It could? Well then, there we go. Low tech-hurray! Still, it'd be nice to have some realistic-but-high-tech weapon with easily adjustable power.
I've been thinking about how the economy in this setting would work, and I've realized that transportation costs would be too expensive for raw materials or manufactured goods to be worth trading. With the former, it'd be cheaper/easier to just find an unclaimed hunk of the stuff in space, and with the latter it'd be cheaper/easier to buy the plans (once) and manufacture it yourself.
Would habitable planets work as the main commodity? You could terraform your own, yeah, but that can be so expensive and time-consuming that buying one from somebody else could be cheaper, right?
In general, after a certain point, the higher transportation costs are, the more valuable manufacturing facilities and intellectual material will be. Cost for transporting goods between space stations, however, might be a lot lower.
If there is someone who can terraform a planet for less than others, and do so in bulk (i.e., at any one time, they're terriforming multiple planets) it could become a business I suppose, but relative to the current world economy it'd be like building an empty entire city for 10,000,000 people and putting it up for sale. Not an easy task. You could also build massive space stations and ship in people.
On adjustable-power weapons: railguns and coilguns would do that quite easily. It's literally just a matter of adjusting how much juice you put into the system.
On space-trade: in slower-than-light travel, raw materials generally aren't worth the cost, but manufactured goods may be on the interplanetary scale; on an interstellar scale, the only thing worth moving around is a) people, and b) the absolute necessities to keep those people alive and build up a local tech base. In FTL, it depends entirely on the nature of your FTL system.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.An interesting energy weapon to consider as an alternative to this "pulsor rifle" would be the electrolaser. It uses a laser to ionize the air between you and the target, then delivers an intense electric shock through the channel of ionized air (called a plasma channel) a fraction of the second later before the ionized air dissipates. It only works in an atmosphere, and could fail spectacularly if used during a thunderstorm, but it's an honest to god lightning gun (or a long range, high powered taser if you prefer). That analogy is particularly accurate considering electric current passing through a channel of ionized air is exactly what lightning is.
You could also use such a device to "call down" lightning strikes during a thunderstorm.
edited 28th Mar '11 7:48:43 AM by Archereon
This is a signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.@ Frodo: Instead of terraforming planets to sell, I pictured people just looking for them. Kinda like an old-fashioned gold rush. Is that feasible?
@ Native Jovian: With the holes, going from one solar system to the next is usually pretty easy (since most of the ones "in-use" by the known galactic societies are connected by the time the story takes place), but moving around within each system still has to be done the old-fashioned way, and isn't much faster or more energy efficient than modern space travel.
@ R Taco:
- In Real Life, no one's been to another solar system, but we can study them from afar and look for signs of habitable planets and signs of intelligent life, such as radio signals, or the sun wobbling in a way that's consistant with the presence of gravity from a habitable planet.
- Then you've got to get there. In your setting, the hard part is finding the right conduit, so to speak.
- Next, you've got to study the planets and establish a claim that will be accepted and honored.
- You could then sell, rent, etc.:
- Real estate on the planet to pioneers, sharecroppers, prospectors, etc.
- Access to trade routes.
- Trade secrets regarding conduits, techniques you discover, etc. If a claim was already established you could still sell info about it to help the owner.
- I could sort of see this also as being done more like privateering, where you're acting on behalf of a larger organization as a private contractor. The larger organization assumes certain financial and legal risks (and may be called upon to rescue you) so long as you don't violate certain policies, and give part of your claim rights to them, but otherwise you're on your own. Perhaps there's a clause that if you start an interstellar war, you'll be declared a criminal in order to protect humanity.
Sounds to me like society would cluster around the hole ends and completely ignore planets, except for raw materials.
Also, you still haven't addressed the time travel issue. Once you pick a handwave, you'll need to think through all the consequences.
edited 28th Mar '11 12:38:48 PM by storyyeller
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play^ I'm not sure how I can answer that any more than I have with the whole "distress signal from Proxima Centauri" scenario. They send the signal, signal (going at lightspeed) gets to Earth four years later, Earth crew immediately uses hole to get there.
