In case you've ever wondered, as I often have "What the hell did they just say?" or Shenmen shi diyu tamen ye zhishi zuo zai?
Firefly's 15 Best Uses of Chinese Profanity (with translation and pronunciation guide)
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Friday, April 18, 2014
Another Mother
Forget colonizing Mars! Let's up the budget on intergalactic jump gates and/or FTL space travel.
NASA's Kepler telescope finds 'the Holy Grail' Earth-sized planet
I vote we change its name from Kepler-186f to Herman (as in hermano or hermana), or just go for the incredibly fitting Alienae, which is Latin for "another mother." Then we could call whatever life is found there Alienaes.
NASA's Kepler telescope finds 'the Holy Grail' Earth-sized planet
I vote we change its name from Kepler-186f to Herman (as in hermano or hermana), or just go for the incredibly fitting Alienae, which is Latin for "another mother." Then we could call whatever life is found there Alienaes.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Find a Job, Keep Flying
I've had intergalactic shipping on the brain lately, mostly because of Firefly and the blu-ray Star Wars sets I just purchased. Per the suggestion of a starjockey friend, I had purchased several of the Star Wars Essential guidebooks. As I flip through the pages of planets, trade routes, and ship cross sections my mind wanders. And as is my wont, I gravitate (yes a space pun, deal with it) toward online generators to whip up a setting.
It's either new to Donjon, or I just haven't noticed it amidst the array of star system gennies, but I came across this:
Star Wars Freight Jobs
I like the basic premise, but I figure it must be applicable to more than just Star Wars. It will take some tinkering, but I'm going to try to come up with a similar dice-based job generator. I will also attempt to create a Traveller cargo generator to determine just what is going in the hold for the journey. It's going to be a long weekend and I may get just bored enough to do something about it.
It's either new to Donjon, or I just haven't noticed it amidst the array of star system gennies, but I came across this:
Star Wars Freight Jobs
I like the basic premise, but I figure it must be applicable to more than just Star Wars. It will take some tinkering, but I'm going to try to come up with a similar dice-based job generator. I will also attempt to create a Traveller cargo generator to determine just what is going in the hold for the journey. It's going to be a long weekend and I may get just bored enough to do something about it.
Friday, November 15, 2013
Ship Class 1-6
I had this idea for ships ranked by numeric class 1-6.
Anything over a class 3 ship in civilian hands is quite suspicious and likely to invite bothersome inspections by (name of cliche authoritarian space government). Many a speedy smuggler, aka "Hoppers", piloting a class 4 have been nabbed and had their ship and cargo seized. Therefore, most regular space jockeys stick to a class 3 or below. Average transports rarely exceed a class 2 and class 3s are reserved for freighters making intergalactic supply runs. These heavy haulers often dock at spaceports to swap cargo and carry on or return the way they came. It's not uncommon for a freighter crew to simply go where the work and fuel cells carry them, staying on the move and "shooting the stars" for as long as they can.
Regardless of a ship's class, all jump drives, aka "hel-cores", are powered by intense bursts of BBN. The regular engines all run on hydrogen fuel.
Hydrogen fuel is ideal for it's abundance and recycle-ability into water and algae, both of which can sustain the crew for months in the event of a jump drive breakdown. However, prolonged exposure combined with infrequent and/or shoddy maintenance can make metal quite brittle. Every pilot can tell you stories of a ship whose fuel cells shattered, released hydrogen into the ship's artificial atmo, and blew the whole crew to kingdom come. "Only a fool neglects his fuel" is an adage commonly heard in every corner of the galaxy.
Some larger ships can be modified to siphon hydrogen fuel from gas planets, but with the high cost of custom "H scoops" also comes the risk that the ships could be destroyed by the dangerous skimming. Skimming planets involves buzzing their atmosphere and pulling hydrogen into condensers, but doing so exposes the ships to other harmful effects, not the least of which being simple icing of the vents, thrusters, and other such mechanics. If a ship freezes up while skimming a large gas giant, it can easily be pulled into the core depths and crushed by the immense pressure.
Regardless of a ship's class, all jump drives, aka "hel-cores", are powered by intense bursts of BBN. The regular engines all run on hydrogen fuel.
Hydrogen fuel is ideal for it's abundance and recycle-ability into water and algae, both of which can sustain the crew for months in the event of a jump drive breakdown. However, prolonged exposure combined with infrequent and/or shoddy maintenance can make metal quite brittle. Every pilot can tell you stories of a ship whose fuel cells shattered, released hydrogen into the ship's artificial atmo, and blew the whole crew to kingdom come. "Only a fool neglects his fuel" is an adage commonly heard in every corner of the galaxy.
