Hyperspace navigation

[ShadowScout]

This is reasonable but begs the question: what happened to the colonies defeated early in the war. Without jump gates and viable off-beacon navigation, supply of such colonies would be impossible and most would have starved to death.

I would assume the smaller, non self-reliant colonies would have been evacuated, mostly. And the larger would have been able to sustain themselves for a while...
But - humanity hadn't expanded in this direction until rather recently, so I'd say they didn't HAVE that many large colonies between Earth and Minbari space - and those they had must have been very close to earth, and thus had less time without contact as the war would have been over months after their fall.

BtW, one more thing for the whole discussion...
Jump routes are basically transmitted directional signals - something that could be turned on and off by the flick of a switch. Sooo... a beacon route usually is established as "always on", but nowhere does it say that it has to be that way. What about a beacon that only works two days per month - enough to get a ship that jumps just as it goes active where it leads, but not enough to lead a ship that discovers the beacon six hours later to the target system. So only those who follow a specifiy time plan (which could chance from month to month of course) can follow That beacon...
I'm sure some race will ahve thought of that trick (the narn secret ship yard and R&D facility at Bor'Goth comes to mind)

 

[frobisher]

Except Mars of course... No jumpgate there

Actually not so - the Sol system HAS a jumpgate with beacon to gauge your position from. You only need one per star system after all...

Though of course most well connected systems have two or three, but well spaced so that the beacons don't interfere with each other. One example is the Epsilon system

That Jumpgate is at Io which is a hell of a long way out from Mars, and would be an appreciable distance in hyperspace.

The other examples were within spitting distance of the jump gates, probably at worst case a few kilometres in hyperspace from the beacon point.

Now, what you're saying is that they can plot a relative course from there, I'd say no. That would require an understanding of the relationship between real space and hyperspace that would be of Ancients' level.

It's not a static mapping; The jumpgate orbits Io, which orbits Jupiter which orbits the Sun, as does Mars.

To arrive (in hyperspace) at Io, and say, "ah, because Mars has this relative position in real space at the moment, so there for to come out over Phobos I'd have to go X thousand kilometres this direction and then I'd be there" to my mind requires a detailed knowledge of the relationship between real space and hyperspace, which if you could do that, you wouldn't need to ride unidirectional beacons, just track relative to point sources the whole time.

However, since hyperspace and realspace must have an equivalent topology (and they must due to a whole bunch of reasons) you can assume an approximate course to follow by triangulation of the big masses in the solar system (which at this point you'd be close enough to perceive).

"That's Jupiter ('cos we're at Io), that'll be the Sun (it's really big), that then will be Saturn so Mars will be in this region of hyperspace over there, once I get there, it'll show up on my sensors and I can finesse at that point".

That's not to say that you can actually see the masses as such, just their local influence on hyperspace. The Streib can do that several orders of magnitude better, plus presumably they can get other information directly from real space.

If you're right over a planet (relatively speaking), yes, you shouldn't get lost. If said star system is two - three (real space) parsecs away then you'd almost certainly not see any appreciable influence of the mass of the star system. So unless you're really close (say the effective distance of the Earth to the Moon translated to local hyperspace) you'll not "see" an Earth sized planet.

Well, if it was That easy, there ought to be a lot more exploration results showing up in B5. But even after centuries, the expansionistic centauri have what, a handful of worlds? So where are all those planets in between?

But bear in mind the many dozen's of colonies the Centauri lost in the last two hundred years. The Centauri Republic did in fact do most of the exploration of our local area of space, and laid down the beacon routes around the EA, the Narn and League worlds.

Anyway, not every star system is worth exploring, and not every system that is explored is worth exploiting.

What you're looking for are worlds that are habitable, or that have a great wealth of resources available but preferably both and if neither is the case, you just record what you can and find a better candidate system.

The only reason then to leave a jumpgate there then would be if it would form a convenient waypoint in the beacon network.

Also, hyperspace exploration isn't easy if you think about it.

Place yourself in a big open space (grassy) with a 1 metre diameter disc.

Assume that's your detection radius. Now, get a friend to take a pea from you in the middle of this grassy area 100 metres (to within +/- 50cm of that at his whim) and on a particular bearing from you (again on +/- half a degree at his whim), but he does this whilst you're not looking.

