Short Story: Caught Speeding

*Note: This is not a new concept, but I am definitely practicing writing. Here are more short stories.*

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What?” An automatic response to really any noise my officemate made, some exceptions.

“This is nuts.”

Not answering directly usually indicated that I should pay attention, but it did seem he was just saying things to be outraged over the most recent political scandal. However, when I looked up the chagrin on his face didn’t seem faked. He slammed his chair back and stood up, paced in the small office and then retrieved the chair . Sitting down he grimaced, and took a breath I recognized as his story-telling breath.

He beckoned me to come around to look at his screen.

He had what looked like a really badly done version of YouTube, yep, GovTube. Nobody watched GovTube unless they were told to. Maybe if the government had made one well-thought-out contract with YouTube more people would have used it.

“Watch this,” he nearly spat and violently slammed the space bar. I only flinched inwardly.

The top view of a red convertible with a single male, obvious from the male pattern baldness and other more subtle hints, was driving, quite quickly along a road in a desert.

“He is going very fast,” I remarked blandly, it was never good to get him more excited, it would just make things worse.

“Yes he is, 162 miles per hour.” The way he said it made me stop watching and look at him. There was a smoldering anger that often came up when people started to do stupid things, or continue without heeding his warnings. But this was different, there was a much deeper connection.

“Wait, that’s you?” I hope I put enough incredulity in the question so he could take it either way.

“Yep, after a conference five years ago.”

“What was observing you?” I went through my knowledge of all the public and military satellites that might record it, “But wouldn’t they have brought this up earlier? Err…” It was a bit of an accusation, him driving that fast, if he had been pulled over he would have lost his job and clearance.

He chuckled wryly. “They certainly shouldn’t have sat on it this long. I wouldn’t have even worked on the project if they had any inkling of this. I didn’t even tell my wife.” He was becoming awfully jovial for a man that was about to lose his job. “Maybe the bureaucracy is just as bad as everyone thinks it is.”

“But five years, I mean it’s more likely that the superluminal satellite project was a success, despite the explosion in orbit.” I paused for moment to do a bit of morbid calculation of the dead project, back then we had amazing offices and dreams that extended outside of the solar system, “The telescope would have just gone through five light years away about four months… ago…”

My face must have looked the same as his, ashen, mouth partly gaping. I saw him start to form words, but I had to be the first to say it.

“That’s more like the bureaucracy I know, what?”

“I can’t believe they are using Dan’s work to nab me, what?”

Space Jellies

“I can just see it now, first alien species discovered. We’ll be famous!” Yasir stood up from his station, arms waving in early celebration.

“Shut up and monitor them. We need to start getting behaviors. Also I would rather not attract their attention. Keep the active sensors off Yasir.” Roger focused on the orbital charts.

“Alright, but really we should celebrate.” Yasir grumbled and sat back in his chair.

“Yeah, later.” Roger growled. For a few minutes the three crew members on the exploration vessel focused on their tasks.

“Look at them, floating in space. They look like jellyfish, maybe space jellies...” Yasir tried to describe them.

“Yasir,” Jane looked over her shoulder from her station and gave him a warning head shake. Roger was studiously ignoring them.

A few more minutes passed. Roger grunted, “Hmm. Looks like they are tacking against the solar wind toward that asteroid field. Unusually dense.” As the pilot, that was saying something; usually only rings around planets gave the small ship any navigational issues, but this was at a trojan point trailing a rather large gas giant. “Zoom in as far as you can Yasir, and send us the views.”

“Sure.” Yasir already had zoomed in as far as he could with one telescope, but Roger rolled the ship just enough to bring both the dorsal and ventral telescopes to bear. Using the telescopes in conjunction meant the computers could interpolate more detail, making the two telescopes act like a larger one.

All three were riveted to the view. About twenty of the massive jellies were circling a section of the cluster, well sphering, but that isn’t really a verb. Yasir watched as jets of matter puffed out from the giants, maneuvering them between the much smaller asteroids. One shot forward through a gap and sent a tendril of gossamer out to a particularly rough rock. But rather than pulling the whole thing to itself a chunk flaked off. Interest turned to confusion as the flake of asteroid developed two bright blue points of light.

“Ion engine signature detected,” intoned the ship’s computer.

They sat for a few moments in shock.

“That’s a ship.” Jane’s voice trailed off.

Roger started to curse with less reserve than normal. His hands flew over controls.

“Rog, three of them see us.” Jane recovered. “They are accelerating for us. Contact in five minutes.”

“I’m going. How’d they see us? Yasir?” Another string of invectives quickly followed.

