The Smoke Ring

F33D said:
Tom Kalbfus said:
a science fiction writer thinks it would work, you should take it up with him.

Larry Niven is a successful writer, he sold a lot of books, seems to me that if the idea can work for a series of novels it could also work for a role playing game.

Actually, Larry doesn't believe it would work in the real world. :lol: He lived down the road from me and we frequented the same small rare books store. Fascinating guy to talk to.
Still, good enough to sell books, good enough to play the game. I don't have to explain to you how the Jump Drive works or how artificial gravity works, do I? Maybe you could talk to Larry Niven about my double-sided ringworld around a white dwarf idea, since you know him. I figure there is more than one way to skin a cat. No one is anywhere close to building these things anyway, so all we are doing is blowing smoke past each other. I'll let the future be the judge of who was right and who was wrong. One can go too far with hard science fiction after all, you just have to be hard enough to convince the reader that it could happen, rather than pull magic hyperdrives and artificial gravity out of your hat. I like my science fiction with a bit more rigor than a light saber, though not to the point where you can actually design and build something in the real world. For instance lets say we have a spaceship that is powered by a fusion torch drive, and then someone raises an objection: "But how do you contain the plasma?" I just shrug my shoulders and say, "Gee, we haven't solved that problem, if I had, I'd file a patent and be a rich man!"
 
Tom Kalbfus said:
Actually propeller driven aircraft is much lower tech than you think.
On most Traveller scales a practical airscrew is going to require about TL2 and an environment that actually allows experimentation. The Smoke Ring qualifies as the latter, certainly. The problem, which you spelled out in your very first post, is DISTANCE.

It is generally accepted that a prop-driven aircraft cannot exceed about Mach 0.85 for several reasons, and that is with TL7 materials and engines. At lower tech, with lesser materials and motive power, the attainable speeds will be lower. With no internal combustion available, that's going to be a LOT lower.

If we assume 40kph, which is really hauling on muscle power (current record is around 30kph), travel even to the trojan rocks from near Gold is approaching generational.

and if you wanted to travel spinward, you'd point your aircraft antispinward in order to slow down, as you slowed down you'd fall towards Voy and pick up speed at a lower faster orbit, the winds at the lower altitude would carry you around the neutron star at a faster rate, that those at higher levels in the smoke ring, and this can be quite fast. Generally, you go lower to go faster and higher to go slower, and the various air currents are in orbit with you, so there is no relative wind.

That's another problem. No relative wind also means no relative motion compared to the other things that feel no wind.

But scale really defeats it all at primitive speeds.

You really need to think of a smoke ring like an asteroid belt: an environment far, FAR larger than a planet, with a little speck of human infection in one small spot.
 
GypsyComet said:
Tom Kalbfus said:
Actually propeller driven aircraft is much lower tech than you think.
On most Traveller scales a practical airscrew is going to require about TL2 and an environment that actually allows experimentation. The Smoke Ring qualifies as the latter, certainly. The problem, which you spelled out in your very first post, is DISTANCE.

It is generally accepted that a prop-driven aircraft cannot exceed about Mach 0.85 for several reasons, and that is with TL7 materials and engines. At lower tech, with lesser materials and motive power, the attainable speeds will be lower. With no internal combustion available, that's going to be a LOT lower.

If we assume 40kph, which is really hauling on muscle power (current record is around 30kph), travel even to the trojan rocks from near Gold is approaching generational.

and if you wanted to travel spinward, you'd point your aircraft antispinward in order to slow down, as you slowed down you'd fall towards Voy and pick up speed at a lower faster orbit, the winds at the lower altitude would carry you around the neutron star at a faster rate, that those at higher levels in the smoke ring, and this can be quite fast. Generally, you go lower to go faster and higher to go slower, and the various air currents are in orbit with you, so there is no relative wind.

That's another problem. No relative wind also means no relative motion compared to the other things that feel no wind.

But scale really defeats it all at primitive speeds.

You really need to think of a smoke ring like an asteroid belt: an environment far, FAR larger than a planet, with a little speck of human infection in one small spot.
I'm trying to explain to you, that you travel down to go fast and up to go slow, and by down, I mean towards the neutron star. The winds all travel in orbit around the star. And the orbits are all circular. Lets take an integral tree as an example, at the lower extremity, the wind is whipping by in the spinward direction, and you feel a one fifth downward pull on you due to gravity. If you jump off the Integral tree end, you fall for a little while, you feel the wind for a bit, but then you match the speed of that wind and you leave the integral tree behind. One could pedal a prop or even swim through the air with fan-flippers attached to your legs and arms, and as you pushed yourself against the rotation of the smoke ring, you would find yourself drawing closer to voy, the closer you got to voy, the faster you would travel, not relative to the air around you, but relative to the things you left behind. It really is not necessary to go at supersonic speeds relative to the winds, because if you did, you would not be in orbit, and if you did not generate lift while doing so, you would fall into a lower orbit, you turn off the engines and your craft would slow down again, but you would maintain your velocity relative to what you left behind and above you. You would not feel and "up" "down" of course, because you are weightless, of course the parts of your body that are closer to voy would be pulled more than those parts further way.