Some larger ships can be modified to siphon hydrogen fuel from gas planets, but with the high cost of custom "H scoops" also comes the risk that the ships could be destroyed by the dangerous skimming. Skimming planets involves buzzing their atmosphere and pulling hydrogen into condensers, but doing so exposes the ships to other harmful effects, not the least of which being simple icing of the vents, thrusters, and other such mechanics. If a ship freezes up while skimming a large gas giant, it can easily be pulled into the core depths and crushed by the immense pressure.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Chronicles of Man
For me, sci-fi is all about the ships and lives lived upon them. I especially liked the military order of BSG and the once military association of Mal and Zoe on Firefly. It is with that interest in mind that I discovered Chronicles of Man.
Chronicles of Man.com
Chronicles of Man Wiki
From the mind of Josh Samuelson with a good deal of art by Adam Kop and many others.
And what's more, you can read how it all began here and continued here. How cool is it that it began oh so long ago and Josh has actually served on nuclear submarines?! He's got a lot more relating to CoM scattered throughout his journal. Now go check it out. That's an order!
Chronicles of Man.com
Chronicles of Man Wiki
From the mind of Josh Samuelson with a good deal of art by Adam Kop and many others.
And what's more, you can read how it all began here and continued here. How cool is it that it began oh so long ago and Josh has actually served on nuclear submarines?! He's got a lot more relating to CoM scattered throughout his journal. Now go check it out. That's an order!
Thursday, October 17, 2013
"New World" Space Fantasy
I am mixing a bit of sci-fi into the (somewhat cliche) discovery/founding of a fantasy
world, but I can't decide on where exactly it should be in relation to
us.
I'm tinkering with the idea of placing it "locally" in either the Perseus or Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
Or perhaps making it much more far flung and positioning it in the Andromeda Galaxy
The premise is that in a not-so-far future we have found other habitable areas, aka "Goldilocks zones", which aren't too far speculatively from where we are now. But geographically they are a long shot in that we know they are there and have Earth-like planets, but that's the extent of our knowledge. So we decide to fire massive colonization ships to each of these areas in an attempt to settle more space and form a cliche federation or empire of worlds. But something goes terribly wrong.
A ship named the Adventus - derived from Latin meaning "arrival, or coming to" - is sent through a wormhole/jump gate on a mission to colonize the zone. Upon coming out of the jump, the ship is struck by a wandering comet that was impossible to detect on previous scans. If I go with the jump gate arrival, the gate is destroyed with the ship. If I go with the wormhole idea, I would have to assume the too-convenient, spontaneous collapse of the naturally occurring wormhole. Or I might combine the two ideas and say that the technology is available for the ships to create the wormholes (essentially hyperspace jumping) but when the ship is lost, so is the "beacon" or black box that would indicate what the hell happened, thus failing to signal for rescue from other colony ships.
Another idea is that no beacons are expected to be sent until a world is colonized, meaning that no one is going to come looking for any "lost colonies" that don't report back. That seems like a stretch in that given the amount of planning and resources and sheer number of committed lives, I would think someone would be keeping tabs on a blinking radar screen.
However I settle the conundrum, the ship is lost and no one is riding to the rescue. No John Rolfs in space, I suppose.
Because it was designed as a colonization ship, all of the materials and foodstuffs needed to begin a new life were already loaded. All of the colonists were in cryo-sleep in various pods of 40-50. The skeleton crew of the ship were all killed and the black box that recorded the impact/wreck was lost. The emergency evacuation override of the ship was to target the nearest habitable planet and launch as many cryo-pods and cargo containers as possible to maximize the likelihood of survival.
Coming out of cryo-sleep is disorienting even in idea conditions. Given the emergency launch and the fact that no crew or records survived, all the passengers can recall is that they were sent "from the stars" to live on a new world. Other than a handful of supply containers, all else is lost.
The only surviving pods land thousands of miles apart on 2 of 5 continents because they were the ones facing the ship at the time. They don't even know if any other pods made the landing. These pockets of humanity have no idea that anyone else is on the world with them. But on this planet, the "standard" fantasy races of elves, dwarves, and gnomes (along with monstrous races) already exist.
Elves call the world Epheria or Epherius (from ephemeral - dream like)
Dwarves call the world Khorden (core den) or Khoruden - the runes are called Khoru (runes of the core)
Humans call the world Aventus, because that's as close as they can recall the name of the ship that jettisoned the pods to the planet.
The monstrous, savage races hail from a continent that is named Velusum (from lusus naturae "freak of nature")
**Several other mythology based names I like for other ships (or possible jump gates) are:
Hyperion - which may end up being a name of a world
Icarus - another doomed ship that crashed into a sun/star.