“I don’t know.” Yasir watched in horror as the one that had caught the ship ingested it and began to process it. First the bright pinpricks of blue died. Pieces started to peel off the ship. Gases started escaping, but they didn’t spread out like in vacuum, but rather bubbled as though inside a viscous fluid. Finally the ship cracked in half. Yasir turned off his screen, too horrified to keep watching.

Jane and Yasir looked at each other as Roger turned the ship and started to accelerate away. She turned back to her station to figure out what was happening. Yasir didn’t really want to turn back to his station.

“At our current rate of acceleration they will catch us in six minutes. How far until we reach the trans-point?” Jane asked.

“Six minutes twenty seconds.”

“Can we give it any more power?” Jane’s desperation started to show through her schooled demeanor.

“Nope, we can’t, our ion spikes are already at max capacity.”

“Max?”

“Twenty percent above recommended, it’s more due to frequency at that point. We’ll hit a third of c right before the trans-point.”

“Are we going to make it?” Yasir asked. Both of his seniors turned to stare at him.

“Not by the numbers.” Somehow Roger’s demeanor was morphing into an oddly jovial one.

“What if we lose some mass?” Yasir tried not to bounce.

“It won’t be enough to make a twenty second difference.” Roger smiled. Yasir didn’t like that smile, it seemed a bit careless in their situation.

“But it might distract them.” Yasir countered.

“He’s got a point Rog. But what can we space?” Jane looked hopeful.

“We could ditch our spare air. Hopefully the recycler won’t cut out on us.”

Jane looked a bit concerned. “What if we spaced half?”

“Half measures so we won’t be eaten? Might as well give them the back half the ship.” Roger waved his hand and laughed.

“Roger,” She almost never used his whole name, working together for ten years called for some familiarity. Yasir wondered if they had ever been in such a dire situation before.

“Alright, let’s keep one of the twelve.” He gestured in a placating manner, hands out. “We are still about ten transits from an inhabited system. If something goes wrong six won’t really do us any more good. One will still work with the suit recyclers though.”

“Let’s start rolling them out.”

The three hurried out of the small bridge and went ten meters back to where engineering started.

A few minutes of lifting the heavy cylinders into the airlock and they were ready to go.

“What about one of the emergency pods?” Yasir asked.

“Might as well. Go forward and launch one. Not both.” Roger turned back to the airlock control.

Yasir sprinted back up the short length of the ship and stood at one of the pod chutes right behind the bridge and in front of the small quarters. He knew the procedure well enough, but in this situation he wasn’t sure how he was going to launch it without being in the pod himself.

He yelled down the length. “I have a problem.” His com blinked on his wrist. Oh yeah.

“Yes?” Roger asked.

“How will I launch this without getting inside?”

“The panel with the red line around it. Lift that. There will be manual overrides. We’ll be right up, just one more thing to space.”

Yasir flipped back the panel and saw a long red handle. “Manual launch. Only use as last resort.” The warning message made him shiver. Who would stay behind if one of the three of them had to launch the other pod manually? He pried the handle out of a clasp and started to pull on it. The first few inches were almost too easy. Red and white doors started to slide closed in front of the entrance to the pod.

But then he encountered a huge amount of resistance. After straining and pulling he put his feet up on the bulkhead and braced to pull sideways. The resistance gave way and he found himself swinging from the bar, feet coming off the bulkhead. His knees landed with a loud noise on the deck. Fortunately there was another spot of resistance, otherwise Yasir would have crashed himself against the oncoming bulkhead.

“Good job Yasir.” Roger never gave complements. Maybe it was sarcasm?

“Thanks.”

“Just need to get it a few more inches. Let me help you.” The two of them pushed it into another clasp. The red and white passage doors denoting that the pod was used closed with a click. The ship juddered as the pod launched.

“Let’s get up there and see what they do.” Jane came up behind them.

They entered the cockpit and took their respective seats. Yasir turned on the screens at his station again.

“Two are peeling off,” reported Jane, “but that big one didn’t take the bait.”

“Hopefully we can transition before we lose anything important.” Roger was almost maniacally happy.

They all sat in tense anticipation, waiting for an imagined but very close doom.

“It’s in range.” A massive spasm ran through the length of the ship. “It didn’t hit too hard. No damage.”

“It’s pulling us in.” Yasir shuddered.

“Trans-point in ten seconds. Please prepare for transition.” The calm tone from the ship’s computer barely registered.

“We are inside, telescopes obscured.” Yasir muttered.

“Transition.” Yasir never liked transitions before, they always made his head ache and his stomach twist. This time he was anticipating it joyfully because the discomfort told him the happy news.

