Ringworld for Orbital

[Tom Kalbfus]

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Ringworld+Movie+Full&Form=VQFRVP#view=detail&mid=87E7C4666D5F337EFC7D87E7C4666D5F337EFC7D

It all starts with a wormhole, this one was created during the Big Bang, where you have local fluxuations in energy density sufficient to create this wormhole, still insufficient to allow the passage of large macroscopic objects, but sufficient to pass information and tiny molecular machines. A civilization descended from mankind discovers this wormhole, while in the process of taking apart planets for construction material, A Type II civilization in other words. The beings that do this have no use for air and water anymore, having long since evolved past those needs, but the discovery of the wormhole has intrigued them, for it has opened up a window on their past. Because of this they decide to build a ringworld around the Sun, to draw the humans from the past into their present, it is a kind of wildlife preserve. They send molecular assemblers through the wormhole, the molecular assemblers construct a space station around the wormhole, and it has rockets so the station and wormhole can be moved to an orbit at the edge of the Solar System in both their past and their present, the time differential is about one million years. All the planets in the Solar System were taken apart to build this ringworld. The stations use molecular assemblers to take apart objects, transmit the information on the molecular structures taken apart through the wormhole and another station at the other end uses that information to reconstruct the object taken apart. Living objects are put into a state of suspended animation before this disassembly process takes place, are reassembled in a state if suspended animation at the other end, and then the living creature is taken out of suspended animation and revived. The station are located at 50 AU from the center of the Sun, their orbital inclination is at 0 degrees from the ecliptic and their orbits are circular

Ringworld characteristics
Radius: 93,000,000 miles, 149,668,992 kilometers
Width: 1,000,000 miles, 1,609,344 kilometers
Tangential Velocity: 751 miles per second, 1,209 kilometers per second
Angular Velocity: 0.000462825 degrees per second
1 ringworld rotation takes 9.005527099 days
Centripetal Acceleration 0.995864136 times Earth gravity
Time it takes to travel 50 AU at tangential velocity: 71.66 days
It takes to accelerate to tangential velocity 1.43 days with an average speed of 2,175,511 kilometers per hour
at an acceleration of 1 g over a distance of 74,452,390 kilometers.

As you can see, the ringworld spins at a high rate to achieve 1 g of centripetal acceleration.
To reach 1,209 kilometers per second, it would require a linear acceleration of 1 g over 1.43 days, over a distance of 74,452,390 kilometers. This would be a good reason to locate the station and track at about 50 AU from the center of the Sun. A linear accelerator accelerates a ship with a maximum Hull displacement of 2000 tons at 1 g for 1.43 days or 34 hours. So passengers accelerate for 1.43 days and coast for 71.66 days, a little orbital maneuvering along the way brings the spaceship on a tangential intercept velocity that matches the tangential velocity of the ring world, it then becomes possible to drop down through the ringworld atmosphere and land on the ringworld floor.

To go back to the station, it is necessary to fly over the ringworld wall, a height of 1,000 miles or 1,609 kilometers and drop over the edge of the wall, if you time it right, you will be on an intercept velocity with the accelerator track, but this time you'll be decelerating along the track for 1.43 days after a 71.66 day journey. You decelerate over the 74,453,390 kilometer long track and then dock with the station, and arrange to be transmitted via molecular assemblers through the wormhole and then be reconstructed on the 21st/22nd century side of the wormhole.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

A few things are different from Niven's ringworld, that I think I'll mention here:
1) Its around our Sun about a million years in the future, not another star as in Niven's, therefore it is a G2 V type star about as bright as our Sun is, now.

2) There are 365 shadow squares in the approximate orbit of Venus, the planets are cleared out so this is not a problem. Also the shadow squares aren't really square, they have 4 sides, two of them are parallel, the other two are not, so they can be called Rhombuses. Each shadow square covers a night in a 365 day year, some are narrower towards the north and wider towards the south these are the "summer shadow squares" they provide for longer days at the northern end of the ringworld, and longer nights towards the southern end of the ringworld, also the spaces between the shadow squares aren't quite empty, that is the sunlight reaching the ringworld surface is filtered especially towards the North and South, towards the middle not hardly at all. Some shadow squares are wider towards the north and narrower towards the south, these are the northern winter shadow squares. The spring and autumn shadow squares are more square prividing more equal amounts of day and night. Every time the ringworld makes a complete rotation, the shadow square ring makes a less than complete rotation by 9 shadow squares, different shape shadow squares provide for seasons, otherwise there wouldn't be any.

 

[simonh]

What kind of adventures do you imaging playing in this setting? Who are the characters and what are their objectives? Who are the NPCs, what are their goals and what kinds of conflicts do you expect to play out?

