Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: r00b on September 27, 2006, 12:25:26 am
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The GTVA could send messages to earth from Alpha Centauri, it would take 4.39 years each way for the messages to arrive though. Still at least the Earth could have an idea about whats going on in the galaxy. what do you guys think?
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This was discusses years ago. Dont remember what the outcome of the debate was, though.
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on to the topic...
This was discusses years ago. Dont remember what the outcome of the debate was, though.
SEARCH FUNCTION TO THE RESCUE!
I personally think that both earth and the GTVA have much more pressing concerns than re-establishing communications. The GTVA has to stop the GTI rebellion, then mop up the rest of the Lucifer's fleet, then re-establish a decent economy, then fight off the second shivan incursion. Meanwhile, earth is probably in the middle of worldwide turmoil once they discover that the jumpnode is closed, then they ALSO have to work on rebuilding their economy, etc.
Now, if the jumpnode could be re-opened, that becomes first priority. In the meantime, I think that both sides have better things to do than ask each other what's happened in the 8.78 years since their last message arrived.
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This was discusses years ago. Dont remember what the outcome of the debate was, though.
Me neither, although several pertinent 'why nots' come to mind;
1/ Need to rebuild both Sol and the seperated GTA post-war could prevent the focusing of resources on communications in favour of survival
2/ Messages may have been sent but classified for various reasons; for example, bad news from Sol could result in a loss of GT(v)A morale and consequential domestic problems. It may be more effective to drive the Terran economy by using the aim of reaching Sol.
3/ This type of comms may be a 'lost art' due to the long term use of subspace communications or other (pre subspace) fast transmission types limited to inter-system range
4/ It may be prohibitively expensive to build transmitters and receivers, especially as a) you don't know if anyone is listening on the other side and b) you can't be sure exactly how they listen. Also c) it may be necessary to encode information for reasons hinted at in 2/
5/ There may have been no coherent strategy for contact with a cut-off Sol, impacting 3/ and 4/s' feasibility on either end.
6/ Failure to respond doesn't mean anything; you could wait 9+ years with no response, . One side could be firing messages off - but it means nothing without response and could be relegated (if messages are being sent from the GTVA side) as a mere minor 'hope' project not worthy of mention - a bit like how SETI is up and running but gets little mention. After all, 50 years waiting by the telephone with no answer isn't a very exciting current event for a news story.
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Other points to consider.
1) Sol might not be listening to signals from Alpha Centauri. It is after all a Vasudan held system. The closest star that Sol would be listening to would be Sirius which is 8.6 LY away. (Assuming Sirius was held by the Terrans at the time. I can't remember by FS1 plotline as well as FS2).
2) Although the Lucifer is gone Sol has no idea that the destruction of the Lucifer caused the Shivan attack to suddenly suffer from a lack of direction. For all they know the Shivans could have regrouped and destroyed the GTA. That might explain why they wouldn't send out any signals and would instead keep their heads down and wait to be contacted by the GTA.
3) What technology would you use? If Sol builds radio telescopes but the GTA builds message lasers then you're not going to be able to hear each other.
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hi,
or the GTA/GTVA had try to send messages to earth but doesnt get any anwser.
or they get a answer but it wasnt so nice and its top secret.
i mean the mankind is depressive enaugh, if they get the anwser that the half solar system is blow up and earth total destroyed, i think this will not really help the people.
so they have the hope that the earth is a life.
only so a idea *g*
Mehrpack
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Hmmm, good points. I've always wondered about this myself.
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Just slightly off-topic:
The "global economy collapse" described in Sol as a result of being cut off bothers me. If you check the FreespaceReferenceBible, it says inter-system jumps (ie, jump nodes) weren't discovered until 2312... barely 25 years before FS1. Just how much extra-solar economy and trade could be established in 25 years? Hardly enough to make Sol dependant on it.
Back on-topic:
I agree with the "not the right equipment" theory. The ships obviously don't use radio to communicate, as Command sends instantaneous transmissions from multiple AU's away (at least). They must use some type of subspace wave. So maybe radio (as a communication device) is a forgotten technology.
