warhammer 40,000 veses galactic empire (asimov)

[Falkenhayn]

I should say, a splinter faction of the Inquisition explored the idea. When the main group got wind of it, they didn't live long.

Quixos and his Alpha+ abductions/Pylon experiments?

[NecronLord]

Quixos and his Alpha+ abductions/Pylon experiments?

Nah, I only vaguely recall it, but it was in the Inquisiton War trilogy. An effort to make the Emperor Unnessecerry by hive-minding humanity into a chaos god. Unfortunately, such a god would have been worse than the existing ones.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

As long as we get to see Hivefleets Kraken, Behemoth and Leviathon visit Gaia, I'll be happy.

[Tasoth]

I should say, a splinter faction of the Inquisition explored the idea. When the main group got wind of it, they didn't live long.

Quixos and his Alpha+ abductions/Pylon experiments?

Ordos Hydra. In the middle of Harlequin and lost my collection of the IW. But what it comes down to is that a handful of beings (Ordos Hydra) will be able to use humanity as a giant galaxy burning Psycannon.

[Junghalli]

Hmm, presumably in the Foundationverse galaxy the warp is still in its natural state, hence no indigenous Chaos Gods (except maybe Galaxia if it comes to pass). Can 40K galaxy's Chaos Gods extend their influence to the Foundationverse galaxy? If not the GE should be OK, although they won't be able to exploit the resources of the 40K galaxy once they've conquered it (at least not unless they're willing to deal with continuous Chaos subversions).
And oh yes, I would dearly love to see the Tyrannid hive fleets converge on Gaia.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Gaia and Galaxia are, IMO, both perfect examples of hive-mind Chaos Gods in the Foundation universe. They fit almost uniformly something like the Tyranid hive mind, even, it can be argued, the Chaos Gods themselves are a sort of hive-mind as they were all 'born' from billions of mortal souls and emotions joining for a single purpose.

Just my two cents on the Warp in Foundationverse.

[Junghalli]

Supposedly telepathy in Foundationverse works by simple electrical signals, so I'm not sure if it's really the same thing in both universes.
On the other hand, the Second Foundationers can communicate over interstellar distances, and Gaians can maintain their hive mind over interstellar distances, so there's no way it's simple EM transmission. Maybe robot telepathy is by simple EM and Second Foundationer/Gaian telepathy is something else.

[Gustav32Vasa]

Supposedly telepathy in Foundationverse works by simple electrical signals, so I'm not sure if it's really the same thing in both universes.
On the other hand, the Second Foundationers can communicate over interstellar distances, and Gaians can maintain their hive mind over interstellar distances, so there's no way it's simple EM transmission. Maybe robot telepathy is by simple EM and Second Foundationer/Gaian telepathy is something else.

Their tele is EM its just that when communicating over intestellar distance they communicating through hyperspace.

[Murazor]

Mentalism = Electromagnetism my ass. We do not know exactly what is involved and hyperspace plays a role in long range communications, for sure. But most certainly, it is not EM.

This was not, in itself, an absolute indication that the warship was not equipped with mentalics. It was well known that the mentalic field did not obey the inverse-square law. It did not grow stronger precisely as the square of the extent to which distance between emitter and receiver lessened. It differed in this way from the electromagnetic and the gravitational fields. Still, although mentalic fields varied less with distance than the various physical fields did, it was not altogether insensitive to distance, either. The response of Novi’s mind should show a detectable increase as the warship approached—some increase.

[Gustav32Vasa]

Mentalism = Electromagnetism my ass. We do not know exactly what is involved and hyperspace plays a role in long range communications, for sure. But most certainly, it is not EM.

This was not, in itself, an absolute indication that the warship was not equipped with mentalics. It was well known that the mentalic field did not obey the inverse-square law. It did not grow stronger precisely as the square of the extent to which distance between emitter and receiver lessened. It differed in this way from the electromagnetic and the gravitational fields. Still, although mentalic fields varied less with distance than the various physical fields did, it was not altogether insensitive to distance, either. The response of Novi’s mind should show a detectable increase as the warship approached—some increase.

My mistake.

[NecronLord]

Sustained hyperspace speeds were, IIRC, around 300,000-1,000,000c

Err. Instantaneous my ass. In that case, the necron FTL does indeed beat it silly. Its preformance characteristics are slightly superior to IoM warp though.

[Gustav32Vasa]

Sustained hyperspace speeds were, IIRC, around 300,000-1,000,000c

Err. Instantaneous my ass. In that case, the necron FTL does indeed beat it silly. Its preformance characteristics are slightly superior to IoM warp though.

dont know where he got that numbers. The hyperjump IS instantaneous, that I know.

