Page 216: Time to move!

[dragoongfa]

SpoilerShow

Rush B!

[QuakeIV]

Damn we are finally getting this show on the road

[Mercy Machine]

The perception of time while in hyperspace is... strange. External clocks record the duration of a jump to be as long as an hour, but for the transiting ship and its occupants, it seems that only a fraction of a second passes.

How could external clocks measure the duration of a jump, especially when the transit is faster than light and over interstellar distances? You'd need synchronised clocks at each end, which would run into the problem of simultaneity. I suppose you could have a ship jump out, and then jump straight back, and compare the time elapsed on a clock at the starting point with the time elapsed on clocks on board the ship?

[boldilocks]

I'm pretty sure the problem of simultaneity isn't going to come into play if you have 2 star systems that work on some form of common time.

[SVlad]

How could external clocks measure the duration of a jump, especially when the transit is faster than light and over interstellar distances?

In Loroi case their farseers can detect ship, when it arrives at distant star.
Or just simply jump there and back and compare onboard clock time with observer's time.

Also, real relativity problems starts when objects has sublight relative speeds. With low relative speeds you actually need to have only minutes of jump delay to prevent violation of causality.

[GeoModder]

How could external clocks measure the duration of a jump, especially when the transit is faster than light and over interstellar distances?

In Loroi case their farseers can detect ship, when it arrives at distant star.
Or just simply jump there and back and compare onboard clock time with observer's time.

I thought a ship arriving in a jump zone first needs to decelerate, and then accelerate again into the jump zone before it can jump. Or performing a slingshot around the star of course. Either case, performing these manoeuvers eats up time. I kind of wonder if a valid measurement of elapsed time during jumps is still possible with all that.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I like the whole bit about relative time dilation. Having a real world delay in jumping helps avoid any causality problems that would crop up if FTL jumping was a real thing, but it also helps make hyperspace a weird and unknowable existence from a narrative level.

Fireblade may not trust Alex, but she at least trusts him enough to turn her back to him in a pinch.

I thought a ship arriving in a jump zone first needs to decelerate

The ship could just radio their timestamps to a nearby ship that is already in the system and ready to jump. Or do any number of other things to account for the lorentz transformation. (It's honestly a pretty easy calculation, as far as high level physics goes.)

[Arioch]

It's not even that complicated. All you have to do is sync clocks with a ship or station in the departure system before you jump, then jump back and compare clocks.

[avatar576]

And you would only need to measure it once to know the time differential for each jump. Sort of like a mileage chart on a road atlas.

[Werra]

How did Tempo manage to sabotage the Umiak ship? Did she meet no other crew and do the Umiak not have cameras anywhere?

[Voitan]

Are the visions in hyperspace all mental, like a dream experience? Otherwise, I'm curious if anyone actually can see in hyperspace, or does everyone have a reflexive action that causes them to shut their eyes, and would there be any significant danger if anyone were to be able to physically see anything in hyperspace if by some terrible fate, they were able to keep their eyes open. Because I'm not convinced Hyperspace is at all empty. I would be extremely skeptical as a person traveling through it, and probably write fictional horror stories about it.

Also curious if synths experience the same things in hyperspace as meatbags.

[dragoongfa]

How did Tempo manage to sabotage the Umiak ship? Did she meet no other crew and do the Umiak not have cameras anywhere?

Her character sheet does include Illusion, EM Surge, EM Sense and EM Dampen. She is a walking jamming and confusion device and the Umiak weren't anticipating an infiltrator of her caliber to be aboard a random disabled shuttle.

[gaerzi]

Are the visions in hyperspace all mental, like a dream experience? Otherwise, I'm curious if anyone actually can see in hyperspace, or does everyone have a reflexive action that causes them to shut their eyes, and would there be any significant danger if anyone were to be able to physically see anything in hyperspace if by some terrible fate, they were able to keep their eyes open. Because I'm not convinced Hyperspace is at all empty. I would be extremely skeptical as a person traveling through it, and probably write fictional horror stories about it.

I don't see (heh) why sight would be more significant as a sense than, say, touch, smell, or hearing. The idea that something is bad if you see it but not bad if you don't borders on the magical. I also don't see how we could have a reflexive action to something we never evolved to do -- unless you go fully Ancient Aliens about it, which I don't think Outsider is doing there's no reason humans would have a hyperspace reflex.

Plus, what people would see would be the inside of their spaceship anyway. As for looking out the windows and seeing what's outside... Our eyes are photon detectors. No photon, no vision. Who says there are photons in hyperspace?

Finally, we can debate the canonicity of forum jokes and references, but there sure were a lot of references to Event Horizon in the FTL primer, so one should keep in mind that when you're going in hyperspace, you don't need eyes to see. Which makes closing the eyes moot.

