RBW said:
Who is going to put in beacons that will only be good after the signal gets
across some large number of (light) years?
Tomb:
Good point! So presumably for us to erect a meaningful beacon, we'll need some
FTL system (maybe something that works on that mated pair of subatomic
particles where a change in one is a change in another no matter how far away,
or something hyperspacial).
Hadn't thought about the time lag. Makes building a galactic beacon a real
long
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2002 at 09:17:07AM -0500, Tomb wrote:
> Tomb wrote:
And astronomers everywhere are going to pick up on it (esp those who are
studying these sorts of things), chart it, catalog it, and could possibly
figure out what it is/isn't. If it is determined to be close enough, a
science expedition *might* be sent out to investigate "a close-up
pulsar". In reasonably short order it will be determined to be a beacon
instead of a real pulsar (assuming your original intent was to fool the
navigation of another force) and word would get out. I really don't think
beacons are
going to be a viable way of nav-spoofing.
Then there's the concept of gravitic propagation being instantaneous that
could be used for FTL transmission:
The theory being something along the lines of gravitic fields being like a
fabric, if you tug on one thread, all the other threads react
instantly. If you say that it really works that way in _your_ universe,
then setting up a beacon with a medium power would be as "simple" as a
purposely mis-aligned gravitic drive (set to remain stationary) pulsing
with specifically-timed bursts to make it unique. Very much like the
lights used to navigate lakes by boats and to denote towers to aircraft.
--Flak
> On Mon, 2002-02-25 at 09:17, Tomb wrote:
> On 25 Feb 2002, Flak Magnet wrote:
> Then there's the concept of gravitic propagation being instantaneous
pulsing
> with specifically-timed bursts to make it unique. Very much like the
As a grad student in General Relativity, I can say with near certainty that
gravitational effects propagate at the speed of light. At least in the
universe as we currently know it. However, if you assume FTL jump drives, a
misaligned jump drive might generate the same type of signal that could
propagate FTL. But even then the concept of instantaneous transmission is
going to depend on relativistic frame (how fast the observer is moving
relative to the source), not to mention the frequency of the signal.
Please note that I do accept that you can setup thing in whatever way you want
in your own fictional universe.
I pulled the idea from the ONE book I read from the Honor Harrington series by
and author named *mumbles something*.
If you really want beacons in your universe, the underlying "fabric" doesn't
have to be gravity... it can be anything, really.
> On Mon, 2002-02-25 at 12:00, Randy W. Wolfmeyer wrote:
pulsing
> > with specifically-timed bursts to make it unique. Very much like
For Pseudo-FTl communication you can use FTL couriers to get to the
system, then beam the communication across to the next courier who then jumps
to the next system (a la Pony Express.) I believe that Niven used this method
in "The Mote in God's Eye" series. This has the downside that you can only use
it in areas where you have a good courier network setup. Communication to the
out of the way places would still be intermittent or take a long time.
--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
Sort of like an internet, but the the "packets" of data are real ships, with
all the problems that such a system would entail.
Icky, but if it's the best you've got...
> On Mon, 2002-02-25 at 12:43, B Lin wrote:
Another possibility, is that instead of ships (you don't really need a big
regular drive, just and FTL drive) you have ummanned pods that hop back and
forth every so often (once a day, hourly or more frequent.) Depending on how
cheap you can make FTL drives, this might be a viable option. It would put
communication rates back to what it was at the
turn of the 20th century across the Atlantic - most mail would be sent
by steamer ship, but some high priority stuff could be sent by
short-range wireless from station to station or ship to ship.
--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2002 at 01:03:56PM -0500, Flak Magnet wrote:
And all the advantages. There's no single information chokepoint - if
packets aren't getting through, you go round...
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2002 at 11:05:32AM -0700, B Lin wrote:
Tricky - in the canon background, at least, an interstellar trip needs
several jumps with recharging time in between them (and known strange effects
on computers). I suspect the failure rate would be quite high.
The big drawback to this system is the number of courier ships you have. If
you have 2 in a system and the ship before you dispatched messages to 2
systems, you have to wait for one to return (or send a replacement).
Assuming that FTL is still somewhat expensive (not every one has his own
"space car"), courier service would be used for high priority communication.
The number of couriers would depend a lot on the importance of the system. The
number of trips out of the system would probably be limited to the number of
couriers (minus 1) except in times of war. And there would probably be a
circuit of couriers (System A to B to C to D to A) or if each system had 3
couriers one each way (System A to B & D; B to A & C; C to B & D; D to C & A).
In this ring of couriers, there would be 1 "Hub System". Hub Systems connect 2
or more Courier Rings. They usually have a station or base where couriers can
take leave (being cooped up in a 4 man courier boat for weeks on end, making
an FTL jump twice a day is stressful duty). This is also helpful for a
campaign, giving some systems more strategic importance than others.
