Interplanetary Travel.

[Ced23Ric]

'lo! o/

Let's assume I have a nifty little colony on Peter's Planet I in the Peter System. Now I would really like to visit Peter's Planet II, which is around the corner. How do I get there (in time)? With Gear?
Let's assume I have a nifty little colony on Peter's Planet I in the Peter System. Now I would really like to visit Mary's Planet II in the Mary System. How do I get there (in time)? With Gear?

Basically: Do I always need stargates?

[Wadmaasi]

I have the vague impression that interplanetary travel is via some sort of "normal" reaction drive and that interstellar travel requires an initial slowboat (cryoships? unmanned robotic constructors?) to get the remote terminus stargate built.

[schoon]

Actually (working off memory here), I thought that a gate at the far end of your trip was not necessary, just more imprecise.

Sending mass this way would be very expensive, however, so you would want to do as much study as you could to ensure sending a probe or expedition would get you a return on your investment.

I would think that "colonization" would be an extremely long-term investment, and that the first thing sent would be some sort of automated mini-factory to create the tools/machinery to start mining/harvesting/etc.

Thoughts?

[Wadmaasi]

just more imprecise

...why would anyone ever build one, then? Space is already big enough, no need to increase your chances of getting lost!

=P

I'm more down with the concept of "1 stargate terminus = ludicrous speed expensive, 2 stargate terminii = only ridiculous speed expensive" than needing to send out an initial slowship. Not that Joshua, Vincent, or Soren asked for my opinion.

[Dukayn]

I think schoon meant that travel without a stargate at the destination is less precise.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Yeah, it's easier to throw someone if you've got a target.

You could, in fact, send someone/something from Venus to Earth, say, through a transit gate. It's a really pricey option when the slow route just takes the fuel to reach escape velocity and the knowledge to get it there. But you certainly could. I bet dignitaries get around Sol that way. They can afford to because a) Jupiter and b) well, the rest of the colonies.

[Ced23Ric]

Mhmm. Why is it expensive? It's not like the Stargate has a "insert coin here" slot, now does it? "Expensive" is such a meaningless word once you travel between starsystems. What do I care about your paper with a face on it, in this here system, we trade crystals. Not because they are pretty, but because they [charge filters] [clean water] [amplify radio emissions] [stop bone detoriation] [...].

[The Trilobite]

Why is it expensive?

I imagine the expense is based on energy used and the time required to produce that energy. Plus the labor needed to maintain the system and operate it. Also, if you control the gates, you can collect a good fee in whatever form you like, probably all boiled down to money just to make transfer easier and maybe even to obfuscate real value.

[Ced23Ric]

None of that has any value outside a given economy. That is what I am trying to say. Think about it - what do I care for your arbitrary numbers on a sheet of paper, you are multiple bajillion lightyears away from where I could cash that stuff. And on the other hand: Why is it expensive to power a Stargate? I am the Solar Union. I own the powerplants. Those people get paid, yah, but all those resources? They are mine. I am a capitalist empire, and my goal is to get to more places to get more resources.

[MittenNinja]

but all those resources? They are mine. I am a capitalist empire, and my goal is to get to more places to get more resources.

You just answered your own question. If you had all the resources you needed you wouldn't go sprawling across the galaxy to find more. There is a shortage of resources. That's why the cost is high but it's still a necessity.

[CrimsonKMR]

The stargates may require "McGuffinite" to run. "McGuffinite" is very rare, and therefor is more valuable in the trade and barter system, rather than a currency per say.... one unit of "McGuffinite" will transport X ships through a stargate, so the cargo in those ships better be worth the cost of the "McGuffinite"... whether it be raw materials, pilots and their frames, Solar Union dignitary etc

I think! XD

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Superluminal travel is orders of magnitude more outlandish than giant robots. There's a reason transit gates use "resources" and mobile frames use "muscle cylinder fluid". It's because those are premises you accept with a wink.

My standard for science fiction is that you get to ask three questions deep. Most fail at one or two.

