[TML] Query Re Exiting Jump Space

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 11/5/07 6:46 PM, Asher wrote:

>  A question about exiting out of jump space.  What happens when there is
> matter in your exit point?  I mean, more than the usual atoms of
> interplanetary vacuum.
>  Case 1:  My lab ship jumps into the tail of a comet.  Does the
> atmosphere of my ship now contain gas from the comet?  Not that it'd be
> thick enough to notice, of course, but wouldn't it be there?  Could a
> habit of jumping into cometary tails build up impurities in my
> equipment, as the gas atoms get trapped inside the matter appearing
> around them?
>  Case 2:  Amazingly unlucky.  My belter takes his seeker out of jump
> near a desirable asteroid.  Oops, it's surrounded by a field of pebbles
> and dust, and now I've got a pebble ricocheting off the wall and dust
> inside my lanthanum coils and microprocessors.  Right?  Wrong?

Excellent question!

Thing is, if jump behaved this way, ships couldn't possible last for
hundreds of years as canon says.  Every part of the ship would pick up
impurities with *every* jump.  I hate to think what that would do to the
crystalline structure of the hull/frame members!  And it would rapidly trash
all electronics.