[Blue Lion]

It's entirely possible they're in contact with Sol. So here's my list

1. If it takes 4ish years to send a message, it's gonna take that long for it to get to Sol, the double it for it to get back.  That's a quarter of the time just to establish contact.

2. Who's to say they aren't in contact? I don't think anyone actually said they thought Sol was destroyed (been a while) Sol might be glad to know everyone else made it.

3.  Why do we assume it's classified? Suppose it's well known. Then again I've forgotten a lot.

[brandx0]

Hey who knows, maybe Earth wanted to continue standing as the head of the GTA and now that the shivans aren't a threat, they've decided to continue their war on the Vasudans.  The new GTVA hears this, thinks its rediculous and says no.  Earth replies trying to throw around its authority and the GTVA laughs in their face. 

[Trivial Psychic]

2338: GTA completes construction of the Spielberg Radio Tranciever Array in Alpha Centauri
Alpha Centauri:  "This is GTA Command.  Are you recieving us Sol?"

2342
Sol:  "Signal Recieved GTA.  What's the status of the Shivan conflict?"

2347
Alpha Centauri: "GTA? What the... OH Right!  Yeah, well they broke up.  We're with the Sirian Confederacy.  What was that about a Shivan conflict?"

2351
Sol:  "Sirian Confederacy.  Is there any word on Terran or Vasudan scientists discovering a means to re establishing the jump node to Delta Serpentis?"

2355
Alpha Centauri: "Greetings Terran.  The Sirian Confederacy has been expelled from this system by Vasudan forces.  We urgently request a status update on the condition of Vasudan refugees and military units currently residing in the Sol system".

2359
Sol:  "Vasudan?  Well, most Vasudan citizens have taken up residence on Mars.  Vasudan warships have been decomissioned due to lack of replacement parts, though they have begun to design some new vessels.  What happend to Terran command out there?"

2363
Alpha Centauri: "This is GTVA Command.  Good to hear your message Sol.  I'm sorry, but the Vasudans here were terrible record keepers.  The translation software can't make heads or tails of it, and the older records seemed to have been lost when some dim-witted pilot misstakenly fired a Stiletto at us.  What were you asking about?  Something about the Shivans?"

2367
Sol:  "Never mind".

[CP5670]

lol

3.  Why do we assume it's classified? Suppose it's well known. Then again I've forgotten a lot.

In the first Silent Threat command briefing, they say "All efforts to restore contact with Earth have failed." and "We have no word on what became of the Terran pilots that destroyed the Lucifer, or how much of the attack force remains stranded on the Earth side of the node." Although ST probably takes place very soon after the end of FS1, so it's hard to say what has happened by FS2's time.

[Goober5000]

(Assuming Sirius was held by the Terrans at the time. I can't remember by FS1 plotline as well as FS2).

Sirius was actually a Vasudan system in FS1.  This leads me to believe that the NTF committed some sort of genocidal coup to seize control before FS2.  Either that or the Vasudans had been driven out by the Shivans, so the Terrans moved in and set up shop.

6) Either of the above could be official senarios too. After all at the time the PVN might have felt it in their interest to keep the GTA making contact with Sol and getting access to any technical advances they made (even if they would be 8 years out of date by the time Sirius got them). Even better it would be in the Vasudans interest to make contact but claim to the GTA that they hadn't and thus get access to that info first (Suddenly you have the roots for a consipracy theory about how the Vasudans got beam technology first involving Solar research into the Lucifer's flux cannons).

That's an excellent idea. Simply marvellous.  It would be terrific for a Vasudan version of Silent Threat.

[Colonol Dekker]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,11501.msg212777.html#msg212777

*cough--Cough*

[karajorma]

That's an excellent idea. Simply marvellous.  It would be terrific for a Vasudan version of Silent Threat.

I actually briefly considered not posting the idea and turning it into a campaign. I only stopped cause

1) When I make conspiracy theory based stories I always run into the problem that if I make my bad guys smart enough to come up with the conspiracy I then have trouble figuring out a way for them to be dumb enough to let anyone get wind of it. That's the problem that sunk TMA. The conspiracy was so good I couldn't come up with a plausable way for anyone to find out about it without being instantly killed and ending the campaign.
2) When have I got the time to FRED the damn thing!

