Giving directions in space

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2007-09-22 08:26pm

Junghalli wrote:I think almost certainly one would use straightforward XYZ positions, such as mathematicians usually use to determine coordinates in three-dimensional space. Another ship might be 3 km away on the X axis, 10 on the Y axis, and 1000 on the Z axis, and hence you have a coordinates. It would probably be communicated something like "we have a bogey at X-110, Y- minus 225, Z- minus 40, inbound", or something like that.

For navigation within a system it seems most straightforward to just use the local sun as the 0-0-0 point. For combat manuevers you'd probably use your own position as the center, I'd imagine. The important thing is how everything's moving relative to you, not how everything's moving relative to some distant reference point, as is the case in trying to find your way around a bunch of planets.

The notation could be even simpler: zero defines the X & Y axial planes, you use a 1000-point compass, and z is distance in parsecs from home point zero. So a positional bearing and heading would be rendered something like "232 by 378 by 040. Course 902 mark 5".

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2007-09-22 08:32pm

IE radial coordinates. Theta, Phi, and Rho.

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2007-09-22 10:47pm

Howedar wrote:Why do you care how fast it is? In what realistic space scenario is time on the order of seconds important?

Ah... to be honest, ANY hostile situation with technological parity. Even if you're lobbing AI guided missile salvos at each-other from light-minutes apart if one ship can recognize "This last round of missiles will overwhelm their defenses" two seconds earlier than the other ship, they can shoot, fuck off, and have better odds of survival.

Unless you were coming at the question from the other angle, that OMG whole seconds are an incredibly long time for the combat systems of any civilization which will be able to crunch through a gigabytes of data on enemy ship positions, vectors, likely armaments, and meal schedules before the stupid meat puppets blundering around in the "command center" can fart in terror. In that case I don't have a good response.