Space Technology
I was seriously thinking about re-doing my comic. It was nonsensical, but now I’m starting to think it could be done better, and with a touch of drama, etc. And I don’t want to be one of those comics that shifts genre halfway through it, so that means starting over, starting with a cooler webpage.
It also means taking the universe seriously. It wasn’t exactly explained what any of my characters were, but it will be. I planned to make a separate seiries of pages explaining the races of my universe. One of the basic premises, though, is that there are faeries and they’re far superior to humans. In fact, they devolped instellar flight a long time ago, and there was a major exodus. The majority that stayed behind are kind of like the Amish. They’re sticklers, and they never caught on to the whole Final Frontier thing. Alternately, there are some who are forced to live there. Earth is actually under the jurisdiction of an alien race, so fugitives hide here, in addition to some regular fey folk.
The humans of earth, even the wizards, are kept blind about the space stuff. Not by force – there are no short, pointy-eared MIB. Mostly, Earth is on the whole ignored. It’s not a major site of interstellar traffic. The ones who do know keep mum about it for their own reasons. A fugitive wouldn’t want to cause a stir, and the ones to stayed behind don’t talk about it.
Well it’s time I did some writing about the nature of faerie space technology. I was inspired into it after reading the Atomic Rocket website. Much of the information found there is of limited relevance, because my world has magic and that changes everything. Note that, in space, the Seelie Court virtually stamped out the Unseelie Court. The Unseelie are left as remnants.
- Construction – A vehicle that goes from one star to the next with living cargo has certain design specifications. For instance, air to breathe, and food to eat.
- Because faeries relate with nature so much, most long-term ships have a big garden. A really big one with trees.
- There’s no holodeck. A faerie’s senses are not so easy to fool. Simulations are used for information delivery only, and would be found in the bridge.
- Life support systems are everywhere, one or more to a room. Each room has its own bulkhead secondary to the main one, which is covered with armor (discussed more in Defense). A room that becomes detached from the ship can function by itself, and may even have its own source of propulsion.
- The decor in faerie ships resembles the decor they would normally have. Any decently furnished ship is like a mansion with funky doors and control panels. Other than that, there’s no look typical to sci-fi.
- Fabrication units are not as ubiquitous as one might think. True automated plants which re-fuse atoms of waste can be hard to come by, since this is more of a scientific advancement.
- The first ships were for travel only. Then, the fey found a need for defense against other interstellar powers, and offensive power to expand their empire. Spaceships for combat are designed to go up against any unkown opponent using raw firepower and defense. So far, this has worked since no enemies thus far knew enough about fey technology to hack their ships.
- Faeries are still not to keen on the spaceship idea, so there’s no such thing as a production line. Ships are unique and pilots are almost always elite and/or rich. Operating in space isn’t easy, and you have to be smart to get a license. Also, (good) spaceships cost a shitload of money.
- Faeries use fusion plants. Later, total conversion becomes possible. Magic makes it easy to turn one kind energy (such as matter) into another (in particular, forms of ether).
- A planet collects ethereal energies like it does matter. Living on a planet, we are constantly bathed in magical forces. Space is not just a vacuum of air, must ether is fairly sparse too. A spaceship’s power plant directs some ether to the passengers so that they can still do stuff. When boarders become hostile and the operators have the guns, they turn this off to give themselves an advantage.
- Propulsion – one of the things not so easily tackled is how a ship gets from one star to the next without taking forever and a vast amount of energy.
- Interstellar drive
- Magic, or ether, is (most of the time) an invisble, intangible energy that is an unseperable component of reality. Well… that sounds a lot like dark matter. It is. Magic can be used to manipulate gravity. With technology, it can be used to really manipulate gravity. And faeries are good with magic. This is a fact. Think of the gravitics in Schlock Mercenary, but sleeker and more powerful.
- The first generation space drive worked something like the one described in Popular Science one time. The PopSci ship hides in a dimsional pocket and compresses the space in front of itself (without actually moving, so it bypasses the speed limit), and when it pops out, poof! you’re there. The faeries’ ship had decent gravitics, so it accelerates to a good speed (as in REALLY FAST) and enters a pseudobubble and tricks space into thinking that it’s actually going slower by compression or rarefaction of space, and so it goes faster than the speed of light. A spaceship using this drive would look like it’s elongating into a thin line, and then it would disappear. Thus, warp drive.
- Dimensional bubbles/pockets are dangerous. You could close off from the universe entirely, and then your buddies would have to find you and re-open it. If at all. So FTL drives moved towards a more open bubble as technology improved.
- The second generation drive uses a pseudo-wormhole. It turns on the previous generation drive, but tunes into the frequency of an attractor at the destination, opens a pseudo-wormhole and "pulls" itself toward the target, which doubles the speed. But, that requires an attractor. Some magic is "locationless" which allows locator spells and voodoo to work, the same principle allows a spaceship to tune in and form a link with an attractor with a set frequency, allowing its large ethereal powerplant to "bridge the gap."
- The third generation drive is an advancement of the second. Instead of relying on existing attractors, it throws out a "ghost" attractor that stays in front of the ship and uses it instead.
- The "fourth generation" drive is built and used exclusively by the main characters. Revealing its nature would be a plot spoiler.
- The ship has a base gravitic system that can perform various tasks, but the ship will have attachments that aid certain common tasks. These include thrusters, sensors, guns, and sheild generators.
- Chemical Thrusters
- Things like chemical rockets we’re familiar with are not alien to faeries (pixies like fireworks too), but not commonly seen on spaceships as they are not as effective.
