Thorondor “Ian” Caladharas is the 18 year old heir to one of the first of the Merchant Houses. An intelligent, independent teenager; Ian has a tendency towards irreverence and and frustration. In all honesty, he doesn’t care what his grandfather says he is heir to, he just wants to have a normal life. Or at least as normal a one as possible. (As my skills improved I made some revamps to this characters appearance to reflect aging and such as well. The top picture is how he is currently modeled. )
Hakon BlackAxe is a highly placed member of the BlackAxe branch of House Delusarnan. Hakon was romantically involved with Theresa Quinlan for a number of years before she became bodyguard to the Taoiseach.
Marcus Vale was the chief architect of the “Hospitality Accords” which helped end the House War. Before he became Taioseach (after the assassination of most of his family) Marcus was an Astronomer and Archivist on the “Crystal One” project.
This lady (who chooses to remain nameless) is professional assassin who hails from the city of Naglorond. She does most of her work for private citizens since the end of the House Wars, where she was responsible for the deaths of a number of House personnel.
The handle she is currently using is “Targeter” All that is known about her so far is that she was a child prostitute in Naglorond who killed her way out of the business , and decided to never put her fate in the hands of another ever again.
Taoiseachs tend to be a shrewd and suspicious lot.
If you were to give them a horse, they wouldn’t look it in the mouth – they’d have the entire animal X-rayed first and then have one of their bodyguards do the actual looking just in case the X-ray or the subsequent routine cavity search missed something…
Hmm, problem, ramjets only work in an oxigen atmosphere. Although satellites in LEO do suffer from very slight aerodynamic drag, the air causing this wouldn’t be enough for allowing a ramjet to operate.
Other (real-life) possibilities would be cold-gas thrusters or chemical rockets. Electrical systems (ion and plasma thrusters) also exist, but they aren’t capable of providing a large enough boost in a short amount of time…
However that requires high interstellar speeds which would mean it would have to travel in orbit around the planet very very fast and could achieve near-light speed eventually. Since it is close to the planet it could also take advantage of the mon-atomic oxygen that exists above 100Km in the upper atmosphere (the ozone layer)- http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930085302_1993085302.pdf
If I were a taiosearch I would be extremely worried about this device. Shielded with two miniature suns, decaying radioactive pellets for the radioisotope thermoelectric generator, and a gigantic electromagnetic scoop that could be lowered into the atmosphere and you have the potential for a planet killer. In order to be useful as a satellite for communication purposes and still maintain the speed for the ramjet to work, it would have to orbit the planet at least 1-3x per second. It could then use technology we have today for receiving messages either in high burst laser transmisions or as a computer communicates on a network with packets containing parts of the transmission that are repeated until an acknowledgement is sent. Also since most debris in space is composed of iron the electromagnetic scoop could be modulated to push the debris away from the device as it achieved higher speeds.
I did a report on the bussard ramjet back when I was in grade school. There are a few differences on the design of this deal, but you have the basics pretty well. You wouldn’t necessarily need to hit the upper atmosphere either. You could fuel the thing off of stray hydrogen atoms if you weren’t intending on going to far/fast.
I first read about bussard ramjets and dyson spheres with Larry Niven’s Ringworld in 1972 or 73. It fascinated me and I checked out several books on the subjects from the library.
You can only fuel a bussard ramjet on stray hydrogen atoms when it’s going at near relativistic speeds. At slower speeds the hydrogen available to the scoop isn’t enough to power the scoop, let alone produce anything useful in terms of velocity change.
I’m not sure that a bussard ramjet would even be useful this close to a planet – they aren’t meant to be very maneuverable.
Purely personal, but my favorite use of a bussard ramjet in fiction was by Poul Anderson in the story _Tau Zero_.
If you want to do a low planetary orbit (assuming earth-like planet here), you’ll use a speed of approx 7 km/s. Any faster, you’ll be launched into outer space, any slower, you’ll fall back to earth. Such is gravity…
There are a lot of knowledgable, educated, and obviously talented people reading and enjoying your work, James. That’s helluva compliment to your own talents, skills and abilities.
Personally, I’ve always thought that I have about the smartest readers in webcomicdom. It still amazes me at times that I can throw out some of the references that I do and everyone pretty much grabs them quick.
Taoiseachs tend to be a shrewd and suspicious lot.
If you were to give them a horse, they wouldn’t look it in the mouth – they’d have the entire animal X-rayed first and then have one of their bodyguards do the actual looking just in case the X-ray or the subsequent routine cavity search missed something…
Hmm, problem, ramjets only work in an oxigen atmosphere. Although satellites in LEO do suffer from very slight aerodynamic drag, the air causing this wouldn’t be enough for allowing a ramjet to operate.
Other (real-life) possibilities would be cold-gas thrusters or chemical rockets. Electrical systems (ion and plasma thrusters) also exist, but they aren’t capable of providing a large enough boost in a short amount of time…
I am sure he was thinking of the bussard ramjet – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet
However that requires high interstellar speeds which would mean it would have to travel in orbit around the planet very very fast and could achieve near-light speed eventually. Since it is close to the planet it could also take advantage of the mon-atomic oxygen that exists above 100Km in the upper atmosphere (the ozone layer)- http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930085302_1993085302.pdf
If I were a taiosearch I would be extremely worried about this device. Shielded with two miniature suns, decaying radioactive pellets for the radioisotope thermoelectric generator, and a gigantic electromagnetic scoop that could be lowered into the atmosphere and you have the potential for a planet killer. In order to be useful as a satellite for communication purposes and still maintain the speed for the ramjet to work, it would have to orbit the planet at least 1-3x per second. It could then use technology we have today for receiving messages either in high burst laser transmisions or as a computer communicates on a network with packets containing parts of the transmission that are repeated until an acknowledgement is sent. Also since most debris in space is composed of iron the electromagnetic scoop could be modulated to push the debris away from the device as it achieved higher speeds.
I did a report on the bussard ramjet back when I was in grade school. There are a few differences on the design of this deal, but you have the basics pretty well. You wouldn’t necessarily need to hit the upper atmosphere either. You could fuel the thing off of stray hydrogen atoms if you weren’t intending on going to far/fast.
I first read about bussard ramjets and dyson spheres with Larry Niven’s Ringworld in 1972 or 73. It fascinated me and I checked out several books on the subjects from the library.
You can only fuel a bussard ramjet on stray hydrogen atoms when it’s going at near relativistic speeds. At slower speeds the hydrogen available to the scoop isn’t enough to power the scoop, let alone produce anything useful in terms of velocity change.
I’m not sure that a bussard ramjet would even be useful this close to a planet – they aren’t meant to be very maneuverable.
Purely personal, but my favorite use of a bussard ramjet in fiction was by Poul Anderson in the story _Tau Zero_.
If you want to do a low planetary orbit (assuming earth-like planet here), you’ll use a speed of approx 7 km/s. Any faster, you’ll be launched into outer space, any slower, you’ll fall back to earth. Such is gravity…
And Don is correct.
There are a lot of knowledgable, educated, and obviously talented people reading and enjoying your work, James. That’s helluva compliment to your own talents, skills and abilities.
Personally, I’ve always thought that I have about the smartest readers in webcomicdom. It still amazes me at times that I can throw out some of the references that I do and everyone pretty much grabs them quick.