I decided to do a bit of exploring yesterday. I know this is going to sound over-dramatic but: this is the first game that has changed my perspective on life. I suppose I knew how big the galaxy is ("really really big") but Elite showed me. I kitted out a hauler with a scoop, big FSD, armored hull, repair machine, SDS, and started making jumps. I jumped and jumped and jumped, more or less in the direction of a particular nebula. I got maybe 1/10 of the way there: then I scrolled out on the galactic view and I hadn't moved at all. I had travelled farther than living humans are ever really likely to travel (outside of games) and it was, literally, no distance at all. And our galaxy is a small one.
But, when I started scanning systems and planets, I found 3 with life. 1 Was labelled as terraformable (interesting!) but one was a water-world with life and two were large planets with life.
I'd love to know if Frontier went at this question organically (i.e.: made a planetary and star system model, then turned the crank and saw how often life emerged) or if they did it top-down (i.e.: decided if life should emerge approximately so many times in the galaxy and then adjusted the model to put that within the probability zone)
The Drake Equation famously is:
N = R* x Fp x Ne x Fl x FI x Fc x L
Where
N is the number of civilizations expected in a galaxy
R* is the average rate of star formation
Fp is the fraction of those that have planets
Ne is the number of planets around stars that have planets, which are capable of life
Fl is the fraction of planets that could support life, that develop life
FI is the fraction of planets that develop life, that develop intelligent life
Fc is the fraction of planets that develop life which develop technological civilization
L is the time those civilizations emit signals into space (because of light-speed)
Given that Frontier has (good for gameplay) made the implicit assertion that faster-than-light travel is possible, because we do it, the Drake Equation term L ought to get changed to some kind of virological spread model: as soon as a technological civilization arises with Frame Shift Drive, how long will it take to colonize the galaxy? Obviously, in the reality of ED humanity has avoided The Great Filter, unless it's an all-destroying Von Neumann machine-cloud of berserkers that we just haven't met ... yet...
I explored maybe 150 star systems and found life 3 times. I see one planet another explorer found has "indigenous life" (does that mean natives that know how to make fire?) (natives that know how to split the atom?) (natives that know how to make beer?) So Frontier's model is that life is commonplace. It ought to stand to reason that if life is commonplace, humanity, in ED, is not alone. From that, we get into the Fermi Paradox: "If there are so many aliens, where are they?" and the idea of The Great Filter. My personal suspicion is that The Great Filter is, put succinctly: "Einstein was right and Frontier is wrong" - travel above the speed of light is not possible. There are civilizations all over the galaxy but, like us, they are like flies trapped in the amber of space-time. They'll launch some robot explorers as we've done, build their equivalent of a Hubble Space Telescope, and go "OMG. We are soooooo F'd!!" once the size of everything sinks in.
I'm rambling slightly, I know. As I played last night I was thinking that ED is Frontier's best guess at conditions in a real, testable, measurable, yet fictional universe. We are at a very interesting time - a time when Frame-Shift Drive does not exist, but our robotic watchers are able to start counting planets around distant suns. Frontier's making a courageous statement (in the form of entertainment) about the way the universe works, which will be verified or disproved in the next generation of humans. When I was a kid in college, I worked on the Hubble Project, manually entering in photometry data for guide-stars, into an ancient VAX computer - the younger people who are playing ED right now will hopefully be alive when man's robotic servants answer the question about how the probability of certain types of planets around certain suns, in general. I think it's incredibly gutsy that Frontier, in the name of entertainment, just leapt out there into astronomy.
Has anyone from Frontier ever published anything about their thinking and/or their process in deciding the parameters of the universe?? I think it would be amazingly wonderful to get an interview between someone like Carolyn Porco and whoever made those decisions for all of us who live in the ED universe.
PS - I'd also love to read some short fiction about how the Frame-Shift Drive was invented. Was it a huge Manhattan Project style effort, as humanity was up against an ecological wall? Was it a military effort? Was it a fairly straightforward consequence of a strange side-effect of some theoretical physics that some researcher spouted out one day? What happened to the first person who heard the words "Frame-Shift Drive Charging"? Were they ever seen again? In my imagination, the voice "Frame-Shift Drive Charging" is a tradition going back to the early days of human exploration of the universe. Perhaps the researcher who first pushed the button, said that, before she was unintentionally catapulted into the front of The Moon from her lab in Oxford.
