Jump Limits

steelbrok

Cosmic Mongoose
I’ve recently been reading (and thoroughly enjoying) the Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton. The ships in this setting need to be far enough away from a gravity field to use their version of Jump safely (as with Traveller). One of the characters pulls of a jump from a world’s Lagrange point as the moon and planet’s gravity fields cancel each other out. It was a risky manoeuvre for the ship because it was done at high speed but I thought it could be an interesting smuggler/pirate trick in Traveller.
 
I've noticed how traveller-like the world is in those books. It has low berths (zero-tau pods), the equivalent you mention of the '100 radius' limit, and a sort of lo tech vision of the future many things (guns, lifestyles, sports, and drink etc.) are vaguely analogous to today. The big departure from the OTU I suppose is the biological technology (bitek), and communal telepathy (affinity) that the edenits have, but it is still easily imagined in traveller terms.

And yes - the 'lagrange' jump should be allowed - remember there are five lagrange points in any two-mass system. You should probably ask for some sort of space science roll to calculate where they are mind you, as well as a very good pilot/engineer roll or something to time it just right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

Whether these points would ever be in the 100 radius limit is worth considering though (gets out old textbooks and pen and paper).
 
I don't think, under canon (100D) jumplimit rules that you can have the equivalent of Lagrange points. While gravity is vector, and can cancel, the D volume is scalar and cannot. With a 2-body system, I think gravity would be cancelled on the surface where the two "spheres" press against each other (wouldn't be circular-flat cos G follows inverse square laws?), whereas when you're dealing with 100D volumes, it just means you're inside *2* limits, rather than just one.

There's still the possibility in complex systems of small bodies that you can find a clever spot that is surrounded by bodies, but outside the 100D limit for all of them.
 
"The big departure from the OTU I suppose is the biological technology (bitek), and communal telepathy (affinity) that the edenits have, but it is still easily imagined in traveller terms. "

Yes, I've toyed with giving the Zhodani all of the bitek as thety already have the psionics, just to make them different/interesting
 
For Earth, the 100D limit is 1,275,610 km.

The LaGrange points are located at 321,392 km.

I would still make it very difficult.

Also, is the 100D limit a function of the gravity of the nearest mass or some kind of hyperspace mass shadow? If it's a mass shadow or some other hand-wavery, then the lagrange point will still be in the fuzzy area within 100D.
 
I THINK that is the right number for the Earth-Moon L1 point. The L4 and L5 points would be at the same distance (from Earth) as the Moon, about 400,000 km.
 
since the lagrange points are a known factor and a limited size
they can have mine fields and space forts gaurding them
they would make an exellent point to base x-boats out of

going into an unexplored/ unmapped system I would say no
 
Evilschemer said:
For Earth, the 100D limit is 1,275,610 km.

The LaGrange points are located at 321,392 km.

I would still make it very difficult.

Also, is the 100D limit a function of the gravity of the nearest mass or some kind of hyperspace mass shadow? If it's a mass shadow or some other hand-wavery, then the lagrange point will still be in the fuzzy area within 100D.

RAW posits a "volume" shadow kind-of handwavery; nowt to do with mass or gravity.
 
Evilschemer said:
lastbesthope said:
Evilschemer said:
For Earth, the 100D limit is 1,275,610 km.

The LaGrange points are located at 321,392 km.

I would still make it very difficult.

Is that the Earth-Moon L1 point you speak of?

LBH

Sorry, I meant the L1 point is located at...

No need to apologise, I used to work for the European Space Agency, did a bit of spaceflight mechanics at university. I used to be able to prove the L1 points existed via the Jacobi integral, but it's been a LONG time :lol:

LBH
 
collins355 said:
A lon time ago in a galaxy far away (actually TML in 1997), Marc posted this reply in a similar discussion...

Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 12:21:36 -0500 (EST)
From: CardSharks@aol.com
Subject: Re: No discrepancy.

[snip]

Marc Miller

Um, did this end up in the right thread and I'm being dim and don't see how it follows, or is it a mispost?
 
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