Forum: Author Hangout

The consequences of the decision is tied to the magnitude, in other words, how many vils. Discuss that.

A need arises that requires the navigational calculations. Options are presented to the commander. He has to weigh the risks with the extra time to get to where they're going, based on how much of a navigational change he orders.

Have the characters debate that, not the calculation itself.

Exactly. Context will tell the reader what he or she needs to know. By all means avoid parentheses, footnotes, asterisks, or any other kind of extraneous notation.

You've got some room to run here, assuming your readers are already on board with the general elements of the world you've described.

bb

A need arises that requires the navigational calculations. Options are presented to the commander. He has to weigh the risks with the extra time to get to where they're going, based on how much of a navigational change he orders.

Have the characters debate that, not the calculation itself.

That makes sense, but the discussion is over whether they should divert at all not by how much, as the ship's captain is claiming knowing information the other intuit (2nd captain) doesn't possess.

You could have the navigator and the helmsman arguing for different amounts of diversion while the captain makes his case that no diversion is needed.

Right - one of the options is no diversion at all. The point of the debate between the crew should be the cost/benefit analysis

vils

To do a detour again is revils. Someone who repeats detours is a revilsder. And backwards that reads ...

AJ

To do a detour again is revils. Someone who repeats detours is a revilsder. And backwards that reads ...

How long did it take you to come up with that one?

I did a moderately quick online search for the word. It appears in French and Spanish and seems to be related to the English word "vile". How did you come up with it for your story?

I'm dealing with dozens of alien species, so I'm inventing names and terms left and write. SO far, many of my alien names are sounding vaguely Jewish! I wanted a technical term which was easy to roll off the tongue. It has no tie in to anything Earth based, but it addresses the issues of faster-than-light collisions with small asteroids.

I recall you posting here, "$10 words are okay, just avoid using $100 words." To me, 'vils' seems like a $100 word. I wouldn't use it at all unless it was going to be used in a number of places throughout a story.

Not using any word for it makes it an even bigger issue, as they you've got to explain precisely what they're doing and how they're doing it. I've outlined the issue earlier, now I'm trying to have a technical discussion as a way of highlighting deceptions among the crew, so I need to be careful how I spread the information around.

After some delays, I'm FINALLY writing the chapter (which is why I'm up at all hours of the night!).

With no fixed points of reference, up or down and port or starboard have no meaning.
If a ship coming the other way is flying up-side-down, according to your orientation, then both turning to what they consider is 'port' could keep them on a collision course!

Port and starboard are relative to the ship's current heading so don't require an outside reference. "Adjust course 20 degrees starboard" would be sufficient to navigate around a local obstacle. If you're plotting a course from a current location to a distant destination, you might say "Set course to 315 degrees".

I space, one could use the galactic center and plane as a reference, as I believe was done on Star Trek (and that's assuming the navigation is done within just one galaxy.)

Unique and easy to detect objects such as quasars could be used like GPS. The ship would have a catalog of objects, and by identifying where each lie relative to the ship they can calculate the location and course.

No, port and starboard are only "relative to the ship's current heading" if you and everybody else is sailing on the same "ocean".

For two ships on the same ocean, their port and starboard are only in reference to their own current headings, and have no relation to the other ship.

If you and I are facing each other, my left is not your left.

It's a local system, distinct from a global one.

NOT when flying directly at each other in space and we both think the other is standing up-side-down.

Confessed I missed the upside down part. Ocean surface navigation is two-dimensional. In space you need to add a third dimension.

Let's take the galactic plane as the surface, and a line through the center and perpendicular to the place as the axis, which needs to have an arbitrary meridian. Then, as Star Trek did, you can define a course as x mark y, where 'mark' separates the two angles.

You can ignore whether the ship is 'upside down' by referencing whether they are above or below the plane (and perhaps some other detail I'm missing, but it can be done)

Since our galaxy is a disk, a simple way to do it would be to pick one side of the disk as north, the other side becomes south, east and west are clockwise and counter clockwise around the disk and you need a third direction for in/out along the radius of the disk.

Or - alpha, beta, gamma and delta quadrants. But actually I like yours.

"Axes, pronounced AX-eez. Interestingly, axes is the only word in English that can be the plural of three different singular noun forms--ax, axe, and axis."

Does that make it the "Axes of Evil" (if they're each coming from a different direction)?

Describing three dimensional space requires three axes*.

* I had to look up the plural of axis.

That's why dwarves are so good at space travel navigation, cause they always have several axes at hand! Only problem is, in space, those beards drift all over the place!

