How not to get lost with FTL jumps?

[Spacescifi]

5 hours ago, Terwin said:

You have just made a 'long' jump and happened to end up in a galaxy of unknown size and composition.

You have data on one Andromeda pulsar and lots of Milky-way pulsars.

There is one strong near-by pulsar that is 'kind of' similar in frequency to the Andromeda pulsar, but all of that data is 2.5 million years old and it may have shifted.

Are you in Andromeda?  Some distant part of the milky-way where most of the known pulsars are not visible?

Some other Galaxy?

 

A Pulsar map is very helpful when you are in a known galaxy, but may not help a lot if you do not know which galactic cluster you are in, unless you have pulsar maps of lots of galaxies.

There is also the issue that a given pulsar may only be visible along a specific plane(directly in the beam as it were) and highly prolific, making them less useful than currently hoped. 

 

Congrats, you just realized a scifi job that does not exist in pop scifi.

Pulsar Mapper.

"These are the voyages of the USS Exciting Undertaking, on our five year mission to map new pulsars, seek out new life and civilizations, and hopefully... get back home."

 

Basically it sounds like you're saying that the only way to make really far extragalactic jumps would be to get lost first, and then map every pulsar needed to get back home.

 

Sounds like Captain Kurt would be spending less time chasing alien space babes and a lot more time drinking tang in weightlessness, while occasionally teasing/annoying his version of Spork for entertainment.

 

It least with more reality inserted into scifi.

Fun times LOL.

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by Spacescifi
Spork

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, Terwin said:

There is one strong near-by pulsar that is 'kind of' similar in frequency to the Andromeda pulsar, but all of that data is 2.5 million years old and it may have shifted.

Are you in Andromeda?  Some distant part of the milky-way where most of the known pulsars are not visible?

Some other Galaxy?

Define "return" and "home" 5 million years later.

(Didn't you think I was joking about the multiversal clone of your homeworld, lol? That's the only way to "return home" after 5 mln year long absence. Otherwise just keep on travelling.)

So, either use a hyperjump spending not so much time, just reappear in the destination point immediately now (then pulsars stay same), or just send back a postcard just in case if somebody is still living there.

8 hours ago, Terwin said:

A Pulsar map is very helpful when you are in a known galaxy, but may not help a lot if you do not know which galactic cluster you are in, unless you have pulsar maps of lots of galaxies. 

Generally a 3d map of the galaxy cluster and quazars would stay more or less same just millions years later.

It would be a problem of billions of years, but then that's not a problem:
>>find earth
no such planet

[KerikBalm]

The most distant known pulsar, as far as I could find, is 50 million light years away

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2017/02/21/brightest-farthest-pulsar-universe-discovered/98208432/

Since some pulsars have a regularity exceeding that of an atomic clock, and the best atomic clocks will be accurate to within a second in 138 million years, pulsar data being out of date by 5 or 50 million years may not be such a problem when you get there.

I'd think galaxy maps could be used as references too, and then there's the already mentioned quasars.

And navigator is a role in Sci-Fi. Even soft-sci fi like star trek. Voyager had 7 of 9 work in "astrometrics"... which I guess is sort of a navigator role... I don't know, her real role was to look nice on screen in a tight suit.

[Shpaget]

To be honest, since you mention 7/9 and astrometrics, it's not a standard feature of ST ships. It was built by Kim and 7/9 several years into the journey.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

(Astro)navigators are necessary on spaceships

• to accuse somebody when the ship gets lost;
• to feed local fauna with unnecessary NPС (that's why there were also First Astronavigator and Second Astronavigator, to have a backup);
• to be a fanservice nerd;
• to shoot from blaster because these idiots haven't research the landing zone from air before landing;
• to be a nose ballast;

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Guest]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

• to accuse somebody when the ship gets lost;

Don't underestimate that one. Even if everything is automated, you've got to have someone sign off on the automation working correctly. A formal responsibility for the astrogation system, including periodically certifying it for operation, is no small matter. On small vessels, this role can be filled by the captain, but larger ones with more complex systems will have a dedicated officer for that. Of course, if the system does fail and the ship gets lost, the astrogator will be the first in the line of fire...

12 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Sounds like Captain Kurt would be spending less time chasing alien space babes and a lot more time drinking tang in weightlessness, while occasionally teasing/annoying his version of Spork for entertainment.

It least with more reality inserted into scifi.

Fun times LOL.

This is true in general. SF can get away with summarizing the boring parts in a single paragraph and spending the rest of interesting stuff, but in RL, serving on a ship of any kind is about 90% (give or take 10, depending on which ship) boring, day to day routine.

However, that one interesting big has a tendency to make up for all the drudgery you go through to get there, at least if you're the kind of person who wants to go sailing in first place.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Guest

[Nuke]

it helps if you have a spice addicted navigator that can see the near future. 

[magnemoe]

16 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Congrats, you just realized a scifi job that does not exist in pop scifi.

Pulsar Mapper.

"These are the voyages of the USS Exciting Undertaking, on our five year mission to map new pulsars, seek out new life and civilizations, and hopefully... get back home."

 

Basically it sounds like you're saying that the only way to make really far extragalactic jumps would be to get lost first, and then map every pulsar needed to get back home.

 

Sounds like Captain Kurt would be spending less time chasing alien space babes and a lot more time drinking tang in weightlessness, while occasionally teasing/annoying his version of Spork for entertainment.

 

It least with more reality inserted into scifi.

Fun times LOL.

 

Also this sounds more like some wormhole of drive mailfunction of some sort rater than an planned mission. You end up 5 billion light year away, obviously any old observations are useless as they show how the area looked 5 billion year ago same does looking back. 

In short you would be very lost, your only option if you don't even know how far you have jumped is random billion light year jumps and see if things looks a bit more like they should do. 

[kerbiloid]

5 bln years later...

Spoiler

 

[Terwin]

16 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Define "return" and "home" 5 million years later.

(Didn't you think I was joking about the multiversal clone of your homeworld, lol? That's the only way to "return home" after 5 mln year long absence. Otherwise just keep on travelling.)

So, either use a hyperjump spending not so much time, just reappear in the destination point immediately now (then pulsars stay same), or just send back a postcard just in case if somebody is still living there.

Generally a 3d map of the galaxy cluster and quazars would stay more or less same just millions years later.

It would be a problem of billions of years, but then that's not a problem:
>>find earth
no such planet

Any data we have on a pulsar in Andromeda is 2.5 million years old, as that is how long it took the light to reach us.

If it has moved, had any collisions(possibly affecting it's period), or been swallowed by a black-hole since it emitted the last light we saw, then it will not be as useful for navigation.

If we teleported in zero time to Andromeda, we would be getting light from that pulsar that was emitted millions of years after our reference information was collected, and as such, possibly out of date or inaccurate. 

(does a pulsar speed up or slow down as it converts it's mass to energy and sprays it around local space?  What if it collides with/consumes a brown dwarf, how will that affect it's rotation?  two million years has a lot of opportunities for something like that to cause the frequency of a pulsar to change.  If Pulsars tend to change often enough, they might not even be useful for interstellar navigation like is currently hoped)

[Nuke]

i think you would want to do your longer jumps to more boring location. if you were doing an intergalactic jump, you would probibly do a series of short jumps to exit the galaxy and then once in intergalactic space make the big jump to the trailing end of the target galaxy. you would then do short jumps until you get to the target star in that galaxy. 

 

you might also consider a jump probe that can jump ahead of you and back again and tell you if it had any problems. of course you could only screw up once and then you dont have a jump probe anymore. enjoy your cosmic craps shoot.