Okay, lets say you are in the Smoke ring at an orbital radius of 456,327 km
Using the circular orbit simulator:
http://orbitsimulator.com/formulas/vcirc.html
the mass of Voy is one half that of the Sun
Orbital velocity is 381.3344604167824 km/sec
If that pedal copter reduces the radius by 1 km to 456,326 km the orbital velocity is now
381.33487824773163 km/sec
reduce the radius to 456,316 km and the orbital velocity is
381.33905663276596 km/sec, this is an increase in velocity by 5 meters per second
reduce the radius to 456,216 km and the orbital velocity is
381.38084803881867, a difference of 41 meters per second.
Reduce radius by 1000 km to 455,216 and were traveling at
381.7995192051381, a difference of 419 meters per second
Cut the radius by 10,000 km to 445,216 km and we are going at
386.06350975166526 km per second, a difference of 4 km/sec.

For a total circumference of 2,797,375 km, traveling at a rate of 4 km/sec it would take 699,343 seconds to travel a full circle, thus it would take 1943 seconds to travel an entire degree of the circle or 32 minutes. So lets say you started out at 455,216 km and went to 445,216 km radius. Lets say you can manage 60 km/hour to travel 10,000 km, it would take you 7 days to cover the distance, and to travel 180 degrees it would take about 90 hours or 3.75 days, and then another 7 days to get back out to 455,216 km radius for a total of 17 days journey. of course I am ignoring the fact that as you slip closer to voy you are going faster and faster as you reduce your orbital radius, so it should in fact take less than 17 days to travel between any two points in the Smoke Ring if you can manage an airspeed of 60 km/hour which is really a modest velocity achievable by pedal gliders.
 
60kph on a pedal-powered air vehicle is not modest, though. Air props are simply not that good at 0.4 (what a good cyclist can produce for long periods) horsepower and the stated load.

That and your orbital mechanics aside, lets examine a few other issues here.

In summary, the orbital radius change game (we'll call it the "Drop In Express") is likely suicide several times over.

Suicide #1:
Let's look at the second of your examples. 110 kilometers gets you 41 meters per second orbital velocity change. We'll start with your assumption that the air is moving at its radius-appropriate velocity for the moment. That means you have a hurricane's equivalent of air velocity change roughly every 125km. EVERY 125km. Such things are not gradual. Air likes to move together in large masses and allow turbulence around the edges, especially when you have large changes in velocity. See those bands on Jupiter? Those are caused by a similar arrangement of air masses sorting themselves out by velocity. Those little swirls on the edges are giant hurricanes.

If you want a large tranquil Smoke Ring, most of the air has to be moving at very similar orbital velocities. If the air is all moving about the same speed, then the Drop-In Express won't work for low tech types since they would have to leave the air to escape the air's speed.
If the air is moving at a local average orbital velocity with storm cells separating "neighborhoods" of different velocities, you are still asking a TL2 primitive to fly into a hurricane. For that 10,000km drop, you are asking for 80 hurricanes. Each way. On a flycycle built of wood.

Suicide #2:
Assuming you get the Drop-In Express to work, the only visual references your intrepid traveller has are Voy and Gold. Get very far around the Ring from Gold and you don't even have that.

Before you is a random segment of the Smoke Ring. Which segment might it be? Unless Gold is present (and remember, it goes zipping by only once in 8 to 10 days), you have to guess based on the amount of time since it vanished behind Voy (or just into the mists inherent in thousands of miles of AIR. You didn't think you could see through an infinite amount of air, did you? (Especially with all those hurricanes.) You get to guess. And you are TL2, so that radio and GPS you wish you had are strangely absent from your wooden dashboard, below the non-existent glass wind screen you wished you had possessed for the hurricanes.

The result is that you are really, totally, lost. Even if you pick the right time to start pedaling back outward, you still have 80 hurricanes to fight through while pedaling 10,000km uphill. The chances of hitting any target smaller than Gold is miniscule.
 
Continued:

Suicide #3 ("This Ain't No Party! This Ain't No Disco! This Ain't No Fooling Around!")
Ask a bicyclist to prepare for a twenty THOUSAND kilometer ride (ie. roughly halfway around Earth) with no civilization, lots of inclement weather, very little hunting, condensing his water from the air around him (except for the 80 hurricanes, during which rain is likely), and only what he can carry. Telling him he can travel at twice his usual speed will not make him laugh less or kick you out of his home slower.

Suicide #4
GOOOOOOLD!
Once you drop in far enough, Gold will start to move relative to you. Big, safe, distant Gold. Wait, it's getting closer. How did a giant planet sneak up on me? Was it hurricane #32?