So I figured I'd post it and let anyone who was interested could have a go

Actually what people here are forgetting is that there's absolutely no reason to build equipment specifically to communicate with Earth. If you were to place a good-sized radio telescope 50 LY out from Earth today you could listen to regular 1956 radio.

They don't need to build anything to keep Earth in the loop, provided Earth actually bothers to listen. Normal civilian communications will still cross interstellar distances with ease. You just need a big enough "ear" at the other end.

You're making the rather big assumption that everyone is still using radio or another system that even can be heard 50LY away. I find that a bit hard to believe considering that the GTA military at least obviously has FTL comms and I see no reason that the equivalent of the TV companies wouldn't want to use the same technology in order to reach anyl the colonies on Mars and Europa etc as well as the people on Earth.

The GTVA would be even less likely to use method. Especially if they had a way to transmit to other systems similtaniously.

Intersystem EM communications would be easy with freespace tech. Building an arecebo sized dish at earth's drydock would probably take about a week tops. Bolt it to an old elysium, stick it at a lagrange point, and let it sit there with a 3 man crew. No problem.

1) You've ignored the fact that its quite possible that no one has built a radio telescope in over 200 years. The GTA might understand the physics involved but converting physics into engineering takes time.

2) Its a goverment project. We all know that those take twice as long as they should even under the best circumstances.

3 ) Given that the only estimate of time we have for construction is that it took 20 years to build the Colossus I don't believe that the GTVA's manufacturing capabilities are that fast.

4) You've also made extrapolations based on what we can do now with no idea whether they are actually possible. Just because we have telescopes large enough to detect planets now doesn't mean we'll have the technology needed to detect vastly smaller and much less luminous objects in the future. There may be a limit to the resolution you can obtain from optical methods before the background noise prevents you getting any signal.
 You've got to consider that possibility. Otherwise going on the improvents ancient peoples made to the horse they must be capable of carrying 15 men and running at 100 mph by now.

1.) Based on my reasoning that intersystem recievers are not difficult to produce even for a single system planet and a high priority, there's probably a swarm of old nearly-decommissioned ships sitting in the solar system, each pointing at the score of closest stars that would be the most likely to get a transmission from. (Alpha cen, sirius, etc). Coverage shouldn't be a problem.

If I agreed with your assumptions. I consider them possibilities yes but I'm certainly not going to consider them concrete enough to say that I have to be wrong. All I've given is possible reasons for the lack of communication between Sol and the GTA.

4.) Who knows what vasudans think, but Earth should be able to passively observe the closest systems and deduce whether they're in Terran, Vasudan, or Shivan control based on radio chatter or weapon signatures. (Detecting 300 shivan warhead detonations in the span of a week and then nothing else wouldn't bode well for the system.)

Even if I buy that (and I don't) all you've described is a system whereby Sol knows that the GTVA are still there but the GTVA hasn't got a clue if Sol is still around. Which is pretty much what exists in the game. Remember that the GTVA don't have the same driving need to check if the Shivans are in Sol since they know that the Lucifer was destroyed.

[Colonol Dekker]

As per Alpha one operation procedure, the Lucy's escors were smaXXored into space gibs before turning attack towards the Lucy reactors, So there should be no Shivans in Sol anyway


<
Wootage, 3K !!!!!

[NGTM-1R]

You're making the rather big assumption that everyone is still using radio or another system that even can be heard 50LY away. I find that a bit hard to believe considering that the GTA military at least obviously has FTL comms and I see no reason that the equivalent of the TV companies wouldn't want to use the same technology in order to reach anyl the colonies on Mars and Europa etc as well as the people on Earth.

There's some rather large assumptions of your own at work here. For starters, radio is good enough for planetary communications, and quite likely cheaper then using FTL comms over such short distances; less energy cost. Also unless you can pack a fusion reactor into a cell phone, I suspect most small applications are not going to be able to use FTL comms. Things like headsets and so on just wouldn't have the power available to transmit that way.

We also don't know how FTL comms actually work, so we could well be dealing with something that just opens a miniaturized node and sends radio signals through it. We know, for example, that intersystem FTL communication requires an open jump node, but we also know it does not require the use of couriers to get it across the node (ref. The King's Gambit).