Now find the pea in one jump...

Now what if the area is scattered with baked beans. When you move across the field towards your intended target and you come across a baked bean with 2 metres of you, you must move 5cm towards that baked bean at that point, but you still maintain the heading you started on, and don't count the baked bean displacements as part of your travel distance. This represents the hyperspace tides

Even your short corrective jumps once you're near the pea will have a baked bean influence on them...

Excpet that hyperspace is worse

Yes, you know what real space is like, but the effects of the intervening hyperspace are unknown to you until you come across them.

If they had operable jump drive, they'd have been fine - they weren't so they clearly didn't.

Oh, now you're trying circular logic!?! :wink:
That statement only works if one assumes you are right, and everyone else is wrong. If you aren't right, then the fact that they weren't fine says nothing about the state of their jump engine, because it could also have been caused by the way hyperspace navigation works in my theory.

Except if you had an operable jump drive, you could drop out into real space, make repairs in a safe location (ie not hyperspace) and get your bearings again.

Because sure as hell it makes no sense at all if going off beacon causes a great upset to an Explorer...

The only way the entire incident makes sense is if something in the accident caused the jump drive to become inoperable.

At that point, the Explorer, having fallen off beacon can't regain her bearing.

And to add one more thing... whoever said that their jump engine was ever damaged in the first place?? We know their navigation system was damaged, throwing then off course. We know some panels on their bridge blew up. And we knew by the time the Starfuries found them, they had repaired that, could maneuver and communicate, but had drifted too far off the beacon to find it.

Which, as I said above, should mean NOTHING AT ALL to an Explorer. These things plot in new beacon routes, which means there was no beacon there in the first place...

Unless it was unable to open a jump point to get its bearings again.

But unless they had a massive "damage all systems" failure, why should their jump engine be damaged only because they have an explosion on board?

Perhaps the explosion was in the jump drive, due to feedback from the jump gate (. Only a couple of boxes on the SCS, but would you want to open a jump point with damage to your jump engine..?

On a ship that size, it would seem very illogical to have any accident that would disable several systems beyond repair - the only way several systems could be affected easily would be by a bridge explosion that leaves the systems intact, but damages the controls, and That should be easy to repais in comparison, because you don't need to take your ship apart to replace a blasted console or two...

At the time jms passed comment on the "accident" that the one thing he didn't want them to do they did - they blew up some consoles on the bridge to indicate the damage in the stereotypical Star Trek way.

And accidents are rarely logical

 

[Sundog]

As I've noted before, Hyperspace is probably pretty complicated. They mention that an unpowered ship drifts due to gravitational effects in hyperspace. In Crusade they find a stable area with actual terrain. Telepathy works differently there.

So, it seems to me that a lot of the comments above make a lot of assumptions. Who says you can jump from one place to another just anywhere? What if you can only open a vortex inside of a particular distance of a gravity well? In that case, Explorer ships would use their enhanced sensors to find gravity wells down which you could drive until you could open a vortex. But I would guess that even a scout has a limited range. So how do you found new jumpgates? Simple: Take a star sighting. Plot the route between where you are and the star you wish to scout. Enter Hyperspace and, very carefully, pilot your way down the plotted line until your sensors detect a gravity well.

A difference of 1/1000th of a degree would mean likely missing the target altogether. At which point you will probably never find a star system ever again...

 

[El Cid]

My understanding was that the EA turned off their jump gates as opposed to destroying them.

If that were the case, reseting them would be relatively easy.

Sidney

 

[frobisher]

So, it seems to me that a lot of the comments above make a lot of assumptions. Who says you can jump from one place to another just anywhere?

A very good point, though I suspect it might not be the case given that the Whitestar fleet was being assembled (I don't mean in a manufactured sense) in what appeared to be "deep space". At the very least, the threshold on the gravity well at which the jump point could be opened might be quite far out.

What if you can only open a vortex inside of a particular distance of a gravity well? In that case, Explorer ships would use their enhanced sensors to find gravity wells down which you could drive until you could open a vortex. But I would guess that even a scout has a limited range. So how do you found new jumpgates? Simple: Take a star sighting. Plot the route between where you are and the star you wish to scout. Enter Hyperspace and, very carefully, pilot your way down the plotted line until your sensors detect a gravity well.

