How Far Should We Go, Round 2

In the interest of appealing to NASA for grant funding we will need to be able to highlight their current and upcoming discoveries. As they are currently using Voyagers 1 and 2 to see deeper into space, and as voyager entered the edge of our solar system in January of 2005, it is understandable that most of their efforts will be focused outside of our own system.

I encourage you to look into the findings of the voyager projects and into NASA's revival of the Deep Space Network prior to casting your vote.

For the above reasons we have removed the "stay within our solar system" option, and ask that you carefully cast your vote again.

Going back to GiGi's suggestion of different levels of access to content based on player levels within their chosen class, I think that if the big boys (aka NASA) are looking at deep space and neighboring galaxies, then so should we, but in a controlled fashion. Start with the factual content and work/play towards the more experimental/theoretical stuff.

I can never remember the number because they are truly astronomical.
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=31
The number of stars in the galaxy is 100 billion or so.
The number of galaxies is hundreds of billions (http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html)

The nearest galaxy is 2.5 million light years away (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_far_is_the_Milky_Way_from_Andromeda)

The speed of light is 670,616,629 mph (http://www.unitjuggler.com/convert-speed-from-c-to-mph.html) .
"The maximum speed for manned space flight is about 25,000 miles per hour" (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_fast_does_a_rocket_ship_fly_in_mph - more at rocket speeds. 1/30,000 of the speed of light and the nearest galaxy is 2,500,000 times that.


Let's keep it reasonable.

Here's my thinking. We should keep the scope of the game in line with whatever NASA (and other potential sources of grant money and other funding) is into. If they are studying deep space and things outside our galaxy, then that is where we should be, too.

I am also completely unaware of the actual numbers, but nothing says we need to deal with everything out there nor that we need to actually have to play amongst the planets, solar systems or galaxies that are out of reach. Part of the lore/story line could be the research and race to figure out how to get out there (just thinking out loud here).

Personally, my goal with what the scope of the game should be is whatever is the most likely to get us fully funded for the longest amount of time by as many sources as possible. Whether that's the entire universe or our galaxy or even just our solar system, then that is where we should be heading with the game.

Elric, let me clarify. I agree with your position. Moreover I like the idea proposed that newbies be restricted to the Solar System and that upper level people get to go off to the Galaxy, etc.
Might I point out that Star Trek used star names (Orion Slave Girl, Rigel traders, etc.) as the stars visible are sometimes close.
I have yet to find the blue-linky-thing that GiGi mentioned for Nasa's deep space probe idea - my computer crashed and then I was out for the day. Hope to work on that soon.
It is just that i take a little umbrage in cavalierly conjecturing that travel outside of the Solar System without some sort of space tunnel is near future feasible.

I am either forgetting or I missed where someone said travel outside our solar system was going to be happening anytime in the near future. Without some miraculous discovery, I can't see it happening any time soon. However, there are theories and such out there and, as I said, if the potential providers of funding for our project are more likely to be forthcoming with that funding if we expand the scope of the game beyond what is 'near future feasible', then we should definitely move in that direction.

Also, while this game is going to be educational at its core, I don't think we are looking to put together a 100% factual game. At least that's not what I envision. There has to be room for theory, speculation and perhaps a bit of sci-fi sprinkled in. Wormhole travel, FTL travel, aliens and other such things should be included to some degree. Just my humble opinion.

Elric, I am burning the midnite oil on this one (and will pay for it tomorrow.) Voyager I is only 115 au (au = the distance from the sun to the Earth) away... Definitely a tl;dr http://askville.amazon.com/time-spaceship-exit-Solar-System/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=10616761


Finally found this: (or bothered to look, anyways) http://www.space.com/news/obama-space-plan-speech-100415.html
Let me quote (from a different, more succinct article), "Obama’s goal for NASA is to have a deep space rocket design by 2015. By 2025 he wants to send astronauts to an asteroid for the first time and by the year 2030, he plans to begin deep space manned missions to Mars, with the goal of colonizing the planet: first with temporary missions, leading to long-term and indefinite occupation of Mars." from http://www.examiner.com/liberal-in-national/obama-supports-nasa-and-plans-for-deep-space-future-on-mars (from a google search, natch.)

By Deep Space, they mean only inside the Solar System! As far as I can tell... Leave it to politicians to obfuscate.

As I said before, aliens, wormholes, etc. can be saved for those who earn the right to idly speculate after stealing all the plans for the Orion Heavy Lifter....

First off, Obama's not going to be around that long (in office, I mean). Secondly, he is a politician, so I don't listen to what he (or pretty much any other pol) has to say about such things. Lastly, I think we are actually pretty much on the same page when it comes to how things should work in the game.

Perhaps where we differ is that I don't think that current or 'near future' technology should restrict us as it pertains to the dynamics of the game itself, at least not in regards to travel and colonization and such things as that. Otherwise, we are pretty much playing on Earth and maybe Mars.

As I keep saying (this poor dead horse is getting a serious beating), whatever gets us the most consistent funding, that's where the scope of things needs to be.

There's also the large Luna Landmass, a bunch of moons of Jupiter and Saturn; spacestations such as Freeside; the asteroid belt; Dyson Worlds; and the Oort Cloud.
Let's leave it up to GiGi to ask the funding sources whether the Solar System is big enuf.
Finally, how do you think websites should be mapped onto the game. For tnn it was simple - a battle over internet sites itself. For this, I still think it should be the rebels trying to disrupt Earths knowledge base or spy/steal secrets from Nasa, etc. sites. (That, as I can attest, still leaves bunches of sites to mine or dp-card or make missions on.)

For those of you who were wondering how we are going to work realism into our deep space travel... I encourage you to check out Celestia. Celestia is an open source astronomy program with incredible graphics that are based off of NASA's findings.

In Celestia you can 'bookmark' a star and then 'travel' from there to see how things really look in space, what are the closest objects, what sunrises look like when standing on another planet, etc.

I think by making use of Celestia's open source code we will be able to help corral "space travel" into educationally focused avenues, regardless of how far we go.

I use Starry Nights, which lately also crashes my 'puter, lol.

The above shows just how close the Voyager Probes are. Or at least I think they do. There is a way to look down on the orbits, but I forgot how and the program keeps crashing.


Mind you, I looked at Celestia before and it had another daunting learning curve.

Is Celestia the one where you can go look at the sky from the perspective of another star or is that a different program that I'm thinking of?

Yes, Widget. You are thinking of Celestia.