[Freespace Freak]

I personally imagined subspace as being connected to gravitational phenomena.  One way they could generate subspace communications is to somehow manipulate the fabric of spacetime by changing gravitational fields at certain frequencies.  This information could travel down subspace tunnels to comm stations on the other side.  This is why you need comm stations near each node as relay stations. 

Let's say you want to send a message to command which is three jumps away.  Using your fighter's subspace comm node, you transmit the message to the in-system comm station.  That station modulates that message and transmits it at the nearby node's natural resonance frequency.  That message travels through the tunnel and is recieved by the other comm station at the other side of the node.  It transmits it to the station retransmitts that message at the next node's natural resonance frequency and it travels down the subspace tunnel and is recieved by the next station and so on until it reaches its destination.

This is what I think is the purpose of those comm stations that were vital in FS1.  It's also probably one of the purposes for the Shivan comm node, but I think the Shivan version is capable of somehow bypassing all that and transmitting and recieving messages directly to anywhere in the galaxy.

[karajorma]

There's some rather large assumptions of your own at work here. For starters, radio is good enough for planetary communications, and quite likely cheaper then using FTL comms over such short distances; less energy cost. Also unless you can pack a fusion reactor into a cell phone, I suspect most small applications are not going to be able to use FTL comms. Things like headsets and so on just wouldn't have the power available to transmit that way.

We also don't know how FTL comms actually work, so we could well be dealing with something that just opens a miniaturized node and sends radio signals through it. We know, for example, that intersystem FTL communication requires an open jump node, but we also know it does not require the use of couriers to get it across the node (ref. The King's Gambit).

Again we get to the point that you can't make any definitive statements about what is going on. If you want to say that radio is likely to still be used that means that you're assuming that whatever powers FTL comms requires a lot of power both to send and recieve.

On the other hand if it only requires a lot of power to send but virtually none to recieve then it would very quickly replace radio waves in the applications that have enough power to reach other star systems. See cause even though it's canon that it requires a lot of power to open a jump node for entry we have no idea if that energy doesn't mean that you also require an expenditure of energy at the other end. It could be that the hole at the other end will definitely form using only minimal expenditure of energy.

Since we don't know we can't say anything for certain.

[Mobius]

The Colossus was a secret project=no public money to spend making it=needed more time to complete.

[bfobar]

Intersystem EM communications would be easy with freespace tech. Building an arecebo sized dish at earth's drydock would probably take about a week tops. Bolt it to an old elysium, stick it at a lagrange point, and let it sit there with a 3 man crew. No problem.

1) You've ignored the fact that its quite possible that no one has built a radio telescope in over 200 years. The GTA might understand the physics involved but converting physics into engineering takes time.

2) Its a goverment project. We all know that those take twice as long as they should even under the best circumstances.

3 ) Given that the only estimate of time we have for construction is that it took 20 years to build the Colossus I don't believe that the GTVA's manufacturing capabilities are that fast.

4) You've also made extrapolations based on what we can do now with no idea whether they are actually possible. Just because we have telescopes large enough to detect planets now doesn't mean we'll have the technology needed to detect vastly smaller and much less luminous objects in the future. There may be a limit to the resolution you can obtain from optical methods before the background noise prevents you getting any signal.
 You've got to consider that possibility. Otherwise going on the improvents ancient peoples made to the horse they must be capable of carrying 15 men and running at 100 mph by now.

Woah there mach horsey! Allow me to defend my assumptions on technological feasability.

1. Tech that is 200 years out of date should be a cinch. As an analogy, I am thinking something like the fiber optic lines between NY and London are severed, and for some reason all we have to rely on is sail power (invoking a "god says so" decree for the sake of the analogy). Either country would have to look at 200 year old technology to make a sailing ship to carry mail across the atlantic. Given a motivated government accessing their libraries on sail boat construction, access to naval shipyards at Virginia or Leeds, and a construction crew of several thousand appropriated from the prefab housing industry or something, I think either country could spit a ship out so fast it would make an 18th century pirate's head spin (knocking off the parrot of course). Of course I'm conjecturing, but it is a reasonable conjecture based on the rediculous speed that the freespace guys can get stuff out of the op-eval period and into mass production.

