Nyrath

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

Re: Mars Colony by 2025? There are some images of a Mars colony here: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/050810_mars_homestead.html Martian dust is a hazard as well. It is abrasive, so it can cause failure in airlock gaskets. It might also cause silicosis if breathed in. What's worse, it can make dangerous electrostatic charges. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=16934 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-atmosphere-05d.html http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/10aug_crackling.htm

Re: Astrogator's Handbook

Re: Atmosphere True. This is brought up frequently when people discuss "clean" hydrogen power. The problem is that there are no hydrogen wells, but there are petroleum wells. If you have to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, the mix is not a power source. It is an energy transportation system. Sort of like a gaseous electrical power line. You take energy from a nuclear reactor or something and put it into the mix by electrolyzing water into O2 and H2. This mix can then be tranported to where energy is needed. When you burn it, the energy comes out of the mix. Less, of course, the inevitable energy loss due to the second law of thermodynamics.

Re: Book suggestions? The Rolling Stones Heinlein, Robert. A brilliant but eccentric family seeks their fortune among the rock rats in the Asteroid belt. Citizens of the Galaxy Heinlein, Robert. Adventures with free traders. Bullard of the Space Patrol Jameson, Malcolm. The adventures of John Bullard as he rises through the ranks of the Space Patrol. Star Rangers (aka The Last Planet) Norton, Andre. Also collected in the omnibus volume Star Soldiers. Adventures of the Patrol during the decline and fall of the Galactic Empire. High Justice Pournelle, Jerry. The story of a visionary corporation attempting to expand into space despite sabotage from decadent governments. Exiles to Glory Pournelle, Jerry. A semi-sequel to High Justice. An outcast from a decadent Earth finds opportunity in the asteroid colonies. The Star Fox Anderson, Poul. To meet an alien menace, the custom of privateers is resurrected. The Lucky Starr series Asimov, Isaac (aka Paul French). The adventures of David Starr of the Council of Science. Startide Rising Brin, David. An earth ship makes a critical discovery, and all the alien races of the galaxy want it. Merchanter's Luck Cherryh, C. J. Adventures of a free trader. The Flinx series Foster, Alan Dean. A rogueish young man with psionics adventures in a Traveller like universe. The Retief series Laumer, Keith. The adventures of a James Bond like Terran diplomat. The Antares series McCollum, Michael. A military starship explores when the warp gates re-open after a hundred years. Life Probe and Procyon's Promise McCollum, Michael. Bringing the secret of FTL travel back to the Makers. Northwest Smith Moore, C.L. The adventures of a Han Solo like interplanetary rogue.

Re: Book suggestions? YMMV. For me, I found them not quite to my taste. A bit too grim and depressing.

Re: Book suggestions? For the STAR WOLF, I think you are thinking about David Gerrolds. There are about three books in the series, depending how you define the series. I'm not sure, but your other series sounds like THE HELMSMAN series by Bill Baldwin. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Bill%20Baldwin Great fun, and written very visually. You can almost see the scenes in your mind's eye, Star Wars like. The novels are a thinly disguised re-telling of the end of World War I and the start of World War II, with the Battle of Britain, the Dunkirk Miracle, and everything.

Re: Astrogator's Handbook

Re: Book suggestions? Absolutely. SPACE VIKING is a must-read for military/rome-falling-to-the-barbarians science fiction. Also not to be missed is THE COSMIC COMPUTER (aka JUNKYARD PLANET).

Re: Book suggestions? Sargassos of Space, Plague Ship, Voodoo Planet, Postmarked The Stars, Space Angel and Spacer: Window of the Mind are all "free trader" novels, about the adventures of a tramp interstellar freighter. Passage At Arms is life aboard a military starship during a war. It is sort of like "Das Boat" in outer space. Space Cadet shows what a young man goes through to be trained as a member of the interplanetary patrol. Silent Galaxy is sort of odd, but has lots of Larry Niven like spacecraft. The Outcasts of Heaven's Belt is about a Belter civilization in an asteroid belt around a far star. It seems there's been a civil war... The Legion of Space is a swashbuckling space opera about the heroic members of the Legion of Space. World of Ptavvs Protector and Tales of Known Space are the books that inspired TRAVELLER. The Mote in God's Eye is the best "First Contact" novel ever written. Aliens, interstellar battles, titanic battleships, what's not to like? Since you are interested in a Firefly like campaign, one might find some inspiration in James Blish's Cities In Flight novels A Life For The Stars and Earthman Come Home (collected in the omnibus edition "Cities in Flight"). They are also tramp freighter novels, except the freighter is Manhatten Island, uprooted and turned into a starship by gravity generators. The other two novels in the series do not work with your campaign. Thinking about it, Andre Norton's The Zero Stone and Uncharted Stars apply as well. The main character is the son of an interstellar gem trader, but he travels with free traders.

