LATE Storyline submission (vacation anyone?): "Full Circle"

[Rocket]

I agree. A biometal space ship plowing a hole through the moon and destabilizing its orbit - all without receiving any significant damage. I don't see even anti-matter warheads denting that armor. Was the reactor vulnerable to attack or something? Of course it's possible that the ship never actually touched the moon and thus wouldn't need ultimate biometal armor to plow through the moon. Perhaps the gravitational field in front of the ship behaved like a black hole and ate through the moon. Though in that case, the ship should have had an easier time traveling as the mass of the moon would be gravitational energy for the black hole... A black hole is the only gravitatoinal phenomenon that seems strong enough to plow through a moon at speeds exceeding light.

It wasn't a black hole

the ARK III, the first intergalactic ship to contain a functional Alcubierre drive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive, a system which allows the propulsion of matter at apparent faster than light speeds without requiring infinite energy (this is accomplished by contracting the space in front of the ship and expanding the space behind, not moving the ship chemically)

Note: Expanding the space behind the ship would explain the moon having a hole in it.


Yay i got my avatar on.

[ScrapPool]

If we were releasing this on CD that whole emerging from the wormhole bit would make a hell of a FMV, unfortunately we aren't and nobody like 300mb downloads (unless I am just slow and old and don't have fast internet or know of the latest compression schemes).

Definitely a powerful story-driven part, and I will vote for it on one condition:

Explain how the pre-biometal aerospace fighters destroyed mankind's greatest and largest creation after it just took on the freaking moon... You'd think non-biometal weapons would "plink" off of its hull, even though it is fractured slightly. I can't cite a reference but I remember seeing that non-biometal weapons do terribly little to no damage to biometal EDD.

THIS is a very good point. It could be resolved one of two ways:

1) Maybe the ARK didn't touch the moon at all, instead it's err, warp drive used all of the ship's remaining energy to pass the mass of the moon around the ship, no energy left=drop out of warp, in this case, we can presume that some WMD like weapon, nukes or antimatter perhaps, were used by the cthonians to attack it as it came out. Biometal hull or not, 50 megatons of thermonuclear energy is a LOT of killing power, especially when applied to a target in multiple instances.  There is also the possibility of boarding craft? Who knows?

2) We can also pretend that the ARK sustained all the damage needed to cause it to crash from the impact through the moon itself. It is not crucial to the plot that the cthonians attack the ship, so long as it crashes and causes the moon to fall to the planet. If anybody can put the situation together to make that work, im happy.

We could also consider the possibility of a giant gun like in FE, im not here to rule things out guys. 

I personally am of the belief that biometal reactors were depleted because of moving the mass of the moon out of the way of the ship + cthonian antimatter weapons = crahsed ARK III

I'm sure we can figure out some chain of events that is mutually believable!

Also: see rockets post.

[bb1]

I really really wanted to overlook this problem with the story that could bring the story to a crushing halt... suspension of disbelief or not I shall continue:

Wouldn't the Scions, in their higher knowledge, have a device to sense a gravity well? I for one wouldn't green light a project ship if it couldn't detect gravity wells in unknown space.

Traditionally, using Star Wars as an example (because it layed the groundwork), if a ship would be pulled out of hyperspace if a gravity well was within the vicinity.

It is simply too preposterous to hint that the Scions felt so confident that their ship could plow through some star or clumsy enough to overlook installing it, along with some sort of malfunction. I would stop the ship immediately and check for issues.

[Feared_1]

I like this story....


A LOT.

[AHadley]

Maybe the gravity well detection failed for some reason?

[Angstromicus]

I'm assuming that since this is new technology, that feature wouldn't be implemented yet. It probably would be assumed unnecessary because telescopes and advanced algorithms would be able to plot a path through space safely (at least for the most part).

Secondly, the chances or running into objects are extremely low because space, for the most part, is very EMPTY. The solar system is fairly crowded, but still quite empty. Even emptier is inter-stellar space. Even emptier than that is intergalactic space. Emptier STILL are the great voids in the universe that contain few - if any - galaxies.