[Murazor]

Sustained hyperspace speeds were, IIRC, around 300,000-1,000,000c

Err. Instantaneous my ass. In that case, the necron FTL does indeed beat it silly. Its preformance characteristics are slightly superior to IoM warp though.

dont know where he got that numbers. The hyperjump IS instantaneous, that I know.

Necronlord: The Jump itself (the hyperspace transition) is instantaneous, but the preparations needed to make the jump aren't by any means. And the need to be far from any massive object is very real.

"I've never felt anything and the ships I've been in haven't been as advanced as this baby of ours. -But it's not because of the hyperrelay that we haven't jumped. We have to get a bit further away from Terminus-and from the sun, too. The farther we are from any massive abject, the easier to control the jump, to make re-emergence into space at exactly desired co-ordinates. In an emergency, you might risk a jump when you're only two hundred kilometers off she surface of a planet and just trust to luck that you'll end up safely. Since there is much mete safe than unsafe volume in the Galaxy, you can reasonably count on safety."

Gustav: My numbers come from Foundation's Edge and Forward the Foundation. Particularly the Terminus-Shayshell trip of the Far Star of which we know quite a bit.

Gendibal said, "Not only has this Trevize moved in an unexpected direction, but at an unprecedented speed. My information, which the First Speaker does not yet have, is that he has traveled nearly ten thousand parsecs in well under an hour."

Earlier about that very trip Trevize had said:

"Do you realize what this means, Janov?" he said. "Every ship I've ever been in-or heard of-would have made those jumps with at least a day in between for painstaking calculation and re-checking, even with a computer. The trip would have taken nearly a month. Or perhaps two or three weeks, if they were willing to be reckless about it. We did it in half an hour. When every ship is equipped with a computer like this one-"

So supposing a full month for the trip and 30000 LY, we get about 350000 c for a normal hypership and up to double that for "reckless" pilots. And a low end of 250 million c for the Far Star, but this is a very different animal. Now, in Forward the Foundation Seldon mentions nearly a month of travel to reach Trantor which is in the opposite side of the Galactic Core relative to Helicon (Arcturus sector), Seldon's homeworld. I don't have the calculations at hand, but the results were around one million c, IIRC and this suggests a well known route that allowed faster jumps without constant recalculations.

[NecronLord]

Necronlord: The Jump itself (the hyperspace transition) is instantaneous, but the preparations needed to make the jump aren't by any means. And the need to be far from any massive object is very real.

So, factoring in time to travel away from and to your destination it's still no match for "orbit of one planet *Zip* orbit of planet on far side of the galaxy"

[Murazor]

So, factoring in time to travel away from and to your destination it's still no match for "orbit of one planet *Zip* orbit of planet on far side of the galaxy"

Usually not, although something similar can be done (even then it is inferior to Necron drive and the only likely explanation for its rarity is that it demands an staggering ammount of calculations).

In Peeble in the Sky, the Earth government attempts to launch hypermissiles with a bioweapon against "all the worlds in the Empire" (this is most certainly hyperbole, considering that then we would be talking about hundreds of millions of missiles). They used all the resources of the planetary government in order to calculate the jumps and they had a very small window of opportunity (and they needed accurate intelligence of the target, obviously).

Barely three hours after the supposed launch time, the chief conspirator was certain of having won (he didn't know that the launch site had been destroyed) and ordered the Imperial garrison to surrender. Considering that they have realtime galactic communications and the risk of warning of the local imperial representatives, this suggests that the missiles were supposed to reach their destinations within three hours of being launched from Earth's surface.

[Junghalli]

Mentalism = Electromagnetism my ass. We do not know exactly what is involved and hyperspace plays a role in long range communications, for sure. But most certainly, it is not EM.

That came out of Robots and Empire, it was said that Giskard's abilities had to be EM based and would follow the inverse square law (in fact this was a minor plot point). I have the book at home and I'll see if I can dig up the exact quote.
Of course, there's no way this could be true for Gaians and Second Foundationers, as they communicate mentalically over interstellar distances.

In Peeble in the Sky, the Earth government attempts to launch hypermissiles with a bioweapon against "all the worlds in the Empire" (this is most certainly hyperbole, considering that then we would be talking about hundreds of millions of missiles).<snip>
Barely three hours after the supposed launch time, the chief conspirator was certain of having won (he didn't know that the launch site had been destroyed) and ordered the Imperial garrison to surrender. Considering that they have realtime galactic communications and the risk of warning of the local imperial representatives, this suggests that the missiles were supposed to reach their destinations within three hours of being launched from Earth's surface.

I'm not sure if that says much, since IMO most likely he only intented to directly infect the nearest worlds, and then counted on infected refugees and travellers spreading it to the rest of the galaxy. And we know there are some major inhabited systems very close to Sol on the galactic scale; namely Arcturus and Sirius (30 ly away and 12 ly away, respectively). I think there's also mention of a habitable planet around Gamma Leporis, which is about 20-30 ly from Sol as I remember offhand.