"Why are the dropships in Starship Troopers covered with guns?"
"So they can protect the troops they're dropping off."
"So who fires all those weapons?"
".... The... troopers getting off... the...?"

I hope I get a little deeper than that.
"Why are there giant robots?"
"Because the mode of interstellar travel they use makes it cheaper to send one machine and one person than six people."
"Why is it cheaper?"
"Because the fuel fraction of sending humans is higher than a machine that you can repair from local materials before you can get a farm supporting a population six times that size."
"Why is does the fuel fraction matter with an Einstein-Rosen bridge?"
"Because the technology they use takes a flat, non-negotiable amount of time to send anything other than zero mass information, and the resources it takes increase exponentially with the mass sent."
"So how do you send a major offensive?"
"You either spend a lot of money/energy/unobtanium or you spend a lot of time. In the latter case, you hope that the port you're sending them to stays friendly as you keep sending your army. In the former, it had better be worth it."

[perplexingTheorist]

May I offer a theory to stargate physics/mechanics/how they work?

What if stargates worked similarly to a slingshot, and (in the case of a receiving stargate) a break as well. By that I mean that once engaged in one, it could launch you at that would get you to your destination relatively quickly. As well, this would allow for no preexisting secondary gate to exist to travel to a system and explore it. This would explain how mass exploration was possible without having to wait years to haul a stargate over to a system and hope it had resources. Yet, only problem with using a single gate is that it shoots you off in a general direction, with no set destination, and you need to slow yourself down, where as in a two stargate system you know your destination and the second stargate would slow you down as you approach it (kinda like taking a train, it gets faster, and then around mid-trip it slows down).

Alternatively, they could manipulate space through gravity wells and worm holes, but those two options probably require 2 gates.

Okay, so, to a different topic of why it requires a lot of energy;

From a purely physics standpoint, the stargates seem to take up a lot of energy due to the fact that they cause some form of large acceleration and/or spacial manipulation, which both require large amounts of energy.


(yeah, this probably didn't sole anything at all did it?)

[Ced23Ric]

May I offer a theory to stargate physics/mechanics/how they work?

Will it be a perplexing theory?

(yeah, this probably didn't sole anything at all did it?)

Nope, my Airwalks from '07 are still falling apart.

[randolph]

From what I've gathered, it's far closer to teleportation than a Mass Effect relay; they send people and perishable goods through.

Yes, you can make that work with acceleration, but all you've done is moved the handwave from one technology to a different set - and if you have all of that safe, functional inertial compensation, the cascading consequences on society would be a far larger impact.

[Zero Revenge]

Teleportation eh? Hmm, and here I was thinking the Cowboy Bebop Webgate-or whatever it was called, system.

[randolph]

This is what Josh said earlier in the thread:

"Why is does the fuel fraction matter with an Einstein-Rosen bridge?"
"Because the technology they use takes a flat, non-negotiable amount of time to send anything other than zero mass information, and the resources it takes increase exponentially with the mass sent."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole#S ... _wormholes

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Use your words.

[Kaiser1917]

Are all transit gates in orbit around various stellar bodies? Have some been built in massive stargate-style rings on a planet's surface?
The Market Massacre makes me think that the colonists and Ijad could just march up to the gate with their goods for sale. Or maybe this was them marching up to an orbital elevator or spaceport?

[Soren]

You could totally build a transit gate on the surface of a planet, just like you can build a nuclear reactor without shielding. You just shouldn't do it because you'll die.

More seriously, I can think of some really weird plausible configurations of gate (like an orbital elevator that uses the centrifugal force along the outer half of the cable* to fling ships through a gate suspended from the end).

*This is complex and nonintuitive to explain, but the simplified version is that an orbital elevator should have a long cable up to geosynchronous orbit, most of its mass and facilities at the midpoint, and then an equally long cable from the station outwards - you can use the outer half of the cable as a form of cheap mass driver. If you fling things off it, you don't have to strap any propulsion to your payload, which makes it a little more cost-effective. The downside is that you can only launch at certain times, and if you aim it wrong, there's no way to slow it down before smack.