I know what Light Years are. What are the other distances? Light seconds is one I think. Give to me from the farthest to lowest and explain how they are used in the game please
How do I judge the distances in game
- Thread starter Honeybadger33
- Start date
See here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/47862-Supercruise-Unit-Measurements
Hope that helps.
LY - Light Years... usually used for anything over 0.10LY away (usually distance between systems, but sometimes to very far things like Hutton Orbital)
Ls - Light Seconds... distance to most things outside close range, distance light travels in one second. Your supercruise speed for nonorbit speeds is in "c" which is "speed of light". So if you're travelling at 10c, you will go 10Ls in one second (as that is 10 x the speed of light)
Mm - Mega meters... 1000km = 1 Mm. 0.1 Ls = 30Mm = 30,000Km
Km and m you should know.
EDIT: Use that link
Ls - Light Seconds... distance to most things outside close range, distance light travels in one second. Your supercruise speed for nonorbit speeds is in "c" which is "speed of light". So if you're travelling at 10c, you will go 10Ls in one second (as that is 10 x the speed of light)
Mm - Mega meters... 1000km = 1 Mm. 0.1 Ls = 30Mm = 30,000Km
Km and m you should know.
EDIT: Use that link
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Ls is Light-seconds.
Mm is Mega-meters which is 1000 kilometers.
Km and m are self-explanatory.
As far as speeds go, the speed is measured in distance per second. So at a speed of 15Mm/s, you can easily know what it means. However, in normal space, the game doesn't tell you that your speed is in meters per second. So at 150, you're going 150 meters per second.
Mm is Mega-meters which is 1000 kilometers.
Km and m are self-explanatory.
As far as speeds go, the speed is measured in distance per second. So at a speed of 15Mm/s, you can easily know what it means. However, in normal space, the game doesn't tell you that your speed is in meters per second. So at 150, you're going 150 meters per second.
Probably common in astrophysics but less useful in the day to day on Earth .. 1Mm
being Market Harboriugh to Oldham and back, twice .. or London to Bilbao in Spain as the crow flies.
m --> km is a factor of 1000 .. good old fashioned metric
km --> Mm is a factor of 1000 .. good old fashioned metric
Mm --> Ls is a factor of 300 .. eh?
and Ls -->Ly is a factor of 31,540,000 .. !
Useful so your HUD doesn't fill up with silly big numbers though
being Market Harboriugh to Oldham and back, twice .. or London to Bilbao in Spain as the crow flies.
m --> km is a factor of 1000 .. good old fashioned metric
km --> Mm is a factor of 1000 .. good old fashioned metric
Mm --> Ls is a factor of 300 .. eh?
and Ls -->Ly is a factor of 31,540,000 .. !
Useful so your HUD doesn't fill up with silly big numbers though
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Every time you say 'miles' or 'inches' a spaceship crashes somewhere.
tbf, certain expressions work better with the old system. "Missed it by miles!", sounds a lot better than "Missed it by kilometres!". "Inching towards the edge.", "Centimetreing towards the edge?"
Or an Apollo mission had to fit a round filter in a square hole......
Those are all idioms and have nothing to do with actual measurement.
His post went right over your head, by many fathoms...
To give you a sense of scale, the Moon from Earth is 380 Mm, or 1.3 ls. The Earth is 499 ls from the Sun.
All the measurements given so far are accurate and recognised.
There is one measurement that isn't official and that's the Kylie. 1 Kylie is 1000 ly (1 Kly). It's handy when you're a long range explorer.
"I traveled 22 Kylies to Colonia this week"
"SagA* is 26 Kylies away"
"The furthest named system from Sol is Beagle Point, over 65 Kylies away on the far side of the galaxy"
All the measurements given so far are accurate and recognised.
There is one measurement that isn't official and that's the Kylie. 1 Kylie is 1000 ly (1 Kly). It's handy when you're a long range explorer.
"I traveled 22 Kylies to Colonia this week"
"SagA* is 26 Kylies away"
"The furthest named system from Sol is Beagle Point, over 65 Kylies away on the far side of the galaxy"
That surely deserves one of my quite rare reps.
And miles/inches - Imperial if you will, is also used in the UK. Which so happens to be where this very game is developed. So is probbly the 'official' measurement system.
Only if a mistake is made in conversion.
The internet and the news present most lengths in terms of football (soccer) pitches or double-decker buses, so for the sake of consistency, 1Mm is roughly 10,000 football pitches or 111,000 double-decker buses. For ease of use, I suggest that we adopt fp and dd as standard ED units, Mfp and Mdd for longer distances.
1 light year = approximately 1/39th of a Kessel Run, if that's of any use
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Given that Braben is an astronomy nerd, people would probably get fired for using those units.
I like that the OP in that thread didn't even know that c = speed of light. Sums up quite a few so-called-experts in these fora.
The (not so) funny thing is, it actually happened.
And something tells me you both knew what you were doing above here.