A difference of 1/1000th of a degree would mean likely missing the target altogether. At which point you will probably never find a star system ever again...

Again, I'd suspect that exploration wouldn't be quite that difficult or the loss rate would be completely unacceptable to any race bar, perhaps, the Narn.

The indications are that exploration and pioneering of jump routes is risky, but not on the order of 95+% loses which this scheme would entail.

If it were, then you wouldn't build large Explorer type vessels but ships just big enough to take an enhanced sensor suite and a jump engine and the minimal crew of crazed pioneers willing to take the risk.

Given that the geometry between hyperspace and realspace isn't necessarily or consistantly the same, you'd be down to total pot luck with regards to exploration if you couldn't open a jump point pretty much when you needed to to make course corrections.

 

[Silk]

Well the hyperspace navigation debate is making my head spin, so no comment. With regards to the tanjent of EF blowing up jump gates, think they did 1 or 2, didn't Ivanova call it the "BoneHead manuver"? As EF struggled to get ships out of the jump gate blast radius?

 

[Stardrake]

Actually, the Bonehead Maneuver ("No offense") was activating a ship's jump engines while in an active jumpgate. That would be only one way of demolishing a jumpgate (and one of the most dangerous, of course). But simply placing charges on the jumpgate framework would destroy it with less risk--but would still be a desperation maneuver.

 

[ThatOneGuy]

I pulled some stuff from JMS’s posts and The Lurker’s Guide on the subject.

The Lurkers Guide analysis of the Cortez incident:

· What looks like a great deal of hand-waving over the Cortez accident can be explained upon close examination of the circumstances. The timeline of the accident seems to be:

1. Cortez enters the jumpgate.

2. Cortez exits the jumppoint in hyperspace and attempts a restart of her primary power system. The fusion reactor restart fails, and the power system spikes, producing a powerful electro-magnetic pulse (and presumably a sizable radiation pulse) which takes out some systems aboard Cortez, including main propulsion, navigation, and some computer systems. Cortez is now adrift.

3. Many hours later Cortez gets some main power back and systems running. Captain Maynard, after getting a damage report that tells him that nav won't be back up for 48 hours, puts up a distress call, which is received (barely) by B5. At this point Cortez is under power, but without reference points the best they can do is hold station against the pull of a nearby gravity well.

4. B5 receives the distress signal, and Captain Sheridan decides to make a rescue attempt. Cortez is effectively just "offshore" in hyperspace, and despite Ivonova's misgivings he feels they stand a chance of recovering her. Five fighters are launched into hyperspace by B5, and they form up on a line facing down the local gravity well at 1000km intervals.

5. The fighters set up the search pattern, with Cdr. Galus (fighter group commander) and Lt. Keffer together at the far end. This puts them about 4000km away from B5.

6. A shadow ship enters hyperspace almost on top of Galus, colliding with and destroying his fighter. It also rams Keffer's Star Fury, but only knocks out some systems (comms, nav, and propulsion). Keffer begins firing (presumably on internal references) in the direction of Galus's last position. Cortez figures it out, and at about the same time Keffer's fighter gets communications back online. Rather than risk losing a good bearing back to the jumpgate, Keffer tells Captain Maynard to take Cortez directly back to the gate, leaving him behind in his unmaneuverable Star Fury. He is unable to keep station and will drift, eventually losing any reference back to B5.

7. About 24 hours later (more or less -- it seems like the next night, end of shift in C&C, about midnight) Keffer is running out of oxygen--but his Star Fury has succeeded in getting his thruster systems back online. Shortly after that he spots another shadow ship, and using that as a reference point he navigates back to the jumpgate and returns to B5.

JMS says:

· To get in and out of hyperspace you have to know where you are and where you're going, otherwise you'll come out even *more* lost, hundreds of light years from home; you jump in, and you're even further gone now.

· Once in hyperspace, you can ride the navigational beams between beacons (narrow beam stuff, to cut through the interference, as noted in "Distant Star"), and by corrolating the beacons, know where you have to come out.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

· And the Cortez might've been able to locate some stars, but any fix on its position would only have been within a few light-years, not nearly precise enough for their purposes. They'd still be lost.