2. I am forced to agree that a government job should have it's cost and time multiplied by 2.

3. I think there's a world of difference between a big shiny parabola and the collossus. The only difficulty we have on earth making  recieving dishes is that they are unwieldly, and the largest optical ones (telescopes like the LBT), have a tendency to sag due to gravity that must be overcome. Building in zero gravity would vastly simplify both problems. Freespace ships are built in zero gravity, earth has the industry to build ships, and so building in orbit would be easy. The collossus was built in secret, was a Joint Government project (that's a cost and time multiplier of 3.5 according to my disillusioned sources), and has a lot of high tech systems to integrate, not to mention being a prototype and needing a 30,000 man crew. I think a cruiser hull, and only the hull would be vastly more complex to build.

4. I actually know quite a bit on the limitations of telescopes/sensors/etc, and can almost (haven't acutally worked out the math, but I could solve for sensor size if I needed to) assure you that a good coronagraph design on an orbital telescope with a main mirror the size of arecibo could easily detect a megaton scale explosion within in alpha centauri. Also, I would safely assume that if freespace earth was sending out interstellar colony ships for a hundred years prior to subspace, such devices were made so that earth would know which systems to send ships to.

Of course I am assuming , but then again, I'm speculating on a science fiction video game. I think my assumptions are reasonable ones. Trivial Psychic's post hilights the most reasonable explanation on why there is no word of communications from earth IMHO.

[Goober5000]

So I figured I'd post it and let anyone who was interested could have a go

Hmm...

"Paging Blaise Russel!  Blaise Russel, please report to the General FreeSpace forum..."

[Kosh]

The Colossus was a secret project=no public money to spend making it=needed more time to complete.

In addition to that, most of the Terran's shipyards were in Sol and the Vasudan shipyards were probably wasted by the Shivans.


Btw, could you cut your sig down a bit?

[Blaise Russel]

So I figured I'd post it and let anyone who was interested could have a go

Hmm...

"Paging Blaise Russel!  Blaise Russel, please report to the General FreeSpace forum..."

Aw, man, I was eating breakfast. 

[Flipside]

A day in the Forum is like a day on the farm, every meal's a banquet, every formation a parade.....









And you're surrouned by lots of animals making strange noises

[Cobra]

And you're surrouned by lots of animals making strange noises

I was about to suggest every forum a playground for monkeys.

[Colonol Dekker]

A day in the Forum is like a day on the farm, every meal's a banquet, every formation a parade.....









And you're surrouned by lots of animals making strange noises

Look into my eye..............

[bizzybody]

All the analog radio, TV and cellphone transmissions ever made on Earth are drifting away through space. Depending on the initial signal strength it should be possible to pick them up and enhance them at various distances.

Anyone got an FTL drive spacecraft, a big radio dish tuned to the BBC TV frequencies and a load of signal processing and enhancement gear? Let's go snag all those 'Dr. Who' episodes the beeb lost when they sold most of their steel ribbon* video'tape' for scrap metal.

A lot of the radio traffic leaving Earth now is digitized, spread-spectrum, encrypted, scrambled and encoded. Picking it up raw it just sounds like noise and static rather than communicationfrom sapient beings. Hoping for a message in the clear from an alien culture of similar or higher tech as we have is most likely futile, unless said aliens are totally self-trusting and don't encrypt or scramble any of their digitized radio frequency comms.

The best chance of an interstellar comm intercept is if we or someone else sends out powerful signals as a deliberate message, with a simple header that should be easy to decode, which contains instructions for decoding/unpacking the rest of the message burst signal. Then repeat the same signal a few thousand times so that a complete copy can be assembled due to inevitable bit loss in the various copies.

*Before anyone thought up the idea of rubbing rust onto sticky tape (see 'The Secret Life of Machines'**), television programmes*** were filmed on ordinary movie film then that was run through a telecine. (Essentially a TV camera with the film running right in front of the lens.) The telecine sent its signals to MASSIVE steel ribbon recorders. These things were something like 15~20 feet long and over 10 feet tall with tape reels bigger than old west wagon wheels. The tape was razor blade thin and recording speed was in feet per second. You didn't want to be anywhere near one of those beasts when the ribbon broke!

**The host of this 90's BBC show demonstrated rubbing ordinary iron rust onto a piece of cellophane tape then used a reel-to-reel tape recorder to record his voice to it.

***I'm using UK English since Dr. Who etc mentioned here is British stuff...