Oolite Bulletins

spud42 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 02, 2021 1:47 pm

Stargate? in all its guises?

I'll do #4 on this, as we've seen 1. Teal'c drive a glider (or the sorts) through a gate early on in the series 2. The Ori create the super gate* to transfer their fleet across galaxies and 3. In Stargate Atlantis the jumpers went through the star gates in Pegasus galaxy on (almost) a episode by episode basis

[*] actually the super gate was one of my other "4 easy targets"

Knock! Knock!
Is there anybody out there?

Commander_X wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 12:02 am

Knock! Knock!
Is there anybody out there?

Aint nobody here but us chickens?

Oh well, if nobody else wants to bite the bullet...

In the Blue Planet tabletop RPG Earth colonizes the planet Poseidon in a solar system which is (I think) 35 light years away. They get there via an artificial wormhole found in space a long way from Earth (I think past Pluto) in the late 21st century. All colonization and interstellar travel is via the wormhole, there's no other form of interstellar travel, and the wormhole builders never appear although there are hints that they may be underwater natives of Poseidon.

Sorry if this is a little vague, it's a LONG time since I read it.

A review here

https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/cla ... v_76.phtml

If you want an alternative, in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 and sequels the black monoliths appear to be interstellar communication devices and the bigger ones are portals for interstellar travel. We don't see any alien spaceships, and the only human to experience interstellar travel just goes through one of the monoliths in a space pod with no engines apart from manoeuvring thrusters and has some sort of psychedelic trip which eventually turns him into a cosmic being that looks like an embryo

https://youtu.be/3CglvOos2bA - bits of it have been edited out

Commander_X wrote: ↑Mon Nov 01, 2021 12:45 am

[...] I'm not looking for a one time/accidental event, but for a regular usage pattern.

ffutures wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 10:41 pm

[...] All colonization and interstellar travel is via the wormhole, there's no other form of interstellar travel, and the wormhole builders never appear although there are hints that they may be underwater natives of Poseidon. [...]

If you want an alternative, in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 and sequels the black monoliths appear to be interstellar communication devices and the bigger ones are portals for interstellar travel. We don't see any alien spaceships, and the only human to experience interstellar travel just goes through one of the monoliths in a space pod with no engines apart from manoeuvring thrusters and has some sort of psychedelic trip which eventually turns him into a cosmic being that looks like an embryo [...]

For the Blue Planet, I'd consider the wormhole a one time/accidental event. Unless _other_ wormholes/forms of interstellar travel would've been available, this would not match what I'm looking for. (I've got similar alternative examples in my "easy hits")

The monoliths also don't seem to go around the "accidental" definition.

Hint #1:
I'll try my best in not _telling_ my other easy hits, but 2 of them are in the gaming universes, while the third is in a very well known movie series.

Robert Heinlein Tunnel in the sky Published 1966.

interstellar gates used to colonise and trade between planets and aparently places on planets too...

spud42 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 2021 5:42 am

Robert Heinlein Tunnel in the sky Published 1966.

interstellar gates used to colonise and trade between planets and aparently places on planets too...

Did ships travel through these gates? From the short synopsis I read, the gates (portals) were used to transfer people ...

depends on your definition of " ship" mostly people walked or rode wagons. The first time the gates are seen by the main character an ambassador from a chlorine breathing word comes through in a capsule but thats not really a ship,so i guess it doesnt count, i forgot the bit about ships .

spud42 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 2021 1:49 pm

The first time the gates are seen by the main character an ambassador from a chlorine breathing word comes through in a capsule

Oh, I don't know, that's getting pretty "Open the pod bay doors, HAL".
More than a few times I've seen a spacesuit described as a personal spaceship. OK, it's lacking long-distance engines. But ... horses for courses.

spud42 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 2021 5:42 am

Robert Heinlein Tunnel in the sky Published 1966.

interstellar gates used to colonise and trade between planets and aparently places on planets too...

They were ground to ground as I recall it, with no spaceships mentioned at all. You messed around with the controls until they locked onto something, if you were lucky it was a habitable world. The equipment was something that could be built in a university lab, e.g. the first gate transfers the inventor from the USA to a botanical garden in South America (he thinks he's time travelled since there are giant ferns etc.), and you could presumably have a network on your planet once it was colonised, since they were being used for point to point gates on Earth. The interstellar connection could be messed up by e.g. a nearby nova, which leaves the hero and the rest of his classmates marooned for several years.

Basically, it's Stargate without the need to have a physical gate on the destination world.

oh , i agree but this was many many years before Stargate. yes no spacecraft used. i did say i forgot about that required detail..lol

Hint #2: both the games series I have in mind have started around the beginning of this century and are still "alive".

Hint #3: the games are quite the opposite of one another, with regards to concurrent number of players connected at any moment.

Belatedly remember the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, in which spaceships are slower than light but can jump from one system to another via naturally occurring portals (described as wormholes but working differently to the ones described by current physics) which link systems, but do not necessarily link to the next nearby system - it appears to be fairly random. Some routes require going through dozens of wormholes, others are much easier. Engines using "Necklin rods" aboard the ships can open them long enough for a ship to get through. It may be possible to create or close wormholes by the use of modified Necklin rods, but the terrorists who tried this nearly blew themselves up, and it is a VERY closely guarded military secret. They can also close or open naturally, which can leave a system isolated, or suddenly make it vulnerable to invaders from a new direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_McMa ... ce_fiction

ffutures wrote: ↑Mon Nov 15, 2021 4:18 pm

[...] Engines using "Necklin rods" aboard the ships [...]

Commander_X wrote: ↑Mon Nov 01, 2021 12:45 am

[...] Ok, as in our favorite game here, in many sci-fi works, the ships capable of (inter)galactic space travel have the means to do that available on themselves.
I'm looking for five examples where this is not the case, i.e. the long leap between two locations is made through means external to the ship. [...]

I am not sure if the "Necklin rods" create or "access" a wormhole, but this sounds very much to me like the travel through "witchspace" we should be so familiar with (also by the means of the ship itself).

So this should be a no.