'Ringworld' - the Citybuilder trade planets?

External Since: Apr 10, 2006 Posts: 8

Something's recently occurred to me. Here's a quote from 'Ringworld' -
'The Pioneer ran a twenty-four-year cycle that covered four suns and
their systems: five oxygen-atmosphere worlds and the Ringworld.'

The Pioneer is Prill's ramship. At sublight speeds, these planets must
be very close both to each other and the Ring; but unless I'm
mistaken, there's no mention of them at all beyond the brief
references in the first book.

Another in the list of interesting but undeveloped/ignored Niven
ideas, maybe?

External Since: Jul 09, 2003 Posts: 169

Star wrote:

> Something's recently occurred to me. Here's a quote from 'Ringworld' -
> 'The Pioneer ran a twenty-four-year cycle that covered four suns and
> their systems: five oxygen-atmosphere worlds and the Ringworld.'
>
> The Pioneer is Prill's ramship. At sublight speeds, these planets must
> be very close both to each other and the Ring; but unless I'm
> mistaken, there's no mention of them at all beyond the brief
> references in the first book.
>
> Another in the list of interesting but undeveloped/ignored Niven
> ideas, maybe?

Yeah, but isn't this Niven's 1-gee acceleration, arbitrary top speed
Bussard ramjets? With one gee acceleration, you reach strongly
relativistic speeds in only a year. Pushing more than that, you
approach ultrarelativistic speeds. Twenty years or so straight line
acceleration takes you to the core of the Galaxy.

Granted, starting and stopping four times would reduce your total range
quite a bit. 24 years divided between four systems gives a maximum of 6
years per leg, so 3 years' acceleration from rest to top speed. Though
for more bang for your buck, you'd probably choose legs where you go to
a cluster of stars that's relatively far away, so it could be relatively
far.

Backing up, though, the stars nearby the Ringworld are totally
unexplored. All the trips there have gone straight from Known Space to
the Ringworld and back. None of the nearby stars have ever been probed
at all. I doubt it's so much an untapped resource for ideas; it's just
some background for the vicinity of the Ringworld: namely, that there
are interesting stars around there too -- just like in Known Space.

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