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Just slightly off-topic:
The "global economy collapse" described in Sol as a result of being cut off bothers me. If you check the FreespaceReferenceBible, it says inter-system jumps (ie, jump nodes) weren't discovered until 2312... barely 25 years before FS1. Just how much extra-solar economy and trade could be established in 25 years? Hardly enough to make Sol dependant on it.
Hmmm...Concievably alot. The opening of near instantaneous extra-solar travel would give Sol access to near infinite resources almost overnight. It's concievable that Sol's economy could become dependant on these resources in as little as 25 years.
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Ya'know, sending and receiving signals over a distance of 4.something light years doesn't require anything particularely high-tech. Any medium-sized dish would do. And I really doubt that basic knowledge of EM waves get's "lost" when you have interstellar spaceships, since it's just so fundamental that any electrical engineer uses it on a daily basis.
IMO, :v: simply forgot that possibility or they didn't bother to include it in the story. Maybe GTVA is constantly sending/receiving news from/to Sol, but it's just that nothing noteworthy has happened in Sol since FS1, which is quite possible.
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You think so? I'm trying to think how much signal loss you get when you transmit through space. I mean, it's kind of like expecting a spotlight to be visible in another star system. The signal may be so weak, even if it's a directed beam, that no reciever could be able to differentiate the difference between the signal and background noise.
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Yes, signal loss would be immense, but radio telescopes are very good at detecting very faint signals. And it also depends on how much power you pump into the sender.
I'm, too lazy to do any calculation right now, but I'm fairly sure that with two dishes the size of the Arecibo observatory you could link Sol and Alpha Cenaturi quite easily.
Alternatively, you could use laser based communication, since you would loose much less energy.
In other words, from a technological standpoint, it should be cheap and easy for the GTVA to construct a communcation station aiming at Sol.
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Yeah, so it doesn't really make sense, and we may never really know.
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Me neither, although several pertinent 'why nots' come to mind;
1/ Need to rebuild both Sol and the seperated GTA post-war could prevent the focusing of resources on communications in favour of survival
2/ Messages may have been sent but classified for various reasons; for example, bad news from Sol could result in a loss of GT(v)A morale and consequential domestic problems. It may be more effective to drive the Terran economy by using the aim of reaching Sol.
3/ This type of comms may be a 'lost art' due to the long term use of subspace communications or other (pre subspace) fast transmission types limited to inter-system range
4/ It may be prohibitively expensive to build transmitters and receivers, especially as a) you don't know if anyone is listening on the other side and b) you can't be sure exactly how they listen. Also c) it may be necessary to encode information for reasons hinted at in 2/
5/ There may have been no coherent strategy for contact with a cut-off Sol, impacting 3/ and 4/s' feasibility on either end.
6/ Failure to respond doesn't mean anything; you could wait 9+ years with no response, . One side could be firing messages off - but it means nothing without response and could be relegated (if messages are being sent from the GTVA side) as a mere minor 'hope' project not worthy of mention - a bit like how SETI is up and running but gets little mention. After all, 50 years waiting by the telephone with no answer isn't a very exciting current event for a news story.
I've always thought that #2 seemed the most plausible one.
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I have too but I like to try to find a non tin hat solution too :)
I'm, too lazy to do any calculation right now, but I'm fairly sure that with two dishes the size of the Arecibo observatory you could link Sol and Alpha Cenaturi quite easily.
Alternatively, you could use laser based communication, since you would loose much less energy.
In other words, from a technological standpoint, it should be cheap and easy for the GTVA to construct a communcation station aiming at Sol.
I don't doubt it. Which is why I made the point about technologies. The GTA might not have any radio telescopes or message lasers. It may need to build them again. So let me give you this as an example.
Suppose both sides build radio telescopes. Big ones. Big enough to communicate over interstellar distances. There are lots of reasons why it might not be enough.
1) The Sol could be looking for signals from Sirius while the GTA sends them from Alpha Centauri. A radio telescope can only scan a small section of the sky and neither side is likely to have many of them any more. It's possible for both of them to have sent signals the other one missed.