To Summarize:

1. The Cortez wouldn’t have been totally lost yet, but would have been by the time they had the sensors to tell them where they were.

2. Jumping back to real space when you’re lost doesn’t help you get your bearings in a meaningful way.

3. I have no idea how new systems are found.

 

[frobisher]

I pulled some stuff from JMS’s posts and The Lurker’s Guide on the subject.

{snip}

To Summarize:

1. The Cortez wouldn’t have been totally lost yet, but would have been by the time they had the sensors to tell them where they were.

2. Jumping back to real space when you’re lost doesn’t help you get your bearings in a meaningful way.

3. I have no idea how new systems are found.

That does muddy the waters nicely More than anything else, I think it shows that jms hadn't thought about the whole hyperspace thing as much as some (of us) fans had.

 

[Myddrin]

One other concept that doesn't appear to have been brought up, just to muddy thing up some more....

Who says that every point in hyperspace has a coresponding point in Real Space?

To draw a parrallel example, If I am sailing across the ocean in a boat, there are only certain areas I can disembark and end up on land.

Perhaps that gravitational incline that I beleive was mentioned pulls the ships into the "deep" part of Hyperspace where you cant' cross over into real space.

Otherwise it would seem that jumping back into realspace the instant you had a problem would be the easiest solution to being lost.

AS far as how explorer ships do what they do.. umm.... maybe they start from the farthest out becon , and have it send a direction signal in the direction they want to go, and drop into real space when ever they think thereis somethign interestign , or when ever there's a point where they can , to at least look around or drop another beacon to help them out. it's weak I know, but I'm trying...

 

[ThatOneGuy]

Frobisher:

That tends to happen. My favorite JMS quote; He says that when people ask him “How fast can a Star Fury go?” his response is “They move at the speed of plot.” Or something to that effect. I think that’s a good attitude to take when GMing too. Of course it would be nice to be able to be consistent by having definite rules. I for one would really love to have the exact numbers of the various fleets. Nothing in cannon to clarify that though.

Myddrin:

Now there’s an interesting idea. So if you go to a part of hyperspace that doesn’t corispnd to another part of our dimension, where will you go if you jump there? Anyone who’s wanted to do a “Mirror, Mirror” type story line without yet another first one artifact might want to consider that one.

 

[ShadowScout]

OK, back from my work-weekend, now let's throw in some more points to heat up this discussion

That Jumpgate is at Io which is a hell of a long way out from Mars, and would be an appreciable distance in hyperspace.

Not really - it may be a long way in real space, but compared to the dozends of lightyears ship "bypass" through a few hours hyperspace travel the distance between Mars and Io is neglectable.
And whoever said that only jumpgates have a beacon?
Whern Sheridan went from Mars to earth during the last drive agaist clarke, didn't he say something like "set course for beacon number -whatever-"? Wouldn't that be an indication that earth too has a beacon signal to help earthforce military vessels that have to jump out closer then Io? (Probably an becaon signal on a narrow band quite different from the usual beacon frequencies, so that -possible hostile- alien forces won't easily recieve it...)

However, since hyperspace and realspace must have an equivalent topology (and they must due to a whole bunch of reasons)...

Says who?
Beacuse I remember a chap named Joe Michael Straczynski telling us that it doesn't...

That's not to say that you can actually see the masses as such, just their local influence on hyperspace. The Streib can do that several orders of magnitude better, plus presumably they can get other information directly from real space.

What made you think that realspace matter has ANY effect in hyperspace? Just because realspace matter has a "mass shadow" in Star Wars hyperspace doesn't mean it has to have a similar effect in B5 hyperspace...

But bear in mind the many dozen's of colonies the Centauri lost in the last two hundred years. The Centauri Republic did in fact do most of the exploration of our local area of space, and laid down the beacon routes around the EA, the Narn and League worlds.

Actually not quite. After all, they only did conquer the Narns 150 years before B5... and discover earth a hundred years b.B5... while they were a intersptellar power much longer. And it made sense to assume they had been exploring as much as they could during their early time... so what made them overlook soo much, hmmm? And their lost colonies were evidently in a different direction (as AoG's people established for their BG)

Anyway, not every star system is worth exploring, and not every system that is explored is worth exploiting.

