Jessica of Dune Predictions!

[SandChigger]

I feel pretty,
Oh so pretty,
in PINK!


Gots LOTS more to say, but gotta get my ass down the road.

Later, taters!

[Omphalos]

"But he actually has excellent bone structure. I'm kinda having a hard time not looking at him now. Is that weird?"

Iron Man

[GamePlayer]

"You're kidding with the hand up, right?"

You da man Omphalos.

[Omphalos]

Ive always liked this game.

[SandRider]

"I'm giving very serious thought to eating your wife."

[SandChigger]

What is worst about this humiliation? Is it how your failure will reflect on your mommy and daddy? Is your worst fear that people will now and forever believe they were indeed just good old trailer camp tornado bait white trash and that perhaps you are too?



(Nowhere near as good as the first, but still had a fun moment or two. Now...where'd them damned fava beans get to....phthtpthtphtphtphth! )

[Omphalos]

"I'm giving very serious thought to eating your wife."

Debbie does Dallas

[GamePlayer]

I don't know that movie

But the subject matter leads me to believe it's a serial killer story. Perhaps something made post-Silence of the Lambs.

[Omphalos]

I don't know that movie

But the subject matter leads me to believe it's a serial killer story. Perhaps something made post-Silence of the Lambs.

Debbie Does Dallas is a porn from the 70's. I was joking. I was thinking Silence of the Lambs too.

[GamePlayer]

No, no, no, I was referring to the quote from SandRider and SC. My apologies, I should have quoted them.

It's funny, I always hear about Debbie Does Dallas, but I've never seen that film either. It would probably be horribly dated porn by now. Probably a lot of Palin-esque rainforests walking around

[Serkanner]

No, no, no, I was referring to the quote from SandRider and SC. My apologies, I should have quoted them.

It's funny, I always hear about Debbie Does Dallas, but I've never seen that film either. It would probably be horribly dated porn by now. Probably a lot of Palin-esque rainforests walking around

There is actually a much more recent version of Debbie as well.

[Robspierre]

No, no, no, I was referring to the quote from SandRider and SC. My apologies, I should have quoted them.

It's funny, I always hear about Debbie Does Dallas, but I've never seen that film either. It would probably be horribly dated porn by now. Probably a lot of Palin-esque rainforests walking around

There is actually a much more recent version of Debbie as well.

Which is even worse than the original stay away!!!!!!

Rob

[loremaster]

GP and ATOE -


Yeah i get why time dilation would make it okay for humans to make it in less apparent time to them than it took for the rest of the universe. (I admit i completely forgot about that, which is a bit piss-poor for a science teacher who just finished reading Hyperion).

BUT it would be no viable way to build an intergalactic (even interplanetary) empire. IMO.

It's okay for scattering colonists.

(And thats even assuming you can get around the problem of accelerating any relatively massive body to speeds approaching any fraction of C - one thing people always forget about C is that, for any massive body, it is simply unnatainable from stationary. You're either instantaneously moving at c: a photons, waves etc. OR you cant get there. I think.)

And to ATOE - Wouldnt a computer which could safely navigate and direct a foldspace drive be called an Ixian Navigation Machine .

You're not suggesting a KJA-esque "Well we built it, used it to find spice, then forgot about it and invented it all over again" are you?

Frank's text makes it obvious computers had never been used to direct foldspace machines. By simple omition. If it were possible, then it would have been mentioned at some point, i feel. (same logic with bene gesserit telekinesis)

[SandChigger]

Oh, well, just butt me out why don't you.

Frank's text makes it obvious computers had never been used to direct foldspace machines. By simple omition. If it were possible, then it would have been mentioned at some point, i feel. (same logic with bene gesserit telekinesis)

You are kidding, right? It may be the same (wrong) logic (argumentum ad ignorantiam), but in no way the same thing.

I really didn't follow the point of some of your one post the other day...the assumption that space-folding using the spice would be the only way to travel long distances? I was thinking exactly in terms of "scattering colonists" and expansion in waves. Canopus is a little over 300 LY away (as was pointed out after your post), so it would take a good while before the colonization wave got there. (But maybe not a series of automated probes?)