[Gustav32Vasa]

Ypu're right Murazor, they need time to move away from gravitywells. The Federation at 500FE has ships that can move faster then before and as you say the FS is one such ship, however when moving from Terminus to Sayshell, Trevize is not in a hurry, he searchers through the ship after a hyperrelay and dont want to jump before he finds it.

At c:a 300FE the Federation dont have gravity ships but they can still jump when still close to a planet, with danger to themselves.

[Gustav32Vasa]

I'm not sure if that says much, since IMO most likely he only intented to directly infect the nearest worlds, and then counted on infected refugees and travellers spreading it to the rest of the galaxy. And we know there are some major inhabited systems very close to Sol on the galactic scale; namely Arcturus and Sirius (30 ly away and 12 ly away, respectively). I think there's also mention of a habitable planet around Gamma Leporis, which is about 20-30 ly from Sol as I remember offhand.

Dont forget Vega. The Sirius sector is heavilly populated.

[Black Admiral]

On the subject of Imperium ship's FTL speed, Ensign Kreff of the Light Intruder Frigate Navarre refers to it being capable of "crossing parsecs in a blink." (Ghostmaker, page 78, chapter four: The Hollows of Hell).

Don't know if that's quantifiable at all, but it's the best I can find.

[Murazor]

That came out of Robots and Empire, it was said that Giskard's abilities had to be EM based and would follow the inverse square law (in fact this was a minor plot point). I have the book at home and I'll see if I can dig up the exact quote.
Of course, there's no way this could be true for Gaians and Second Foundationers, as they communicate mentalically over interstellar distances.

1. This is no "plot point": it is Kelden Amadiro talking out of his ass when he realizes that Fastolfe's daughter was right and that there is a telepathic robot heading for Earth days before the final countdown for the activation of the nuclear intensifiers. Amadiro reached this conclusion right after Giskard's escape, without evidence to support his theory and after thinking for quite a while that Vasilia was nuts. We have speculation of a scientist that hopes that mentalic fields will obey the inverse square law in one hand, but in the other we have a statement that exactly states that Amadiro was wrong in this (and in many other things).

2. Giskard manipulated the minds of the Auroran warship that Amadiro sent to intercept D.G's ship in the outskirts of Sol. Not exactly interestellar, but we are probably talking about quite some distance.

3. Daneel is able to use his mentalic powers accross interstellar distances and he is usually considered to be the most powerful mentalic in the galaxy (don't let the Liso incident fool you, as it can be explained and it is official at best).

I'm not sure if that says much, since IMO most likely he only intented to directly infect the nearest worlds, and then counted on infected refugees and travellers spreading it to the rest of the galaxy. And we know there are some major inhabited systems very close to Sol on the galactic scale; namely Arcturus and Sirius (30 ly away and 12 ly away, respectively). I think there's also mention of a habitable planet around Gamma Leporis, which is about 20-30 ly from Sol as I remember offhand.

Most unlikely: it was an all or nothing attempt for Earth and the conspirators stated in not uncertain terms that only with the surrender of the whole Empire would they share the cure for the weapon. If they attacked only the nearby sectors they would cause horrible damage, but not treathen the Empire as a whole.

[Imperial Overlord]

40K FTL can cross the galaxy in a year, under good condition, if you are looking to crunch numbers.

[Gustav32Vasa]

40K FTL can cross the galaxy in a year, under good condition, if you are looking to crunch numbers.

A jump can cross the Galaxy in a second, if you have the calculations right. Otherwise it can take days.

[Junghalli]

1. This is no "plot point"

Toward the end of Robots and Empire Giskard had to affect the minds of the crew of an Auroran warship and he was too far away to pick out individuals. He had to effect the minds of the entire crew simultaneously.

We have speculation of a scientist that hopes that mentalic fields will obey the inverse square law in one hand, but in the other we have a statement that exactly states that Amadiro was wrong in this (and in many other things).

True. Whatever Foundationverse telepathy is it sure as hell isn't based on simple EM, as demonstrated by the fact they can communicate that way over interstellar distances. The issue here is whether Foundationverse telepathy works the same way 40K psychers do, because if it does then we can draw some conclusions from that, such as Gaia will be resistant to subversion for the same reason the Tyrannids are (although Galaxia, if it came about, wouldn't solve anything because it'd just create a bigger meaner Chaos God).

Most unlikely: it was an all or nothing attempt for Earth and the conspirators stated in not uncertain terms that only with the surrender of the whole Empire would they share the cure for the weapon. If they attacked only the nearby sectors they would cause horrible damage, but not treathen the Empire as a whole.

True, but I still doubt they sent the virus-carrying missiles to anything more than a small fraction of the planets in the Empire.