CotG Tech
The Launch Bay
The launch bays of a Starhammer vessel are huge, accommodating up to eight Decimator launch tubes in each of the four bays aboard the ship, and are almost always a hive of activity.
Even when flight operations are idled, as happens while the Starhammer is travelling at quantac drive speeds, launch crews remain at a high level of readiness, maintaining at least one flight (a minimum of three Decimators, known as Bingo Flight) at-the-ready in each bay. After primary maintenance, repairs and/or reloading has been carried out on Bingo Flight, work proceeds on the next fighters in line to be staged. While “landed” aboard, Decimators can be moved throughout the ship via the docking cradles, which shuffle their charges from the docking bay, through the maintenance facility, then on to the staging bay, where they will await their turn to be placed before a launch tube once again.
Fighters are staged according to squadron ranking aboard the ship, with the more experienced squadrons receiving priority. (Bingo Flight is almost always composed of fighters from the Wing Commander’s squadron, though the WC can select another squadron to supersede theirs, or swap out ships on a one-off basis if he or she chooses.)
At the proper time, the next flight is called from the staging bay, and the cradles moved into their launch positions. The deck crews begin their prep work, which consists of double-checking all cradle-to-fighter connections, monitoring constant full-frame and engine scans produced by the cradles’ diagnostics, and ensuring the reliability of the Decimator engine fusion containment systems.
Only after staging and general preparatory maintenance has been completed on fighters for all available launch tubes will the deck crews decrease their schedule intensity, and fall back to a slower-paced repetition of their routine on the fighters and cradles remaining in the staging bay.
As the Starhammer approaches the final quantac jump before arriving at its destination, activity in the launch bays achieves a feverish pace. Decimators currently slotted at launch tubes are the primary focus of all initial efforts: removing safety interlocks from cradle tracks, power and data connections, removing covers from exposed gravity distortion emitter plates, engine outlets and cannon muzzles, and finally, loading the torpedo rail and dorsal cannon charge booster cells. At this point, the launch crew assumes responsibility for the fighters, powering up on-board systems and ensuring any outstanding software updates are received and installed properly, before moving on to preparing the cockpit for its crew.
While these checks and procedures are run on the Decimators, the Starhammer is preparing to exit its final jump. At this phase, the entire ship goes into a momentary lockdown, and all activity is halted as the shipwide inertial compensation array dumps its stored energy back into the spatial substrate, effectively returning the energy “loan” that the quantac borrowed from it to propel the vessel.
After final jump exit has been completed, crews immediately resume their work, with the assumption that Bingo Flight, at the very least, will be launching almost immediately to resume standard escort duty.
Here is a recording from a Starhammer launch bay, moments before final jump exit:
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The launch bays of a Starhammer vessel are huge, accommodating up to eight Decimator launch tubes in each of the four bays aboard the ship, and are almost always a hive of activity.
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The Whisker Comms
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Space is big. No, seriously, it’s huge! Consider this: light travels at 300,000,000 meters/second, and even at that mind-boggling speed, it still takes light from Sol (our local star, the sun) around 12 minutes to reach Mars, our nearest planetary neighbor!
But what about staying in contact across those vast distances? Radio waves will take between 10 and 20 minutes to travel from Earth to Mars, depending on their respective orbital positions. If you were to try to have a conversation with somebody on the red planet, that makes for a lot of long uncomfortable pauses. So much for catching your significant other in time to remind her there’s no more milk left in the fridge! Of course, the farther out you go, the longer the comm delay becomes.
This delay can be trimmed somewhat through the use of lasers, much like a fiber optic line, without the wire. There are limitations to this method as well, though.
For one, lasers (or “pinbeamsâ€, as the UDF refers to them) are strictly line-of-sight. The path from transmitter to receiver must be clear of obstructions, or the beam will end up scattered or blocked altogether.
For another, pinbeams require a great deal of power in order to produce a beam intense enough to remain intact at any appreciable distance. The space in the inner Solar system is not a pure vacuum; it is swarming with all kinds of dust and free-floating elemental molecules. Even the solar wind itself can present a problem over enough distance. Besides, though they’re based on light, even pinbeams quickly become impractical.