- The fusion/total conversion plant is rife with plasma. Many spaceships have an exhaust that provides thrust by opening a hole in the power plant.
- Since spacecraft move so quickly, they will experience time dilation to due their relativistic speeds. However, the passengers would like to return home and not have their younger siblings be older than them. This is offset by the same magic that allows faerie inhabitations to have the reverse effect.
- Acceleration is not an issue with gravitics, because they apply to the whole ship simultaneously. The movements of the ship have no effect on the passengers and the simulated gravity.
- Gravitics and the increased ability to accelerate make the ships much more maneuverable.
- The effectiveness of the warp drive and gravitics is limited by gravitational wells. So, 1,000c+ is possible in extrasolar space, but it goes downhill from there. In solar orbit, the drive may permit 2c or less. It is no longer worth turning it on in orbit around a planet.
- Detection – finding stuff in space that is of importance.
- Atomic Rocket’s website has a discussion about detection in space, and how it’s impossible to avoid being seen. But he’s using real physics and I’m using magic
And yet, the same basic principle applies to this universe. - Good gravitics means good gravitational sensors.
- Anything with mass leaves a gravitational well. Gravitics are versatile, so ships can try to hide their well, but such a mask only works at fairly long distances. You might be able to hide from someone across
a solar system if that system has a lot of traffic. It’s better to hide behind a planet or other opaque body. If they over analyze your cover, though, you might get found. But that requires a good computer, which is not currently a major field of research. - I must stress that using a warp is extremely noisy. They leave a huge gravitational wake. When someone uses it, everyone in the solar system will know. And folks in nearby systems with good computers will know too. It’s like shouting into a stone corridor. And they get noisier when they’re more efficient, so you can’t win there either.
- "Wormhole-pulling" doesn’t leave an immense wake but can still be easily "seen" with passive obsrvation. It’s almost tearing space.
- Like their creators, fey spaceships have superb vision.
- They have good telescopes, but are subject to light speed lag.
- Chemical thrusters are very, very hot. They will seeeee you, so you can’t get away with that.
- The fact that magic lets its users easily convert one form of energy to another makes it fairly easy to convert your heat to something else, so you have virtually no thermal signature.
- But wait. They can see ether, and that’s really hard to mask. It’s also not subject to light speed lag.
- A spaceship would easily scan the heavens’ ether, and sort through generic stuff like stars and planets and find the more complex and conspicuous ether signatures of spaceships.
- Illusory magic is of limited use in space. It relies on your observer confusing their actual surroundings and you, and in space, there is pretty much only vacuum. At best, you could fool their computer into thinking you’re something harmless.
- Trouble is, it’s just virtually impossible for them to not realize that something is there.
- But faeries aren’t really affected by illusions.
- It’s much easier to hack them into thinking you don’t exist.
- The only true way to avoid detection is via the "fourth generation" drive. But that’s a secret!
- Defense - first rule of combat: don’t get hit. second rule: stay alive to run away if you are hit.
- I will not go on about a good defense being a good offense. Civilian ships need some kind of protection, but they’re not allowed to have weapons.
- Gravitics again. They can be used as a sheild that deflects physical objects. Also, dimensional bubbles can be closed around offending objects. However, most non-combatant ships are not designed to form a good bubble around anything but themselves. Of course, forming the bubble can make it harder for the enemy to attack since you can activate a warp and can only be targeted through a narrow channel.
- Armor: Faeries are known for doing things like making wood as strong as iron, so it’s no surprise that their hulls and armor are really strong too. There are a wide variety of "magic alloys" that are light, strong, easy to repair, resistant to spells, and all the above.
- Robots: Non-combatant ships may have defensive robots equipped to busy an attacker long enough to escape.
- Offense – They killed your father. They must die.
- The only faeries with offensive ships are Seelie Court military vessels or that of pirates, rogues, and other no-do-gooders. There are mercenaries, but in order to be sancioned by the Seelie Court you almost have to become a part of the government.
- Gravitics again. They can be used to the same effect as an explosion, minus the fire in a gravitational shockwave. Some weapons/attachments specialize in creating such a big badda boom. Also, the dangerousness of pockets can be used to advantage. If two spaceships get close, the one with the better gravitics will inevitably swallow its opponent. Often, the strain and interference will prevent the use of other weapons.
- Thrusters: As discussed in the aforementioned website, any vehicle that can propel itself at such great speeds must have a deadly engine. The chemical thrusters a.k.a exhaust ports pack a powerful punch, in addition to propelling you away. Non-combatant ships can leave their opponent behind in a cloud of superheated gas.
- Robots
- No space fighters, unless there are mitigating circumstances where the only option is to use a really small ship.
- A combat situation will typically start with robots speeding ahead of the main vessel to attack or investigate. Why endanger the real ship when you can toss some relatively cheap gadets? Robots are designed to go as fast as possible and pack a lot of firepower. They can be controlled remotely in the manner of space fighters.
- Probes warp in to investigate the enemy, and warp back to avoid getting shot.
- Drillers and ships that are all gravitics and other robots to compromise defenses,
- Followed by offensive robots with missles, railguns, and other weapons.
- Missiles: Of course. With magic under consideration, missiles can pack all kinds of strange booms. And blooms. And they go really fast, and follow their target.
- Railguns: May combine magnetism, gravity, or other forces to accelerate a slug. Used as point defense, and in close quarters against other ships. The slug could have special properties, as well.
- Spells, counterspells, countercounterspells, are old news. But now they’re applied to space combat.