OTOH, I would avoid names like south, west, north, east, up, and down. I would use a XYZ-system with zero in the galactic centre. Now you've only to define where to set the x-line, which side has positive and which negative values and the unit size. I would set X to the largest diameter, Y would be in the same plane, but 90 degrees off and Z the smallest diameter (the thickness). I would name it Standard Galactical Co-ordinate System and the co-ordinates of a sun would then be expressed as SGC X+85.76322; Y-17.11754; Z-2.68391;

Let's assume each alien race has its own co-ordinate system, probably zeroed to their home system and their own unit size. If you know the basics of their system, there is no problem to convert co-ordinates from their system to SGC.

Except, space is nothing like a three-dimensional coordinate system. Instead, space warps based on gravity. Thus planets physically bend space, as do various difficult to detect black holes. Assuming that all of space is merely a large blank sheet (in 3D) is underestimating the complexities of space travel. However, the reassuring countermeasure, as NASA has proved time and again, is that these obstructions are easily resolved through the application of mathematics. They aren't insurmountable problems, but they don't lend themselves to simplistic explanations.

As far as referring to "east"/"west" or "port"/"starboard", I suggest you simply avoid those colloquial terms altogether, as I'm sure we'll eventually come up with a more comprehensive system which isn't based in the 17th century navel navigation.

Except, space is nothing like a three-dimensional coordinate system. Instead, space warps based on gravity.

You are wrong CW. Space is three dimensional.

A three-dimensional coordinate system, also known as a Cartesian coordinate system, can be used to define the location of planets and other celestial bodies. The warping of space has no affect on the coordinate system. The planets and other celestial bodies exist and they have locations. The coordinate system just defines that location relative to a reference point regardless of how gravity may affect our perception of location from a second location.

Hi DS.

I am confused by your discussion with Ross. To start with, a galaxy is a collection of individual stars and each star has a solar system that is comprised of its planets, asteroids, comets, etc. I am not aware of anything like a star system within a galaxy (i.e., multiple stars grouped together as a unit). Thus to me, the term 'local star system' is meaningless unless the term is meant to refer to nearby galaxies, which are star systems.

The only thing I can envision as the purpose of your discussion is defining a navigational system within a galaxy that can be used for determining a spacecraft's position and path of travel relative to its destination's position and path of travel. But why reinvent the wheel.

The most useful reference system for navigating within a galaxy would be a Cartesian Reference System. The galaxy's axis of rotation could be used as the Z-axis and two stars 90 degrees apart in the plane of the galaxy could be used to set the orientation of the +X and +Y axes and that would define which direction the +Z portion of the Z-axis would point relative to the plane of the galaxy. The position of the stars within the galaxy can then be defined by their Cartesian coordinates.

A spaceship's captain would only have to know the Cartesian coordinates of the spacecraft's location and direction of travel to determine a course change to reach a destination. The course change itself would most likely be given in terms of the spaceship's current axis of travel and the crew's current orientation of up-down, left-right.

I am not aware of anything like a star system within a galaxy

I understand "star system" to be synonymous with "solar system" - a collection of planets and other lesser objects orbiting a star. 'Solar' is an adjective form of 'Sol' which is a proper name of our star, so presumably there's only one 'solar system' out of the multitude of star systems. The 'local star system' would be the one you're present in at the referenced time.

A spaceship's captain would only have to know the Cartesian coordinates of the spacecraft's location and direction of travel to determine a course change to reach a destination.

From the point of view of telling a story I think that's an acceptable simplification. But actually space is curved. If a Cartesian straight line course takes you close to the gravity well of a black hole, for example, you're not going to end up where projected :(

AJ

you're not going to end up where projected

That is why navigators make mid-course corrections.

Yes, exactly what I was trying to describe.

How comes many space operas use a helmsman for steering the spacecraft?

Social inertia is the main reason. I suspect it's also because people relate spacecraft to naval ships more than they do to aeroplanes.

However, the real oddity is an aircraft like a Boeing 747 etc. is controlled by a pilot, while an airship like the Hindenburg was controlled by a helmsman.

Why is spaceship more used than spacecraft?

The convention (developed over time) seems to be that "spacecraft" refers to small vessels, while "spaceship" refers to large Federation ships. Putting it into a nautical analogy, a "craft" is a boat, while a "ship" is either a tanker or an aircraft carrier (of most of anything in between).

Hint: I fleshed this out in other, earlier stories about spacefaring races (btw, that's a race around the "Faring" galaxy).

How comes many space operas use a helmsman for steering the spacecraft?

Only ocean going ships have helmsmen, aircrafts of any size have pilots.

Why is spaceship more used than spacecraft?

