Elite / Frontier Jon's Law

[DraQ]

(Derived directly from Robinson's First Law of space combat.)

I'm starting this thread because I'm thinking about how should Frontier handle Jon's Law that is inevitable consequence of the Frontier/Elite setting.

You have a lot of ships, most owned by civilians. Those ships are packing really powerful drives and are buzzing around at thousands of km/s. Each and every one of them is potentially an RKV - it just needs an unfortunate malfunction or loon for a pilot.

I'm trying to figure what safeguards against that could be implemented in universe, because without proper plan B in case if someone decides to play chicken with an inhabited Earth-like planet, it's going to be like living in a today's world where every car can be easily, cheaply, and sometimes unintentionally converted into a fully functional Tzar Bomba.

Now, my fellow Elitists, it's time to discuss.

 

[Geraldine]

How about this DraQ.

One way this could be achieved would be to put all civilian available weaponry into offline mode when in proximity of an inhabited settlement with a nav beacon. Military, Police and illegal grade weapons too would not go offline. These weapons would be much harder (and more expensive) to get a hold of. Kinetic weapons (due to their massive recoil) could only be usefully used by large ships. And again the same restrictions would apply to these also. On the upside, they would rip an unshielded hull to sherds, but the downside is they would of course deplete their ammo reserves when used. A skilled player who properly manages their ammo reserves (short controlled bursts) would be formidable indeed. Another downside is a shielded opponent would suffer minimal damage.

The ideal situation is to have both energy and kinetic weapons fitted to your ship. Then you could go hunting!

 

[DraQ]

*snip*

The problem is not weapons. The point is that

Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction.

. Imagine that you accelerate towards the Earth from hyperspace exit, reach about 4000km/s at mid-point, and... just keep accelerating. You don't need weapons. Your ship becomes one, far more deadly than some flimsy nuke.

Let's use a fully loaded Panther (2e6kg) and take a running start... say from Pluto. Let's accelerate all the way till the Earth - we should be doing some 36000km/s or 0.12c. At this velocity Panther will carry some 1.31e21 joules of pure BLAM - about as much as 313 billion tons of TNT.

Admittedly, that's somewhat less than asteroid that allegedly offed dinos, which is estimated to have packed about 300x more BLAM in kinetic energy, but still pretty much the end of the world for anyone on the surface.

Bonus points for releasing quite a lot of this energy in form of gamma and roentgen radiation, and such, which asteroid, being slower, was kind enough to refrain from.

Notice that ship this fast would be pretty much impossible to intercept in time by anything launching from any port or station in the system, while just shooting it down would be of little help, as you'd still have all its mass heading towards the Earth at more or less previous velocity. Even vaporized it would still dump roughly the same amount of energy into the Earth's atmosphere and surface.

How should the Elite authorities prevent the apocalypse brought by careless drivers?

 

[Geraldine]

How should the Elite authorities prevent the apocalypse brought by careless drivers?

Sit a flying test?
I do understand your point DraQ.
Well how you you stop a modern day pilot from doing the same? By using traffic control. Once within a certain boundary, an orbital flight plan is given as a prelude to landing co-ordinates. If a pilot deviates from his flight plan, then they have either broken down (malfunctioning conventional engines) or they would be considered hostile. This still would not stop a suicidal ship from ploughing into a planet at near light speed, but it would at least stop (or hinder) those attempting to bomb the planet and make it out alive because defence forces would have time to react, given enough advance warning they might stand a slim chance of intercepting a near light speed suicide run on their base. It would depend on how far controlled space extends around the base.

 

[Steve O B Have]

I would've thought that the obvious solution would be to set the ship to self destruct if it were in an un-savable trajectory possibly with an ejection scenario. One could argue that in such a time the ships computer would be responsible for planetary avoidance...

You know - good of the many over the good of the one and all that.

 

[Michael Brookes]

I suppose it depends on how accurate you want the science to be, one solution could be to have some form of drag field around vunerable targets, this would force a maximum velocity within the field.

Alternatively all civilian jump drives could be tied into the sensors, if you appoach designated areas at relitavistic speeds the pilot is automatically ejected and the ship jumps to a specified safe area. Of course jumping too close to a target could have it's own problems

Michael

 

[Sir.Tj]

As Geraldine said I think the best way would be to have a traffic control system backed up by police vipers to help protect the planets airspace.

