@rykbrown Can I ask how much time passes between the end of Episode 1 and the begin of Episode 2?
3 days
@rykbrown Did you give Josh and Loki "Falcon Four" in Episodes 13/14 as a nod to one of your followers and forum commenters?
I should say yes, but the fact is I just pulled the number out of a hat.
@rykbrown How much time do you intend to have elapse in-universe between the end of Episode 15 in Part I and the beginning of Episode 1 of Part II?
A few years. The exact number has yet to be determined. For now, I'd say less than 10 and more than 1.
😉
How soon till ep 15 is out?
Are you reading the fan fiction some of us have put up here? Whats it like to have other people draw inspiration from your work?
@rykbrown Thank you for answering my question. If I may, may I please ask another? Are the computers on the Aurora separate, but networked together or does each station access a central, more sophisticated computer elsewhere on the ship? From reading the books, it sounds like it's the former rather than the latter.
Many different computers, and many different networks. All of them joined together but not necessarily dependent on one another.
For example, the navigation computers are a separate system from the environmental control computers, but they are not directly connected nor does either system require the other to operate. However, both systems could be monitored and interacted with from a single workstation.
Think of it like an operating system. You can have many programs running, some of which share information and others of which do not.
Critical systems, such as navigation, jump nav, sensors, life-support, weapons, comms, etc, all operate as independent systems on separate hardware. In addition, each of them has multiple sets of hardware all doing the same thing concurrently, so as to triple-check one another as well as provide redundancy in case of failure. The failure of one system will not affect the operation of another, even if that system depends on data from another system in order to operate. (In which case it would use assumed values in place of actual ones.) Of course, in order to maintain this functionality, all individual systems also have to write their status and values to a central system.
An IT nightmare, to be sure, but better than having one supercomputer that creates a single point of global failure.
@rykbrown So... a virus planted by either someone influenced by Jung nanites or someone operating knowingly as an operative for the Jung couldn't cause a widespread failure of systems or lock the crew out of their stations in order to render the ship vulnerable to an ambush and boarding attempt by the Jung with the intent of capturing it and its jump drive?
It would be near impossible. Also, anything that is operated via computers can also be operated manually, given enough manpower and time. Just not an efficient way to do things.
It has always disgusted me when Sci Fi makes a ship so easy to down via computers and viruses and the like.
@rykbrown What if the ship in question were to suffer sufficient battle damage quickly and unexpectedly by being ambushed without warning by the Jung? Said ship being shorthanded with an inexperience crew like the Aurora had at the beginning of your series. I ask because I'm attempting to envision a scenario where certain junior officers could be dispatched from their normal posts at the orders of their superiors to perform certain actions in an attempt enable the ship to escape capture by the Jung.
I would want said officers to:
A) leave the bridge for Jump Control in order to initiate a manual jump
B) manually deploy and use one of the ship's quad plasma cannons to launch a surprise counterattack on an unsuspecting Jung cruiser
Also, could a ship equipped with a jump drive initiate a jump without a preset destination? And, if yes, could that jump be initiated manually with the intent of merely dumping whatever amount of energy remained in the energy banks into the jump fields at the moment of contact between the two fields? I suppose you could call it a "blind" jump.
The systems that control the jump drive are not located in the bridge, they are located in the compartment where the jump field generators are housed. The systems on the bridge are merely display and interface systems that are able to "talk" to the jump systems and give them instructions. So yes, scenario A would work, as would B.
Keep in mind that a jump is not "to" a destination. A jump is performed by controlling the amount of energy that is dumped into the jump fields at the moment that the collapsing outer field crossing the expanding inner field. The more the energy, the longer it takes for the "new" inner field (which still exists in normal 4 dimensional space which includes 'time') to collapse and cause the ship to revert back to normal 4D space, thus ending the jump. The jump drive knows nothing of destinations. The amount of energy needed is calculated based on the desired jump distance and the vessel's speed at the moment of the jump. You want to jump from Earth to Tau Ceti? Then point the ship at Tau Ceti, give it some forward momentum toward Tau Ceti, then calculate the amount of energy needed to jump that distance based on your speed, and execute.
The escape jump feature is simply a fixed amount of energy that will result in a jump of an average distance based on average operating speeds.
Scout Three escaped the Jar_Benakh by doing exactly what you described. By dumping what was left in the jump drive's energy banks into the jump fields. They had know idea how far it would throw them.
And that was scary. I reread that part today.