Not quite. Every star is woth exploring, because you can never know - there might be very valuable materials or potentially hostile aliens orbiting every star that shines (habitable systems are a little easier to predict - stellar classes and the likelyhood of them having suitable worlds are a part of astronomy after all). But you're right that not every star explored is woth following up to exploit - at least not for everyone (raiders might pay good money for directions to a system where noone else wants to go).

Yes, you know what real space is like, but the effects of the intervening hyperspace are unknown to you until you come across them.

And it's not quite like that too... what you describe is StarWars hyperspace, where a big enough computer can calculate the interference of every bean... now consider B5 hyperspace, where there are no beans to see, but the whole grassy plain is in fact the surface of an ocean, whith unseen currents everywhere, some hindering you, some accelerating you, some driving you off course. And no way at all to calculate their effects in advance, as younger races can't even detect them until they feel their effects.

Except if you had an operable jump drive, you could drop out into real space, make repairs in a safe location (ie not hyperspace) and get your bearings again.
Because sure as hell it makes no sense at all if going off beacon causes a great upset to an Explorer...
The only way the entire incident makes sense is if something in the accident caused the jump drive to become inoperable.
At that point, the Explorer, having fallen off beacon can't regain her bearing.

Probelm with that is that if it was possible to jump to normal space and get back to somewhere that easily, there'd be no reason for the comment about how no ship lost in hyperspace was ever rescued before. Because at least half of those should have had jump engines as well, and it seems inconciavable that all of them suffered a freaky "all different engines" accident.
So even if we'd assume the Cortez had an extremely unlikely accident that affected not only their navigational thrusters but also their vortex generators (two systems that shouldn't even be in physical proximity on the ship), it just doesn't add up...
(And yees, I KNOW it was an oversiget of writers more concerned with drama then hard SF - but we have it and must expolain it away now. At least we can still count the instances where we have to find an explenation for something like that, unlike some other SF shows I could mention... though B5 does have it a little harder then those because here noone dares to blame it on a magic particle of the week... :wink: )

Which, as I said above, should mean NOTHING AT ALL to an Explorer. These things plot in new beacon routes, which means there was no beacon there in the first place...
Unless it was unable to open a jump point to get its bearings again.

OR - unless they need to pay attention the whole time while they're moving through un-beaconed hyperspace, And it somehow is dangerous to jump completely blind (which would also explain why noone else has ever thought of jumping back into realspace to get their bearings and maybe get home through a lot of "microjumps" before).

So, it seems to me that a lot of the comments above make a lot of assumptions. Who says you can jump from one place to another just anywhere?
What if you can only open a vortex inside of a particular distance of a gravity well?

Nice thought, but contradicted by the show. The raider ship jumps into realspace far away from every gravity well (Signs ond Portents), the WhiteStar fleet seemed to have assenbled in deep space and the Drakh armada sets course for earth from a location also far away from everything that could create enough gravity (since Xha'dam was already destroyed at that time)

My understanding was that the EA turned off their jump gates as opposed to destroying them.

Hmmm, yees that would make more sense. Turn them off, erase the beacon coordinates, and it's just as well. Or maybe set new, false beacon coordinates... :twisted:
And the bonehead maneuver was something the EA thought about durin g the war as a means to wipe out minbari, but discarded as suicidal and ineffective, as none of their ships was fast enough to get away (and the minbari assumedly seldom came near the jumpgates in any case, as every Sharlin had a jump engine, and I always saw them jump out on their own in EA/Minbari war flashbacks)

To Summarize:
1. The Cortez wouldn’t have been totally lost yet, but would have been by the time they had the sensors to tell them where they were.
2. Jumping back to real space when you’re lost doesn’t help you get your bearings in a meaningful way.
3. I have no idea how new systems are found.

1. - yes.
2. - but it might if you're not totally lost, but make a small jump in a direction you want to go. For that you need your sensors and nav system operational the whole time though.
3. - probably with the above explentaion, as assumed in my first post :wink:

Who says that every point in hyperspace has a coresponding point in Real Space?

