How fast is Travel?

[Hackie]

Bluespace is a crazy wacky thing, and travelling from place to place can carry a huge risk of overshooting or something going wrong. So, I'd think going from planet to planet would take one to three hours, with the use of bluespace, while long distance could take a week to a couple of months. I also kind of like this sort of long time in space gives this mystique of being constantly alone. But, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

This is where the game gets a little inconsistent with travel times and with bluespace in general. The ERT shuttle arrives instantly, but the transfer/evacuation shuttle arrives in 10 minutes, but returns in 3, and the supply shuttle takes, what, 5 minutes?

Different engine types or something.

Think of travel around the galaxy like choosing between the highway or travel by train. Different systems are like neighboring cities, and human space is like the entire breadth of the USA. If you want to travel from Phoenix to New York you can drive the whole way or take a train. (Telescience would be the equivalent of booking a plane, but that's not really something your average crew member would have installed on their ships, mostly because it's not scaled up yet)

Travel within a system is like a daily commute, 5 - 30 minutes.

Travel to a neighboring sector is 40 minutes - 5 hours.

Travel to anywhere farther is 5 hours - <32 hours. It really doesn't matter at this point, just make up whatever length sounds right.

This is all only true for systems that are connecting with bluespace gates, though. And this accounts for the time you spend dealing with the traffic to get through the gate in the first place. Travelling to places not connecting by bluespace gates or bluespace beacons for your starship drive and suddenly you're basically doing the equivalent of driving on a dirt road in the countryside, which is the entire frontier. Now when you're trying to travel the frontier, again imagine going from Phoenix to New York, but suddenly the entire trip is by dirt road. Days and weeks or even months to get anywhere significant. Hopefully you have enough fuel!

Before Bluespace, travel was done by regular Warp travel, which was only double the speed of light in the early years, and even its best form before being outdated by bluespace made it months of travel either way.

[Nikov]

What stops people from putting a warp or bluespace drive on a used tramp cargo ship and turning it into a relativistic planet-killer?

[Guest]

What stops people from putting a warp or bluespace drive on a used tramp cargo ship and turning it into a relativistic planet-killer?

 

spatial re-entry, probably

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

What stops people from putting a warp or bluespace drive on a used tramp cargo ship and turning it into a relativistic planet-killer?

 

What stops people from detonating nukes in times square? What stops us from nuking someone that irritates us?

We're not insane, for one.

For two, inertia. You exit bluespace at the speed you entered.

[Nikov]

What stops people from putting a warp or bluespace drive on a used tramp cargo ship and turning it into a relativistic planet-killer?

 

What stops people from detonating nukes in times square?

 

What stops people from flying planes into the World Trade Center?

That out of the way, what if you did not exit bluespace before hitting the planet?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Then you'd miss.

[Nikov]

Why? Is the planet not present in bluespace? Does a gravity well of that size not influence bluespace? What keeps you from bluespacing a torpedo into the middle of an enemy ship? What keeps the enemy from bluespacing nuclear warheads past your defenses and across the upper atmosphere of a target planet?

[Guest]

Is the planet not present in bluespace?

 

Effectively. When moving from point A to point B, you're actually displacing yourself from an existential and dimensional standpoint. There's no record of you moving from point A to point B in realspace, but in bluespace (which is an alternate dimension) motion is measured in its own way proportionate to that of realspace. Once you've reached your destination in bluespace, you're dropped from the realm of bluespace and superpositioned into the intended arrival point in realspace.

Other perceived realspace objects do not exist whilst in bluespace.

[Nikov]

So if realspace objects are not present in bluespace, how do we prevent warheads from being bluespaced directly inside enemy ships or onto enemy planets?

[MagnificentMelkior]

So if realspace objects are not present in bluespace, how do we prevent warheads from being bluespaced directly inside enemy ships or onto enemy planets?

Either the math is too difficult to be done in real time with moving fighting targets, and/or it is possible, but bluespace filters/ defenses exist for planets and some stations, or a bluespace engine is too large to fit onto any sort of practical warhead.

Or, it is possible to do this and the defcon level of the universe is lower than I thought it was. I'm interested in the ruling here.

[Guest Complete Garbage]

So if realspace objects are not present in bluespace, how do we prevent warheads from being bluespaced directly inside enemy ships or onto enemy planets?

Either the math is too difficult to be done in real time with moving fighting targets, and/or it is possible, but bluespace filters/ defenses exist for planets and some stations, or a bluespace engine is too large to fit onto any sort of practical warhead.