Since hopefully you're familiar with The Original Series (Shatner as Kirk) Star Trek, I'll use that as reference.

Sulu was helmsman, Chekov was navigator. The middle console between them was the astrogation console. Navigation determined the course to get the ship from point A to point B, which is trickier than ocean going navigation because in space, point A and point B are both moving.

Aircraft have pilots because the pilot is in command of his aircraft. The helmsman is not in command of his ship, that's the job of the Captain (who is called that, even if his rank is Ensign).

And ship versus craft is similar to what we see today, it's a size thing. You'll have a small craft warning due to bad weather (somewhere around 40 knot winds and 15 foot seas) but ships would pretty much ignore that. The Enterprise was a space ship, the Galileo was a shuttle craft carried BY the Enterprise.

Sulu was helmsman, Chekov was navigator. The middle console between them was the astrogation console. Navigation determined the course to get the ship from point A to point B, which is trickier than ocean going navigation because in space, point A and point B are both moving.

Yes. Helmsmen operate the helm which guides the ship.

On the Australian TV show Sea Patrol the ranks and duties were driven home as nearly everyone referred to each other by those names - XO, RO, Buffer, Swain, Charge, Chefo

The original reference to Vils seems to have been a possible command by the ship's captain to change course to avoid another vessel. Thus the change would be relative to the captain's ship's existing course prior to the change and does not concern outside bodies such as quasars, other ships, planets etc.

Using the premise of an Intuitive (someone who can predict events in the near-term future) avoids the difficulties of figuring out a chartiographic (can't figure out how to spell it) system for space flight. Rather than planning who's scheduled to be flying across thousands of light years distance, you merely avoid any potential disaster points and then subsequently scheduling how to make up the difference in time between the two different plans.

No, port and starboard are only "relative to the ship's current heading" if you and everybody else is sailing on the same "ocean".
That's why I suggested there would need to be a general agreement about what plane the ocean is on. The same plane as the galaxy's rotation would be a suitable way to define compass points on that plane, but there would still need to be an agreement about which side of that was "above water".
Bearings to nearby objects would be needed for actual navigation, but you need to define at least compass points and an orientation to figure out the locations of those objects.

In this case, the various navigation AIs plot out the course and the corrections, but the Intuit Captains' main objective is preventing the ship from going KABOOM when it strikes a tiny rock hurtling thru space. Again, the navigation AIs can handle the details, but the Intuits need to detail how BIG an obstruction it is. Factoring in how much FASTER than light they're traveling, multiplied by what they have to avoid, determines how far afield they'll end up--adding that much to their travel time.

I think for CW's problem, the crew could discuss an 'adjustment' specified by orienting the ship from 0 to 360 degrees clockwise from Up and thrusters on the underneath of the ship then alter its course by some number of degrees or seconds.

Just a little context, this doesn't take place within a particular solar system. Instead, it's well beyond outside the solar system where the solar winds drop off. Since that area is largely empty of anything, running into another ship is unlikely. But because they're traveling SO MUCH faster than light, hitting a small pebble could be catastrophic, so they employ computer enhanced intuits (those who can detect when something's about to happen) to avoid these types of collisions.

The conflict is the human Intuit captain is essentially lying to the ship's crew, trying to keep them off guard, so when called on it, it launches into a separate discussion about a different topic--relating to the human's overall mission.

How far afield the ship moves is minor, what isn't minor is WHY the ship captain is lying to his crew!

hitting a small pebble could be catastrophic, so they employ computer enhanced intuits (those who can detect when something's about to happen) to avoid these types of collisions.

Wouldn't a deflector shield be easier and more reliable? Project a force in front of the ship to push those smaller mass objects out of the way. Like the cow catcher on a train.

Wouldn't a deflector shield be easier and more reliable? Project a force in front of the ship to push those smaller mass objects out of the way. Like the cow catcher on a train.

Yeah, a deflector would be easier, which is why Star Trek invented it out of whole cloth, but I've never seen any justification for the premise in any scientific principal. Every other sci-fi topic, from Warp Speed to time travel, have been extensive researched and discussed, with multiple realistic alternatives promoted. But there is no 'external energy shield' which holds up post a first glance.

Moreover, the risk isn't from tiny space gravel, it's from the multitude of potential risks you might encounter when travels thousands of light years in a short time (i.e. nearly instantaneously). While a 'space shield' might deflect small obstructions, it wouldn't prevent you from crashing into another craft, and unknown comet deflected by a nearby star, or any number of other obstructions. (The 'planetary dust' is just a more dramatic argument about relatively minor risks presenting monumental threats.)

