In msg (2311) How do Densitometer thingies work? Simpson, Bart
[email removed] writes:
> My biggest question is can anyone tell me how these things 'work'? Do they
> sense the 'dimples' in space that masses have? I know they rate them at
> High and Low penetration and then xxx kilometers, but beyond that I know
> very little. Can they be effectively used in searching for derilicts?
Most probably yes. There were a table in "Grand Survey" about the maximum
ranges of densitometers against various size targets in empty space. It's much
easier to find an object if it floats free in space than if it close to some big
mass like a planet.
I don't remember the exact range, but I'd wager that it was somewhere in the
range of 1 AU or slightly more for a ship in less then 20000 ton.
The biggest question when talking about the PCs using a densitometer for
searching for derelicts is "Do they have one?". Densitometers are military
and scout equippment, and unless they have a type S (or perhaps a seeker)
they are unlikely to have one.
> I expected that there would be some 'junk' in space, but
> (I think) there was generally empty space between systems (can any of you
> astronomer types help here?)
I'm not an astronomer, but not knowing what I talk about has never stopped
me before :)
What can be found in deepspace? Well, anything that don't advertise it's
presence or is valuable enough to drag a lot of people there. If it did, it
would be on the charts.
Among the things that are right out according to this are large astronomic
phenomena like black holes, novas, anything more massive than a small gas giant
(the GS table gives the max range a sgg can be detected as up to one parsec),
mysteriously undiscovered pop 9+ worlds (Yes, I know about Ruie) and similar
things.
As for what *is* there is the occational navy fuel/supply dump at strategic
locations (and perhaps a Zhodany ditto occationaly, just waiting for the PCs
to stumble upon as they scourge the sector for derelicts:), very rarely a
planet and lots and lots of cometary nucleii.
According to some theories(*), the orgin of comets are in a area at about
100AU distance (the Oort cloud) from the central star of system. Some models
suggest that, in addition to the ones that fall inwards and become 'real'
comets, there are also a slow leakage towards interstellar space.
The number of nucleii that have leaked from every system for the history
of the galaxy adds up to a very large number and I did some calculations on
the chance a ship a very high sublight speed and a densitometer had of locating
one (but they are at home, and probably lost in an avalance of old paper, but
the chance was not astronomically small.)
In my campaign, the players have cashed in on the "needle in the haystack"
angle and have used random locations in deepspace as a convenient places to
mothball starships. The specific example was a vargr trader (the same as on my
deckplans) that were placed in deepspace somewhere around Deneb 0330 manned
only by a gunbot in the turret and a hold full of occupied low-bearths
(various enemies of the PC's. I remember that there's supposed to be the SolSek
'rezident' on Vincennes/Deneb and two officers from the Illelish Navy:)
The fun really started when the PCs came looking for their ship and didn't
find it. After some bitching about if they were in the right location and
scared thoughts about what'd happen if someone had found the ship and released
everyone there they begun to search the area and found a 200km cometary
nucleus winding it's way from the scene of the crime.
The nucleus had simply collided with the ship and carried it along. The
responder beacon was silent because the gunbot had burned all fuel when it
tried to fight off the comet:)
> Bart
(*) November, two years ago, I asked an astronomer here at Chalmers about the
latest status of the Oort cloud theory and got the reply: "Unproven, but
largly accepted because it fits in with some popular theories about the
orgin of the solar system."
After that, however, I heard ("Objection! Hearsay!") on sci.space that
the evidence of Oort could was looking less likely every day.
When it comes to traveller, I refer to exhibit 1,
"MT Aliens 1: Vilani&Vargr", more specifically the Vargr section as proof
that Oort clouds exist in the traveller universe:)
- - -bertil-
- - --
"Some people almost never think. They just reshuffle their prejudices."