[Ampoliros]

My impression is that short jumps were probably safe enough to make before prescient navigators. You could make the calculations using computers and nav-charts to avoid certain dangers. As Humanity expanded over millions of light-years the amount of 'safe' jumps made travel more and more dangerous and expensive. long jumps were impractical because you could not do them safely, and series of short jumps still took a very long time and massive amounts of fuel. Prescient navigators didn't need to calculate, they could just see the safe route and jump.

Spice doesn't make space travel possible it makes it practical and efficient. After 10,000 years however the Guild probably controlled the vast majority of the maps, and most of these were in the navigators minds. Without them Mankind would literally have to rediscover the universe, even if Kaitain and Arrakis were right next to each other.

Think internet bandwidth. High-speed internet gets the job done faster and more practical, but with dial up you can still download that 2gb file, if you're crazy and don't care that it takes 2 weeks. Your web browser is the navigator. imagine if you had to memorize the ip address for every damn thing on the internet and type them in individually.

[GamePlayer]

loremaster
That was my point. A conventional narrative could not work using conventional travel through the vast interstellar distances of space because of time dilation. The only way around it wouyld be to set the action of the story inside only a few light years (Enders Game?). For Dune, that isn't an option, since it even takes place across galaxies. I believe Freak Z once provided a quote that spoke of the empire in more than one galaxy.

As for navigation machines, isn't it entirely possible they were created and then banned after the Butlerian Jihad? This is Dune we're talking about, so the technology could have been discovered and then destroyed for political/social/religious reasons in the BJ. The Ixians may not have secured navigating computers before they were all lost. Or perhaps thinking machines were the only technology capable of navigating, thus their obvious loss in the jihad.

Attaining c is not possible due to the infinite energy requirements needed to accelerate a mass that fast. But it is possible to obtain speeds fractions of the speed of light, which is what would be used to travel the breadth of the universe. It would take some advanced technology to overcome the hazards of space travel (radiation, micrometeorites, power, fuel, sustainability, et cetera) but it is far more believable than FTL.

[A Thing of Eternity]

And to ATOE - Wouldnt a computer which could safely navigate and direct a foldspace drive be called an Ixian Navigation Machine .

Yup. But before the Jihad it would have just been a standard peice of navigation equipment.

You're not suggesting a KJA-esque "Well we built it, used it to find spice, then forgot about it and invented it all over again" are you?

Frank's text makes it obvious computers had never been used to direct foldspace machines. By simple omition. If it were possible, then it would have been mentioned at some point, i feel. (same logic with bene gesserit telekinesis)

No - I hate to make a mean joke but I think you forgot about a tinsy tiny part of the Dune history called the Butlerian Jihad. My point is that it is likely that people had foldspace ships at least for some time before the Jihad, likely quite a long time. (why? you try inventing technology that re-shapes spacetime itself without a computer to help you. Kinda tricky.)Navitgation was done by computers. Then the Jihad hits and everyone has to give up their computers. Suddenly, that life-extending/sometimes vision inducing drug found on Dune suddenly looks a lot more interesting, and a few smart folks start up the Spacing Guild - since their the only people who can get from planet to planet without a computer they have an instant monopoly in the post Jihad world.

Then, over 10,000 years later the rules of the Jihad have started to slacken, and Ixians get started on the project to revive computerized ship navigation.

So NO - NO KJA style, they forgot it and then reinvented it BS! They had the tech, then they threw it away on purpose.

[Freakzilla]

That's what I imagine happened.

[SandChigger]

Attaining c is not possible due to the infinite energy requirements needed to accelerate a mass that fast. But it is possible to obtain speeds fractions of the speed of light, which is what would be used to travel the breadth of the universe. It would take some advanced technology to overcome the hazards of space travel (radiation, micrometeorites, power, fuel, sustainability, et cetera) but it is far more believable than FTL.

Iff you could manage those technological requirements and accelerate at, say, 1 gee for about seven years, coast for a little over three, and then accelerate at 1 gee in the opposite direction for about seven more years, you could cover that 3500 light years (mentioned above) in about 17.5 years, ship time. (3502 years would pass in the "rest frame", e.g., the planet of launch, etc. You're travelling at just a fraction under c, so you take more time to reach the destination than light itself, observed from rest.)

With the same ac/de-celerations, you could travel 10 times that distance in about 69 years (35001 yrs rest), and cross the galaxy 3.5 times in about 575 years. (Which is beyond even a spice-enhanced human lifespan, so we're back in suspended animation or generation ship territory.)