First, the increased turbulence as the already chaotic airflow in this Smoke Ring moves around it. You thought the hurricanes were bad.
Next, your sleep cycles go nuts because suddenly you have endless darkness instead of light.
Lastly, the gravity of this GAS GIANT grabs you. Distant Voy has nothing on the Gold looking over your shoulder, and this is a hill you won't be able to climb on pedal power.
 
Just to be clear.

The smoke ring is a continuous breathable atmosphere ringing a neutron star, with independent chunks of rocks suspended?
 
GypsyComet said:
60kph on a pedal-powered air vehicle is not modest, though. Air props are simply not that good at 0.4 (what a good cyclist can produce for long periods) horsepower and the stated load.

That and your orbital mechanics aside, lets examine a few other issues here.

In summary, the orbital radius change game (we'll call it the "Drop In Express") is likely suicide several times over.

Suicide #1:
Let's look at the second of your examples. 110 kilometers gets you 41 meters per second orbital velocity change. We'll start with your assumption that the air is moving at its radius-appropriate velocity for the moment. That means you have a hurricane's equivalent of air velocity change roughly every 125km. EVERY 125km. Such things are not gradual. Air likes to move together in large masses and allow turbulence around the edges, especially when you have large changes in velocity. See those bands on Jupiter? Those are caused by a similar arrangement of air masses sorting themselves out by velocity. Those little swirls on the edges are giant hurricanes.

If you want a large tranquil Smoke Ring, most of the air has to be moving at very similar orbital velocities. If the air is all moving about the same speed, then the Drop-In Express won't work for low tech types since they would have to leave the air to escape the air's speed.
If the air is moving at a local average orbital velocity with storm cells separating "neighborhoods" of different velocities, you are still asking a TL2 primitive to fly into a hurricane. For that 10,000km drop, you are asking for 80 hurricanes. Each way. On a flycycle built of wood.

Suicide #2:
Assuming you get the Drop-In Express to work, the only visual references your intrepid traveller has are Voy and Gold. Get very far around the Ring from Gold and you don't even have that.

Before you is a random segment of the Smoke Ring. Which segment might it be? Unless Gold is present (and remember, it goes zipping by only once in 8 to 10 days), you have to guess based on the amount of time since it vanished behind Voy (or just into the mists inherent in thousands of miles of AIR. You didn't think you could see through an infinite amount of air, did you? (Especially with all those hurricanes.) You get to guess. And you are TL2, so that radio and GPS you wish you had are strangely absent from your wooden dashboard, below the non-existent glass wind screen you wished you had possessed for the hurricanes.

The result is that you are really, totally, lost. Even if you pick the right time to start pedaling back outward, you still have 80 hurricanes to fight through while pedaling 10,000km uphill. The chances of hitting any target smaller than Gold is miniscule.
Another way to go is by hot air balloon, you know there is a slight bit of gravity here, A hot air balloon maintains the air pressure while reducing the density, such a balloon will tend to migrate to a region where its internal density matches the density of the air surrounding it. So a Hot air Balloon will go either up or down towards voy until the internal and external pressure is equalized. Same thing applies for hydrogen and helium balloons, there is plenty of water for making hydrogen. the thing about balloons is that you don't need to pedal, the balloon will ascend or descend depending on where you are to start, and then the air currents will take you there. Now if you want to move towards the middle, you can fill your balloon with carbon-dioxide. At higher tech levels you could have a solar powered prop engine, there is no need to maintain lift, so the props don't have to move continuously, and unlike a pedal plane, if you stop pedaling here, your aircraft won't crash.
 
GypsyComet said:
Continued:

Suicide #3 ("This Ain't No Party! This Ain't No Disco! This Ain't No Fooling Around!")
Ask a bicyclist to prepare for a twenty THOUSAND kilometer ride (ie. roughly halfway around Earth) with no civilization, lots of inclement weather, very little hunting, condensing his water from the air around him (except for the 80 hurricanes, during which rain is likely), and only what he can carry. Telling him he can travel at twice his usual speed will not make him laugh less or kick you out of his home slower.
You assume the bicyclist can't stop. Why not? Since we're in a near zero-gee environment, it the bicyclist stops pedalling the aircraft simply drifts with the layer of air he is in, the pedaling simply causes him to ascend or descend, if he stops pedaling, he stops ascending or descending, that is all.
Suicide #4
GOOOOOOLD!
Once you drop in far enough, Gold will start to move relative to you. Big, safe, distant Gold. Wait, it's getting closer. How did a giant planet sneak up on me? Was it hurricane #32?

First, the increased turbulence as the already chaotic airflow in this Smoke Ring moves around it. You thought the hurricanes were bad.
Next, your sleep cycles go nuts because suddenly you have endless darkness instead of light.
Lastly, the gravity of this GAS GIANT grabs you. Distant Voy has nothing on the Gold looking over your shoulder, and this is a hill you won't be able to climb on pedal power.
A hot air balloon would work though, and be more effective the stronger the gravity that it encounters.
 