2) A dish that size would take time to build. It's possible that Sol didn't finish theirs in time to get the signal from Alpha Centauri
3) What frequency would you send the signal on? SETI uses the hydrogen band IIRC but would the Vasudans think of that? More importantly if they missed it would they be caught and corrected before Sol turned its eye towards Sirius instead? Remember that the GTA fractured soon after the destruction of the Sol jump node. They might not have had good enough relations with the Vasudans to have access to the scientific literature that would cover stuff like this.
4) Who says the Vasudans even sent the signal? It would be pretty easy for a few vasudans who were bitter about the war to simply pretend that they were contacting Sol when in fact they didn't even turn the dish on.
5) It would be similarly simple for them to have made the claim that civilisation in Sol had fought a war or whatever to make the GTA give up trying to make contact.
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).
I could go on :D
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Not to mention the question of 'Why send a beacon saying 'We are here' when the people on Earth aren't even sure if the War finished with the destruction of the Lucy?' So even if the GTVA are sending signals, who to say that Earth is even listening for it?
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I don't doubt it. Which is why I made the point about technologies. The GTA might not have any radio telescopes or message lasers. It may need to build them again. So let me give you this as an example.
Suppose both sides build radio telescopes. Big ones. Big enough to communicate over interstellar distances. There are lots of reasons why it might not be enough.
1) The Sol could be looking for signals from Sirius while the GTA sends them from Alpha Centauri. A radio telescope can only scan a small section of the sky and neither side is likely to have many of them any more. It's possible for both of them to have sent signals the other one missed.
2) A dish that size would take time to build. It's possible that Sol didn't finish theirs in time to get the signal from Alpha Centauri
3) What frequency would you send the signal on? SETI uses the hydrogen band IIRC but would the Vasudans think of that? More importantly if they missed it would they be caught and corrected before Sol turned its eye towards Sirius instead? Remember that the GTA fractured soon after the destruction of the Sol jump node. They might not have had good enough relations with the Vasudans to have access to the scientific literature that would cover stuff like this.
4) Who says the Vasudans even sent the signal? It would be pretty easy for a few vasudans who were bitter about the war to simply pretend that they were contacting Sol when in fact they didn't even turn the dish on.
5) It would be similarly simple for them to have made the claim that civilisation in Sol had fought a war or whatever to make the GTA give up trying to make contact.
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).
I could go on :D
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.
Earth has a good motivation to build sensor ships capable of watching for battles in the neighboring systems, and they could watch the great war with a 5 year delay. They would want to know if the gta won or if the shivans are going to send a sub-lightspeed fleet that will show up in 20 years. Since we have the plans for building space telescopes now that can spot a terrestrial planet out to 150 light years, I don't think its unreasonable to imagine a space based society 300 years more advanced being able to detect a destroyer going critical after getting hit by 30 helios bombs at 10 light years. So I say we can assume that building a reciever that can listen to the next star system is also possible, and probably not very expesive either. (Probably on the scale of launching a communications satellite into geostationary orbit for today's economy.)
As for your points:
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.
2.) Making a big metal parabola in space? With access to earth's drydock? They should be able to make one the size of a cruiser in a week.
3.) As for the transmisison frequency, there would probably still be standards for light based frequency uses. Senders and recievers would tune in the most logical. Tuning into multiple bands simultaneously is possible today, and likely highly perfected by freespace time.
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.)
5.) I would think public outcry to know the fate of family members on earth would drive the GTA to set up a similar reciever ship and probably broadcast the news as well. there's too much vested emotion in earth to just shrug and walk away. It would probably have been one of the first treaties put to the Vasudans.
6.) Yeah, it makes for an interesting theory that earth first reversed engineered the flux cannons into functional beams and sent it out to the rest of the empire in case they hadn't figured it out yet. I think most likely though is that with no travel to earth and the only interaction being 4+ year out-of-date news broadcasts and emails, earth has been rendered completely irrelevant to the GTVA. Terrans get the warm fuzzy feeling that their homeworld still has things growing on it, but for all intents and purposes, it may as well have been destroyed.