Re: Book suggestions? By Andre Norton: Sargassos of Space Plague Ship Voodoo Planet Postmarked The Stars By John Maddox Roberts Space Angel Spacer: Window of the Mind By Glen Cook Passage At Arms By Robert Heinlein Space Cadet By William Tedford Silent Galaxy By Joan Vinge The Outcasts of Heaven's Belt (collected in The Heaven Chronicles) By Jack Williamson The Legion of Space (collected in Three From The Legion) By Larry Niven World of Ptavvs Protector Tales of Known Space The Mote in God's Eye (with Jerry Pournelle) Many of these are out of print, but can be found at http://www.bookfinder.com

Re: What the Milky Way looks like Such barred spiral galaxies are common, but so far no astronomer can quite figure out what causes them. They bother me since as a general rule in nature one never finds straight lines, only curves. One generally finds straight lines due to something being crafted by intelligent beings... Sir Arthur C. Clarke mentioned the possibility of our discovering highly advanced alien civilizations by detecting evidence of engineering on an astronomical scale.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! It is actually not that radical. Secretly, most physicists were hoping for something like this. On the one hand, the pillar of all physics, indeed of all science, is the principle of cauality. Initiate a cause and its effect will follow. Drop a brick over your foot and your foot will be crushed. Send electricty through water and obtain hydrogen and oxygen. If sometimes you dropped a brick and it flew up, sideways, or turned into little fairies covered in rainbow glitter, you might as well give up being a scientist. On the other hand, (a) time travel seems to destroy causality due to its ability to create paradoxes and ( other than that, relativity, quantum mechanics, and all other known laws of physics allow time travel. In fact, they describe several methods that are theoretically possible. This has been annoying physicists for quite a few decades now. In theory, there were four possibilities to fix the situation, but no details on how these would work. They are all ways to prevent time travel from creating a paradox, thus allowing time travel and causality to co-exist. The new paper describes a way that quantum mechanics can create possibiliy #2: Consistency Protection. If the paper withstands peer review, physicists can heave a sigh of relief and go back to what they were doing.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! Larry Niven, in "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel", had a similar concept. In a universe where time machines had been invented, sooner or later some joker would go back in time and change history. And changes would happen in the new history. History would be in an unstable state, constantly evolving. This would stop once history reached a stable state. Which would be a history where nobody ever invented a time machine. In other words: history would inevitably evolve to a state which had no time machines, and stay in that state.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! Actually, I respectfully disagree. The paper is saying whether you have knowledge of the future or not is irrelevant. Its just that any attempt you make to cause a paradox will fail. And there is the other possibility that one of the events in the past that created the world you live in right now is some time-travel meddling that you did. In that case, events would conspire to force you to travel back in time to do the meddling. Otherwise it would be a paradox.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers!

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! It's still available from Barnes and Noble. Both Last And First Men and Star Maker are worth reading. Sir Arthur C. Clarke has often spoken about the influence these had on his writing. Having said that, the first couple of chapters in Last And First Men are pretty boring, so you can skim over them until you get to the good stuff.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! Somewhere between the atomic and the molecular. Physicist Sir Roger Penrose has a hypothesis that this is due to the effect of gravity. Gravity is the one force out of the four know forces that has no effect at quantum levels but major effects at macroscopic levels.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers!

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! Thanks for the link Marcus! I've incorporated it into my site. http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3v.html#causality Mr. Greenwade, you are in good company. According to Jason Hinton, there are four main ways to avoid paradox due to time travel: Parallel Universes, Restricted Space-Time Areas, Special Frames and Consistency Protection. The latter is what you were advocating

Re: How Dense Is A Nebula? Ah, the paperback version of Guide to the Galaxy is available for $28 from Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/052145882X/qid%3D952114822/sr%3D1-16/103-2315286-8680647

Re: How Dense Is A Nebula? Before I forget, those images are from The Guide to the Galaxy by Henbest & Couper, Cambridge 1994, ISBN 0-521-45882-X. Out of print, but you might be able to see it through an inter-library loan. Used copies go for about $45 on http://www.bookfinder.com A most useful book, jammed packed with useful astronomical information. The larger maps trace out the spiral arms. And another note: in the map, the galactic core is in the direction of the top of the map, the left side is "spinward", the right side is "trailing", and the bottom is "rimward"

Re: How Dense Is A Nebula? Many astronomers have a suspicion that the local bubble was created when the star Geminga went supernova about 100,000 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geminga http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/archives/D/archnas1799.html These maps may prove useful: You can see Geminga in the first map, a little below and left of center. It's off center now, but it was approximately in the center of what is now the local bubble 100,000 years ago.

Re: How Dense Is A Nebula? True. So two atoms per cubic centimeter in a galaxy. This was a plot point in Poul Anderson's classic Tau Zero. A Bussard Ramjet starship suffers an accident, damaging the deceleration system. If they turn off the drive, the interstellar hydrogen atoms will impact the hull, causing enough radiation to kill the crew. So they have to go where the interstellar density is exceedingly low. They have to go, ahem a little further than they planned...

Re: How Dense Is A Nebula? An average area of space contains about one or two atoms of hydrogen per cubic centimeter. A nebula has a density of 10 to 10^5 atoms per cubic centimeter (10 to 100,000). A molecular cloud has a density of 10^7 to 10^9 molecules per cubic centimeter. Earth's atmosphere at sea level is about 10^19 atoms per cubic centimeter.