Interesting Facts

parent nodes: StarSpawn

Interesting Facts

This page contains Trivia and other interesting facts about people, places, and things in the Star Spawn Universe. I will add to it from time to time as people ask questions about the stories and characters. (Original Site Page)

People

Julie Stollack's first command as Captain: ADF Just Cause, survey vessel.
Stan Walker's first command as Captain: ADF Howler, survey vessel.
Al-zed's civilian police force are referred to as the restrictors. Planetary security force names include planetary advocates and security.

Things

Supply Shuttle globe diameter (interior): 200 metres
Warship globe diameter (interior): 400 metres
Dreadnaught globe diameter (interior): roughly 8 miles (13 kilometres) (I had originally specified this as four times the diameter of the standard warship (1600 metres) but then realized that the ship would not be able to accomodate its mission. Increasing the size of the ship also resulted in having additional needs in terms of power and construction.
Hull design. Typically a single hull is 10 metres in thickness. Multiple hulls are sandwiched together light the sheets of plywood, with the grain offset by 1/4 turn (90 degrees). Hulls of warships are called a triple hull because they use three hulls. A quint hull (used in the dreadnaught design) uses five hulls.
The hull material is created by manufacturing at a molecular level, producing an extremely high surface tension, which is so great, backed by the mass of ten metres of the same material, as to be almost indestructable--certainly at the speeds acheived against natural objects. Pitting is very uncommon as any small object, striking the hull, is vaporized by the impact and resistence of the hull's surface tension. The principles are the same that are used in producing armor piercing shells and bullets. Surface tension counts far more than pure mass and energy. The common formula for engery, e=mc² (engergy equals mass times (c - the speed of light) squared), applies only with material which has equal surface tension.

Alliance Common

Common is the written and spoken language of commerce among Allied Planets. While I don't mention it, common is not the same language used by the indivudal races.

Drac Common

The Drac common language is phonetic in nature and has only thirty-eight distinct sounds (as compared to about fifty-two for speakers of American English and its foreign sound variants).

If a Drac was to come into contact with a citizen of the United States and assuming we spoke a similar “English” language, we would find that they would have a very distinct accent. They would think the same of us and I think that in many cases, they would find it difficult to understand us.

For instance, some American accents would make the words balm and bomb sound alike. Also, they have four letters each in our language. The Drac language would give the two words a very distinctive “flavor” if written: balm would be written in their limited character set as four letters, the equivalent of b, ah, el, em, while bomb would be written as three letters, the equivalent of b, ah, em.

Of course, the character set would also be distinctly different, but I think most of us would be able to read the language with a little work, primarily because it is phonetically based.

At some future date, I hope to create and post a true-type font, along with text written in their language. Users of Microsoft-based operating systems should be able to load the font and “see” the written language in their broswer.

Update (June 17, 2008): I have decided against trying to design my own font, but instead, have made contact with an artist (Karen Ann Hollingsworth http://www.wrenditions.com/) to provide artwork for my novels and also the Drac phonetic alphabet. Watch for an unpdate which will link you to the written language and also a means by which you can download a truetype (but copyrighted) font to use with your browser.

Other notworthy facts:

A minute is called a "click"
There are 60 clicks in an hour
There are 24 hours in a day (convenience factor for dealing with human readers)
A day is one rotation of Al-zed about its axis
A sevendy is a week
Four sevendies (also spelled sevendys) make a month
Thirteen months make a year
There are 362 days in a year
A year is roughly the rotation of Al-zed about its star (also named Al-zed).
Months have “common” names, that is, Quixar is the name of the fourth month and it means “pretty baby.”
DA - Dark Ages - corresponds to the middle ages--roughly 500 to 1500 A.D. (CE)
CE - Classic Era - corresponds to the time of the great empires up to the middle ages
FE - First Era - corresponds to the time from the beginning of civilization to the Classic Era
SE - Space Era - starts with the first orbiting satellite onward
IE - Industrial Era - from the end of the middle ages to the space era, generally called the pre-space era, that pre-space takes into account anything prior to the space era
AI - Artificial Intelligence or machine intelligence. Basically, programming that provides an impression of intelligence - the ability to make decisions and use the results to provide some service or information. The intelligence in the alliance is limited, not having the ability to go beyond that intended by its original programmers.
Distances are based upon the distance light travels in the vacuum of space: 1,800,000,000 metres per click. This universal constant is slightly different in terms of measurement than ours, where the actual speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second.
A metre is roughly the distance an average person steps when purposely walking. It it called their metre, or pace. Note, this distance roughly equivalent to a meter in earth terms.
Speed in space is measured in lights, which is not real space/time or the distance light would travel in one year. A "light" is the same distance (that light would travel in a year, but accomplished in one sevendy. Therefore, a "light" is 52 times the speed of light.
The maximum speed of a standard star-drive ship is roughly 6 lights, or 312 times the speed of light. Thus, at maximum velocity, a ship can travel 200 light years (in our terms) in about two-thirds of a year, a little over eight of their months.
FTL - faster than light - is achieved at one fifty-second "light"

Places

Al-zed, headquarters city, planet, and system of the Alliance, was originally a Zurth Colony. The city was originally known as Arazthruestra.
Dracus - home world to the Drac race.
Morningstar - a Drac colony world.

Page created: April 09, 2007
Page updated: October 13, 2008