- Just added the open quote at the start of that BFO. - Flipside
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lots of stuff
Oh, I'm not arguing about that. There can be many reasons why no communication with Earth has been established. I'm just stating that whatever the reason, it pretty sure isn't technical limitations of the GTVA or the Earthlings.
As for coverage. With a 4 year delay you won't be able to have a dialog anyway. So if I were GTVA command, I'd just constantly send stuff towards Earth, probably realaying some news channels to keep the folks at home up to date (minus 4 years).
The Earthlings would probably figure it out for themselves to start listening to Alpha Centauri 4 years after the node collapsed. No need to listen to other star systems for a few years, since they're all further away.
Anyway, this is all getting waaay to hypothetical for my tastes ;)
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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.
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I was always of the opinion that the GTVA relied on subspace communication. Yes, the technology is there to send long range messages that would take years to get there, but is that really feasible at this point in time.
Plus, for all we know, the GTVA has been communicating with Sol, and has classified all their comm records at the highest level.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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lol :D
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.
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(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. :eek2: Simply marvellous. It would be terrific for a Vasudan version of Silent Threat. :D
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http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,11501.msg212777.html#msg212777
*cough-:nervous:-Cough*
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That's an excellent idea. :eek2: Simply marvellous. It would be terrific for a Vasudan version of Silent Threat. :D
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. :D
2) When have I got the time to FRED the damn thing! :D
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.
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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 :D
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Wootage, 3K !!!!!
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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).
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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.
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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.
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The Colossus was a secret project=no public money to spend making it=needed more time to complete.
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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 alot, 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.
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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..."
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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?
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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. :(
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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
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And you're surrouned by lots of animals making strange noises
I was about to suggest every forum a playground for monkeys. :P
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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.............. ;7
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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... ;)
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Quite right, Alexandra palace = birthplace of good TV. :yes:
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Dr. Who was a better show with the "other" doctor on it .... i dont like the new "good-looking" dude (as my sister says). Another good show is "dead like me" but that one i no longer follow...
Anyways SciFi channel has alot of good stuff... i guessed it was from UK cause of english accents...
My question is how complicated is data encryption in the years around the great war?? ought to be like 1024-terabit encryption... basically impossible to decode after years of isolation. The only thing we might have is Earth GTA's early transmissions, possibly 2-4 years following the Great War... and they'll prolly have our early GTVA transmissions from the Great War.
I think the thing that we succeeded in saving Sol was more of a lie to the people to keep morale high... thus the reason it wasnt actually a high priority until GTVA lost Capella... they needed more space and morale... so they get the Knossos portal to reconnect to earth.
For the GTVA:
1) Stop the NTF and HoL
2) Build the Colossus
3) Defend against Shivans
4) Prevent future rebellions
5) Develop new ships
6) Keep everyone happy, guessing/lying about Sol
7) Get to Sol
8) Find a way to get to Sol
Notice 8 is below 7 because theyres little headway to doing that.
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On Sol: Directly after the destruction of the SD Lucifer
They build a ship with big F%&k!ng engines and then, load it with messages and people. Set a course for Delta Serpentis and go top speed!!!!!
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Because they are 5000 light years from Sol.
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they would die on the ship before they get there.
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You fail to recognize how vital jump nodes are. Without jump nodes, Humans would still be stuck on earth blowing themselves up.
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yes indeed :nod:
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Why not go to Alpha Centauri? :wtf:
EDIT: Sorry--I reworded it and forgot to put back in the "not".
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He said Delta Serpentis, not Alpha Centauri.
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Alpha Centauri is closer you know.
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Bleh--I forgot to put the "not" back in.
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Maybe they just did it Star-Control style. I.E. the system names do not correspond at all to real-life constellations. It would explain why there are so many proper-named stars in FS (and how there can be colonies and inhabitable planets around Deneb and Sirius, which ought to be ultra-hot and irradiated).