Prometheus - one of the first successful colony ships
Delos or Delphos - derived from Delphi
Atheum - derived from Athens
Sparatus - derived from Sparta and Spartacus
Hermeus or Hermean - a Mercury-like "dead world" named after Hermes (aka Mercury)
Aquilon - vaguely Latin for "north"
Meridium - vaguely Latin for "south"
Atlas - this would be a great classification for a heavy, carrier ship. Perhaps it's not a warship, but a resupply/support ship that brings additional cargo to established worlds.
I'm tinkering with the idea of placing it "locally" in either the Perseus or Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
Or perhaps making it much more far flung and positioning it in the Andromeda Galaxy
The premise is that in a not-so-far future we have found other habitable areas, aka "Goldilocks zones", which aren't too far speculatively from where we are now. But geographically they are a long shot in that we know they are there and have Earth-like planets, but that's the extent of our knowledge. So we decide to fire massive colonization ships to each of these areas in an attempt to settle more space and form a cliche federation or empire of worlds. But something goes terribly wrong.
A ship named the Adventus - derived from Latin meaning "arrival, or coming to" - is sent through a wormhole/jump gate on a mission to colonize the zone. Upon coming out of the jump, the ship is struck by a wandering comet that was impossible to detect on previous scans. If I go with the jump gate arrival, the gate is destroyed with the ship. If I go with the wormhole idea, I would have to assume the too-convenient, spontaneous collapse of the naturally occurring wormhole. Or I might combine the two ideas and say that the technology is available for the ships to create the wormholes (essentially hyperspace jumping) but when the ship is lost, so is the "beacon" or black box that would indicate what the hell happened, thus failing to signal for rescue from other colony ships.
Another idea is that no beacons are expected to be sent until a world is colonized, meaning that no one is going to come looking for any "lost colonies" that don't report back. That seems like a stretch in that given the amount of planning and resources and sheer number of committed lives, I would think someone would be keeping tabs on a blinking radar screen.
However I settle the conundrum, the ship is lost and no one is riding to the rescue. No John Rolfs in space, I suppose.
Because it was designed as a colonization ship, all of the materials and foodstuffs needed to begin a new life were already loaded. All of the colonists were in cryo-sleep in various pods of 40-50. The skeleton crew of the ship were all killed and the black box that recorded the impact/wreck was lost. The emergency evacuation override of the ship was to target the nearest habitable planet and launch as many cryo-pods and cargo containers as possible to maximize the likelihood of survival.
Coming out of cryo-sleep is disorienting even in idea conditions. Given the emergency launch and the fact that no crew or records survived, all the passengers can recall is that they were sent "from the stars" to live on a new world. Other than a handful of supply containers, all else is lost.
The only surviving pods land thousands of miles apart on 2 of 5 continents because they were the ones facing the ship at the time. They don't even know if any other pods made the landing. These pockets of humanity have no idea that anyone else is on the world with them. But on this planet, the "standard" fantasy races of elves, dwarves, and gnomes (along with monstrous races) already exist.
Elves call the world Epheria or Epherius (from ephemeral - dream like)
Dwarves call the world Khorden (core den) or Khoruden - the runes are called Khoru (runes of the core)
Humans call the world Aventus, because that's as close as they can recall the name of the ship that jettisoned the pods to the planet.
The monstrous, savage races hail from a continent that is named Velusum (from lusus naturae "freak of nature")
**Several other mythology based names I like for other ships (or possible jump gates) are:
Hyperion - which may end up being a name of a world
Icarus - another doomed ship that crashed into a sun/star.
Prometheus - one of the first successful colony ships
Delos or Delphos - derived from Delphi
Atheum - derived from Athens
Sparatus - derived from Sparta and Spartacus
Hermeus or Hermean - a Mercury-like "dead world" named after Hermes (aka Mercury)
Aquilon - vaguely Latin for "north"
Meridium - vaguely Latin for "south"
Atlas - this would be a great classification for a heavy, carrier ship. Perhaps it's not a warship, but a resupply/support ship that brings additional cargo to established worlds.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Even More Sci-Fi Ships
Just yesterday I found this amazing gallery on DeviantArt by one I.L. Jackson. Total it is 35 pages of awesome sci-fi art, but the ships in particular are what caught my eye...all 10 pages of them. And best yet is the fact that most of the ship designs are his very own.
The artist (who is also one hell of a writer) and I exchanged a few notes and he notified me that he'll soon have a web series coming out called Ascension Chronicles. Be watching for that!
In the meantime, be sure to check out his art. Do yourself a favor and read every word of his descriptions too. They give nearly every pic the oomph of an FTL jump.
The artist (who is also one hell of a writer) and I exchanged a few notes and he notified me that he'll soon have a web series coming out called Ascension Chronicles. Be watching for that!
In the meantime, be sure to check out his art. Do yourself a favor and read every word of his descriptions too. They give nearly every pic the oomph of an FTL jump.
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