Subject:
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Re: The "geography" of local space
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Thu, 4 Nov 1999 01:01:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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390 times
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In lugnet.space, John J. Ladasky, Jr. writes:
> Hi there!
>
>
> I have been lurking on LUGNET for a few months now. This is my first
> post to LUGNET, and I should probably introduce myself before jumping in
> to a discussion, but whatever... I will post a personal intro. over in
> lugnet.people under the title "Saying Hello", after I'm done with this.
Welcome!
> I've been reading the proposal for an integrated space milieu. There
> is a question about what the geography (cosmography?) of this Legoverse
> should be. Some people have suggested that what we currently know about
> local space should be taken as a starting point. This makes sense --
> minifigs are rather human-looking, after all. It is only natural to
> assume that they call a Lego Earth their home.
>
> If there has been any argument against using reality as a starting
> point, it seems to be that nobody here is that sure what real space
> looks like.
Perhaps, but we can find out, so it's not impossible. I know I don't have a
starmap in my head <:) Having a universe without going through a lot of
research was what I was aiming at, and I didn't think anyone else would want
that either. Not very realistic I admit, but I'm not ashamed.
> Tom McDonald says:
>
> > I also am not against someone wanting to do real research about • "what's real" though I
> > think that once we establish some sort of map, it should be "first • come, first served" so that
> > if someone finds out that IRL there's a huge black hole where we've • put a densely
> > populated set of solar systems, then the hole has to be relocated.
>
> Well, I've done a little of that research -- astronomy is one of my
> hobbies (I have too many of those!). I'll share what I know with you
> here.
>
> As for building models to add to the "Datsville universe" -- well, I'm
> not quite ready to do that! First, I have to negotiate with my son for
> the pieces. 8^) I'm also kind of a "hard" science fiction fan, and
> disinclined to accept FTL travel... but I'm not building anything, so
> you can ignore me! 8^) 8^)
:)
> > I think it might be cool to just start with what we *very* generally • know about how real
> > space is arranged so far, and then let imagination take over. That • way we could still use
> > some known real names and objects, but are not strictly limited to • them.
> > * How about we start with 100 parsecs (pc) / 326 light years (ly)? Too
> big? Too little?
>
> How big should your bubble of explored/explorable space be? Well, it
> depends how exotic a setting you want. See comments immediately below.
Well, it became quickly apparent given the imagination of some that we needed
some widely varying environments. It's not just a minifig-only universe out
there. So bigger distances were needed. Also, at this point, it's not
necessary that everyone's worlds be hard-mapped either; maybe only those
nearby to Earth; or far away worlds that exist within a relatively short
distance from each other but whose distance from Earth has never been measured.
> > ** If you all want to see it, I've got a map from which we could • possibly start. It's from an
> > old Star Trek Tech Manual which shows major stars (48 of them in fact) • in a sphere within
> > 7 pc, 22.82 ly, centered round our own star Sol (though the original • Federation was much
> > bigger than that, more along the lines of 4kpc+). And it does not • show any other objects,
> > such as nebulae, black holes, etc.
>
> I wouldn't expect to see any nebulae or black holes on the small-scale
> Star Trek map. • <snip>
> Now, the Star Trek manual (Is this the original '70's Trek manual? I
> think I still have a copy of it myself somewhere) is likely to have been
> fairly accurate -- but it is clearly incomplete.
Yes, it is the same. And I am aware it is incomplete. That's why I volunteered
it. We don't have to have Lego space be identical to IRL space, not unless
more folks want it that way. I proposed leaving it vague at the start to
accomodate more lego worlds.
> There are about 100
> stars known within 7 parsecs of Sol. Most of those have been known for
> decades, so it is likely that Trek left off some minor, dim stars. Do
> you care about these dim, "red dwarf" stars? Well, they're actually the
> most numerous type of star! They're under 1/10 as bright as the sun,
> and they're unlikely to have planets where you can walk around on the
> surface in your shirtsleeves. One theory holds that they're unlikely to
> have any planets at all. But, it's your universe. What kinds of
> interesting things might you find in such places?
But that's kinda my point: it's not just my universe. The difficulty is in
incorporating everything into a common frame such as Town's Datsville. Town is
relatively defined whereas space is not. It's got everything from living
machines to Suzanne Rich's triffids and more.
