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FTL Communication
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Do we or don't we have it in the setting? I'd like to put an "ansible" entry in the glossary if we do.
And I post this seconds before I read the "Interwave" thread. -- Bob --------- ...The President is on the line As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by... 
I'm of the opinion that we have it, though it's not quite as unwieldly as Epsilon's Interwave. Or that the Interwave is just one system out of dozens, all of whom can talk to each other. (How? Blame the Wave Subconscious if you have to. Otherwise don't complain that your cellphone works out in the back of beyond.)---
Mr. Fnord http://fnord.sandwich.net/ http://www.jihad.net/ Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information "I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!" 
Probably by newsgroups, forums, and other means of gossip.
Mind you this may not be due to a Handwavium application as news and gossip (especially bad news) have always travelled FTL. (I think would be a real Kick in the pants to watch 'danelaw raid the various newservices for Handwavium posesion and find nothing wrong. ) In fact I'd say that this would be one area that Hand wavium can not replicate easily. 
One of the reason I made the Inerwave so tricky is because reliable FTL communication woud change the feel of the setting.
At the moment you have a sort of new frontier kind of deal going on. A wild and wooly space where anything goes. Adding FTL communications means that this shrinks the story universe quite a bit. The baisc idea in mind is that you can relay instant transmission between any number of Interwave machines, provided none is more than one AU from the other. This will create a situation that space is much more oganized the closer to the sun you get. The further out you go, the more unreliable communications are going to be. And interstellar communication is going to be... tricky. Of course, I'm not actually a contributing writer. If you want to increase the relay point from one AU to one lightyear or feven more, go ahead. Maybe like Speed Drives the max distance between relays dramatically increases past the Limit. Consider my idea more of a set of ideas, then anything solid. Use what you like, throw out the rest. Though I do like the words Interwave and Wavenet, just so you know. Ansible is never a word I liked. --------------------- Epsilon 
I'm not sure I like the idea of FTL communications in Fenspace, actually... I suppose it's because of the "Napoleonic-era-style space battles" decision we made, but I like the idea of communication being limited to the speed of the fastest ship. That isn't going to happen, with the speed of the fastest ship being 1/10 (or 1/5, if my speedster is accepted) of lightspeed, but I think it's still more in keeping with the feel of the setting to have slower communications than it would be to be able to call home whenever somebody needs a shoulder to cry on.
(That said, if we do decide to put some sort of FTL communications system into the setting, then master-gossip Yoriko will definitely know how to operate it or them... ) -Rob Kelk -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
I was under the impression that ftl communications were possible, but not everyone was capable of pulling it off with equal success. (And different systems probably have thier own advantages and disadvantages, and probably not everything can talk to everything else.) But they seemed to be one of the initial assumed possibilities.
One of the idea fragments I've been playing with is that for some reason Irene has real trouble with ftl communications, so despite Morgan having no trouble downloading whatever-seems-necessary through an ftl relay, Irene can't do much more than voice communications over them. Haven't figured out details or how it might actually affect anything though. -Morgan."I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, or espers here, come sleep with me." ---From "The Ecchi of Haruhi Suzumiya" -----(Not really)
existing communications and broadcasts use radiowaves/lasers/ect as a medium, all of which are basicly lightspeed communication (regardless of how much time is required to send/recieve the data).
FTL communications does not automatically mean realtime conversationsacross galaxies. A com signal that travels twice the speed of light is technically FTL but there's still gonna be a delay in responses if 1 person is at Earth and the other is at Saturn. You'd have to wait hours between each response with normal transmissions (something like 80 minutes each way using the mean distance) Even if the FTL lines were 10xlightspeed, there'd still take over a quarter of an hour to get a reply. lets see, using Fnord's travel time chart from the gazetteer thread, a transmission from Earth to Mars (mean distance)would take: 1c = roughly 12.5 minutes (25 min round trip) 5c = roughly 2.5 minutes (5 min round trip) 10c = rouphly 75 seconds (2.5 min round trip) heck, even at 50c there'd still be 30 sec round trip, and none of these times include deciding how to respond hmm, I must be tired, I think I'm rambling. anyways, my point is you'd probably need special (read: 'Waved) gear to transmit or recieve FTL radio so combine that with an FTL speed of, say, 5c and you get good but not perfect communications.__________________ The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin. ___________________________ "I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin
I think that the 'Honorverse' style FTL comms would work rather nicely in this universe.
The first generation FTL 'grav pulse' comm was slow and clunky, omnidirectional with a low absolute range (relatively speaking) and a high space and power requirement. As the series progressed, the FTL comm got better, to the point where an extra-large 'Apollo' missile could serve as a high bitrate ftl bridge for a pod's worth of missiles, and FTL voice comm was plausible where sufficient relays were available. the grav pulses can be generated by any sufficiently 'smart' grav drive, and read by anyone with appropriate sensors.. now, if they can decrypt/understand what they are reading is another story. With some modification, this would fit into the fenspace universe, imo.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979 |
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