Or, it is possible to do this and the defcon level of the universe is lower than I thought it was. I'm interested in the ruling here.

 

We're at DEFCON 2 iirc, so we can deploy fleets and airbases, but no nukks just yet.

[Guest]

So if realspace objects are not present in bluespace, how do we prevent warheads from being bluespaced directly inside enemy ships or onto enemy planets?

You pretty much don't. Only issue is that BSA-based technology is heavily guarded, and nobody wants to violate the universe equivalent of a Geneva convention in order to implode a planet or a star. If the Unathi pulled anything stupid against NT, Moghes would not last a week before being ethnically cleansed by bluespace artillery.

[Nikov]

Why aren't people putting warp drives on asteroids and cracking Moghes with a relativistic bomb?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

The acts of extremist terrorists are not the same as rational governments. We do not tend to launch full scale nuclear strikes against our enemies with the express intent of making the planet uninhabitable. It's also frowned upon to use WMD's against people that don't have their own WMD's. They're a deterrence, not a candy you toss around. Technically there is nothing stopping you from bluespacing ordinance or bombs anywhere, and that's reflected in lore for actual reasonable warfare. Bluespace artillery is used to have instant firepower on a location. It's more difficult with moving targets, though. The Unathi use bluespace to turn their ships into battering rams.

But the foundation is that WMD's aren't used by bluespace to wipe people out because that's not a focus of the lore. This isn't 40k where planets are imploded willy nilly, the focus of the lore is on the intrigue, deception, and espionage. Our major factions at least pretend to care about space geneva, which is all just consolidated under the Luna Convention so we can pretend to be original.

This is the only time I'm speaking on warfare in this thread. I'm not going to respond to any further questions about warfare or weapons. If you want that make a new thread.

Back to bluespace travel itself:

The Bluespace is like The Nether in Minecraft. When you go through a nether portal, you end up in the Nether. Every block you walk is like 50 blocks in the Overworld or something and you don't actually exist in the overworld. Then you pop out of a new portal, which is either a warp gate, or a bluespace beacon that pulls your ship out. Gravity wells have no impact on Bluespace travel or locations except for their affect on the movement of your destination.

That seems simple enough, but the bluespace dangers come in its incredibly low allowance for error and its immense calculation requirements.

Let's say you want to bluespace from Biesel to Earth on a one way trip without a bluespace gate or a bluespace beacon. You have to...

 

• Calculate the location of Earth and Biesel relative to each other on an Z Y and Z axis for the navcomputer.
  
  Calculate where they're going to be for the duration of your trip when you exit Bluespace, still maintaining a lock on their relative locations to each other, for the navcomputer.
  
  Calculate your arrival location in bluespace for the navcomputer..
  
  Enter bluespace. The following calculations have to be done continuously and at the same time and constantly cross-checked or you'll miss your target. You also no longer see anything in realspace, so everything from here on out is guesswork informed prediction.
  
  -Calculate the current location of Earth and Biesel within Bluespace for the navcomputer on an X Y and Z axis.
  
  -Calculate the locations of where Biesel and Earth are relative to each other within Bluespace when you exit bluespace for the navcomputer.
  
  -Calculate your current location relative to Biesel and Earth, on an X Y Z axis, for both dimensions, for the navcomputer.
  
  -Exit bluespace once the navcomputer, from the calculations, predicts you should be at your target.
  
  You've either: successfully jumped in orbit of Earth a few hundred feet off-target, failed and emerged inside solid bedrock of the Earth's core, missed entirely and appeared next to the moon, or a .01 being a .001 once in the nth calculation dumped you out into deep space.

 

Needless to say, there is a reason that exploration of the frontier is dangerous and why humanity relies on artificial intelligence running a ship to manage calculations, whereas trained Skrell can do it all by hand because they're snowflakes.

Bluespace beacons make the process simpler, though to install the beacon someone had to jump in blind to install it. All you have to do is:

• Plug in your coordinates.
  
  Plug in the coordinates of the beacon, which helpfully uses bluespace transmissions to constantly update your Navcomputer with a safe exiting location not in use by another ship going to the same place.
  
  Enter bluespace.
  
  Adjust calculations to be consistent with the beacon's location.
  
  Exit bluespace at target.
  
  Enjoy a snack.

 

Bluespace gates are even better. All you have to do is:

• Enter the gate.
  
  Exit the gate.
  
  Complain about how complicated space travel is because you have to sit in space traffic and change space lanes.