“Whoa. Look at that.” Jane sent a screen around showing an trailing cloud of debris. As the alien’s goo sloughed off of the hull it crossed the realspace bubble into subspace and dissociated into component atoms becoming rainbow colors on the subspace sensor.

“Now, Yasir, we can celebrate.” Roger seemed a bit more dour.

“I think I’m good.” Close calls didn’t sit well with Yasir’s stomach.

“But we discovered two alien species in a single day!” Roger said it with a straight face, much less scary than his smile.

“Two?” Both Jane and Yasir asked in unison.

“Yep, that other ship wasn’t human, or at least nothing I’ve seen before.”

“Yeah, but they have a bug problem.” Jane shook her head. “How will they escape?”

“I don’t know. But what I do know is that we need to get back home after all those supplies we pushed out.”

“Yep, it’s going to be tight.” Jane agreed.

“I thought we only need to worry if we start leaking air.” Yasir stared at Roger.

“We also spaced about a month’s worth of rations. We’ve got about ten days of food for a nine day trip. Not much of a margin of error.”

“Ah.” Of course Yasir didn’t feel like eating right at the moment, but packaged food was certainly better than the recycler’s version.

***

The ship made it back to Earth’s system a few hours ahead of schedule. All the slime had sublimated away before doing serious damage, but one thing still stuck to the hull. None of the ship’s sensors detected any anomalies as it detached itself just as the sun’s strength reached the right parameters. The clear melon-sized envelope expelled a bit of mass, stabilizing its orbit.

*END*

And just for fun here are the Slow Mo Guys with Jelly Tennis.

Course Correction

“Course correction filed. Target centered. Time to transition, five minutes thirty-four seconds.” The light synthetic voice droned, obviously bored with simple things, but it took an edge that Jordan didn’t like, “Captain,” A word without much of the tonality it should have, “The problem with subspace disk four seems to increasing. I would suggest that we don’t use it as it may interfere with the more stable bubbles generated by the other three.”

Jordan couldn’t decide if it was good or bad to have an AI that was worried about their welfare. Mostly good, but they really needed to make this run as quickly as possible. “What alternatives do we have?”

“The first, and only real alternative is to leave the disk out of the jumps, of course we will have to course correct again and make a slightly shorter hop for Proxima Centauri in order not to risk a long burn on the other side.” Of course, the disks were what kept them together in subspace, protecting them from the different physics existent in the parallel universe. The disks also kept them from floating up out of subspace in some unknown part of their own universe, like anchors or down planes.

“Any other options? How bad could the interference be? You know they have an inverse payscale, the longer it takes, the less money we get and the less likely it is that I can get that repaired.” Hauling zettabytes of data was the high-tech way between systems paid well. With exclusionary pricing on data via quantum entanglement an industry of a sneakernet spaceships making jumps several times a day between systems.

“Based on rough models,” That phrase sent chills through his spine, all too often those models were spot on, it must have been a colloquialism that the ship’s computer acquired from the previous owners, a cantankerous elderly couple that had been wandering the stars for nearly eighty years. “The interference would certainly take out the number two disk and possibly the number one disk which would roughly halve or quarter our distance.”

“Oh.” If you were going five light years you really wanted to arrive in a spot that wasn’t too far away. The three standard hours it would take to get to the Sol system would turn into years of relying on the standard ion-spike drives and hoping none of the recyclers brokedown. And there was that whole time dilation thing too. All in all, not something you really wanted to risk hopping between stars. “Turn it off. Correct our course again.”

“Course correction filed.” The stars swept from left to right. “Target centered. acceleration time: twenty seconds. Time to transition: two minutes eight seconds.”

“Carry on, Jean.” Jordan put his feet up and reached for the first edition Asimov, quite a rare find, maybe he should replace the disk next time.

Shielding Fails!

Continued discussion of subspace physics.

Subspace is an odd set of the laws in our dimension, specifically it is missing the electromagnetic force, or half the electroweak interaction. This means that things that rely on that interaction in our dimension fail spectacularly in subspace.

Shielding against this affect is the most important part of a functioning subspace disc after the transitions into and out of subspace. The disc is a carefully arranged array of projectors that are encased in a titanium-doped mono-ceramic, capable of withstanding rough use. Only voltage difference need be applied over the arrays, meaning that only two wires enter and deliver the current to the array. Of course the shield produced by the disc isn't generally referred to specifically, as shield generally refers to electromagnetic deflector arrays mounted on some ships.