So, e.g. the GTVA calls it Deneb, but it wouldn't be the Deneb we look at in the northern sky. They'd just be calling it Deneb since it's easier than "HD 331309" or something.
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Maybe they just did it Star-Control style. I.E. the system names do not correspond at all to real-life constellations. It would explain why there are so many proper-named stars in FS (and how there can be colonies and inhabitable planets around Deneb and Sirius, which ought to be ultra-hot and irradiated).
So, e.g. the GTVA calls it Deneb, but it wouldn't be the Deneb we look at in the northern sky. They'd just be calling it Deneb since it's easier than "HD 331309" or something.
Yes, and also the inhabitants of that system surely wouldn't call it HD 331309 unless they were high definition number lovers ;)
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The Freespace Wiki has a list of all the canon systems and their proximity to earth.
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Cryo the people and send them off to earth? No point.
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98% of the information we now have on extra-solar planets wasn't available to :v: 8-10 years ago. Stop nit-picking that part of it--they used what they had and we use what we now have.
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Meh.
At any rate the GTVA could still communicate with Sol system if they really wanted to, albeit with about 4.365 ping.
They wouldn't be really able to play multiplayer games but they sure could communicate, they would just need to build a honking big radio telescope - not really anything beyond the ability and resources of the GTVA - and bombard the Sol system with it.
Obviously, the fact that they may have done that and there is canonically no answer (since there has been no communication with Sol since the Great War ending) would likely mean that Sol system cannot (or doesn't want to) answer, perhaps due to Shivans, internal powerstruggle or some other event that rendered the system unable to transmit powerful enough radio signals. Go figure.
Seeing how Sol is obviously no longer capable of even keeping radio/TV stations on air (even those could be detected with good telescopes acting together as interferometres), I don't think they could send people away on cryo ships or any other way... :rolleyes:
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OR
Sol has responded but stupid Command is keeping a lid on it..
OR
Stupid Command didn't even try to contat Sol
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OR
The GTA received word that the Lucifer had been destroyed, meaning there was contact.
OR
Sol became very aggressive very quickly.
OR
They have attempted to find a way out of Sol, meaning some already jumped system and they still don't have FTL-drives.
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OR
Some type of interstellar debris/anomaly/whatever between Alpha Centauri and Sol rendered conventional communication indecipherable.
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This whole thing was going to be a plot device in FS3 and you guys are reading too much into this?
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OR
This discussion is going too close to the Unmetionable Topic.
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when you say debiers could it be like I don' know perhaps the damn Lucifer blowing up creating some sort of masive subspace disturbance that prevents comunications or make them damn hard to get out of the sistem?
Or the GTVA command is just beeing stupid and doesnt want people to know they have contact with SOL! don't ask me why they would do such a thing cuz we all know by know that 90% of what GTVA command does makes no sense and is devoid o any sort of rational thinking and logic.
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Seeing how Sol is obviously no longer capable of even keeping radio/TV stations on air (even those could be detected with good telescopes acting together as interferometres), I don't think they could send people away on cryo ships or any other way... :rolleyes:
Why in the hell would the GTA still be using radio and TV when it's quite obvious that they already have a form of FTL communication small enough to be used on fighters?
Hell even now TV might be on its way out as the Internet is starting to show signs of taking over.
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Even so...it would be damn hard for the GTA to make contact with the Sol sistem...! Why?
Because as far as we know they are using some sort of subspace com. sistems to be able to talk live so speak otherwise it would be imposibl for GTVA command to know what happenes and what orders to give.
If they are indeed relling of subspace com. then the fact that they cannot comunicate with Sol would be more the plausibel since there are no jumpnodes to use for com.
The real question here should be has the sol jumpnode been completely destroyed or merely crashed as in become too unstable for any ships of the GTVA or com. to get through. However I believe that such a badly damaged node would be almost imposible even for the shivans to use for com. let alone get a ship through it.
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Sorry to :necro:
but on the subject of the original topic...
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,11501.0.html
BEHOLD !
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You necro'd this thread to make an even bigger necro, by proxy? :wtf:
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Threads merged.