[Edit history: minor fix-up surrounding The Great Filter]
But, when I started scanning systems and planets, I found 3 with life. 1 Was labelled as terraformable (interesting!) but one was a water-world with life and two were large planets with life.
I'd love to know if Frontier went at this question organically (i.e.: made a planetary and star system model, then turned the crank and saw how often life emerged) or if they did it top-down (i.e.: decided if life should emerge approximately so many times in the galaxy and then adjusted the model to put that within the probability zone)
The Drake Equation famously is:
N = R* x Fp x Ne x Fl x FI x Fc x L
Where
N is the number of civilizations expected in a galaxy
R* is the average rate of star formation
Fp is the fraction of those that have planets
Ne is the number of planets around stars that have planets, which are capable of life
Fl is the fraction of planets that could support life, that develop life
FI is the fraction of planets that develop life, that develop intelligent life
Fc is the fraction of planets that develop life which develop technological civilization
L is the time those civilizations emit signals into space (because of light-speed)
Given that Frontier has (good for gameplay) made the implicit assertion that faster-than-light travel is possible, because we do it, the Drake Equation term L ought to get changed to some kind of virological spread model: as soon as a technological civilization arises with Frame Shift Drive, how long will it take to colonize the galaxy? Obviously, in the reality of ED humanity has avoided The Great Filter, unless it's an all-destroying Von Neumann machine-cloud of berserkers that we just haven't met ... yet...
I explored maybe 150 star systems and found life 3 times. I see one planet another explorer found has "indigenous life" (does that mean natives that know how to make fire?) (natives that know how to split the atom?) (natives that know how to make beer?) So Frontier's model is that life is commonplace. It ought to stand to reason that if life is commonplace, humanity, in ED, is not alone. From that, we get into the Fermi Paradox: "If there are so many aliens, where are they?" and the idea of The Great Filter. My personal suspicion is that The Great Filter is, put succinctly: "Einstein was right and Frontier is wrong" - travel above the speed of light is not possible. There are civilizations all over the galaxy but, like us, they are like flies trapped in the amber of space-time. They'll launch some robot explorers as we've done, build their equivalent of a Hubble Space Telescope, and go "OMG. We are soooooo F'd!!" once the size of everything sinks in.
I'm rambling slightly, I know. As I played last night I was thinking that ED is Frontier's best guess at conditions in a real, testable, measurable, yet fictional universe. We are at a very interesting time - a time when Frame-Shift Drive does not exist, but our robotic watchers are able to start counting planets around distant suns. Frontier's making a courageous statement (in the form of entertainment) about the way the universe works, which will be verified or disproved in the next generation of humans. When I was a kid in college, I worked on the Hubble Project, manually entering in photometry data for guide-stars, into an ancient VAX computer - the younger people who are playing ED right now will hopefully be alive when man's robotic servants answer the question about how the probability of certain types of planets around certain suns, in general. I think it's incredibly gutsy that Frontier, in the name of entertainment, just leapt out there into astronomy.
Has anyone from Frontier ever published anything about their thinking and/or their process in deciding the parameters of the universe?? I think it would be amazingly wonderful to get an interview between someone like Carolyn Porco and whoever made those decisions for all of us who live in the ED universe.
PS - I'd also love to read some short fiction about how the Frame-Shift Drive was invented. Was it a huge Manhattan Project style effort, as humanity was up against an ecological wall? Was it a military effort? Was it a fairly straightforward consequence of a strange side-effect of some theoretical physics that some researcher spouted out one day? What happened to the first person who heard the words "Frame-Shift Drive Charging"? Were they ever seen again? In my imagination, the voice "Frame-Shift Drive Charging" is a tradition going back to the early days of human exploration of the universe. Perhaps the researcher who first pushed the button, said that, before she was unintentionally catapulted into the front of The Moon from her lab in Oxford.
[Edit history: minor fix-up surrounding The Great Filter]
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