Thirdly, imagine how dangerous it was for the first astronauts to make it to the moon. This is similarly epic (actually, more), so the risks would be worth it.

[AHadley]

On average, there are only four atoms per square metre in space.

[RHadley]

I have to admit I really like your story idea, ScrapPool. You have probably heard it all before, but a story from a scion perspective is brilliant.

[bb1]

I'm assuming that since this is new technology, that feature wouldn't be implemented yet. It probably would be assumed unnecessary because telescopes and advanced algorithms would be able to plot a path through space safely (at least for the most part).

Secondly, the chances or running into objects are extremely low because space, for the most part, is very EMPTY. The solar system is fairly crowded, but still quite empty. Even emptier is inter-stellar space. Even emptier than that is intergalactic space. Emptier STILL are the great voids in the universe that contain few - if any - galaxies.

Thirdly, imagine how dangerous it was for the first astronauts to make it to the moon. This is similarly epic (actually, more), so the risks would be worth it.

Sure, if you want to drive out on the highway late at night with no headlights... at 1:00AM there isn't much traffic at all but the freak car may pull out in front of unexpectedly.

The Scions seem too pensive to overlook something that important... And if it malfunctioned I would expect them to pull out of "warp" to fix it. I'm sure you could probably write around it and still have the moon issues though, although it is still tough. I still find it interesting how it wouldn't pull out of warp from simply entering a system with a star period, let alone a gas giant.

[Rocket]

Maybe their sensing systems failed BECAUSE of the upcoming gas giant?

[Nielk1]

Assuming that such a system works on the thin space pushed into by dense space (terms are a misnomer, like being in flatland and saying upward not northward) then anything that things space (biometaloids) or anything that thickens it (blackholes and stars) would have a distortion effect on the travel.

[AHadley]

The thicker space around the star would make faster-than-light travel more difficult, thus draining power, thus forcing the Ark III out of FTL travel and back into normal space.

[Nielk1]

I also figure blinkdrive thins the space infront of a ship and thus fives it into it, so it 'surfaces' a distance away.

[ScrapPool]

I really really wanted to overlook this problem with the story that could bring the story to a crushing halt... suspension of disbelief or not I shall continue:

Wouldn't the Scions, in their higher knowledge, have a device to sense a gravity well? I for one wouldn't green light a project ship if it couldn't detect gravity wells in unknown space.

Traditionally, using Star Wars as an example (because it layed the groundwork), if a ship would be pulled out of hyperspace if a gravity well was within the vicinity.

It is simply too preposterous to hint that the Scions felt so confident that their ship could plow through some star or clumsy enough to overlook installing it, along with some sort of malfunction. I would stop the ship immediately and check for issues.

Ya know it may sound retarded but I really do like that people are pointing these things out.  

The thing about gravity is that it propagates in "waves", at the speed of light, according to the assumption made by my buddy Einstein.
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gravity/overview.php
Note: this has never actually been proven in lab settings, because it would take a LOT of experimental gravity to test it out, and that's something we can't really afford.

For example, if our sun magically disappeared, it would take "eight-ish minutes" for our planet's motion to start feeling the effects of this; we would feel the effects of the hypothetical sun's magical disappearance exactly as we were able to see that our sun had disappeared. If gravity travels faster than light, our planet's orbit around the sun would dissipate some time before the light had reached our planet which indicated that our sun had disappeared, and this doesn't make much sense to physicists and mathmeticians, so we just assume that gravity travels at the speed of light.

Keeping in this assumption, the ARK (traveling FTL, as it would appear to the rest of the universe, not traveling at all from the perspective of the the ARK inside its warp "bubble") would be in a gravity well before it had actually had the chance to receive any information which might indicate that it was about to pass into one. It would literally drop out of warp instantly.

George Lucas' gravity well generators which stop hyper drives are a cool idea that makes sense in our down to earth world, but as far as science can prove, no information happens faster than light in the natural world. :/
But then again that's where the physics fall apart and one just has to go with it...

All the compliments are much appreciated everybody.

[bb1]

*Pulls on labcoat*

Then the highly intelligent Scions would stop every couple million light years and carry out long range scans and navigating to see which way is clear O_O