From the perspective of the people who sent the signal, the Earth crew arrived four years late. From the perspective of the Earth crew, no real time passed between the signal reaching them and them arriving at Proxima Centauri (though they knew they'd be least four years late, since they understand how the system works).
edited 28th Mar '11 1:02:25 PM by RTaco
^^^^ The problem with that is that you are assuming all the stars are motionless with respect to each other. In reality, stars move at slightly different speeds, leading to time dilation.
A roundtrip to even an nearby star and back could cause you to end up several hours in the past or future.
edited 28th Mar '11 2:49:21 PM by storyyeller
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play^ It's more confusion on my part than anything. This is how I understand time (feel free to correct me, and please be specific):
Everything experiences time passing at a different rate, depending on its velocity. If you had two clocks, put one on another planet, waited until one reached a certain time, and then brought the two together (moving them at the same speed until they met in the middle), the time on each would be different.
Let's imagine that one hole is on Earth, and that the one it connects to is on a planet that's orbiting around its sun hella fast. Somebody is standing on the Earth side, then he grabs a stopwatch and steps through to the other side. He hangs out there until his stopwatch says X amount of time has passed, and then he steps back through to the Earth side. When he gets back, he finds out that much more than X amount of time has passed due to time dilation.
Is this logical? I'm okay with skipping into the future, but if this could be used to travel into the past, could you please give an example of how that would happen?
edited 28th Mar '11 2:52:06 PM by RTaco
Sort of, except that he could arrive on Earth before he left, if the two ends are moving apart.
Any time that the two ends are moving apart with respect to each other, a roundtrip should cause you to go back in time. If the two ends are moving towards each other, you'll end up in the future instead.
edited 28th Mar '11 2:52:22 PM by storyyeller
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayBasically, the problem is that not only do the two time axis have different scales, they also point in different directions. And same with the distance axises. If you travel along one and then back along the other, you'll make a triangle.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayLet's see...
The holes connect Earth to a slower-moving planet. Person starts on Earth side, goes through with clock, waits X amount of time, and then finds that less time has passed, and then goes back through again and arrives before they went home (seeing their past self waiting with the clock).
Is that right?
edited 28th Mar '11 2:59:07 PM by RTaco
As in, it's orbiting its sun more slowly than Earth is, so time isn't passing as slowly there.
Or if Earth's already too slow to noticably slow down time, just replace the two with any "fast-moving one & slow-moving one" pair. The point is time's going by slower on one end.
EDIT: Do normal Year Inside, Hour Outside places like the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and Narnia face the time travel problem? If not, how come?
edited 28th Mar '11 3:14:46 PM by RTaco
The problem is that you're thinking in terms of some other frame of reference.
From the point of view of the planets, it is the other one that is moving. They are both moving equally fast with respect to each other. You cannot say that time is moving more slowly on one planet than another. If you asked someone on Earth, they'd say that time is passing more slowly on AC. But if you asked someone on AC, they'd say time is passing more slowly on Earth.
edited 28th Mar '11 3:18:31 PM by storyyeller
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayWoah...brain hurt. I know that the velocity of another planet differs from your perspective depending on where you are, but I assumed that Time Dilation used velocity as relative to a single, common point in space.
So a ship has clock A, clock B, and clock C. It starts on AC and drops clock B off there. The ship then flies to Earth, which takes 4 years according to clock A. It waits a year (so clock A reads 5 years), drops off clock C, and flies over to AC again. When it arrives, clock A reads 9 years and clock B reads X years (where X is less than 9). The ship stays for a year on AC, then picks up clock B and returns to Earth.
At this point, clock A reads 13 years & clock B reads X+4 years. Clock C would read less than 13, right? Would it read X+4?
edited 28th Mar '11 3:48:19 PM by RTaco
No, X would be much more than 9.
The problem is that the ship is accelerating, which messes everything up. Here's a page with a more in depth explanation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox
edited 28th Mar '11 4:15:59 PM by storyyeller
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayWell the problem with that is that the stars are moving, so they would drift away from the ends of the holes.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

That also doesn't explain why you don't use a normal gun. Surely, the amount of powder could be adjusted much more easily.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play