SLN FTL

[deowll]

I need to make a correction. Sandra Crandall and her peers were aware at
least in theory very large FTL units can be made even before they ran into
FTL com. The SLN hadn't made any to the best of their knowledge.


This suggests they _could_ put such coms in large ships or fortresses after
some development work. It doesn't sound like something they'd want to stick
in every ship in a fleet though.

I guess this was just one more item that didn't get researched because they
felt safe.

I'm not sure even that computes to me in a way. If you have more than one
inhabited planet in a system businesses would be willing to pay a lot to use
the thing even if all it could send was Morse code.

[Don Sample]

Post by deowll
I need to make a correction. Sandra Crandall and her peers were aware at
least in theory very large FTL units can be made even before they ran into
FTL com. The SLN hadn't made any to the best of their knowledge.
This suggests they _could_ put such coms in large ships or fortresses after
some development work. It doesn't sound like something they'd want to stick
in every ship in a fleet though.
I guess this was just one more item that didn't get researched because they
felt safe.
I'm not sure even that computes to me in a way. If you have more than one
inhabited planet in a system businesses would be willing to pay a lot to use
the thing even if all it could send was Morse code.

Any ship with a wedge can send low bandwidth FTL messages (though I
haven't seen Weber actually do this, at any time.) How low a bandwidth
would depend on how long someone with gravtic sensors has to watch a
given signal to be able to get a good read on its wedge strength and
acceleration, and how quickly ships can actually change their
acceleration.

From the reports we see regularly from tac officers, they have no
trouble refining a ship's acceleration within 5gs pretty quickly, so by
varying your acceleration in 5 g increments between say 460g and 495g
you can transmit three bits of data with every acceleration change, at a
cost of only about 5% of your overall acceleration. If you're willing
to lose a bit more of your acceleration, you can transmit even more bits
with each change.

[deowll]

Post by Don Sample

Post by deowll
I need to make a correction. Sandra Crandall and her peers were aware at
least in theory very large FTL units can be made even before they ran into
FTL com. The SLN hadn't made any to the best of their knowledge.
This suggests they _could_ put such coms in large ships or fortresses after
some development work. It doesn't sound like something they'd want to stick
in every ship in a fleet though.
I guess this was just one more item that didn't get researched because they
felt safe.
I'm not sure even that computes to me in a way. If you have more than one
inhabited planet in a system businesses would be willing to pay a lot to use
the thing even if all it could send was Morse code.

Any ship with a wedge can send low bandwidth FTL messages (though I
haven't seen Weber actually do this, at any time.) How low a bandwidth
would depend on how long someone with gravtic sensors has to watch a
given signal to be able to get a good read on its wedge strength and
acceleration, and how quickly ships can actually change their
acceleration.
From the reports we see regularly from tac officers, they have no
trouble refining a ship's acceleration within 5gs pretty quickly, so by
varying your acceleration in 5 g increments between say 460g and 495g
you can transmit three bits of data with every acceleration change, at a
cost of only about 5% of your overall acceleration. If you're willing
to lose a bit more of your acceleration, you can transmit even more bits
with each change.

If it is really that simple to send Morse code then they should be using it
in most systems as a norm and every ship with a wedge should be using it for
communications over long distances. Yes I agree it really should be about
that simple. All you would need to do is make your wedge a little stronger
or weaker even if you aren't moving.

Post by Don Sample
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>

[Michael R N Dolbear]

Post by Don Sample
Any ship with a wedge can send low bandwidth FTL messages (though I
haven't seen Weber actually do this, at any time.) How low a

bandwidth

Post by Don Sample
would depend on how long someone with gravtic sensors has [...]

See "With One Stone" in Worlds of Honor #4 _The Service of the Sword_
where HH invents the idea and a one bit message is sent. The end of
that story shows Hemphill reading the report and starting on the road
to the FTL coms seen in HotQ a couple of years later.