Editing FederalSpace:Technology
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone.
Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 257: | Line 257: | ||
'''Version One:''' Spinning off of the warp drive idea, and the "spatial sensors" idea. Let's say there's a warp-drive spin-off that can make some big spatial pulse, refracting off of a large gravity well—i.e. a planet or a sun. Anyone in range with a warp-drive and/or spatial sensors can pick up this signal. But they can't ''reply'' unless they're also in a gravity well. And this would suggest a rather low bandwidth signal device. Thus, we get the submarine model: slow VLF radio, lots of codes; you can signal your ships, but they need to make landfall to respond. Inspired by but nowhere near as badly-off as the crew in ''Forbidden Planet'', who had to ''unship'' most of the drive and electronics systems and ''build'' an FTL signal tower, right there on the planet, in order to call in for orders. And ''detailed'' orders need to be hand-delivered—or rather, transmitted from a friendly ship. | '''Version One:''' Spinning off of the warp drive idea, and the "spatial sensors" idea. Let's say there's a warp-drive spin-off that can make some big spatial pulse, refracting off of a large gravity well—i.e. a planet or a sun. Anyone in range with a warp-drive and/or spatial sensors can pick up this signal. But they can't ''reply'' unless they're also in a gravity well. And this would suggest a rather low bandwidth signal device. Thus, we get the submarine model: slow VLF radio, lots of codes; you can signal your ships, but they need to make landfall to respond. Inspired by but nowhere near as badly-off as the crew in ''Forbidden Planet'', who had to ''unship'' most of the drive and electronics systems and ''build'' an FTL signal tower, right there on the planet, in order to call in for orders. And ''detailed'' orders need to be hand-delivered—or rather, transmitted from a friendly ship. | ||
− | '''Version Two: | + | '''Version Two:'' We've got the World Wide Web now, and if we're doing social commentary, we need to keep that relevance for this version. So we need a Galaxy Wide Web of some sort. Wormhole server nodes makes as much sense as anything, I guess. On the other hand: I ''do'' love LeGuin's word ''ansible''. |
Line 345: | Line 345: | ||
'''Shadowjack:''' Probably the best compromise: beyond the frontier, you have to wait for the mail. | '''Shadowjack:''' Probably the best compromise: beyond the frontier, you have to wait for the mail. | ||
+ | |||
=== Space Warfare in the Eight-and-Twenty === | === Space Warfare in the Eight-and-Twenty === |