboard Information Service has been enabled.  Details of the costs for dedicated tight-beam or tangle transmissions are available on the ship’s intranet, as are charges for processor rental.  Batched data transfer and access to the ship’s extensive library and cache are available at no charge.”

“Under the Imperial Navigation Act, we are required to familiarize you with certain emergency procedures.  In a loss-of-pressure emergency in any compartment of the ship, this alarm will sound — and the ship’s lightning will switch to high-contrast blue.  The spacetight doors will immediately seal off each compartment.  If you are in a compartment designated as a pressure shelter at this time, identifiable by the green and blue bands painted at the top of the bulkheads, please remain where you are until otherwise instructed.”

“If you are in a compartment that is not a pressure shelter, or if you are in a pressure shelter and this alarm sounds — accompanied by strobing high-contrast blue lighting, indicating a local loss of pressure, you should immediately locate the nearest individual rescue ball.  These are located behind the emergency panels in each compartment, marked in hazard yellow.  Simply pull the panel from the wall, and remove the rescue ball.  Unfold it, place it on the floor, sit on it, and pull the red handle at the sides of the ball up simultaneously and over your head until they meet, at which point the sides of the ball will catalytically seal together and the ball will inflate.  In the event that the automatic sealer fails, remove any foreign objects from the area where the edges of the ball meet, and press the edges together manually until a proper seal is formed.  There is no need to rush; explosive decompression is exceedingly rare, and carelessness in this task is a greater risk than delay.”

“Each rescue ball contains a self-repair pack, essential medical supplies, and an intercom system to allow communication with crew and with passengers in other balls. It also contains an automatically activated rescue transponder that will report your location and status to the crew.  The rescue ball’s internal air supply will last for a minimum of one hour; if you will be required to remain for longer periods of time, the crew will connect your rescue ball to the ship’s backup oxygen supply.”

“In the event of a local loss of pressure, sealing capsules may be released into the compartment’s air to plug the leak.  While the sealant gel is unpleasant to the touch should you come into contact with it, it is non-toxic and designed to bond only to hull metals.”

“Should a fire occur in any compartment, the following alarm will sound — along with red, flashing alert signs.  You should leave the compartment immediately, following the bulkhead track lighting to the nearest spacetight door.  If a fire is of magnitude sufficient to trigger the alarm, you should not attempt to fight the fire; the fire will be extinguished when the compartment is vented to space.  Do not stop to collect your belongings or other items.  While every attempt will be made to provide reasonable escape time, the spacetight doors will seal as rapidly as is necessary to secure the safety of the ship, and the compartment vented to space to extinguish the fire.  If you are unable to escape the compartment before the spacetight doors seal, make use of a rescue ball in a location as distant from the fire as possible.”

“In the event of any other survivable emergency situation, please report to a pressure shelter compartment as soon as possible, and comply with all directions given by the ship’s crew.  If you are trapped or otherwise unable to reach a pressure shelter compartment, please contact us using the emergency channel on any ship intercom.”

“If you have any questions about the flight at any time, please don’t hesitate to ask any of our cabin stewards.  Thank you, and again, on behalf of Captain Corréval and the crew, please enjoy your voyage with Interstar.”

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Trope-a-Day: The Bridge

2 Comments Posted by on June 9, 2012

The Bridge: Unusually for fiction, buried right in the middle of the ship where some smartass can’t shoot it off.  Also, very distinctly not the Combat Information Center, the Flight Deck/Conning Tower, any kind of conference or communications room, Damage Control Central, Flight Operations, Astrogation, or any one of the other assorted rooms scattered throughout the ship’s volume where some department or other runs its stuff.

In some designs, may even be entirely virtual.