When shielding fails, the matter inside the previously shielded space loses all electromagnetic attraction. It completely ionizes every atom, stripping every single electron to travel tangentially from its current orbit. Depending on the entrance velocity and the distance traveled, small scale experiments, of course over very large distances, showed that electrons sometimes collided with nuclei and stuck due to the strong interaction but more often did not, preserving the shape over shorter timescale tests. When exiting subspace at the limit it was determined that there were two different reactions from electron-connected and non-connected nuclei.

The electron connected nucleus shot away at high velocities relative to the distribution of the protons and overall mass. The second more common reaction was stripping any intercepted matter of electrons, often very few in the vacuum of space causing the remaining ionized atoms to disperse in a cloud, and releasing large amounts of energetic electromagnetic radiation as electrons fell into orbits, bumping into other nuclei and bumping them further. This causes a majestic and most-likely deadly "space aurora."

This can actually be used to advantage, currently large facilities have been replacing their aging fusion reactors with Inverse Subspace Generators (ISGs). Careful shaping of the subspace arrays can produce a bubble of subspace.

Two atoms are shot into the bubble at a single point so that the nuclei collide and stick together. The resulting nucleus exits the bubble and tries to grab electrons from a carefully maintained cloud of gas, as well as possibly shedding a neutron. The resulting cascade results in a bright flash that is captured by the electro-photonic (different than photo-voltaic hence the name difference) material on the chamber walls.

The theory as to why this works in producing energy is that it is actually stealing energy from subspace. This is not yet confirmed, and the consequences haven't been mapped out, however, most people think this resource is inexhaustible at the rate any foreseeable future holds. And this might be balanced out by the amount of photons that "disappear" into subspace as ships produce photons in large quantities.

The reason this hasn't been implemented on ships yet is because of the gravitronics involved. For the atoms to enter and exit the bubble in the same room the process requires an extremely flat gravity gradient, meaning that the system has to measure and adjust to any gravimetric anomalies as often as atoms are sent into the bubble, sometimes exceeding several GHz. Maintaining this system can sometimes take up a significant portion of the produced power.

Another reason ships can't use this, as long as there aren't any break-throughs, if they go into subspace themselves the two arrays tend to cancel each other out, causing lopsided and ineffective shielding on experiments.

Some large experimental ships have added an ISG that is turned off before entering subspace and then turned on again after exiting. This is more of a supplemental generator as the main power needs are met by a fusion reactor that is not limited by the same constraints.

Lastly, I would quite enjoy a discussion on these fictitious ideas.

Sub-space Equations: Drift and Pointing

This post is continued from the previous one, talking more about depth and a bit about velocities.

Generally a well pointed ship will come out tangential to the orbit of a gravity well, and fall into the correct orbit with only minor modifications. Of course if it comes in perpendicular it could cause the ship to quickly fall to its destruction, or be at an escape velocity on the other side of the gravity-well pointed away from the mass.

But there are a few problems with traveling in subspace, other than getting your heading just right. There is drift. Drift causes a ship to essentially lose depth in subspace, meaning that potential energy in our universe is lost.

Where po is the starting depth and 256 is a conversion variable related to a light year and deltaD is the distance traveled in light years. This equation hits about 0 depth in 32 light years, this causes ships to pop out of subspace with 0 potential energy, essentially an energy vacuum. If not deeply inside of a gravity well this can cause a catastrophic energy re-balance that can overwhelm a ship's shields.

The dimensionality of this equation might seem suspect. Shouldn't entering into subspace deeper in a gravity well mean that the entity is deeper in subspace if it is so tied to our gravity wells? This equation is more of an approximation. It is much more of a logarithmic curve, however, in order to go "deeper" it would probably be inside the event horizon of a small black-hole, which brings up an interesting point. If a ship were able to survive the tidal forces could it escape a black-hole via sub-space?

The other end is much more enigmatic, what happens if the ship dodges the near certainty of exiting subspace? It might continue to build up further and further debt, but would the probability of exiting subspace further approach 1? Or would it hit a peak and then taper off causing a very small percentage of ships to be trapped until reaction mass was exhausted and the shielding failed?

The largest problem for day-to-day travel is getting orbits correct because velocity is conserved throughout the process, and you would rather be in the same orbital position relative to a gravity well as the one you left, meaning that your potential energy in orbit would be conserved, except for drift.

To get an idea of the distances and tiny angles involved, and the real limiting factor to navigation apparent: precision.

Where e_r is the acceptable error in radians, d_a is the acceptable error in distance from target, and delta D is the distance to travel. Delta D and d_a are the same units so let's take travelling 1 light-year.