OK, so that's not one of the "more believable than FTL" examples.

If you can convince your crew to put up with 1.2 gees for a month, you could achieve 0.1 c and reach Alpha Centauri in a little over 41 years. Hop, skip, jump. You gotta crawl before you learn to walk. Or run.

(Off-topic for a bit of KJA bashing: One of the things that has amused me most about his saggy Seven Suns books is he has three generation ships leaving Earth in 2100. Ain't gonna happen, ain't even plausible.

As we learned when we shot our wad back in the '60s trying to beat the Russians to the Moon, you need to build proper infrastructure before you can maintain—or should even attempt—long term journeys. We'll need a proper, long-term station and manufacturing facilities in orbit or possibly bases on and stations around the Moon before we should even think about trying for a manned mission to Mars, for example. And we'll have the whole Solar System to play in before we should think about sending anything more than automated probes toward another star system. I'm thinkin' 30th century or thereabouts.

Kevin really does not think things through.)

[A Thing of Eternity]

I've found some math relating to the amount of AMAT it would theoretically take to accellerate _____kilos at 1g for _____years, turn the ship around, and decellerate at 1g for _____ years to go various distances. The numbers are shocking, even with AMAT (which is very near 100% efficient) n, the amount of fuel we'd need to carry would be insane. Even if we had AMAT coming out the ass we'd still be fucked.

It would take waaay less than half this amount o AMAT if we just wanted to accellerate for half the time and then coast, or if we had some other way to decellerate other than flipping and using main engines.

This is how much AMAT we'd need per 1 kilo of payload assuming 1g of accelleration for half the trip and 1g of decelleration for the other half(according to the brainiac who wrote the article, I'm good with physics theory, not so much with the math):

distance ----- Stopping at: ----- Kilos of Antimatter

4.3 ly ----- Nearest star ----- 38 kg

27 ly ----- Vega ----- 886 kg

30,000 ly ----- Center of our galaxy ----- 955,000 tonnes

2,000,000 ly ----- Andromeda galaxy ----- 4.2 thousand million tonnes

Conclusion: if we want to hold to 1g accellerations and decellerations we're going to need some mind boggling "magic" technology. Lesser accellerations would be much more managable, but don't get us those nice fun time dialation effects.

[Hunchback Jack]

Great summary, Chig. Interesting to see these kind of calculations.

You're travelling at just a fraction under c, so you take more time to reach the destination than light itself, observed from rest.

Wouldn't there be a problem in travelling so close to c, in that any stray particles you encounter on the way will effectively become very high-energy radiation which will cook you and your ship? I seem to remember reading that shielding against this kind of radiation was effectively impossible because of the energies involved.

(There's also the problem of being able to accelerate a mass travelling at, say, 0.8c by 1 gravity, but we'll assume we have harnessed KJA's crud-producing energy to that end )

I don't know what speeds are "safe" with respect to radiation; any takers?

This is how much AMAT we'd need per 1 kilo of payload assuming 1g of accelleration for half the trip and 1g of decelleration for the other half(according to the brainiac who wrote the article, I'm good with physics theory, not so much with the math):

distance ----- Stopping at: ----- Kilos of Antimatter

4.3 ly ----- Nearest star ----- 38 kg

27 ly ----- Vega ----- 886 kg

30,000 ly ----- Center of our galaxy ----- 955,000 tonnes

2,000,000 ly ----- Andromeda galaxy ----- 4.2 thousand million tonnes

Conclusion: if we want to hold to 1g accellerations and decellerations we're going to need some mind boggling "magic" technology. Lesser accellerations would be much more managable, but don't get us those nice fun time dialation effects.

That's interesting, but I would have thought that you'd only actually need enough AMAT to accelerate to close enough to c to not bother trying to accelerate any more. At that point, you'd switch off the drive, travel in free-fall, and switch it on again much later to decelerate.

Is there any advantage to continuing to accelerate once you're very close to c? (Other than comfort) I thought it was the relative speed that causes time dilation, not the acceleration.

HBJ

[A Thing of Eternity]

Great summary, Chig. Interesting to see these kind of calculations.