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Trope-a-Day: Deflector Shields

3 Comments Posted by on May 31, 2012

Deflector Shields: These come in one played-straight kind: kinetic barriers, which are a product of vector control (a kind of Applied Phlebotinium, yes), essentially applying counterforce to, or slapping aside, incoming massy objects, from space dust to missiles, but don’t do anything to massless radiation.  And they’re usually ad-hoc plates, not an always-on bubble, but details…

The universe is not nearly so kind when it comes to providing us with a way of shielding against EM radiation, massless photon phenomenon that it is (and no, you can’t shield against lasers by making the hull shiny; it still heats up, explodes, and then isn’t shiny any more).  The best they can do for this one, apart from the layers of shielding compound, and bunkerage and suchlike stashed under the hull, is for the hull plating and underlying layers to include a nice framework of thermal superconductor nanocomposite (at which thermodynamics weeps, but it is actually allowed by physics as we know them); this dissipates radiative heating throughout the entire structure of the ship, thus preventing exploding hot-spots.  Of course, it doesn’t avoid the problem that if you keep acquiring heat faster than you can dump it – and remember, you generally can’t use your radiators when in combat – you’ll broil yourself.

To deal with that, military ships generally carry a few big tanks of thermal goo, a thick, goopy substance engineered to have a ludicrously high specific heat capacity, into which tanks heat generated during combat, specifically including what happens when you get hit by a medium-range energy weapon, is dumped.  And when the thermal goo heats up enough that it’s no longer useful, it’s simply pumped over the side, taking its heat with it.

Which doesn’t solve the problem, but does significantly extend the time before you have to choose between surrender and broiling yourselves alive.

There is absolutely no way to shield against gravitic weapons except by counterfiring your own gravitic weapons extremely quickly and accurately, but honestly, if you’ve somehow managed to end up within (extremely short, by space standards) gravy range, you’re already totally screwed.

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Mind the Self-Loading Cargo

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 26, 2012

All Hands:

As per the ship’s itinerary, we will be arriving at Thetra (Banners) highport in three cycles, ship time. As is the usual procedure, I’ll require completed pre-arrival checklists, chandlers’ requisitions, and codicils from each department by the wineful hour tomorrow.

The following special instructions apply:

1. If the complaints I’ve been getting are anything to go by, the ship’s locker is running low on a variety of non-spec stores. The ship’s discretionary budget’s looking good this quarter, so, deck department, while you’re doing your inventories, make out your wish lists.

2. This is our first call at an outworld this trip, and we’ll be taking on passengers. Now, for those of you on your first trip, this means we’re going to be carrying lots of people who aren’t spacers or spacer-modified, and who are used to the idea of artificial gravity whenever they go offworld, and who certainly aren’t used to people using a half-dozen different verticals in the same place.

This means, yes, lots of freefall sickness. So break out the emesis bags and multispecies microgravity-adaptation pills, people, they’re going to need them.

And I don’t want to have to detail people to clean it out of the atmosphere processors, am I clear?

3. Likewise, break out the catchpoles, and make sure we have enough. If past voyages are anything to go by, we’re going to spend the first few days hauling lots of people down out of mid-air. And keep them with you – none of the other passengers are paying to watch the ongoing flailing while you go get the ’pole.

4. If you haven’t used them recently, go see the Master-at-Arms for a refresher on your multispecies child-restraint techniques. Kids love microgravity, and are not good at keeping it to the rec deck. And since the passengers aren’t paying for free-fall pranks, either, that means you’re going to have to.

And Crewman mor-Venek? Do remember that electrolasers are not an approved child-restraint technique anywhere off Paltraeth. Legal had to pay out enough compensation last time.

5. I’ll be in my office for the whole of the highsun hour today if any additional concerns arise that require my attention.

It’s only a short layover this time, but let’s make it a smooth one!

- Iallis Steamweaver-ith-Ilithos, purser

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What the Ship is This?

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 25, 2012

CORVETTES

We were interested to see that a number of “corvette” – i.e. sub-frigate – classes of warship have emerged since our last edition, especially since the role of the frigate is already extremely limited, due to the limitations of its available mass and volume on its capacities, to wolf-pack deployments for light anti-piracy control, scouting, minor system pickets, and civilian system-security functions.

