Achilles and the tortoise drive, interdictors and frustrated traffic controllers
01 Mar 2022Eli the Dangerous
Approaching a station always reminds me of the story of Achilles and the tortoise. That is, if you do not suddenly start accelerating uncontrollably which can only be fixed by making your destination blip go hollow (by doing a loop of shame or a corkscrew manoeuvre) or selecting a different destination and then reselecting the old one. It is as if time stretches near destinations. The last picometer will take the rest of the duration of the universe to traverse. Only through quantum tunneling you eventually reach the drop zone.
Initially i thought this had something to do with gravity wells, but then I noticed a stranded ship asking for help has the same effect.
I'm still trying to figure out what physics causes this. I'm really glad the neutrino-emissions of my drive influence the weak nuclear force enough to make the quantum tunneling more likely.
Pirates have a very sick sense of humour. Even though I can usually evade their interdictions, they tend to interdict me on the last 2 megameters before dropping near a station and force me to turn around and fly back after a successful evade.
I'm secretly working on something I can drop while they chase me blinded by the interdictor-noise. Anything you hit with 25 pseudolights should turn you into a quark-plasma.
Could be fun =)
For now chewing them up with my Philosophers Headstone is a pleasure. (The ship is so named because some "Erasmus" kept harassing me near Colonia while I was trying to turn in my exploration data).
What is it with traffic controllers on small stations? Are they frustrated over their lousy job?
Whenever I ask for permission to land they invariably appoint the farthest and hardest to reach dock available.
It reminds me a bit of the building crew that was working on an apartment on the same floor of my dirtbound hideyhole in #NOT TELLING#. These guys came in at 07:00, proceeded to put a pneumatic hammer on a weightbearing wall for five minutes, then go on a smoke break and never touch the pneumatic hammer again until next morning 07:00. Always figured it was frustration about having to be at a job at 07:00 while the people around start at 08:30.
Anyway. On a 22000 lightyear trip you hardly ever encounter these irritations. In the bubble this is the rule. And big ones wonder why I prefer the void over the bubble.
Good thing there is still a void to run to. I pity the fools who are locked in a gravity well with them.