GypsyComet said:
60kph on a pedal-powered air vehicle is not modest, though. Air props are simply not that good at 0.4 (what a good cyclist can produce for long periods) horsepower and the stated load.

That and your orbital mechanics aside, lets examine a few other issues here.

In summary, the orbital radius change game (we'll call it the "Drop In Express") is likely suicide several times over.
Excellent points, it's clear that TL 2 pretty much leaves humans in a small area, likely no more than maybe a few thousand km along the ring and within the boundaries of their storm cell (and likely other groups of mostly isolated humans in adjacent storm cell bands). I can even see sturdily built large, enclosed (but obviously not airtight) vessels, powered by a dozen or more people peddling, which were designed for long distance transport and (for the truly daring &/or desperate) reaching the neighboring storm cell band - at which point repairs and refitting are in order. Basically, you've got something like the age of sail, but with the severe disadvantage of far less in the way of useful navigation. I'm seeing the basic design for a long range ship looking like a submarine with a large propeller and wings or long fins for steering.

What I think is interesting is considering slightly higher tech options:

At TL 3-4, you've got steamships - they are limited by fuel, but you can gather it from integral trees. Also, if you have access to metal (maybe there are actual asteroids in the ring - that would be immensely handy and from my PoV far more interesting). At that point, you've got all the iron you need and a steamship would be faster (maybe even something like 100 kph), and with a metal hull, reinforced glass windows, and suchlike could handle travel between storm cell bands with moderate safety. Humanity would still be localized, but could expand gradually. TL 4 gets you radio, which would be handy, but also quite short range at that point.

At TL 5, the ships will be sturdier and faster. Local ships would likely be alcohol powered gas turbines and would hit 300-500 kph, but long distance ships would still be wood powered, since you'd need that for wilderness refueling. You'd also have long range radio navigation broadcasts, which wouldn't help for trips of millions of km, but definitely would keep anyone going 100,000 km or less knowing where they were going.

Things change at TL 6 - since (assuming you can find some radioactives in the asteroids) you've got fission and can make the smoke ring equivalent of a nuclear submarine. You'd have a sturdy metal hull, a power source that lasts for years, extremely accurate time keeping and basic inertial navigation. At this point, humanity could actually safely manage traveling through 8 storm cell rings and circumnavigating the smoke ring. I'd expect ship speeds for these nuclear ships on the order of 700-1,000 kph. I'd also assume that at TL 6 you'd start manufacturing automated radio beacons powered by solar cells and positioning them at both trojan points to provide better navigation.

Anything above TL 6 just makes travel a bit easier and faster, but anyone at Tl 6 or higher could basically colonize the entire smoke ring and keep colonies millions of km apart in regular contact with one another.
 
The thing to remember is "geography" is as changeable as the weather, It would be very hard to have nations if all the objects in the smoke ring keep blowing around in relation to each other. I think the social organization will remain tribal, basically each object, whether tree or rock or forest would have its own government or be contested between multiple governments or tribes. Asteroids probably won't get much bigger than a kilometer on its long axis, longer than that and it will get broken apart by tidal forces, so basically we are talking about the Polynesian model of colonization, with the added factor that the "islands" get new neighbors all the time. It really doesn't make much sense for the natives of one "island" (forest covered asteroid or integral tree) to try an conquer another "island" unless they intend to move from one island to another. I think the more primitive tribes would tend to use either stone tools and weapons or substitute silver for bronze, due to the higher availability of precious metals. Societies that advance to tech level 4 to 5 would tend to use silver wires to carry electrical current instead of copper, due to silver's superior conductive properties. Gold would be a medium of exchange with each 50 gram gold coin being locally the equivalent of a Imperial credit of course out of system the gold would be worth much more. The asteroids contain uranium ore, which could be used in atomic reactors. Tech level 6+ societies might build atomic bombs, the only problem is that it would be hard to achieve an economy of scale to support full industrialization, because it would be hard for a society to occupy more than a single asteroid or tree. A city might be built on an asteroid, but the trading relationships with neighboring rocks and trees would be constantly changing, because of the constantly changing positions of the various objects in the smoke ring. Since the stars are not visible and the objects constantly move it would be hard to set out towards a particular destination that was not visible through naked eyesight, telescope, or binoculars. With the advent of radio, it may be possible for objects at the Gold Trojan points to stay in contact with each other. The maximum distance within the smoke ring is about one million kilometers between objects at opposite ends of the smoke ring, radio communication is possible, but a powerful transmitter would be required, it is hard to see a 1 km wide asteroid or integral tree at the opposite end of the smoke ring, so radio broadcasts would have to be omnidirectional, since one does not know where to point one's radio antenna, though perhaps a homing beacon could be used to give direction and a dish antenna can then focus on that direction and provide higher bandwidth. There would be a maximum 6 second round trip delay in communication over the electromagnetic spectrum. The smoke ring is likely to be broken up in a number of freely orbiting city states, which would be hard to organize as a single world state. If there is a starport here, it would likely be on one of the larger rock islands and it would have a ledge of shelf for landing spaceships. Since there is plenty of gold here to buy high tech items, the starport would likely be a class A starport within the atmospheric envelop, and having artificial gravity generators buried under the surface to provide Earth-normal gravity for travelers.
 