On examining the three primary examples of corvette-class vessels seen in use, the Vanknir-class from Nal Kalak State Arms (we admire, incidentally, the gall of the Orsten System Navy in officially designating essentially unmodified Vanknirs as “system defense frigates”), the Auberwuth­-class from Eilish Star Armories, and the General Svanek-class from the Empire’s own Islien Yards/Artifice Armaments, several key differences from frigate-class vessels, and ones which render them even more impractical as ships of war, are apparent.

Specifically, the defining characteristics of these sub-frigate ships are a particularly light armament (one barely sufficient for civilian system-security functions, if that), a greater emphasis on armor and shielding (although the kinetic barriers and hull armor mounted by any corvette-class vessel would be inadequate against even lightly armed warships firing for effect), and an emphasis on technological simplicity, focusing upon ease of field repair in the absence of equivalent-technology infrastructure, often by the replacement of modular components.  This is to say that the corvette appears to be designed for ease of maintenance in the low-technology field first, survivability – such as is possible at this scale – second, and warfighting ability third.

In the light of these unusual features, and of its emergence after the case of Sarine v. Galactic Volumetric Registry, the true purpose of the corvette becomes clear.  They are a political ship class, not a military one.  In other words, they are not intended to put up a practical system defense; rather, they are intended to permit a single-system polity which does not wish to bear the expense of a viable star nation’s naval establishment to claim system sovereignty – by virtue of policing their own space – using a few corvettes at a fraction of the expense of actual warships.

Certainly, in the event of any serious territorial incursion, these ships could do little more than fire off a few warning shots for the honor of the flag and surrender immediately thereafter, but this may be sufficient to establish their intent to assert system sovereignty in the eyes of the legal authorities.

(The name of the Islien Yards/Artifice Armaments General Svanek-class may also suggest the correctness of this analysis, the historical General Svanek Arctorran being known primarily for presiding over two surrenders in the War of Banners without any decisive battle preceding.)

We await the first legal decisions on this point with considerable interest.

- Naval Starships of the Associated Worlds, INI Press, Palaxias, 421st ed.

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Bloody Diamonds

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 8, 2012

“I hate dip refueling.”  The grizzled spacer took a long pull on his beer, then looked around at his audience.

“I came in on Levikí, out of Meryn.  That’s her there – the fast courier you’ve been eyeing up in between your drinks. All set up for these long wilderness runs with the fanciest new scoop system and thermal shielding you ever saw so we can pick up fusion fuel anywhere and keep as much velocity as we can while we’re doing it. You ever heard of a Záïc Dip?”

“Well, that’s what Levikí was built to do.  Do a slingshot around a convenient gas giant in mid-voyage, making a high-speed pass through its upper atmosphere as you do it.  Thermal superconductor plating and the oversized heatsinks keep you from burning.  Open up those for’ard gratings, and the dynamic pressure, all the while, rams the hydrogen-helium mix through the mollysieves neat as neat, and strip out the deuterium and helium-3.  Come out the other side fully bunkered and ready to burn for the far gate.  The captain loves to use it, ‘specially as he’s a bit of a tight-wire and won’t spend a taltis if he can get something done himself.”

“Anyway, like I said, we came out of Meryn.  Any of you can tell me where we fuelled heading out of Meryn for a spinward run?”

“Helcáss is the nearest, but it’s not got the right atmosphere –”

“Not bad, kid. Here, have a drink on me.  But it’s close enough.  All the right components are there to fuel her.  They’re just mixed up with a bunch of methane ’cause Helcáss’s too hot to stratify, but that doesn’t stop the Dip from workin’.  Methane doesn’t take well to the dynamic pressure, though.  All that carbon doesn’t fit through the mollysieves, and it’s not going to go back out against the pressure, so it crystallizes right where it sits.”