As for a Panther Clipper accelerating from Pluto heading on a collision course with Earth, there's not a lot you can do about it, unless you could have a more powerful version of the tractor beam cargo scoop to either stop the ship or deflect it's headinf away from planets etc.

 

[DrBaggy]

(Derived directly from Robinson's First Law of space combat.)

I'm starting this thread because I'm thinking about how should Frontier handle Jon's Law that is inevitable consequence of the Frontier/Elite setting.

I'm trying to figure what safeguards against that could be implemented in universe, because without proper plan B in case if someone decides to play chicken with an inhabited Earth-like planet, it's going to be like living in a today's world where every car can be easily, cheaply, and sometimes unintentionally converted into a fully functional Tzar Bomba.

Now, my fellow Elitists, it's time to discuss.

I don't think we need to worry, Jon's Law is trumped by David's law which states that "Elite 4 is in active development, but always at least two years in the future". This law has a substantial body of empirical evidence to support it

 

[Stefan Mars]

Notice that ship this fast would be pretty much impossible to intercept in time by anything launching from any port or station in the system, while just shooting it down would be of little help, as you'd still have all its mass heading towards the Earth at more or less previous velocity. Even vaporized it would still dump roughly the same amount of energy into the Earth's atmosphere and surface.

How should the Elite authorities prevent the apocalypse brought by careless drivers?

If you don't obey the traffic rules then traffic control opens a wormhole right in front of you? If you are going fast enough you are not going to be able to avoid it. And the other end is obviously inside the sun...

 

[turwhitt]

If you don't obey the traffic rules then traffic control opens a wormhole right in front of you? If you are going fast enough you are not going to be able to avoid it. And the other end is obviously inside the sun...

I was thinking Swindon.

 

[Stefan Mars]

Time: 2049-10-01
From: J. Jameson
To: Nasa Governance.
Subject: The abundance of Swindon

Our core science group today confirmed that every single starsystem known has a place which the locals refer to as Swindon. Furthermore it appears that they are all junkyards where traffic-offenders are kept. We are preparing a press-release now.


Time: 2049-10-01
From: Nasa Governance.
To: J. Jameson
Subject: Re: The abundance of Swindon

Please hold off on the press-release while our legal department investigates the fact that this may have been predicted by a computer game back in the thirties.

 

[SuperG]

Well I follow the link and it's very interresting.

What comes to mind and like I said before. A realistic space flight model is just one facet of realism. That site show a lot of all the other stuf. Alltho theoretical. They could be way of to. But suppose lot it right. Because my science understanding is limited.

And what more interresting is why and how Hollywood go for such unreal stuf. Well thats how the masses like it. And more how that bussness works. And they realy doesn't have a totaly grip on it wenn they produce it.

Well there is a need of a specific high tech level needed that trading commences in space.

So it seams that hard scifi doesn't work for movies. But probaly won't for games either.
And hard scifi isn't newtown flight model. That just one point of many.

Gonna read it some more it's so interresting.

 

[boringnick]

Easy:

Ground batteries (on planets). Massive arrays of Large Plasma Acclerators. They roast the ship and any debris thousands of kilometres away from the planets.

 

[boringnick]

.

Alternatively all civilian jump drives could be tied into the sensors, if you appoach designated areas at relitavistic speeds the pilot is automatically ejected and the ship jumps to a specified safe area. Of course jumping too close to a target could have it's own problems

Michael

Workable in a game, but really a cheap plot device if you think about it.

So the jump drives have some sort of firmware that prevents malicious use? Bad idea, you can't count on it. What if someone hacks it? Especially in a setting like the Elite games (tons of hostilities between many different factions), counting just on firmware is madness.

I know that this very plot device exists in Frontier and FFE (you can't jump out close from a planet because of the hyperdrive firmware) but I doubt whether today's spoiled whiney audience would buy that.

 

[Sir.Tj]

On the flipside......

Completing a contract by setting a Panther Clipper at full speed loaded with Hydrogen fuel on a collision course with the location of your target, could be interesting.

Although I don't think the local police will be satisfied with a fine.

And as for your criminal record......