[r00b]

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?

[Taristin]

This was discusses years ago. Dont remember what the outcome of the debate was, though.

[Turey]

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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.

[aldo_14]

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.

[karajorma]

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.

[Mehrpack]

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

[Freespace Freak]

Hmmm, good points.  I've always wondered about this myself.

[Dark Hunter]

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.

[Freespace Freak]

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 .  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.

[Col. Fishguts]

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, 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.

[Freespace Freak]

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.

[Col. Fishguts]

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.

[Freespace Freak]

Yeah, so it doesn't really make sense, and we may never really know.

[CP5670]

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.

[karajorma]

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

[Flipside]

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?

[bfobar]

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

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

[Col. Fishguts]

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

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Blue Haired Maniac]

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.