Pinbeam comm time from Gateway to Jupiter: 30 minutes. One-way. That’s an entire hour between asking a question and hearing the response. Yikes!
Enter the Whisker comms. The Whiskers are a unique, completely secure means of real-time communication, and are unaffected by distance. Definitely sounds like something out of a science fiction story, doesn’t it? Well, not all that long ago, cell phones would have been placed in that same category too!
In fact, the Whisker concept is based on real world physics. It’s been discovered that quantum particles are capable of an odd behavior called “entanglement”, whereby two particles can become “entangled” with one another, and will share their states with each other, instantaneously, regardless of the distance between them. Put simply, this means that when one particle points “upâ€, its entangled partner will move that way too, and vice-versa. Interesting, but how could that possibly be used to build a long-distance live communications system?
Though the details are actually quite complicated (not to mention filled with all manner of mind-numbing science nerd jargon), the basic premise is to get yourself a pair of entangled particles, and put them aside. Now, build a pair of nifty little boxes. Inside each box, you place a gizmo that can force a particle to point a certain way, as well as read which way it’s pointing. Now, place one of the entangled particles within each box, and send one of the boxes someplace far off, like Mars.
At this point, you’ve got yourself a Whisker! This basic version works much like Morse code. When powered up, the boxes push the particles to point “down” while idle. To send a message, you push a little button on top of the box, which causes the gizmo inside to push the entangled particle inside to point “up”. It’s twin, all the way out on Mars, swivels to match instantaneously, and the box “reads” that and presents the change as a light or a beep on that end. The process works both ways, too. Instant communication!
But wait a sec! That’s just Morse code, right? How can the Whiskers in CotG transmit much more complex information, like sound and video, back and forth?
That’s simply a matter of bandwidth. In other words, Morse code is (more or less) an old-school version of the digital 0′s and 1′s that our current technology relies on, and our systems can process that stream of numbers very quickly. In the case of a quantum particle, it’s capable of assuming different states at a far more rapid rate than you could hope to exceed by pushing that simple button on the box. So you get a computer to do the button-pushing for you instead. The computer directs the gizmo inside, and generates a rapid stream of 0′s and 1′s that can be interpreted on the other end as whatever particular kind of content is being transmitted. So video transmissions are possible with just a single entangled particle pair, and the bandwidth is limited only by the slowest computer involved in the exchange.
You can add additional “sidebands” by including additional entangled pairs within each unit, so it becomes possible to transmit multiple types of information simultaneously without risk of random crosstalk between the channels. For example, you could hold a video conversation with the other side, in addition to other forms of information, such as instrument telemetry, or perhaps another separate video feed from a robotic probe, a bit like watching the ball game and an episode of Stargate: Universe at the same time!
There is a limitation of this technology, in that the Whiskers are built almost exclusively in paired assemblies, meaning that there is no such thing as a “broadcast†from one transmitter to many receivers. The UDF overcomes this limitation by placing one side of the Whisker pairs within a central communications array, located on Haven, the UDF’s center of operations. The Whisker array is monitored by a SARA fragment, which reads incoming transmissions and directs them to their intended destination. If one ship wishes to communicate with another Whisker-equipped vessel, SARA transfers the incoming stream to the Whisker half matching the targeted vessel, and sends it off. This induces a delay of a fraction of a second between the ships, but the delay will never change, no matter how far apart the vessels are from one another, and is certainly preferable to the alternative.
The UDF controls the distribution and use of the Whiskers, and the assemblies that drive them are huge, so their installations are limited to the larger ships of the fleet. Civilian colonists also have access to dedicated intra-colony Whisker installations, which are maintained by GC-authorized staff of the Gateway Archive.
Still sound like science fiction? It’s not. In fact, there are now experiments underway that work on this principle! This article talks about the Chinese and American militaries’ efforts with this technology!
