Hard science/Lore questions

[killerofstars]

Hey so, in thinking about elite, I have a few lore/science questions.

1) Zero gravity has a bunch of bad effects on the human body, but pilots presumably spend a lot of time in zero g...especially deep space explorers. The two big ones are muscle degeneration and bone loss. In elite, how is that delt with? Drugs? Or Gene therapy so that pilots are mostly immune? The flight suits could probably mostly handle muscle degeneration through forced muscle stimulus, (exercise from your flight chair!) but the bone loss is a bit more serious, and so far nobody really knows if a low gravity environment mostly negates those problems.

I'm kind of assuming Gene therapy since the geforce tolerance for pilots in elite seems to be pretty impressively high.

2) Solar radiation: We basically fly into stars. Are the ships just really well radiation shielded or do the ships shields mostly block that out?

3) FTL communication: Does this exist in Elite? It doesn't have to, ships traveling between stations could basically carry data packages in kind of a sneakernet. In fact, this seems likely given how many data courier missions there are. However, sometimes galnet posts are written as if FTL communication between stations without ships DOES exist, so...not really clear on this one.

 

[Robert Maynard]

FTL communications must exist - otherwise there'd be a (long) delay when using text comms in SuperCruise or when messaging a Wing mate or friend in another system entirely.

 

[satrycus]

Hey so, in thinking about elite, I have a few lore/science questions.

1) Zero gravity has a bunch of bad effects on the human body,

I think you've pretty much answered this question in that some form of gene therapy is the most likely answer (progenitor cells maybe?) and unless you're exclusively skulking around outposts of deep space you're never that far from at a station with gravity.

2) Solar radiation: We basically fly into stars. Are the ships just really well radiation shielded or do the ships shields mostly block that out?

Yes.

3) FTL communication: Does this exist in Elite?

I think it must do (hence Jaques' message all the way from what's now the Colonia nebula) but expanding upon your sneakernet suggestion, it's possible that all ships, could act like packets, passively sending and receiving data when they come within range of stations, ships and nav beacons. I imagine it would be a vast bubble wide P2P comms network that operated and existed outside of government control. In theory with a large enough number of ships you could transmit a lot of data even by 34th century standards without that much of a delay.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

1. Seeing that your ship can be destroyed 1000 Ly from the last station at which you docked and you can settle up with your insurance company and be back in pilot's seat in mere moments, I suspect the pilots are not actually in their ships at all. Ships may be controlled by a human-shaped telepresense unit, or even some manner of clone allowing the actual pilot to remain safe and sound at some remote location. But if pilots actually do occupy their ships: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/bone_loss.html - Now we know what's in all those canisters of "Basic Medicines".

2. Since we can fly without shields and still fuel scoop without sprouting tumors, neck-hands, or developing a personal glow, I would have to suspect the ships themselves are constructed in such a manner to screen out harmful radiant energies. Layers of materials in the hull as well as coatings applied to the canopy may very well provide suitable protection from radiations.

3. Long-distance communications are likely handled by means of quantum entanglement/quantum teleportation: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-physicists-distance-quantum-teleportation.html
This would be the most reasonable and sensible means of communicating across the galaxy, and might also account for some of those 0 H 0 M mission bonus timers - they figure if the communication can reach you "right now", then their goods should be able to reach them the same way... Instant Gratification Entitlement... seems some things never change.

 

[Shadowdancer]

2) Solar radiation: We basically fly into stars. Are the ships just really well radiation shielded or do the ships shields mostly block that out?

Don't think about that one too much. Anything coming as close to a star as you do when exiting hyperspace would immediately turn into a small cloud of rapidly dispersing plasma, toxic radiation effects on the pilot or anything else in there are very much secondary.

 

[Han_Zen]

Hey so, in thinking about elite, I have a few lore/science questions.

1) Zero gravity has a bunch of bad effects on the human body, but pilots presumably spend a lot of time in zero g...especially deep space explorers. The two big ones are muscle degeneration and bone loss. In elite, how is that delt with? Drugs? Or Gene therapy so that pilots are mostly immune? The flight suits could probably mostly handle muscle degeneration through forced muscle stimulus, (exercise from your flight chair!) but the bone loss is a bit more serious, and so far nobody really knows if a low gravity environment mostly negates those problems.

I'm kind of assuming Gene therapy since the geforce tolerance for pilots in elite seems to be pretty impressively high.

2) Solar radiation: We basically fly into stars. Are the ships just really well radiation shielded or do the ships shields mostly block that out?

3) FTL communication: Does this exist in Elite? It doesn't have to, ships traveling between stations could basically carry data packages in kind of a sneakernet. In fact, this seems likely given how many data courier missions there are. However, sometimes galnet posts are written as if FTL communication between stations without ships DOES exist, so...not really clear on this one.

1) Zero gravity is mostly compensated by the suit, as far as I remember. Hyperspace sickness is prevented by a drug called Quitolline.

2) I don't think the shields make any difference. Must be the duralim hulls.

3) FTL communication is done thru the Interstellar subspace communications network.

Disclaimer: Retcon may have changed some of these names.

 

[Rob At Work]

And that's why we have a coffee machine on board.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Don't think about that one too much. Anything coming as close to a star as you do when exiting hyperspace would immediately turn into a small cloud of rapidly dispersing plasma, toxic radiation effects on the pilot or anything else in there are very much secondary.

You might be surprised: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/how-close-could-person-get-sun-and-survive

 

[Siranui]

I've personally always assumed some genetic engineering went on some time in humanity's past.

The ships must themselves be shielded, as some ships do not run with any shields

FTL comms are confirmed to exist in the setting.

 

[Ashnak]

1) You are rarely under Zero gravity - as long as your engines burn, you are under acceleration. For the rest, I'd point at the remlock suit as prime suspect.