[boldilocks]

It's not even that complicated. All you have to do is sync clocks with a ship or station in the departure system before you jump, then jump back and compare clocks.

Does every jump between 2 systems always take the same amount of time? When I read the page the idea I got from it was that if you jump from Sol to Vega then it might take 10 minutes or it might take 1 hour to arrive.

[Keklas Rekobah]

It's not even that complicated. All you have to do is sync clocks with a ship or station in the departure system before you jump, then jump back and compare clocks.

An even simpler method (which I envisioned for Traveller a couple of decades ago) is a "Zero-Point Jump" -- jumping to the same (or nearby) spatial coordinates within the same system and comparing the onboard chronometer's time to an external standard.  This gave an indication of the relative efficiency of a ship's jump drive -- the greater the difference, the greater the need for better 'tuning' of the jump drive.

@ARIOCH: Does this work in the Soiaverse, or is it absolutely necessary to cross interstellar space from one gravity well to another (twice) before a chronometer comparison could be made?

[Keklas Rekobah]

Are the visions in hyperspace all mental, like a dream experience? . . .

Considering that Alex may have some latent sanzai ability (implying that other humans may have it as well), those 'visons' could indicate some inter-relation of hyperspace, time, and psionics that not even the Loroi have figured out yet.

[Keklas Rekobah]

How did Tempo manage to sabotage the Umiak ship? Did she meet no other crew and do the Umiak not have cameras anywhere?

Who says it was (only) Tempo?

It is fair to point out that Cloud's death has not yet been verified.

[Arioch]

Otherwise, I'm curious if anyone actually can see in hyperspace, or does everyone have a reflexive action that causes them to shut their eyes, and would there be any significant danger if anyone were to be able to physically see anything in hyperspace if by some terrible fate, they were able to keep their eyes open. Because I'm not convinced Hyperspace is at all empty. I would be extremely skeptical as a person traveling through it, and probably write fictional horror stories about it.

You can see the interior of your ship and its occupants, because they're traveling at the same velocity as you -- I think that if causal connections weren't preserved as according to general relativity, your body would fly apart -- but you can't see anything outside the ship, as you're outrunning the photons. If there was a lot of light in hyperspace, then theoretically you should be able to perceive a small amount of it as a point source in the direction of motion, but this has never been observed.

Also curious if synths experience the same things in hyperspace as meatbags.

Mechanisms experience the same physical effects as organisms (they can see or not see the same things). Androids might Dream of Electric Sheep, but Historian constructs are notoriously unhelpful when answering questions about how they operate and what they experience.

It's not even that complicated. All you have to do is sync clocks with a ship or station in the departure system before you jump, then jump back and compare clocks.

An even simpler method (which I envisioned for Traveller a couple of decades ago) is a "Zero-Point Jump" -- jumping to the same (or nearby) spatial coordinates within the same system and comparing the onboard chronometer's time to an external standard. This gave an indication of the relative efficiency of a ship's jump drive -- the greater the difference, the greater the need for better 'tuning' of the jump drive.

@ARIOCH: Does this work in the Soiaverse, or is it absolutely necessary to cross interstellar space from one gravity well to another (twice) before a chronometer comparison could be made?

You can't make jumps within a star system, because the curvature of space is dominated by the gravity of the star; there isn't a well deep enough to pull you back out again. If you activate the jump generators without having escape velocity from the star of the system you're in, you either a) won't make the transition into hyperspace, or b) you'll enter hyperspace and be drawn into the star.

Does every jump between 2 systems always take the same amount of time? When I read the page the idea I got from it was that if you jump from Sol to Vega then it might take 10 minutes or it might take 1 hour to arrive.

The time elapsed depends on the velocity and distance traveled in hyperspace, just like in normal space. Since the path isn't always exactly the same, the time elapsed isn't always the same, but it's not as variable as 10 minutes to an hour.

[Keklas Rekobah]

So no tactical zero-point jumps.  Drat.

I was hoping for a last resort suicide action where a jump field is overloaded, drawing (or only partially drawing) at least one enemy vessel into hyperspace, destroying them both.

No such luck.

[Arioch]

So no tactical zero-point jumps.  Drat.

I was hoping for a last resort suicide action where a jump field is overloaded, drawing (or only partially drawing) at least one enemy vessel into hyperspace, destroying them both.

You'd have to be insanely close to the enemy vessel, at which point if you have the power to operate the jump drive, there are several much more reliable tactics to pursue (such as collision, self-detonation, splashing the target with your engine exhaust, or simply engaging with normal weapons).