Re: [GZG] How fast is FTL in GZGverse?

I don't have my books with me... didn't it also say that most ships
make several mini-jumps at the beginning and end of a journey to enter
and leave the stellar gravity well?

Basically jumps outside the gravity well are still pretty inaccurate
if they're still too close, but short jumps are safer and more
accurate. So your first Jump is to get fully clear of the star, then
you make your long jumps. Then when you get where you're going, you
make a few small jumps at the end to shave it as close as you dare.
Military ships make even more jumps at the end to get into formation.

So even a one-jump flight (say to Alpha Centauri) would take more than
one day due to in-system transit and those minijumps.

Or to rephrase Niven, you could go anywhere in eight weeks, but
nowhere in less than one week. If a campaign system came up, you could
start to see a turn-based rhythm emerge.

On 5/13/08, Phillip Atcliffe <atcliffe@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I refer you to p44 of FB1, which contains the following two statements
which
> set a current upper limit for human ships in the GZGverse:
>
> "The fastest cycle possible is around one jump per six hours [...] On
> average, naval vessels on most missions will make no more than one
jump per
> day."
>
> "The longest verified controlled jump to date was [...] a realspace
> displacement of 7.328 light-years"
>
> So the upper limit, requiring a superb ship and crew, anti-Jump-shock
drugs,
> and a lot of luck, is about 29 ly/day. More usual would be about 6
ly/day (1
> jump of roughly Sol-Barnard's Star distance IIRC.

-- 
Robert Mayberry

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