Tom Kalbfus said:
The thing to remember is "geography" is as changeable as the weather, It would be very hard to have nations if all the objects in the smoke ring keep blowing around in relation to each other. I think the social organization will remain tribal, basically each object, whether tree or rock or forest would have its own government or be contested between multiple governments or tribes. Asteroids probably won't get much bigger than a kilometer on its long axis, longer than that and it will get broken apart by tidal forces, so basically we are talking about the Polynesian model of colonization, with the added factor that the "islands" get new neighbors all the time.
Once you hit TL 6 or perhaps more likely 7, I can see moving asteroids and tethering them together on short tethers (a few km long) - if an integral tree can be up to 100 km long, then mid 20th century equivalent materials should be able to make cables capable of working over 10-20 km distances. At that point, you can create networks of asteroids cabled together. Moving an asteroid into position for this would likely be accomplished using some combination of huge sails, powerful motors, and perhaps shaped explosions, none of which would be easy (and asteroids would be moved both very slowly and not very far), but likely no more difficult that similarly massive projects like building the Hoover Dam. Then, once two asteroids are in position, they could cable them together.
 
heron61 said:
Tom Kalbfus said:
The thing to remember is "geography" is as changeable as the weather, It would be very hard to have nations if all the objects in the smoke ring keep blowing around in relation to each other. I think the social organization will remain tribal, basically each object, whether tree or rock or forest would have its own government or be contested between multiple governments or tribes. Asteroids probably won't get much bigger than a kilometer on its long axis, longer than that and it will get broken apart by tidal forces, so basically we are talking about the Polynesian model of colonization, with the added factor that the "islands" get new neighbors all the time.
Once you hit TL 6 or perhaps more likely 7, I can see moving asteroids and tethering them together on short tethers (a few km long) - if an integral tree can be up to 100 km long, then mid 20th century equivalent materials should be able to make cables capable of working over 10-20 km distances. At that point, you can create networks of asteroids cabled together. Moving an asteroid into position for this would likely be accomplished using some combination of huge sails, powerful motors, and perhaps shaped explosions, none of which would be easy (and asteroids would be moved both very slowly and not very far), but likely no more difficult that similarly massive projects like building the Hoover Dam. Then, once two asteroids are in position, they could cable them together.
But then maybe these societies like being independent, and tethering them together would likely change the orientation. Now imagine if a would be "Alexander" wanted to conquer this world with his army, and part of that involved tethering a whole bunch of trees and rocks together, meanwhile some rebels that don't want to be a part of his "Empire" decide to come out with axes and start chopping at the tethers so their colony can break free. You see the local rulers might not want to give up power either and become part of someone else's empire. A lot of this empire building is motivate by people wanting to accumulate power, and its very frustrating to such people to have their potential conquests floating about in their own independent orbits where they can't control them, and trying to tie all their conquests together becomes unwieldy. There is nothing in it for these people being conquered either. The fact that the geography isn't fixed means they don't have to worry about invaders and would be "Alexanders" and "Caesars" trying to build their empires and collect tribute and taxes. At worst their is the local equivalent of pirates raiding communities to steal stuff, but permanent occupation requires physical tethering, ad what is tethered can also be untethered, cutting the cord might mean savings on taxes to his "Imperial Majesty!" Some people like their communities small and their governments close, they might like to know their leaders on a first name basis and for their leaders to know them. There is also less opportunity for tyranny on a small scale, and less likely to be sustainable class divisions. In a community of 1000, where 500 of them are slaves, the slaves could always overthrow the masters, and their would be no one to call for help to put down the slave revolt. Of course the conquerors could come from off-world, that is the most likely scenario. These off-worlders wan to conquer the Smoke Ring, and they are encountering all sorts of problems, too many tribes and communities in free orbit, of course their starships are more than a match for any single one of them, but mass slaughter isn't profitable, they wish to enslave or exploit, and dead people don't do any work!
 