2) Solar radiation is basically EM or particles converted to EM. While scooping, you are in supercruise, so I'd expect some as yet unknown side effect of the Alcubierre drive to take care of the filtering of the stellar radiation. Compare also with the fact that you can scoop the beams of a Neutron star in SC, while dropping out of SC in that position is an instant death warrant.

3) Long range FTL comms seems to exist, but is apparently only available to larger structures. My guess is on sneakernet, though.

 

[The space tyrant]

Hey so, in thinking about elite, I have a few lore/science questions.

1) Zero gravity has a bunch of bad effects on the human body, but pilots presumably spend a lot of time in zero g...especially deep space explorers. The two big ones are muscle degeneration and bone loss. In elite, how is that delt with? Drugs? Or Gene therapy so that pilots are mostly immune? The flight suits could probably mostly handle muscle degeneration through forced muscle stimulus, (exercise from your flight chair!) but the bone loss is a bit more serious, and so far nobody really knows if a low gravity environment mostly negates those problems.

I'm kind of assuming Gene therapy since the geforce tolerance for pilots in elite seems to be pretty impressively high.

2) Solar radiation: We basically fly into stars. Are the ships just really well radiation shielded or do the ships shields mostly block that out?

3) FTL communication: Does this exist in Elite? It doesn't have to, ships traveling between stations could basically carry data packages in kind of a sneakernet. In fact, this seems likely given how many data courier missions there are. However, sometimes galnet posts are written as if FTL communication between stations without ships DOES exist, so...not really clear on this one.

I think quite a bit of imagination is required with these.

1.) Let's assume when you log off at a station that your pilot goes through rigorous physiotherapy programs. Or maybe we're all on painkillers and have our life-spans severely reduced.

2.) Our shields and hulls are radiation-proof? Or we pop Rad-X when we log-off

3.) Saw a dev speak about this on youtube. Basically besides FTL travel itself this is the biggest realistic stretch the game makes. I don't know how they explain it in game, but I'm assuming some utilization of the FSD for transmission broadcasting.

Another stretch is the fact that we can clearly see the universe around us when travelling faster than light. This would be impossible since photons wouldn't be able to catch up to our eyes. I can also confirm that it's not a HUD simulation, as I recently flew FTL with my cockpit glass smashed off. FTL goggles?... lol

I'm also not sure if this game addresses time dilation at FTL speeds.

Did you know it would take more energy than all the stars in the entire universe to accelerate even one atom to 1.0C?

 

[Shadowdancer]

You might be surprised: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/how-close-could-person-get-sun-and-survive

(scratch that, I dun massively goofed with orders of magnitude. Rule of thumb: if your gut tells you that your exponents look funny, they are.)

 

[The space tyrant]

1) You are rarely under Zero gravity - as long as your engines burn, you are under acceleration. For the rest, I'd point at the remlock suit as prime suspect.

2) Solar radiation is basically EM or particles converted to EM. While scooping, you are in supercruise, so I'd expect some as yet unknown side effect of the Alcubierre drive to take care of the filtering of the stellar radiation. Compare also with the fact that you can scoop the beams of a Neutron star in SC, while dropping out of SC in that position is an instant death warrant.

3) Long range FTL comms seems to exist, but is apparently only available to larger structures. My guess is on sneakernet, though.

1.) actually not correct... If this were an aircraft, than you would feel acceleration in your body, yes (although that's very different from gravity), but when you are moving at a fixed speed you are no longer accelerating, you would be at equilibrium and feel nothing.

That would be an aircraft, but since this is a space ship which can travel FTL, an inertial dampener would be required to prevent us from becoming bug-splats in our ship when we enter/exit such speeds. So unless we want to spend hours (days even?) accelerating and decelerating, then it's necessary for there to be some mechanism which eliminates all inertia inside our ship

 

[Shadowdancer]

you would feel acceleration in your body, yes (although that's very different from gravity)

Functionally, it isn't.

 

[The space tyrant]

Functionally, it isn't.

Sorry, but you're wrong.

Gravity is a constant 1.0G across the board.

Acceleration you will feel a temporary increase in G up to a point, which stops as soon as you reach your target speed. Not at all like gravity actually.

 

[blmcquig]

You might be surprised: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/how-close-could-person-get-sun-and-survive

Very cool article!
I wonder how that would look in elite. And of course assuming that our ships in elite are 1,300 years more advanced than the space shuttle, it actually kind of makes sense.

 

[Lendri]

Ever sat in front of a star with your canopy broken and shields offline? Try it. Nothing happens. So where is the shielding?

 

[Shadowdancer]

Gravity is acceleration. If you constantly accelerate at 9.81m/s² it's no different experience from what you're used to.

 

[syngyne]

Hey so, in thinking about elite, I have a few lore/science questions.

1) Zero gravity has a bunch of bad effects on the human body, but pilots presumably spend a lot of time in zero g...especially deep space explorers. The two big ones are muscle degeneration and bone loss. In elite, how is that delt with? Drugs? Or Gene therapy so that pilots are mostly immune? The flight suits could probably mostly handle muscle degeneration through forced muscle stimulus, (exercise from your flight chair!) but the bone loss is a bit more serious, and so far nobody really knows if a low gravity environment mostly negates those problems.

I always wonder about this when I land at engineer outposts. They pick these tiny little rocks with barely any gravity to live on.

 

[The space tyrant]

Gravity is acceleration. If you constantly accelerate at 9.81m/s² it's no different experience from what you're used to.

Lol. Just stop, you're wrong. In this game you are constantly accelerating and decelerating, and at all sorts of different rates. Even if we could feel inertia in these ships (which would kill us) that would not resemble a uniform level of gravity in any way.