Going through this we find that it is about 1.5x10^-5 radians, somewhat simple for computers to handle. In fact being off by the whole distance of the Earth to the Sun is definitely not something you want to risk, at least not toward the sun. The real limiting factor is the control dynamics of the craft itself. Most small craft will have large reaction wheels, able to spin a craft with high accuracy and maintain pointing during minor shifts of mass. Milliseconds before entry into subspace a smaller more accurate set can get the error down to around 10^-10 or 10^-11. On the other end this translates to 1500 km. Still not great for a tight orbit on a planet.

The smallest consistent error was set by a crew on a small commercial packet ship averaging 350 km off of set targets. The captain of the ship went on to found his own company for delivering extremely sensitive information very quickly, because normal space still takes time to maneuver if you aren't in the right orbits even with powerful engines. He did very well for himself up until a small adjustment made while maintaining the reaction wheels deviated his craft by 1000 km causing a spectacular splash in the target planet's ocean, and disintegrating the craft. The resulting tsunami was quite small as most of the energy dissipated in different frequencies.

Larger ships use maneuvering thrusters to get a general alignment and then use several large sets of reaction wheels to precisely align, though generally their accuracy is 10^-9 or slightly better meaning they need to give themselves more than 150,000 km error.

I mentioned shield failure, I will discuss consequences next time.

Sub-space Equations: Velocities and Depth

As promised from the previous post: Equations.

First let's start with an equation describing the relative velocities between normal space and subspace.

Where K is the constant of about 8.24x10^23 kg^-1m^2. v_n is the velocity relative to all influential gravitational bodies, depending on the precision needed. The more precise this needs to be the more bodies need to be considered, such as for sensitive instruments going into subspace to observe anomalies. If it is an emergency or the computer power is limited, which in this time period would probably mean there was also other emergencies, less n bodies can be used. Of course if the right bodies aren't considered it can be catastrophic in when a wrong exit point is determined.

The second equation calculates the "depth" that the system will enter into subspace, or the potential energy.

Where G is the gravitational constant, m is the masses of objects and d is the distance from those masses. With further posts I will give further equations on depth, but essentially this is the potential energy of the system and can be modified for the benefit or detriment of ships in subspace.

I think this is all about geeking out over playing with numbers. And setting up equations which I can throw real numbers into to see what happens.

Fun Physics and Fiction

Time is the enemy. Dramatic events are unfolding, but will our hero be able to save the world, yet again, in time? Used to dramatic purpose time is a very useful tool as there are very few people who haven't been up against a deadline, real or constructed. They can feel the tension building, the expectation of succeeding slowly winning out over defeat or receding as panic sets in. Split seconds described in paragraphs that take ten times as long to read than to happen in book time.

Time can also be used dramatically in a longer term view in science fiction. Where will we be in so many years? Time travel is another way, and then there are the books that stitch together star systems with relativistic travel, decades long travel between stars and everybody that you knew when you headed out is long dead and hundreds of years have passed. To me it is depressing, or rather actually scary. When we travel on Earth we get those same affects, but since we are no where close to the speed of light we don't notice that those people sitting still are relatively older than us.

So most science fiction that isn't diligently exploring what life would be like without a go-faster-than-light card creates a way to travel faster than light without the time dilation problem. However, they try to limit themselves with problems such as gravity wells and where and how the drive works. So let me introduce an idea for FTL drive that is limited in its own way, I might have equations...

First, the Basics

Discovery of a universe "below" ours that our universe is wrapped around. It is smaller in the fact that things can move much faster through it. The main feature of the neighbor universe, sub-space, is that it has no electromagnetic force, but it does show the effects of our universe in terms of gravity. A ship going in unprotected would just fall apart as all the electromagnetic forces holding atoms and molecules together would collapse.

Also gravity wells are a major player, essentially entering and leaving the sub-verse must be done at a similar gravitational potential energy. Coming in at higher potential energies cause major power stripping coming in, lower potential energies means the possibility of overwhelming systems with incoming energy. There is no limit to how far inside or outside a gravity well a ship must be however, orbital and absolute velocity relative to mass and proximity affect the velocity in the sub-verse.

What do I want my timelines to be in the universe? Do I want to make it such that we are retelling old sailing tails and battles on the high-ocean? Or skipping across the universe seemingly unfettered? I think I have enough restrictions to play with both logically and dramatically, but I also want a bit of down-time, unable-to-do-anything time that my characters might need to experience. I think reasonable speeds would be about two light-years in and hour, meaning about 8760 times the speed of light. Of course that is highly variable due to the gravity well that you are exiting.

One of the major problems with early travel using this drive was pointing and timing. Hitting a star's or planet's same orbital potential in such a way that you weren't just plummeting toward its surface but instead tangent and able to establish an orbit was extremely hard, however the first wave of extra-solar colonists risked it.

I will continue these thoughts in the next installment.