Looks like I just stumbled on a potential adventure plot:
Lets say a group of pirates "discover" the smoke ring. There were people who came before, but the pirates were the first ones to discover it and also have starships with them so they could return to the OTU, and what they discovered in the Smoke Ring was tribes of humans and asteroids with veins of gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals. Guess what happens next? The pirates aren't miners, a few of them are ex-belters, so they know the trade, but mining is hard work, and they don't like to do it themselves. Fortunately the Smoke Ring comes with its own labor force, and the habitable environment reduces the costs of mining the ore, and so long as none of the inhabitants can get off the smoke ring, the pirates can keep their mining operation a secret, so basically they enslave the inhabitant and force them to mine for gold and other precious metals, that they can sell. So naturally the PCs arrive in their scout ship, and they think they are the first ones to discover it, a Pirate base is here. The pirates also hope to make their mining operation legit at some point in the future so they have secretly constructed a Class A starport, and then they would approach the OTU community as their own interstellar nation hopefully with an interstellar navy of their own. These Pirate with their pilfered gold have bought the components of this star port from out of system and have used their trained native slave labor to put the parts together, and when they are ready they will declare themselves as a World Government, and might even join the Imperium. Of course when the PCs arrive in their scout ship, they are not ready to do this yet. The starport has been constructed, but the pirates haven't built their Navy yet, and the PCs reporting this would spoil their plans.
 
Tom Kalbfus said:
F33D said:
Tom Kalbfus said:
a science fiction writer thinks it would work, you should take it up with him.

Larry Niven is a successful writer, he sold a lot of books, seems to me that if the idea can work for a series of novels it could also work for a role playing game.

Actually, Larry doesn't believe it would work in the real world. :lol: He lived down the road from me and we frequented the same small rare books store. Fascinating guy to talk to.

Still, good enough to sell books, good enough to play the game.

I never said it wasn't. (I love his fiction) I was just correcting your wrong information about the book & author.
 
Tom Kalbfus said:
But then maybe these societies like being independent, and tethering them together would likely change the orientation.
Sure, but cities are useful, especially for industrialed societies. Of course, one interesting option might not be tethering inhabited asteroids together, but the inhabitants of a large and relatively advanced and prosperous asteroid might send large ships out to grab portions of trees, 100 m diameter rocks, and other difficult by possible to move items, bring them home. Then, the people use these objects to expand their settlement by manufacturing an arrangement of platforms and tethers. That way, you could eventually manage a settlement with a population of 10s of thousands of inhabitants, which is awesome for manufacturing (economies of scale), specialization, advanced education, and of course, defense from raiders.
 
heron61 said:
Tom Kalbfus said:
But then maybe these societies like being independent, and tethering them together would likely change the orientation.
Sure, but cities are useful, especially for industrialed societies. Of course, one interesting option might not be tethering inhabited asteroids together, but the inhabitants of a large and relatively advanced and prosperous asteroid might send large ships out to grab portions of trees, 100 m diameter rocks, and other difficult by possible to move items, bring them home. Then, the people use these objects to expand their settlement by manufacturing an arrangement of platforms and tethers. That way, you could eventually manage a settlement with a population of 10s of thousands of inhabitants, which is awesome for manufacturing (economies of scale), specialization, advanced education, and of course, defense from raiders.
What I have in mind is the space pirates advanced one particular settlement to tech level 5, this turns out to be a city with an allied chieftain, or a king thanks to the help of the pirates, this society has conquered a number of surrounding societies, and has enslaved them, forcing them to mine for gold and other precious metals, the Pirates then take the gold and gift the local chieftan with high tech items, the inhabitants of this city have advanced to a native tech level of 5, many of the inhabitants are spies for other tribes, the chieftain has been pretty tyrannical and unpopular with the local citizens, chiefly ruling by fear through the various high tech weapons the pirates have given him, he has a guard that is armed with laser rifles. The Pirates have been careful not to supply anyone with any starships, lest the natives escape and tell the larger universe about what is going on here. The Pirates are at the moment trying to build up to a point where they can rule this system and keep out challengers that might want a piece of the gold mining action, they aren't there yet. The setting, I think has a sort of Flash Gordon feel to it, as in the movie, there are rebels, a tyrant, and a bunch of pirates trying to profit from the whole operation. If the PCs make the right move, they could topple the whole thing! One thing I haven't mentioned are flying beasts, there are huge ones native to the smoke ring called "Air Whales", they are about the size of terrestrial whales, with large wing-flippers for propelling themselves through the air, and some of the natives have domesticated them and ride them through the air! Spaceships are other aircraft have to be careful in the midpoint of the ring, that area of maximum air pressure (equivalent to sea level on Earth) this is where most of the asteroids, bodies of water, integral trees, and everything else they might crash into are, and space is far away. Starships can't jump from within the smoke ring. Ships move at their nap of the Earth movement rates Further out and inward the airspace is less cluttered and faster travel is possible.