Once fully developed, these real world Whiskers will enable all kinds of incredible advances in exploration. Imagine probes that don’t require incredibly expensive and complex software to overcome unexpected hazards and situations, because an operator is capable of issuing commands and receiving feedback in real-time. Picture a space exploration program built around robots that provide more than just a slow, grainy still camera on the scene, but rather a full-motion, high-definition, panoramic, even 3D video feed!
The possibilities are nearly endless!
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In the CotG universe, Terrans use space-faring vessels to ply the vast distances between the three colonies, and to various points around the Solar system, in search of various resources required to maintain life on those colonies. Were it not for QuantAc and fusion drive technologies, travel between the colonies and their mining operations would require far too much time to be of any real benefit. Of similar importance is the ability to actually communicate with those far-flung travelers.
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Decimator Docking Cradle
Starhammer vessels carry with them a flotilla of UF-2/C and UF-2/D “Decimator” fighter craft. Launch and recovery procedures are frequently complicated by artificial gravity systems, so it’s a good thing the Starhammers were designed to accommodate their Decimators with docking cradles.
The Decimator is inarguably the most agile and powerful ship within its class in the UDF fleet. However, for all of its flexibility, most pilots find it extremely difficult to attempt manual landing or launching maneuvers aboard the Starhammers. A number of factors make the prospect of an unassisted landing a bigger challenge to most pilots than dogfighting. For example, the transition from zero-g to artificial gravity can produce extreme buffeting, causing the fighter to shift unexpectedly during the final critical stages of landing. The sheer power of the engines and lack of a landing brake system (the landing gear are pads, not wheels), required the development of a dedicated platform to perform launch and recovery handling.
Enter the launch cradle. Originally used as mobile storage platforms for the Decimators’ predecessors, the cradles are complete maintenance, launch and recovery platforms, providing complete umbilical and systems support throughout the Decimators’ operational cycle. Utilizing powerful magnetics and a dedicated field emitter array, the cradles ensure that the fighter is docked properly, and secures the fighter for all shipboard operations, from maintenance to transport to storage.
A typical cradle launch procedure proceeds as follows:
- Launch Call – The loaded cradle is moved to and locked in position before its assigned launch tube. Power for onboard initialization and diagnostics is provided via external connections located within the cradle’s mounting pad surfaces. Preflight systems updates and low level diagnostics are performed at this stage.
- Engine Start – Engines are started, one at a time, port side first, (power generators are located here). To extend the service life of the vessel\’s power cells, the required initial starting current is provided through the umbilical connections. After both engines have started and settled into a stable idling state, power is switched to the ship’s onboard generator and life support systems brought online.
- Pre-Launch Release – The Decimator’s repulsor system is then verified and activated. Once the repulsors have stabilized, the ship is quickly scanned for any potential structural problems, the cradle’s field array initialized and powered, and the hard locking clamps released. The Decimator is allowed to hover above the cradle, the holding fields generated by the cradle keeping the ship on-station.
- Pre-Launch Evacuation – The tube’s atmospheric field activates, isolating the tube entrance and the launch area from the rest of the bay. The launch tube is opened to space, outer door first. The inner door facing into the launch area opens slowly to avoid rapid-decompression stresses on the Decimator’s frame.
- Booster Spoolup – The Decimator’s engine boosters are activated, providing maximum forward acceleration at the time of launch release. A small amount of air is injected into the launch area, which carries toxic boost exhaust emissions with it as it travels out through the open launch tube.
- Launch – The Decimator’s alignment to the launch tube is checked, and the holding field adapted as needed to make any necessary final positioning adjustments. The field is then dropped, and the Decimator finally set loose.
The cradles give pilots and deck crew much more flexibility and freedom in the placement of the fighters, which is of utmost importance during times of heightened battle-readiness.
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Starhammer vessels carry with them a flotilla of UF-2/C and UF-2/D “Decimator” fighter craft. Launch and recovery procedures are frequently complicated by artificial gravity systems, so it’s a good thing the Starhammers were designed to accommodate their Decimators with docking cradles.
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