Well of Souls Forums

RedDwarfIV wrote:How does the TCA collect hydrogen fuel? I think I saw mention that a modified scout could collect it from gas giants by diving into them, but besides that, I've seen no mention of aerostats, cloudscoops or atmocruisers.

I would guess that solar powered electrolysis of seawater is probably a top source, but there's no shortage of other sources of hydrogen.

I suspect that Helium-3 may be the preferred fusion fuel, and that will come primarily from off-Earth sources.

What's the mass of a Bennet class scout? Taking the displacement of a Ticonderoga class cruiser (which is just a little shorter than the Bennet) and ProjectRho's listing for the thrust of an Inertial Confinement Fusion engine, I found that if you were to bolt the ICF engine to the back of a Ticonderoga you'd get an acceleration of 9Gs. Does the Bennet mass a lot more than a Ticonderoga, or is TCA drive technology less efficient?

Starships in Outsider are much heavier than naval vessels of a similar length.

Arioch wrote:Starships in Outsider are much heavier than naval vessels of a similar length.

Right.

What's the internal design philosophy you will follow for Terran warships whenever you bring them into the story?

Will it be the usual 'bridge at the front' design and with relatively open interior spaces or will you go with a more pragmatic approach, copying the CIC of modern warships and turning it into a full fledged bridge in an armored compartment deep into the hull?

Will Terran ships be like the Loroi's on their interior design or will they be like modern submarines, sacrificing comfort but putting in more systems and armor?

dragoongfa wrote:Will it be the usual 'bridge at the front' design and with relatively open interior spaces or will you go with a more pragmatic approach, copying the CIC of modern warships and turning it into a full fledged bridge in an armored compartment deep into the hull?

Will Terran ships be like the Loroi's on their interior design or will they be like modern submarines, sacrificing comfort but putting in more systems and armor?

#2 in both cases.

Arioch wrote:

dragoongfa wrote:Will it be the usual 'bridge at the front' design and with relatively open interior spaces or will you go with a more pragmatic approach, copying the CIC of modern warships and turning it into a full fledged bridge in an armored compartment deep into the hull?

Will Terran ships be like the Loroi's on their interior design or will they be like modern submarines, sacrificing comfort but putting in more systems and armor?

#2 in both cases.

Glad to hear it, it's a rare treat when Sci-Fi artists follow the pragmatic approach in their stories.

dragoongfa wrote:

Arioch wrote:

dragoongfa wrote:Will it be the usual 'bridge at the front' design and with relatively open interior spaces or will you go with a more pragmatic approach, copying the CIC of modern warships and turning it into a full fledged bridge in an armored compartment deep into the hull?

Will Terran ships be like the Loroi's on their interior design or will they be like modern submarines, sacrificing comfort but putting in more systems and armor?

#2 in both cases.

Glad to hear it, it's a rare treat when Sci-Fi artists follow the pragmatic approach in their stories.

I thought Babylon 5 was doing quite well on that front.

Then I noticed where the bridge was on the Hyperion class heavy cruiser.

hi hi

Much as I love Babylon 5, their space craft design was highly derivative. The station itself was practically copied straight out of Spacecraft; 2000 to 2100 AD, of the Terran Trade Authority series. I suspect they weren't thinking too terribly hard about those kinds of design decisions.

Tight, enclosed spaces are pragmatic from a structural point of view, but there are drawbacks from a personnel point of view. It is harder to maintain morale when people are confined in cramped conditions. Not all people are capable of handling it, and submarine crews -in the US navy anyways- are usually rotated out every 60 to 80 days. Of course, the Terrans don't have a huge navy, so they can likely afford to be picky about their crew. (I certainly wouldn't say that it is an un-pragmatic decision, but it is not without drawbacks.)

Beyond six months, things level off.

icekatze wrote:hi hi

Much as I love Babylon 5, their space craft design was highly derivative. The station itself was practically copied straight out of Spacecraft; 2000 to 2100 AD, of the Terran Trade Authority series. I suspect they weren't thinking too terribly hard about those kinds of design decisions.

Tight, enclosed spaces are pragmatic from a structural point of view, but there are drawbacks from a personnel point of view. It is harder to maintain morale when people are confined in cramped conditions. Not all people are capable of handling it, and submarine crews -in the US navy anyways- are usually rotated out every 60 to 80 days. Of course, the Terrans don't have a huge navy, so they can likely afford to be picky about their crew. (I certainly wouldn't say that it is an un-pragmatic decision, but it is not without drawbacks.)

Beyond six months, things level off.

That's true up to a point but there are ways to trick the human mind into limiting it's perception of en-closeness, as mentioned in the above page. Limiting obstructive clutter, using particular color schemes, certain lighting techniques and etc.

I am an amateur writer myself and I have thought about this more than a few times, I found two solutions to the above problem (at least for human spacecraft):

1st: All fleets are either stationed near a planet or at a mothership class ship (Don't think of the Homeworld game series think of an Eldar Craftworld but bigger). The regular warships themselves are tightly packed but crews are regularly rotated when at port, be it a planet or a mothership.

2nd: It's complicated but by taking advantage of the two layered armor concept, (i.e. Armor -> Empty Space -> Armor -> Ship interior) one can put various superfluous entertainment accommodations in the empty space between armor layers. When in combat these spaces are evacuated and filled with a foam like damage limiting substance that will quickly plug any holes that are opened in the outer and inner layers of armor.

Ok, maybe this has been answered before but why did Alex recite the 'Time to say Goodbye' song from the Mickey Mouse club when Bellarmine was destroyed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UXyOy16fYw

I get the reference but I believe that it does break the flow of the story if it was put there just for reference.

Possibly related?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmILOL55xP0

Well Americans do seem to have an odd fixation with the damn rodent so it may have stuck in the military jargon.

Beyond that it was the first thing that came into his mind so I guess that he watched a lot of Mickey Mouse club when he was a kid, hope that it was a new series because if it was the old series his parents would singlehandedly paint a target on Alex's back at school.

icekatze wrote:hi hi

Much as I love Babylon 5, their space craft design was highly derivative. The station itself was practically copied straight out of Spacecraft; 2000 to 2100 AD, of the Terran Trade Authority series. I suspect they weren't thinking too terribly hard about those kinds of design decisions.
1
Beyond six months, things level off.

AH! another TTA enthusiast, although I must ask, what entry is the one similar to Babylon 5? as far as I can make out closest would be the Nomad Industrial Complex..

dragoongfa wrote:Ok, maybe this has been answered before but why did Alex recite the 'Time to say Goodbye' song from the Mickey Mouse club when Bellarmine was destroyed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UXyOy16fYw

I get the reference but I believe that it does break the flow of the story if it was put there just for reference.

Not really sure if it broke it, or was pivotal.
Did we work out when the radio waves from the first transmissions of the Mickey Mouse Club reached the borders of Loroi Space?
If so, singing that song ties him to something that might send shock waves through the Loroi.
Although it was for children, the Mickey Mouse Club was educational, especially through Jiminy Cricket Presents, touching things like Evolution of the Human Being (You are a Human Animal) and Human Biology. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... ehPvFJ3QqY
Something I believe would be a cold wet slap to the face of the Loroi.
(Oh look! They look like us, but evolved and were not put there by Percussors...)

I might be completely off track with this, but it might explain the sudden and odd reaction of all the main characters on the bridge in pages 90 - 91, especially if they were worried about the Umiak knowing of it, and I believe their commanders comm line was still open at least partway through Alex's recital.

Considering that human space is more than 200 light years from the Loroi borders then those Radio Waves haven't yet reached anything close to the Loroi. The closest thing that could reach the Loroi would be that Hitler 1936 speech which was the first AM signal powerful enough to reach space, which at the time of Outsider would be traveling for 224 years, still barely within the Loroi wartime borders.

dragoongfa wrote:Considering that human space is more than 200 light years from the Loroi borders then those Radio Waves haven't yet reached anything close to the Loroi. The closest thing that could reach the Loroi would be that Hitler 1936 speech which was the first AM signal powerful enough to reach space, which at the time of Outsider would be traveling for 224 years, still barely within the Loroi wartime borders.

I was judging it off of the fact Naan was 217 Light years from Earth, the 1950's broadcast was 210 years previous, putting its (wave front?) at only 7 light years Sol-ward from Naam, which puts it squarely on the doorstep of Tithric, judging by this map Arioch has made, certainly within Loroi borders I would think.

Signal dissipation is a thing though. The further the signal travels, the more it spreads out, and the more likely it is to get drowned out by the background noise of the galaxy at large. You might still be able to discern that there is a signal, but you'd never be able to decode it or discern its content.

Sound makes for a good analogy, especially since it follows a lot of the same laws as light does. What the Loroi would have to listen for would be the equivalent of trying to eavesdrop on a whispered conversation in the middle of a crowded room full of people talking normally. You could certainly hear someone if they cupped their hands and yelled Cooee, but you couldn't really use it to convey any meaningful information beyond "Oi! There's someone over here!".

Now, if you kept a steady signal beamed directly at the Loroi sphere for long enough with the same information repeating over and over so they could reconstruct it by listening to it long enough, yes, you could potentially get a signal across interstellar distances like that, but as you can imagine, sending the same signal for long enough is not something we've deliberately done. They'll be getting a host of different signals that will amount to nothing more than random noise. It's like trying to figure out a single puzzle in its entirety, but all you ever get is a single piece from every other puzzle in existence and not the one you want.

In short, unless there was a determined transmission effort from Arecibo that pointed at Loroi space for long enough to allow their receivers to piece together the signal, and even then, only if they were listening in the first place, the Loroi getting any 20th Century signals from Earth is so low as to be negligible.

I very much doubt that a 50's radio signal would be strong enough to be decipherable at 200+ light years.

If somehow it was, the Loroi would have no way of understanding its content, since they don't speak the language.

If the Loroi had received such a signal, then they would already know of Humanity's existence and what we look like. If that were the case, then Alex's appearance should not be quite such a surprise to them.

Razor One wrote:
Now, if you kept a steady signal beamed directly at the Loroi sphere for long enough with the same information repeating over and over so they could reconstruct it by listening to it long enough, yes, you could potentially get a signal across interstellar distances like that, but as you can imagine, sending the same signal for long enough is not something we've deliberately done. They'll be getting a host of different signals that will amount to nothing more than random noise. It's like trying to figure out a single puzzle in its entirety, but all you ever get is a single piece from every other puzzle in existence and not the one you want.

Heh, heh, well how about if it was repeated five days a week for several years? on regular timeslots like the Mickey Mouse Club was? admittedly the content changes for each one so the only thing you would get that would be consistent would be the Mickey Mouse Theme..

However, as we have it from the great makers own hand, its unlikely!!

Arioch wrote:I very much doubt that a 50's radio signal would be strong enough to be decipherable at 200+ light years.

Well, I thought it was a good idea!