Simon Hibbs

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

What kind of adventures do you imaging playing in this setting? Who are the characters and what are their objectives? Who are the NPCs, what are their goals and what kinds of conflicts do you expect to play out?

Simon Hibbs

The setting is an add on to Orbital, one of the things about orbital is that there is no Jump Drive, not artificial gravity aside from spin gravity by centrifugal force or acceleration by rocket, basically it is the physics as we know it to be. Now when the Solar System is your whole entire setting, the interaction is between humans or humans and robots, or between humans and perhaps genetically engineered creatures or augmented humans etc, and a few references to alien artifacts which may change the setting. I've done some reading, and there are physicists that think wormholes may have been created in the Big Bang and that there still might be some around today, under certain circumstances, these wormholes may become time machines. So my assumption here is that "quick and easy" FTL drives never become possible, instead Societies build big dumb structures like this ringworld more more commonly Mastroika brain around stars, because these beings are all electronic, the ringworld they built here was for flesh and blood humans, which at about this time were extinct, until the wormhole dating back to the Big Bang was found and opened up a door to their past. The wormhole was tiny, but large enough to allow passage of nanotech devices through and to allow communication into their past. These beings studied the ancient Earth and compared it with their historical records, through their various probes, they have been able to take samples of the life there, because in their history, they had already taken apart the Earth and other planets to build other things on a system wide scale. They build two stations around the wormhole, one on each side, and placed the stations and wormhole at the edge of the Solar System, at a distance of 50 AU from each star. And then they just stood back and waited, their role is that of observers. The moment the space stations and wormhole is discovered by the flesh and blood humans the timeline that leads to the electronic successors to humans changes, but the wormhole continues to connect both realities, one is at 2100 AD the other at around 1002100 AD in another timeline, one where there was not a wormhole discovered in 2100 AD.

Now for adventure ideas
1) There is the discovery of the wormhole stations, there are nanotech devices within the station itself on the 2100 AD side of the worhole, there are docking ports that will adapt to whatever docking devices are on the PC's ship. I expect that the station on this side of the wormhole is a sphere 1 km in radius, the wormhole at the center of the sphere provides 1 g of gravity at the sphere's surface, so basically the PC's are going to have to land on it if they want to dock with it. There are some rooms which have an environment capable of supporting human life, there are even some food processors, that assemble food out of atoms using nanotech devices, there are other facilities including a fresher and staterooms to sleep in, and of course the low berths. If a human or other creature uses the low berths, they go into a state of suspended animation and then are disassembled by nanites, their information is sent through the wormhole and reassembled at another set of low berths at the other station on the 1002100 AD side of the wormhole. This station is spherical as well, but attached to it are two enormous launch tubes, each one one half of an astronomical unit long, one is aimed at the leading edge of the ringworld, where it is spinning toward the station, the other is aimed at the trailing edge of the station, where the ringworld is spinning away from the station. The leading edge launch tube receives capsules released from the ring world, the trailing edge launch tube sends capsules to the Ringworld. When the capsules arrive at the ringworld, their velocity matches the spin velocity of the ring world, some rockets effect a landing on the ringworld itself. The immediate area at the bottom of the rim walls has arctic conditions, traveling some distance away from those walls will lead to warmer climates with seasons.

Now as for setting up adventures I suppose there are individuals who may want to profit from this discovery. There maybe people already living on the ringworld that were transported there by the "Ancients", there are societies there which may come into conflict with the settlers from the Solar System, There are rival corporations which may try to exploit this setting. The "Ancients" do not interfere at all, to them the ringworld is like a petri dish displaying ancient life they have long outgrown and evolved out of, but they have a chance to study the doings of various human societies and see how history plays out differently under this environment, but otherwise they have nothing to say and do not interfere. The devices on board the stations are self-repairing, they do not operate off the stations and will not replicate off the stations. The humans are unable as of yet to build devices like them.

Someone controls the stations, and does not play favorites between the interested parties on board the stations, maybe it is the same electronic beings that built the ringworld, but they will not allow conflict onboard the station, those nanites are everywhere on board and they see to that, once passed through everyone is on their own, and humanity is allowed to continue the usual way through wars and such. It is basically a setting or a canvas upon which human action occurs.

I am good at imagining the setting, setting up actual adventures, I can use a little help on. Do you have any ideas about that?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

A few other ideas:

The civilization which built the ringworld has access to a wormhole which reaches 1 million years into the past, they can shorten that reach into the past using Einsteinian relativity, they can't reach further back into the past than it already is, but the wormhole itself may have begun with a greater time differential than what it is at present, thus they had access to a good portion of Earth's history and prehistory, and they may have put things on the ringworld's surface from those times.