My entry for this system can be found here: http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=104820&p=866914#p866914
The stats, which I repeat here is as follows:
Name: The Smoke Ring
Hex #: 1120
UWP: AX6X87X-5
Starport: A - Excellent Facilities
Size: X = 693 (1,108,000 km diameter of breathable air, Inner radius 358,000 km (5-Thin), Trace atm. inner radius 260,000 km, Trace atm. outer radius 850,000 km.)
Atmosphere: 6 – Standard (at maximum air pressure zone)
Hydrographics: X = Undefined (Smoke Ring has no surface, it is a ring of breathable gases)
Population: 8-9 - Estimated Hundreds of millions to billions (Has not been thoroughly surveyed by pirates)
Government: 7 - Balkanization down to tribal level
Law Level: X = Law Level Varies usually less that 4
Tech Level: 5 - Early 20th century in native manufacturing (Though higher tech levels are imported)
Bases: None
Trade Classification: Asteroid Belt, Garden World
Zone: Green
Population: 100 million to 999 million
Planetoid Belts: 1
Gas Giants: 1, 1 small
Allegiance: None
Stellar Data: Binary - Neutron Star (0.5 Solar Masses), F9 V (1.2 Solar Masses)
 
Tom Kalbfus said:
What I have in mind is the space pirates advanced one particular settlement to tech level 5, this turns out to be a city with an allied chieftain, or a king thanks to the help of the pirates, this society has conquered a number of surrounding societies, and has enslaved them, forcing them to mine for gold and other precious metals, the Pirates then take the gold and gift the local chieftan with high tech items, the inhabitants of this city have advanced to a native tech level of 5, many of the inhabitants are spies for other tribes, the chieftain has been pretty tyrannical and unpopular with the local citizens, chiefly ruling by fear through the various high tech weapons the pirates have given him, he has a guard that is armed with laser rifles. The Pirates have been careful not to supply anyone with any starships, lest the natives escape and tell the larger universe about what is going on here. The Pirates are at the moment trying to build up to a point where they can rule this system and keep out challengers that might want a piece of the gold mining action, they aren't there yet. The setting, I think has a sort of Flash Gordon feel to it, as in the movie, there are rebels, a tyrant, and a bunch of pirates trying to profit from the whole operation. If the PCs make the right move, they could topple the whole thing! One thing I haven't mentioned are flying beasts, there are huge ones native to the smoke ring called "Air Whales", they are about the size of terrestrial whales, with large wing-flippers for propelling themselves through the air, and some of the natives have domesticated them and ride them through the air! Spaceships are other aircraft have to be careful in the midpoint of the ring, that area of maximum air pressure (equivalent to sea level on Earth) this is where most of the asteroids, bodies of water, integral trees, and everything else they might crash into are, and space is far away. Starships can't jump from within the smoke ring. Ships move at their nap of the Earth movement rates Further out and inward the airspace is less cluttered and faster travel is possible.
That's an awesome setting. I have also thought a bit about TL 5 vehicles. You can make bio-oil from pyrolosis, presumably using wood as both feedstock and fuel for the pyrolysis, since bio-oil is a better fuel than wood, especially unseasoned, freshly harvested wood. Stick that in a diesel engine, and you've got yourself something that looks somewhere between a winged submarine and a very sturdily built, short-winged airplane (it's sturdy to deal with transitions between air cells and the hurricane force wind boundaries and the wings are for steering), with large propellers and machine guns and small solid fuel rockets or large guns for weaponry. They'd have radio for communication and radio beacons for navigation (at at absolute minimum, you could find your way home using a directional antenna). So, basically, a sort of diesel-punk smoke ring, where the crew are dodging airwhales, trading with or battling TL 1-2 barbarians, and attempting to defeat (and steal tech from) the high tech space pirates. Very cool.
 