> If you wanted to keep the Datsville universe this small, there will
> almost certainly be planets to explore. Some of them might even prove
> to be habitable. (If there is interest, I will be happy to discuss
> planets in more detail -- but I'll try to stick to stars in this post,
> it's getting long enough already.)
Personally, I don't have a problem talking planets at all. But I think folks
here mostly like just talking space lego.
> But there won't be any exciting
> *stellar* objects. Where is the closest known black hole? Neutron
> star? Nebula? I can't answer these questions definitively, but I can
> state with confidence that you will find no such objects within 50
> parsecs of us. We wouldn't fail to notice them, if they were in so
> close. We would probably be able to see them by eye, and we would
> certainly spot them with even modest telescopes.
True. But I figured if there was enough participation in our "safe/boring" :)
area of the galaxy, we'd start some sort of world federation thingy that could
be the equivalent of Datsville in space, a collective effort rather than one
person running the show. It obviously wouldn't have to be limited to just the
core worlds around Sol, but it could start there. Just as Datsville started as
one small town and was built more or less one building at a time, I thought a
similar thing could happen with space.
<snipped good examples>
>
> > As it's not very detailed, it'll leave plenty of room for creativity. • I don't want to imitate Star
> > Trek (or any other established paradigm necessarily, though I imagine • it'll happen to a
> > degree or two), except possibly by convenience of adopting spacial • measurements.
> > Which reminds me: if we use faster than light (FTL) velocities, what • kind of velocity scale
> > do we want to adopt?
>
> This depends on where you want to go, and how quickly you want to get
> there. If your imagination tells you that you should be able to travel
> from Earth to the Crab Nebula in a week, parsecs per hour is a
> reasonable unit of measure.
Perhaps. It just depends on what folks are willing to tolerate. Hyperdrive,
found in Star Wars, has incredible velocities. Much moreso does gravitic
drive, as in Asimov's Foundation.
I had suggested an alternative milieu, but was unable to discover how to make
it work along the lines of a Datsville: to derive a timeline of (inter-)
galactic history, it's parallels and splinters, so that everyone's universe
fits somewhere in time and space. For now, such an idea is probably best left
to a webring. But someone else can tackle that though.
> > Unless, maybe, someone wants to go to the trouble of staging an • emergency mass-exodus
> > of moving civilizations because a rogue black star is approaching! • That could be another
> > story :-)
>
> Sounds like fun! But realistically, you would have thousands of years'
> warning. The relative speeds of objects within the galaxy (and its
> attendant globular clusters) are pretty low -- no more than about 50
> kilometers per second, which works out to one parsec every 19,600
> years. An object moving much faster than this would have to come from
> far outside the local galactic group, and to my knowledge no such object
> has ever been found.
While intragalactic object speeds may be typically low, you did not mention
another typical slow phenomenon known as the bureaucrats, who want to tell us
everything is okay. So you've got to convince and pull people together to
overthrow them and establish a new regime, which would be wobbly at best for a
few hundred years until it gets serious and all the disgruntled used-to-be-
dynasties fade away. Then maybe build a religion around it; build vessels; and
eventually evacuate the masses to somewhere suitable (the exploration of which
of course has been happening un/successfully for a few hundred years), cuz
maybe a dozen of populated star systems lie in its path... and that could take
a long time. (That's a part of the story I inadvertantly left out :-)
Somehow, I feel that it's all been written before... (Where's Jemby?)
-Tom McD.
when replying, spamcake given out during Halloween is now illegal in 31 of 50
states.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: The "geography" of local space
|
| Hello all. This is the first time I've poked my head into lugnet.space. I'm sure some of you are familiar with my site at (URL) Its got a space storyline and some models I've made as well... (...) measured. I have a question about this discussion. (...) (25 years ago, 13-Nov-99, to lugnet.space)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | The "geography" of local space
|
| Hi there! I have been lurking on LUGNET for a few months now. This is my first post to LUGNET, and I should probably introduce myself before jumping in to a discussion, but whatever... I will post a personal intro. over in lugnet.people under the (...) (25 years ago, 3-Nov-99, to lugnet.space)
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