Finally, how much energy would it require to project an imaginary force field millions of miles ahead of your ship, if you're traveling Faster Than Light? Frankly, that makes FTL travel seem like a minor inconvenience while protecting your ship would require an unlimited amount of energy on an ongoing near-perpetual basis. Just because an idea has been used once in cheesy sci-fi doesn't mean it's worth preserving indefinitely. However, in this case, I wanted to capitalize on an odd-set of skills that a future spacefaring culture might require, rather than relying on storytelling shortcuts from previous centuries.

Yeah, a deflector would be easier,

All good replies, but...

It's possible that once something is traveling faster than light it's then in hyperspace where objects in normal space don't appear.

It's possible that once something is traveling faster than light it's then in hyperspace where objects in normal space don't appear.

I've never understood where 'hyperspace' exists. Is it separate from 'normal' reality (like jumping into an alternate dimension, like using string theory to postulate crossing folded space to cross a wide expanse more quickly), or is it simply a way of crossing existing pace more quickly.

In my universe, FTL travel is accomplished by going as near the speed of light as you can achieve, then then expanding space before the ship, sucking you along. Technically, you're traveling less than the Speed of light, but in reality, you're traveling orders of magnitude faster than light, only then you face all the nastiness of relatively (a 3-hour voyage turns into a several hundred year trips).

I've used both in stories (jumping into an alternate dimension: "The Catalyst" and "Singularity") and (stretching space: "Stranded in a Foreign Land", "The Lad Who Poked the Devil in the Eye" and now this story, part of the "Not-Quite Human" series).

The rule in 'making up the rules of a universe', is that you lay out the rules in the first several chapters, and then you STICK blindly to rules thereafter, so readers don't question all the assumptions you initially made. Thus you CAN'T switch from FTL speeds with string-theory based hyperspace. It's either one or the other. You don't need to explain how each state exists, but you'd better not cross the one with the other!

I've never understood where 'hyperspace' exists.

What you describe is similar to how I understand hyperspace.

The object doesn't really travel faster than light, but it bends the space around it or creates a wormhole, exiting normal space to take a shortcut to a distant location. Sort of like bending a piece of paper so that the ends are close to each other, and then jumping across that gap.

In the Star Trek universe, the navigational deflector is separate from the ship's shields. The navigation deflector consists of a magnetic field to push fine debris out of the path of the ship and automated tractor/repulsor beams to handle larger debris.

Even as a ten-year old when the series first appeared on television, this explanation made ZERO sense! How does a 'magnetic field' deflect anything non-metal? You don't need something constructed of iron ore to destroy objects both traveling faster than light. Also (as I already pointed out) projecting a 'mysterious force' ahead of you, while traveling faster than light, involved massive amounts MORE energy than does simple faster than light travel (which already requires absolutely phenomenal amounts of energy).

It's true, you can always take the Star Trek/Star Wars/Dragon Riders of Pern examples and say 'I don't give a damn what's physically possible at some point in the future, I'm simply telling a fun story', but others WANT you to account for HOW such things are possible, even if you don't bore them with the details.

As if there was a scientific justification for a precognitive crew. :)

In my world, there is. They start with the weak natural abilities humans seem to already possess, and augment them with nanobots (tiny computers floating in their blood) to make the previously unpredictable results reliable.

It's a stretch, by the best of calls, but it bears up under the 'internal validity' test (does the story make sense within it's own reality). And given the complexities of relativity in regards to space travel, it deftly dances around those difficulties with surprising ease.

Again, it's not a matter of basing the future on the past, or proving the future technology beyond a shadow of a doubt, instead it's all about creating a universe which makes sense in it's own world (the make believe world I'm creating) and then keeping the rules of that universe consistent so things make sense within that framework.

Cowcatchers worked in the Star Trek universe, and hyperspace works in the Star Wars universe, but in my particular universe, neither really pans out (which we all work from a different set of assumptions).

Like you, it has been a long time since I read the Lensmen series. I don't recall if mention was made about the ships capabilities, but a deflector would be different than an energy shield used to protect the ship from an energy beam attack.

It's been too long since I've read them, so I may be wrong, but I think E.E. "Doc" Smith had something similer in his "Lensmen" series; I'm real sure his ships had energy shields to protect against enemy energy beam attacks, but I don't remember if they also protected against solid matter. It I _am_ remembering correctly, then the concept goes _way_ back in the SF field.

Using energy to block a physical attack (while remaining stationary, or at least traveling through space at a consistent speed) is vastly different than traveling faster than light by several orders of magnitude. In one, you're simply deflecting things from your ship, in the other, you're deflecting things billions of miles distant from your ship at the moment.