You're travelling at just a fraction under c, so you take more time to reach the destination than light itself, observed from rest.

Wouldn't there be a problem in travelling so close to c, in that any stray particles you encounter on the way will effectively become very high-energy radiation which will cook you and your ship? I seem to remember reading that shielding against this kind of radiation was effectively impossible because of the energies involved.

(There's also the problem of being able to accelerate a mass travelling at, say, 0.8c by 1 gravity, but we'll assume we have harnessed KJA's crud-producing energy to that end )

I don't know what speeds are "safe" with respect to radiation; any takers?

Nothing solid, and nothing I can back up with math, but Clarke figured (in Songs of Distant Earth) with a nice huge block of ice for sheilding about 0.5c would be do-able from a radiation/particle sheilding standpoint but still very risky if you hit bigger objects. He admitted did invent a crazy propusion system to get up to that speed though, called a quantum ramjet which would use the "power of vacuum".

Ice laminated with fullerites into a "million" layers could maybe up that speed.

This is how much AMAT we'd need per 1 kilo of payload assuming 1g of accelleration for half the trip and 1g of decelleration for the other half(according to the brainiac who wrote the article, I'm good with physics theory, not so much with the math):

distance ----- Stopping at: ----- Kilos of Antimatter

4.3 ly ----- Nearest star ----- 38 kg

27 ly ----- Vega ----- 886 kg

30,000 ly ----- Center of our galaxy ----- 955,000 tonnes

2,000,000 ly ----- Andromeda galaxy ----- 4.2 thousand million tonnes

Conclusion: if we want to hold to 1g accellerations and decellerations we're going to need some mind boggling "magic" technology. Lesser accellerations would be much more managable, but don't get us those nice fun time dialation effects.

That's interesting, but I would have thought that you'd only actually need enough AMAT to accelerate to close enough to c to not bother trying to accelerate any more. At that point, you'd switch off the drive, travel in free-fall, and switch it on again much later to decelerate.

Is there any advantage to continuing to accelerate once you're very close to c? (Other than comfort) I thought it was the relative speed that causes time dilation, not the acceleration.

HBJ

The two advantages are 1: comfort of course, like you said, and 2: when you get past 0.99c is when relativity really starts to kick in big time, so if you can afford to keep accellerating it will shave serious "shiptime" off of your trip. You are right though, it is the relative speed that causes the dialation, not the acceleration itself.

In a more realistic situation the amounts of fuel needed are pretty much impossible, so a ship would just get up to whatever fraction of LS it could with a little more than half it's fuel and then coast until the turn around point and start decelleration with remaining fuel.

That said, you wouldn't have to put up with freefall in the coasting phase, because since your ship would be rocket shaped you would just put some spin on it for g-force and make your walls into your floors kinda thing, ala Jerry Pournelle.

[SandChigger]

Great summary, Chig. Interesting to see these kind of calculations.

I made a Javascript webpage I call "Travel Planner" for my own use a few months back that does the calculations; I wanted some realistic idea of how long the flights would be at different speeds and what the dialation effects would look like. I'm not sure the calculations are 100% correct, or I'd put it up on my site.

And you're right about the radiation issue: at high enough speeds, even hydrogen atoms become high-energy particles. (In most situations it's the particles moving and the body struck that's stationary. Makes no difference as far as result if the roles are reversed.) How about a small iron asteroid hollowed out and filled with ice?

Is there any advantage to continuing to accelerate once you're very close to c? (Other than comfort) I thought it was the relative speed that causes time dilation, not the acceleration.

Thang has already answered this. The speed produces the dialation; the acceleration only increases the speed. The 1 gee (9.81 m/s^2) figure wasn't to provide a comfortable environment so much as an acceleration that would probably be non-stressing for crews/colonists over extended periods. (I forget how many gees humans can stand and for how long, but long-term the health effects are probably adverse.) With that limit on acceleration, the time you have to accelerate to reach a given speed becomes longer.

[chanilover]

Wow, so anyway, about those primitives.

Any ideas who they were? Are they really outer space aborigines, like the guys who chucked stones at Duncan in Sandworms?

[SandRider]

I think Kevin Blogged that they would turn out to be the last survivors from the Planet of the Apes, but he has to get ahold of that franchise first, and re-write the ending of the last movie, making it all Nova's dream.