heron61 said:
Tom Kalbfus said:
What I have in mind is the space pirates advanced one particular settlement to tech level 5, this turns out to be a city with an allied chieftain, or a king thanks to the help of the pirates, this society has conquered a number of surrounding societies, and has enslaved them, forcing them to mine for gold and other precious metals, the Pirates then take the gold and gift the local chieftan with high tech items, the inhabitants of this city have advanced to a native tech level of 5, many of the inhabitants are spies for other tribes, the chieftain has been pretty tyrannical and unpopular with the local citizens, chiefly ruling by fear through the various high tech weapons the pirates have given him, he has a guard that is armed with laser rifles. The Pirates have been careful not to supply anyone with any starships, lest the natives escape and tell the larger universe about what is going on here. The Pirates are at the moment trying to build up to a point where they can rule this system and keep out challengers that might want a piece of the gold mining action, they aren't there yet. The setting, I think has a sort of Flash Gordon feel to it, as in the movie, there are rebels, a tyrant, and a bunch of pirates trying to profit from the whole operation. If the PCs make the right move, they could topple the whole thing! One thing I haven't mentioned are flying beasts, there are huge ones native to the smoke ring called "Air Whales", they are about the size of terrestrial whales, with large wing-flippers for propelling themselves through the air, and some of the natives have domesticated them and ride them through the air! Spaceships are other aircraft have to be careful in the midpoint of the ring, that area of maximum air pressure (equivalent to sea level on Earth) this is where most of the asteroids, bodies of water, integral trees, and everything else they might crash into are, and space is far away. Starships can't jump from within the smoke ring. Ships move at their nap of the Earth movement rates Further out and inward the airspace is less cluttered and faster travel is possible.
That's an awesome setting. I have also thought a bit about TL 5 vehicles. You can make bio-oil from pyrolosis, presumably using wood as both feedstock and fuel for the pyrolysis, since bio-oil is a better fuel than wood, especially unseasoned, freshly harvested wood. Stick that in a diesel engine, and you've got yourself something that looks somewhere between a winged submarine and a very sturdily built, short-winged airplane (it's sturdy to deal with transitions between air cells and the hurricane force wind boundaries and the wings are for steering), with large propellers and machine guns and small solid fuel rockets or large guns for weaponry. They'd have radio for communication and radio beacons for navigation (at at absolute minimum, you could find your way home using a directional antenna). So, basically, a sort of diesel-punk smoke ring, where the crew are dodging airwhales, trading with or battling TL 1-2 barbarians, and attempting to defeat (and steal tech from) the high tech space pirates. Very cool.
There could be fossil fuels in the asteroids. One has to consider the asteroids have been here for a long time, there is microgravity enough to hold onto soil and plants can grow in the soil, including trees. When the plant matter dies it gets buried under a layer of soil, much as on Earth, in the absence of oxygen, the plant matter fossilizes and becomes coal. Some of the asteroids have lakes, plant matter deposits become buried and over time turn to oil. Think of the asteroids as flying mountains with coal and oil deposits. Air friction keeps the collisions as low velocity impacts, the rocks bounce off of each other instead of smashing into one another. Pretty much most of the objects tend to move in the same direction as the wind, and any collisions between them are more like the Titanic hitting an iceberg rather that meteor impacts in space.
 
Tom Kalbfus said:
There could be fossil fuels in the asteroids. One has to consider the asteroids have been here for a long time, there is microgravity enough to hold onto soil and plants can grow in the soil, including trees. When the plant matter dies it gets buried under a layer of soil, much as on Earth, in the absence of oxygen, the plant matter fossilizes and becomes coal. Some of the asteroids have lakes, plant matter deposits become buried and over time turn to oil. Think of the asteroids as flying mountains with coal and oil deposits. Air friction keeps the collisions as low velocity impacts, the rocks bounce off of each other instead of smashing into one another. Pretty much most of the objects tend to move in the same direction as the wind, and any collisions between them are more like the Titanic hitting an iceberg rather that meteor impacts in space.
You can get both peat and natural gas pockets that way, but if the largest asteroids are only a few kilometers across, then you won't get the pressures or temperatures necessary to create coal or petroleum.
 
Perhaps not. There is solar power and there is wind, the main thing petroleum is needed for is transportation. Transportation in the smoke ring is by air. A car is pretty useless without sufficient gravity to hold it to the surface. Besides propellers, there is balloons. The way balloons work is by being less dense than the surrounding air. Lets say you had a balloon made out of black material to absorb sunlight and convert it to heat, the air inside gets hot and therefore less dense than the air on the outside. The denser air on the outside is going to squeeze more on one side of the balloon than the other, thus the balloon is going to move in the direction of less air density until the air density on the outside equals the air density on the inside.

Now if the balloon is below the layer of maximum air density, the balloon will move downward (towards Voy) until the air density on the inside equals the air density on the outside, and it will move faster in the spinward direction along with air currents to stay in orbit.

If the balloon is above the layer of maximum air density, it will move away from Voy until the air density on the inside equals the air density on the outside, and it will move slower in the spinward direction, but relative to the layer of maximum air density, it will move antispinward.

If you want to drop back towards the layer of maximum air density, then you simple deflate your balloon, and since most objects are denser than air, the slight gravity of the smoke ring will pull objects back into the layer of maximum air density.

Objects will fall very slowly, but eventually they end up at that layer of maximum air density where most of the solid objects reside. Around this are the water clouds, they are composed of water droplets held aloft by air currents, the Troposphere is the breathable portion of the smoke ring. water clouds ranging from rain clouds to cirrus clouds at the very fringes of the smoke ring. Rain appears as a grayish mist, which upon closer inspection is actually rain drops, some of which can be quite large since they fall rather slowly, sometimes ranging in side from that of baseballs to basket balls, and eventually merge into ponds of water several hundred meters wide in some cases, others pool on asteroids and get absorbed by the ground.

Balloons can also move perpendicular to the orbital plane of the smoke ring. Solar heating heats the air on the inside causing the balloons to move toward layers of thinner air. this process of travelling through the smoke ring can take days to a couple of weeks. Unlike in space, the weather and air currents makes the paths of objects unpredictable, without something like radio homing beacons it really is hard to keep track of objects within the smoke ring, so there is less motivation to get somewhere really fast, at jetliner speeds if one doesn't really know where one's destination is.
 
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