In Star Trek and Star Wars, they avoided this by NEVER MIXING FTL travel with battles in space (they'd all stop before battle), but in my universe, I wanted to wrestle with how new abilities a future star-faring face would require in a 'new breed' of humans.

I laid those features out in "The Cuckoo's Progeny", but now in its sequel, I'm fleshing out what they mean in real life (i.e. encountering the dangers of actual space travel and armed conflict in space).

In Star Trek and Star Wars, they avoided this by NEVER MIXING FTL travel with battles in space

I don't think that's correct. I believe that they never fired phasers while in warp but they did use photon torpedos.

In Battlestar Galactica they were never seen while in FTL. They instantaneously went from point A to B, but the distance was of each jump was limited by the capability of their FTL drive and the amount of energy available. In season one Starbuck took a raptor back to Caprica but it took many more jumps than a battlestar and she was starved for energy by arriving. On one hand, that would make it easy to jump out of a battle situation, and often they did while under fire, but it was complicated by having a fleet of disparate capabilities and the necessity of sharing the destination coordinates with all the allies but not the enemy.

I believe that they never fired phasers while in warp but they did use photon torpedos.

As further point of clarification to what DS said, phasers were still a light speed weapon. So the actual ship itself had to be traveling at less than warp one - the speed of light - to actually use the weapon. You fire the weapon directly ahead of yourself at warp 1.0001 and end up shooting yourself in the butt.

For those of us who were gamers - this was simulated in the game Star Fleet Battles. I don't know if anyone else still plays that - I don't have my copies of the game anymore - but I spent many an evening at the helm of my ships. (We used to play Federation & Empire - the strategic game - and then with the smaller battles, we'd actually do those in SFB, which was the tactical game.)

For all this why not have a "phrase" which can be abbreviated to VILS (a parallel to FBI for Fed.......)

The bridge crew can then discuss the various changes (as already suggested) thus educating the reader

That actually makes sense, especially since there are SO many different competing alien languages, the letters don't HAVE to actually spell anything out at all.

Thus, to deviate to port by 20 degrees while going up by 10 degrees would be to steer port 20 at positive 10 - or something like that as I'm not sure which goes first.

That's useful. Again, since these are deviations from the preplotted 'fastest' course already laid out by the Navigation system, they're merely concerned with how far off they're moving and how long it'll take them to recoup the lost distances--which is all handled by sophisticated alien tech.

They're not avoiding Death Stars or Cruisers, instead they're facing a catastrophic collision with 'space dust', where turning away a hundredth of a degree means traveling hundreds of millions of miles.

This site has generators for everything: alien names (classic and current styles), alien physical descriptions, planets, terrain, spacecraft/ships, ship names, as well as general technobabble.

I'll have to check it out. In a universe where each species speaks a different language using different wavelengths, and it's translated on the fly in their heads, we're already making all kinds of assumptions. As I've noted, many of my 'alien' names are already sounding like Jewish names with a lot of random "z"s, "x"es and "k"s in them. :(

we're talking about space not being consistent enough to be measured on a simple X-Y-Z grid based system.

CW, you don't know what you are talking about.

In astronomy, a celestial coordinate system is a system for specifying positions of celestial objects: satellites, planets, stars, galaxies, and so on. Coordinate systems can specify a position in 3-dimensional space, or merely the direction of the object on the celestial sphere, if its distance is not known or not important.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_coordinate_system

Astronomers use their spherical coordinates and the spherical coordinates of an object they wish to observe (i.e. satellites, planets, stars, galaxies, and so on) to determine the direction to point their telescopes and the angle above the horizon to set its elevation. If you aren't familiar with spherical coordinates, they are a 3-dimensional reference system that uses the center of Earth as a reference point for defining the location of any celestial body or item that can be seen from Earth.

Since we are currently using a 3-dimensional reference system in astronomy with great success, I see no problem with someone doing the same thing in some other galaxy.

Your hang-up regarding gravity bending light waves would only affect navigating between two defined points. In space travel, it would no different than navigating from San Francisco to London. Your would just periodically have to determine where you are relative to your destination and planned route and then make any necessary course correction. That can be done in both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional modes of travel.

seems to ignore the difference between the great circle and the straight line course from a map.(He refers to wind and currents)

You are addressing the route. DS was addressing the factors that cause a ship to drift off of that route.

It may be called a Great Circle route because of the way it looks on a flat map, but it is actually the shortest route on a globe.

Let's not forget CW's bending of light waves by a gravity well. Of course in a known region, the way a gravity well affects the light waves would be a known factor that could be compensated for when setting the initial course.

True and those types of course drift is what mid-course corrections are supposed to correct.