Couriers would also act in a 'run for help' role if a system were invaded.
[quoted original message omitted]
[quoted original message omitted]
> "K.H.Ranitzsch" wrote:
Lots of
> similar cases from fake lighthouse to electronic warfare.
That and how do you disguise the real pulsar so it isn't picked up? Moreover,
I would think that unless you have rearranged where the pulsars are in space
completely, a savvy nav officer is going to pick up on any discrepencies when
correlating to other known pulsars. With hundreds to choose from, how do you
know which ones will be picked for spatial location purposes? Unless there is
some very rigid protocol about choosing only a specific 3 or something.
Personally, I'd have my navcomps be picking as many as feasibly possible in
order to really nail my position down. Any rogue pulsar mimickers ought to
stand out pretty plainly in those instances.
Also, adding redundancy to the system, sanity checks by using remote targets
that won't change at appreciably no matter your location after a jump would
help for basic orientation (I'm thinking of objects like, oh, the Andromeda
Galaxy and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds; there would be other objects
available for orientation purposes as well).
Fake lighthouses and e-warfare operate in a much tighter realm than
that of using pulsars. It's that distance thing you have to overcome when
faking out a pulsar (and masking the real one; another daunting
task, I would imagine ;-)
[quoted original message omitted]
> On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, K.H.Ranitzsch wrote:
> > > ----- Original Message -----
I'll give you that. However...you have to make some assumptions as to how
space nav algorithms would work (unless you do the "cheapest bidder did your
nav design", then you are only going to pick 3 known pulsars
;-).
I would imagine (however wrong this may be) that space nav systems would
(should!) take in as many pulsars as possible for a firm fix of position, not
just three (that leaves you more vulnerable to potential spoofing attempts).
But maybe it's just me. Maybe the NAC sold out to the cheapest
bidder and shoot for 3. ;-)
> > Moreover, I would think that unless you have rearranged where the
Actually, quite a lot. Depends on how many pulsars (and other astronomical
objects) the nav officer opts to use to fix the ship's location.
> > Fake lighthouses and e-warfare operate in a much tighter realm than
One could. I'm not. It'll be morning there first (already is,
in face - the wee hours). Have fun. I'll await thy results. ;-)
> --- "K.H.Ranitzsch" <KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de> wrote:
> Not really neccessary. If you have one fake, he has
Well if one coule gather the output from several stars to create and power the
false signal, the likely hood of the false data being used in the nav.
calculation is very small and ONLY has a chance of success if the 'plot' is
only using three points. If five or more points are used the 'false' dats
of the 'spoof' source would be detected as 'non-
standard' and would be rejected by even a civilian
freighter. Not to mention the creation of such a
device would cost more that most the major powers fleets.
Bye for now,
Quoting Dances With Rocks <kochte@stsci.edu>:
> On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, K.H.Ranitzsch wrote:
It's not /just/ looking at the pulsars. You also know /which one/ you're
looking at because of the pulse rate. So you actually have to get their
positions and frequencies right. And then there's the fact you're observing
from a moving starship -- at interplanetary speeds you /ought/ to be
able to get a distance to the pulsar from it's parallax in a couple of hours.
Certainly if its parallax is high (close object) you're going to notice.
Using pulsars wouldn't get you very accurate anyway - they're probably
not dense enough... but you would get an approximate area. Knowing that and
having a star catalogue means you can spot the nearby bright stars, you can
work out their approximate apparent magnitude, approximate positions, find
them (and check their absorbtion spectrums, just to be sure) and get a more
accurate fix. You ought to be able to get within a cubic AU fairly easily from
a few pulsars and some local stars.
Of course: if you fake the pulsars, the local stars aren't going to
match...
the chances of there being similar stars in the right places to match your
faked location is pretty minimal.
John Leary schrieb:
> > Not really neccessary. If you have one fake, he has
While I mainly agree with your other arguments, I don't see why you would need
the powere of several stars unless you want to put the beacons at the same
distance as the pulsars. If you want a set of beacons just to cover a limited
volume of space, you could put them much nearer and use directional emitters,
both of which drastically reduces the power requirements.
Greetings
[quoted original message omitted]
The unmanned, non-thrust pods avoid that problem by transmitting the
signal. In-system, you aren't going to get much faster than Light
Speed, so the pod would arrive in-system, transmit the data, receive new
data and pop back out. If it is a couple of light hours out then it takes a
couple of hours to transmit the data in, then a couple of hours while the
response and outgoing data is sent to it. Meanwhile it's
fixing it's actual location for the trip back and re-charging the FTL.
Maybe six hours total before it starts the return journey. By having multiple
units, you could conceivably have one going out every hour.
If people are willing to postulate that mass 8 FTL boats are viable, I would
think that in certain systems, having a network of FTL transmitter pods would
be viable.
Private, high security data would still be sent by courier.
--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----