[TML] Transportation solutions.

[Richard Aiken]

On 10/19/07, Jerry W Barrington <jursamaj at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On 10/19/07 4:11 PM, Richard Aiken wrote:
> > Under the pressure of war, this initial discovery was "good enough"
> > and the tuner units were put into use as fast as they could be
> > produced.  But after the war, research into *why* they worked led to a
> > practical theory.
>
> Without any theoretical underpinnings, why would the researchers have even
> *attempted* such a bizarre arrangement of components?

Well, actually, I was thinking about that.  This is still a
work-in-progress, mind you.  So far, I've come up with:

The Real Reason - I want to keep as much canon as possible.  Thus the
zucchai crystals and lanthanum jump coils.

The Game Reason - Dr. Leonard Zucchai was an eccentric genius (in
GURPS terms, he was a Gadgeteer), who had gained independent wealth
from his many inventions.  Think "Buckaroo Banzai."  He had been
researching the properties of these strange crystals on his lab ship
"No Way Josephine."  To hold the crystal for his electron microscope,
he was using a coil of lanthanum left over from a previous experiment.
 On the fateful occasion, there was a laboratory accident just after
he had entered jump, one which caused a high-voltage power line to
fall across the experiment.  When he rushed into the lab, Dr. Zucchai
expected to find the crystal exploded and the coil holding it slagged.

While the crystal had been blown from the mounting and the frame
displayed some scorching, everything was surprisingly intact.  All
that power had apparently went somewhere else once it hit the crystal.
 Dr. Zucchai was still trying to figure out where it had gone when the
"No Way Josephine" emerged from jump . . . one system further over
than where it "should" have been.  Working backwards from this, Dr.
Zucchai was able to determine how to reliably replicate the event, but
it took a lot longer to come up with an explanation for why it worked.

> And unless they still have no good theory and the J1 thru J6 tuners are
> equally bizarre compared to each other, why does it take decades to figure
> each one out?

Hmmmm.  [thinking]

I see several possible factors slowing down the search for higher jump numbers:

1) Secrecy: The Imperium didn't want any of their research data
getting out - not even negative data - because each increase in jump
number gave the first possessor of it a significant strategic
advantage (while their monopoly lasted, anyway).  Even transmission of
research data "in-house" was discouraged, due to fears about leaks.

2) Difficulty: It developed that research on achieving higher jump
numbers - which meant investigating the higher dimensional framework
of zucchai crystals - could *only* be conducted while in jump.  Each
experiment could only last a week, before jump emergence destroyed
that particular multi-dimensional framework.  It therefore took a very
large number of experimental attempts before the proper configurations
could be found.  And it turned out that you could only do research for
the next higher jump during a jump of the highest available number; to
research Jump 5, you had to be *making*  a Jump 4.  As the jump
numbers climbed, the usuable routes narrowed.  NOTE: This also
bolsters the origins of the lab ship.  Jump-mobile research labs like
that never did make much sense to me.  A fixed sites deep in an
otherwise-empty outer system always seemed better.  But now we can see
where the tradition started.

3) Rarity: Finally, it turned out that only certain zucchai crystals
could support the higher jump numbers.  The proportion of usable
crystals decreased sharply as the jump number needed increased.  And
you couldn't tell which could support what jump number until you took
*that* particular crystal into jump and tested it, by trying to use it
to make a "longer" jump.

> I'm not trying to stifle your creativity here, I just have issues with the
> way tech was handled in OTU, and your divide-by-5 doesn't improve it all
> that much from my view.  :)

The "divide-the-timeline-by-5" was originally - IIRC - Anthony
Jackson's idea.  I have found that even just *thinking* about a
timeline this short leads to a more vigorous "feel" to past events, as
I write up the history of my District 268 and it's worlds.  For one
thing, it's making me really ponder on when and how each world got
settled . . . and whether or not what is publicly known is the true
story.

And I agree: the canon tech progression seems a little odd at points
and very vague everywhere.  But then, the writers were originally
aiming at a generic setting, trying to capture the feel of the first
Star Wars movie (where the Old Republic was supposed to have lasted
for "a thousand generations") and the original Foundation books (with
that sprawling, decadent empire ruled from a city-covered Earth).  So
I'm not really disappointed with them.  Besides, it's stimulating to
fill in the gaps as I go along.

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein