From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 4:23 AM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews "Bray, Lee" wrote: > > I was just wondering out of idle curiosity why passengers are put into > suspended animation when traversing the wormhole when ship crews (as far > as I know) aren't. Is it just to conserve life support resources or are > there other reasons? Of course I've only read the Blue Planet book once > so I may have forgotten/missed an explanation. If this is the case then > I apologise - these eyespots take some getting used to! The answer is: Yup, only to save having to carry consumables. The deal is, every breathing person on board requires so much air, water, food, toilet paper, etc. While it can all be recycled, you loose a little bit every time through the system. If everyone were awake, you would have to build ships the size of planets, because as your weight in consumables goes up, you need to carry more reaction mass, which increases the overall mass, requiring more reaction mass, and of course there's the matter of tankage for all this extra fuel... You see how it goes. The easy answer is to make sure that your passengers aren't breathing. For animals, carry embrios and incubators. For people, put 'em in hibernation. For a crew, you get maximum efficiency, if not the most agreeable dynamic, from pregnant women. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Bray, Lee [Bray@petinf.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 3:31 AM To: 'Blue Planet List' Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews I was just wondering out of idle curiosity why passengers are put into suspended animation when traversing the wormhole when ship crews (as far as I know) aren't. Is it just to conserve life support resources or are there other reasons? Of course I've only read the Blue Planet book once so I may have forgotten/missed an explanation. If this is the case then I apologise - these eyespots take some getting used to! Cheers Lee *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Martti Karonen [mk56166@uta.fi] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 4:29 AM To: 'Blue Planet List' Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Bray, Lee wrote: > I was just wondering out of idle curiosity why passengers are put into > suspended animation when traversing the wormhole when ship crews (as far > as I know) aren't. Is it just to conserve life support resources or are > there other reasons? Of course I've only read the Blue Planet book once > so I may have forgotten/missed an explanation. If this is the case then > I apologise - these eyespots take some getting used to! > > Lee Hello, another newbie stepping from the shadows... :) A long-time reader of this list, starting a BP campaign next weekend. To answer your question, I would assume that keeping the passengers on ice is more cost-effective... ;) I have a problem with the torchships themselves, their speeds in particular. If the trip from Earth to Poseidon takes six months and the distance travelled is roughly 1500 AUs (I assume the Serpentis wormhole is roughly at the same distance from it's sun as ours), ...well that's quite fast in todays terms. I understand that the torchships are powered by fusion engines, but do they use swingbys or something else to speed them up? Some simple describtion of starship technology and travel would be appreciated, before my players gang up and ask difficult questions. Thank you... * Martti M. Karonen * * * University of Tampere, Finland * "Where there's a will there's a won't." * * mk56166@uta.fi * * * http://www.uta.fi/~mk56166 * Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary * *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 4:49 AM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews Auberon wrote: >For animals, carry embrios and incubators. For people, put 'em in >hibernation. For a crew, you get maximum efficiency, if not the most >agreeable dynamic, from pregnant women. Really? I wouldn't have expected that. Wouldn't a pregnancy increase the amount of food and water consumed by the crew member? Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 4:58 AM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews Martti Karonen wrote: > > On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Bray, Lee wrote: > > > I was just wondering out of idle curiosity why passengers are put into > > suspended animation when traversing the wormhole when ship crews (as far > > as I know) aren't. Is it just to conserve life support resources or are > > there other reasons? Of course I've only read the Blue Planet book once > > so I may have forgotten/missed an explanation. If this is the case then > > I apologise - these eyespots take some getting used to! > > > > Lee > > Hello, another newbie stepping from the shadows... :) > A long-time reader of this list, starting a BP campaign next weekend. > > To answer your question, I would assume that keeping the passengers on ice > is more cost-effective... ;) > > I have a problem with the torchships themselves, their speeds in > particular. If the trip from Earth to Poseidon takes six months and the > distance travelled is roughly 1500 AUs (I assume the Serpentis wormhole is > roughly at the same distance from it's sun as ours), ...well that's quite > fast in todays terms. I understand that the torchships are powered by > fusion engines, but do they use swingbys or something else to speed them > up? Some simple describtion of starship technology and travel would be > appreciated, before my players gang up and ask difficult questions. Actually, there was a really long discussion on the list in (I think) December. You can check the archives on the Biohazard site. The short version is: Constant low accelleration, flip over, and then accellerate the other way (shedding velocity) to WH-1, traverse the wormhole to WH-2, accellerate again, flip over again, apply breaking thrust again until you make orbit around Poseidon. Miscellania: Refuelling takes place after traversing the wormhole, and the ship accellerates slowest on full tanks (more mass to accellerate). Gravity slingshots are basically useless, because you lose as much energy climbing out of a gravity well as you gain going in. If you shed mass in the process, there can be some net gain, but that's really only going to be useful swinging around a star in a reaction drive ship. Of course, then you have to design the ship to survive proximity to the sun, which means shielding, which means more mass... Anyway, got any specific questions? -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 5:26 AM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Some notes... >Party composition: > >Two midget Private Eyes (Real Men) >A World-Class Geneticist (Real Roleplayer) >An amoral computer hacker (Real roleplayer/loonie) >A GEO Covert Op? (Real loonie) Might change his character Ah, if you'd started up your game back during my Profession Survey* I woulda had some real interesting results... No Munchkin types in your group, I see. >As to where the campaign's headed...I don't know. Its really dictated >by what the PCs want to do; I throw various scenario hooks into the >mix and see which ones they bite. In the short term, depending on >what exactly happens, I'll probably expand on their conflict with >Gendiver. The campaign will be based on Nova Mare that's about all >I'm certain of, and it could change soon. Isn't that a bit out of the way? I seem to recall Nova Mare being outside of the Archipelago proper, but don't have a book to refer to right now... >Yeah, I've got it bookmarked. I'll probably use the scenario about the >garden of Eden thing and the pomegranate some time(but not soon; I want >to save the aborigines for a while) and I know I'll use the crashed VTOL >as a plot hook sometime. I'm flattered! Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph *which was recently put on Dave's page ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Andrew Pearce [ajp@dcs.qmw.ac.uk] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 6:25 AM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews Auberon wrote: > Gravity slingshots are basically useless, because you lose as much > energy climbing out of a gravity well as you gain going in. If you shed > mass in the process, there can be some net gain, but that's really Then why does NASA use it for its unmanned probes? Andrew *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 1:13 PM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews Andrew Pearce wrote: > > Auberon wrote: > > > > Gravity slingshots are basically useless, because you lose as much > > energy climbing out of a gravity well as you gain going in. If you shed > > mass in the process, there can be some net gain, but that's really > > Then why does NASA use it for its unmanned probes? Direction change. Voyager, as I remember, Passed Jupiter for a look, used Jupiter to alter its course, looked at Saturn, altered course, swung by one of the outer gas giants... You can't hit all those planets in a straight line, but you can get close enough that you complete part of an orbit, and when you fly off, you've changed direction without using any reaction mass, but also without gaining any speed. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 1:20 PM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews Tun Kai Poh wrote: > > Auberon wrote: > >For animals, carry embrios and incubators. For people, put 'em in > >hibernation. For a crew, you get maximum efficiency, if not the most > >agreeable dynamic, from pregnant women. > > Really? I wouldn't have expected that. Wouldn't a pregnancy increase the > amount of food and water consumed by the crew member? Well, at the beginning, you're supplying one normal person. By the end, you're supplying hot quite half again as much, but you've got extra passengers on. And remember, the trip is only 6 mo., so there aren't going to be any births until ya get there. I think I first heard this idea as part of a two-stage colonization of Mars, incidentally. This would be the way to pack people on the second stage, after the first stage had set up infrastructure. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Greg Benage [gbenage@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 7:53 PM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews -----Original Message----- From: Auberon To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Date: Thursday, March 04, 1999 3:21 AM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews >Martti Karonen wrote: >Constant low accelleration, flip over, and then accellerate the other >way (shedding velocity) to WH-1, traverse the wormhole to WH-2, >accellerate again, flip over again, apply breaking thrust again until >you make orbit around Poseidon. Definitely check the archives from late last year! The only thing I'll add is that the Poseidon wormhole is much further in-system than the Sol wormhole, so the total distance traveled is much less than 1500 AU. Also, Leif -- the resident rocket guru and mathematician on the list -- has done some excellent work on the spacecraft of Blue Planet that will appear in Fluid Mechanics. Greg Benage Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: c718678@showme.missouri.edu Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 6:56 PM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Where'd it go? Hey Jerome, What happened to your web page? I'm getting an "Erreur 404 - L'adresse que vous avez tapee n'existe pas" message. Did it move or it is really gone? Later, Eva @@@(* > *)@@@ *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 8:45 PM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Where'd it go? >Hey Jerome, >What happened to your web page? I'm getting an "Erreur 404 - L'adresse >que >vous avez tapee n'existe pas" message. Did it move or it is really gone? Try http://www.multimania.com/bpfr. Jerome has put up a whole bunch of PDF help files, and an article of mine which is a portion of a larger article which I submitted to Undercurrents a while back. At this moment, Jerome's page is the only place you can read about the Storm Widow-inspired ecoterrorists, The Children Of The Widow. In French. :) I've been trying to collect the URLs of all the BP fan sites. So far, Jerome has links to just about all of the ones I know of, and some I'd forgotten about. Among them are Lief's GURPS: Blue Planet page, Ghost's old Sea Lions page (where are you, Ghost?), and David Chart's Haven Institute of Science and Technology page. Check it out. Sad thing is, the official Biohazard page only has three links to fan pages, and two of them (Triton's Grotto and The Trench) are outdated. I think The Trench, the Blue Planet web ring, must have died in 1998 for lack of participants, which is ironic considering that 1999 has seen several new fan pages popping up... Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: c718678@showme.missouri.edu Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 9:19 PM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Where'd it go? Its working now at fly.to/bleue.planete. I don't know what was wrong before. I tried to read your stuff, but my French isn't that good - hope to see it in English one day:) Later, Eva @@@(* > *)@@@ On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Tun Kai Poh wrote: > >Hey Jerome, > >What happened to your web page? I'm getting an "Erreur 404 - L'adresse > >que > >vous avez tapee n'existe pas" message. Did it move or it is really > gone? > > Try http://www.multimania.com/bpfr. Jerome has put up a whole bunch of > PDF help files, and an article of mine which is a portion of a larger > article which I submitted to Undercurrents a while back. At this moment, > Jerome's page is the only place you can read about the Storm > Widow-inspired ecoterrorists, The Children Of The Widow. > > In French. :) > > I've been trying to collect the URLs of all the BP fan sites. So far, > Jerome has links to just about all of the ones I know of, and some I'd > forgotten about. Among them are Lief's GURPS: Blue Planet page, Ghost's > old Sea Lions page (where are you, Ghost?), and David Chart's Haven > Institute of Science and Technology page. Check it out. > > Sad thing is, the official Biohazard page only has three links to fan > pages, and two of them (Triton's Grotto and The Trench) are outdated. I > think The Trench, the Blue Planet web ring, must have died in 1998 for > lack of participants, which is ironic considering that 1999 has seen > several new fan pages popping up... > > Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph > > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > *************************************************************************** > To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line > 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. > *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Jason A Werner [c577200@showme.missouri.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 10:17 PM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews I'm sure somebody will get to this before I do, but... > I was just wondering out of idle curiosity why passengers are put into > suspended animation when traversing the wormhole when ship crews (as far > as I know) aren't. Is it just to conserve life support resources or are > there other reasons? Nope. That's it. All those bodies operating at normal metabolic rates take way more oxygen, water, food, etc. That means mass, and mass means more fuel, which you also have to move, which means still more fuel. The end result is that every gram of cargo you can save is worth a fortune. So, if you can save more than the mass of a freezer in O2 and food by putting the passengers in hibernation for the trip, it makes economic sense to do so. -- -Jason Werner Biohazard Games ------------------------------------------------ I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly. - Wm. of Baskerville -------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Jason A Werner [c577200@showme.missouri.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 10:20 PM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews Tun Kai Poh wrote: > Really? I wouldn't have expected that. Wouldn't a pregnancy increase the > amount of food and water consumed by the crew member? I don't know why it works, I don't know how it works, I don't know the cause, and I don't think anyone else does, either. But...according to "Williams' textbook of Obstetrics," the bible for treating pregnant people, women late in their pregnancies actually increased V02max (a measure of how much aerobic work they can do) and increased their O2 consumption efficiency...meaning they can do more work, and do it on less oxygen when they're pregnant. I know it doesn't make any sense, I know it doesn't fit. I don't know how it works, so don't ask me, but I've seen the data. -Jason Werner Biohazard Games ------------------------------------------------ I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly. - Wm. of Baskerville -------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Jason A Werner [c577200@showme.missouri.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 1999 10:32 PM To: blue_planet@mpgn.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Starship Crews > > > Auberon wrote: > > > > > > > Gravity slingshots are basically useless, because you lose as much > > > energy climbing out of a gravity well as you gain going in. If you shed > > > mass in the process, there can be some net gain, but that's really > > > > Then why does NASA use it for its unmanned probes? > I'm only going to stick my toe in on this one, but I thought that Galileo and...er...Mars Explorer, maybe?...all used gravity assist to boost their velocities. If I remember correctly, there was one (and I can't believe I can't remember which...Galileo, I think) that planned to use Venus, Earth, and then Venus again in a complicated gravity-assist maneuver. I have a hard time imagining that all this nonsense and all those extra years are for course corrections... -- -Jason Werner Biohazard Games ------------------------------------------------ I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly. - Wm. of Baskerville -------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.