(Let's see if this goes through, me being on a business trip and
not able to access my subscribed e-mail address and all....)
> --- KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:
Good book -- I just finished reading it, actually. (Books like
that are *great* for overseas flights....)
> He argues that British supremacy was in decline BEFORE the
Actually, he argues it peaked before Napolean in 1805, it just wasn't obvious
because Britan still managed to win the wars. It just became *very* obvious
after the World Wars (and to a large extent before, which is why Churchill was
"glad" that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor to bring in the US) due to the massive
production of the US and others.
However, tossing aside the economic arguement for the moment... are there
specific "space lanes" that could actually be blockaded in the GZGverse? I
don't remember the exact description of the FTL drive, but I remember it was
more in
jumps, with a rest/recharge/recalibrate period in between.
Could that be used to allow piracy on merchant ships?
My guess is that a lot depends on how you view the technology... can you
detect when someone is in hyperspace (or does it take "zero" time)? Can you
detect when someone leaves, and plot it well enough to get in a jump of your
own, before his FTL drive can recharge?
This does have possibilities for piracy actions in the GZGverse, if you assume
that ships can be tracked in some way. It is not as restrictive as, say, jump
points (like Mote in God's Eye), but merchants would not want to deviate too
far from a
least-time course since, well, time is money as they say....
Any other thoughts on this?
On or about Mon, Sep 16, 2002 at 06:20:03AM -0700, Aaron Teske typed:
> However, tossing aside the economic arguement for the moment...
Given the chains of jumps used for long distances, I think the only way to
make piracy practical would be to know where the target is going to jump to,
and wait there. It seems likely that civilian lines would have standard
rendezvous points (both to simplify navigation and to make it easier to search
for a ship that's missed arrival).
Then it's a race between the civilian crew coming out of jump-shock and
the pirates fixing their position and attacking.
Aaron:
> However, tossing aside the economic argument for the moment...
Roger:
> Given the chains of jumps used for long distances, I think the only way
Something like: "All ships departing Sirius, arriving Sol, must arrive within
Traffic Control Zone 14. It is the responsibility of Sirius Traffic Control to
assign arrival points to each ship so as to avoid collisions. Therefore your
arrival point is 14 J4K, and this point is reserved for you from 1100:00:00
8JUL93 to 1100:00:00 15JUL93. Failure to adhere to these instructions can
result in loss of the shipmaster's license as well as civil penalties and
criminal prosecution."
Of course, you have a moving target (Earth isn't staying till, it's orbiting)
and not everyone departing from Sirius is going to the same destination (I'm
headed for Titan, which is on the other side of the Solar system from Earth at
the moment). And everyone will want to jump as close to the target as
possible, which starts getting traffic control zones a little crowded.
On or about Mon, Sep 16, 2002 at 11:18:09AM -0400,
laserlight@quixnet.net typed:
> Something like:
I wasn't thinking of that quite as much as the mid-points of the jump
chains. Say that Nakamura Lines operates a variety of ships between Alpha
Centauri and Sol, and that this takes seven successive jumps. It makes sense
to say that there's a particular section of space designated
as "the first jump out of Alpha-C", which all their ships will aim for -
so when a ship doesn't arrive at Sol, Nakamura's other traffic can look in
those jump zones (where it would be anyway) rather than having no idea where
the missing ship might be.
So, Vito's Wealth Redistribution Service Inc. bribes somebody at Nakamura to
get the locations of those jump zones, puts a ship out there (running silent),
and pounces on the first decent target it sees. Once that happens, of course,
Nakamura will change all its navigational data, so Vito's had better wait for
a worthwhile prize.
> So, Vito's Wealth Redistribution Service Inc. bribes somebody at
In the Starwars computer games you had a stardestroyer variant that had a
gravity generator or some thing that would force ships nearby to drop
out of hyperspace. There must be other Sci-Fi ways of almost netting
passing ships rather than have to rely on catching them at specific points.
Jeremey
> At 2:58 PM +0100 9/16/02, Roger Burton West wrote:
Piracy will be more practical out around smaller worlds (Moons) belonging to
third rate powers. They'll have less to defend with and be more likely to turn
a blind eye to piracy when it's not their ships being affected.
> Then it's a race between the civilian crew coming out of jump-shock and
I think the pirates would have to be right on top of the ship in order take
advantage of the 30minutes to an hours time a civilian crew would have.
> At 4:29 PM +0100 9/16/02, Germ wrote:
Pirates don't operate off the coast of New York City. They operate in choke
points way outside of major powers spheres of influence when they are
attacking larger ships. The pirates in the South East Asian areas are able to
hide in massive numbers of islands and do take things from larger ships.
From: Roger Burton West roger@firedrake.org
> I wasn't thinking of that quite as much as the mid-points of the jump
I'd assign a separate jump point to each individual ship. That way you're less
likely to have two ships intersect, your security is better, and you still
know where to look. If someone does pirate a ship, you'll know they were
looking for that specific ship, and you don't risk losing multiple ships that
were already in transit before you could get the word out.
On or about Mon, Sep 16, 2002 at 12:27:02PM -0400,
laserlight@quixnet.net typed:
> I'd assign a separate jump point to each individual ship. That way
...but you have to send a ship to go and look, rather than your next
scheduled run being there anyway. It's a trade-off - I certainly
wouldn't expect really high-value cargoes to be transported in this way,
and military ships would probably not set their final rendezvous point until
after departure, but in peacetime it does make a certain amount of sense.
[quoted original message omitted]
> Roger Books wrote:
> >I'd assign a separate jump point to each individual ship. That way
Yes, but the ship going there to have a look would most likely be armed and
prepared for trouble rather than another essentially defenceless
freighter :-/
Later,