Hmmm... naaw.
I'd assume every point in hyperspace Does correspond with one in real space, at least when you're using a "hyperspace to real space" vortex (the blue ones). However... who says these have to correspond directly all the time? It'd make exploration much harder, but hyperspace points could correspond unrelated to any topographical relation - like "jump out here, come out at Epsilon system; jump out in one kilometer, come out a lightyear coreward of epsilon, jump out in two kilometers, come out three lightyears Spinward of epsilon..."

Now there’s an interesting idea. So if you go to a part of hyperspace that doesn’t corispnd to another part of our dimension, where will you go if you jump there? Anyone who’s wanted to do a “Mirror, Mirror” type story line without yet another first one artifact might want to consider that one.

No, please, not again. StarTrek and Andromeda did those to excess already. If any GM wants one in B5, please be more inventive (an leftover multi-dimensional portal the Walkers forgot near Sigma-957 perhaps...)

 

[Vonbloodbath]

I think one key astronomical fact it's worth remembering is the sheer vastness of space. There is a lot of it. A hell of a lot. it's huge, and only a tiny, tiny percentage has stars, and of the stars, only a small % have planets.

So if you just drop into real space, you could be anywhere, billions of miles from anywhere habitable. It's not then that easy to get your bearings, as your position relative to the stars is different; unless you have a very accurate 3D map of the stars, it will be virtually impossible to figure out where you are.

Now, they might have such a map, or not; it may be too difficult tech wise, or too time consuming (more likely) or simply not worth the effort since hyperspace is much quicker, and bears no relation to the stars, making a detailed star map unnecessary 99.9999% of the time.

An added danger of just dropping out anywhere is, if there is no "mass shadow" (which I don't recalll there ever being any record of, so must assume that there is not), then you could drop into a star, which would be a bad thing.

And making lots of little "micro jumps" wouldn't work because jump gates require a tremendous amount of energy to form, and so your power reserves would run dry quickly, and leave you stranded. Plus, given that there are "tides and eddies" of gravitaitonal current in Hyperspace, you could find yourself moving further and further off course.

It would almost certainly be safer to wait in Hyperspace; you stand a small chance of coming across another beacon then.

As an aside, the "no ship ever rescued in hyperspace" thing...that's no HUMAN ship; who's to say, for example, the Minbari haven't managed to rescue a ship in the past. Plus, how often do they go missing? Perhaps the last one to go missing had no jump engines etc...

VB

 

[ThatOneGuy]

Jump engines or no, lost is lost, at least for Humans. See my overly long post above. Umm, if you have a spare minute or 20.

Two more notes on the subject. In Well of Forever it is essentially stated that all hyperspace navigation is done relative to hyperspace beacons. Doesn’t say how far off the beacon they can go, only that they have to stay within sensor range of them. Which has finally lead me to a simple conclusion, which I’m sure not every one will agree with, but here it goes.

1. Explorer ships make hyperspace beacons as the go. Simple, direct. This would also explain why expansion is so slow and why explorer ships need to be big if they’re going to go very far. I’m betting hyperspace beacons are nether cheap nor small.
2. Based on Garibaldi’s little White Star stunt in Endgame I’d say for the most part hyperspace and real space correspond, though your mileage may vary. I think it’s safe to assume going in a certain direction in hyperspace puts you further in that direction in real space.
3. They probably head in the general direction of a potently valuable star and do corrective jumps, but this would only work in conjunction with knowledge of where they were going AND a detectable hyperspace beacon.
4. This leaves one question unanswered for me. Why don’t the hyperspace beacons move around?

At least that’s my take on all of this.

ShadowScout, I’ll agree that if one were rather close to something like a system the could probably use a series of corrective jumps to make their way there. That’s probably how explorers do it. I also think if they are that close to a system they can probably pick up it’s beacon if it has one.

 

[Dag'Nabbit]

4. This leaves one question unanswered for me. Why don’t the hyperspace beacons move around?

Either they use something similar to a La Grange point or they are equipped with might durable powerplants and engines to keep them stationary.

 

[Steeltiger]

Either they use something similar to a La Grange point or they are equipped with might durable powerplants and engines to keep them stationary.

I would go for the second.