“And then ship’s mechs, which would be me, gets to spend the next leg out from Meryn with his brain plugged into a dozen or so worker-bots, carefully scraping the kveth-lakh carbon-crystal off the ‘sieves.  Which is not, I may tell you, my favorite choice of in-flight entertainment.  And then we’ve got to store it somewhere.  Can’t just toss it out the lock, y’know.  That’d be littering.”

“So, know anyone who wants four-five tons of starshit-grade diamonds?”

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Stop Fittling With That

2 Comments Posted by on January 11, 2012

Congratulations, my students, on your successful completion of the first half of Ontological Engineering.

When you return in two months, it will be time for each of you to choose the research project you’ll be carrying out for the next two years.  And with regard to that, I would like to encourage you to choose something other than the current obsession with faster-than-light devices.

While I can appreciate your enthusiasm, whether based on the honors and plaudits that await anyone who cracks that particular problem, or the unspeakably large bounty that the Imperial Navy have waiting for anyone who can provide them with a tactical fittler capable of pulling off that four-simultaneous-shots-with-one-ship maneuver – ever since it was shown off on Galaxy of Conquest, anyway – I should nevertheless like to remind you of a few things.

Firstly, that people have been banging on, yanking at, and poking any piece of physics that looked like it might have practical or even impractical fittling potential since before Imogen Andracanth’s team invented the wormhole; and except for the wormhole and the tangle channel, have produced absolutely no positive results whatsoever.

Secondly, that Exogenesis, Islien Yards and Stellar Express, between them, have poured more money into their Starleaper Initiative than the entire budget of this university, and have hired a great many talented graduates of this course.  You can therefore be fairly sure both that the competition is extremely stiff, and that if there were any low-hanging fruit to be plucked in this area, we would probably have heard about it already.

And thirdly, of course, there are a great many unsolved, and indeed, as yet uninvestigated research problems in other areas of ontotechnology, many of them leading to potentially exciting developments in fields as simple as remote sensing and drive efficiency to old speculative-fictional dreams such as dimensional transcendence, matter translocation, negentropy, and instant manufacturing free from all that tedious mucking about with nanomachines.

So go home, enjoy the blue and green season, and come back to me with some exciting proposals!  You won’t be penalized if you do insist on sticking with the fittle, but do check what’s been done in the past and what the Starleaper team have been trying recently, and put some fresh and interesting spin on it.

Class dismissed.

- address to the most recent OE class, Imperial University of Almeä

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Trope-a-Day: Abandon Ship

Leave a Comment Posted by on December 22, 2011

Abandon Ship: As mentioned under Escape Pod, only occasionally useful in the physical sense due to the lack of places the escape pods could take you, given their delta-v constraints – nor are they likely to have enough delta-V to correct a sunward plummet, or other highly inadvisable course – and the likelihood that if something is going to explode badly enough to destroy the hulk, it’ll catch any conceivable pod-launch in the blast, too.

No, abandoning ship is something done by mindcasting – i.e., transmitting the minds of everyone on the ship somewhere else (some vessels carry a passel of emergency tangle for exactly this purpose).  The copy of you left on the ship gets to go down with it – and, actually, in more than a few cases, that the copying nature of mindcasting lets you both abandon your ship and go down with it at the same time is seen as a positive advantage, even if dying liners exercising this option prefer to break out a round of euthanasia pills for the passengers, at least.

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Trope-a-Day: Escape Pod

3 Comments Posted by on December 21, 2011

Escape Pod: Averted.  Fusion reactors don’t explode, they fizzle.  Antimatter reactors (well, really, the storage cryocels) do explode, but in general, there’s no way you’re going to get away from them fast enough in order to matter.  And unless you’re in orbit around a planet or co-orbiting with a habitat cluster (in which case there are almost certainly plenty of people around with small craft anyway), you’re not going to be able to get anywhere with the delta-v that can be packed into an escape pod, so you might as well stay with the hulk of your ship, however shot up it is and whatever resources it represents.  Escape pods are (mostly) pointless.

And even in the military scenario when you want to get to a different ship, Dodge for the getting out of, that’s what mindcasting is for.

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