Created Monday 15 August 2022
Accuracy matters.
Not only on the business end, but even getting there. Humans jump by blasting holes through space-time as far and wide as they can. But the holes very quickly heal up. (And that's not a bad thing.) So to jump successfully with a whole ship through a blip, youve' got to time your interaction with the jumphole just right. Not too close to the edges or not all of you will jump. Not too soon or late in crossing the hole or you'll maybe only have your front half jump.
(Actually, it's more like half your atomic nuclei for some odd reason. You tend to blow up in a really big explosion (bigger even than the mass that goes into blasting the hole). And yeah, Humans do use that as an interstellar artillery. But it tends not to actually work well. One of those things other ages remember about them, but that doesn't really happening that much. It's hard to be that accurate that reliably to make it worth puring that much mass into a jumphole. But it is really deadly when it hits. Even outside of nearly 5 AUs of the system's sun. For most starts, that's close enough to destroy life in the system.
So, jumping takes very careful precision and timing. Down to the millisecond. You've got to know the graviational dynamics of a system very well---down to meter-sized rocky bodies---to be able to launch your ship out of that system and through a jumphole. Essentially you have to fly through space and hit an explosion exactly when and where it happens.
(I sm dsutpised that I don't think I've written this stuff down yet. That's a old idea.)
And
Fei Lung is a master at hitting jumps. She always does it perfectly. She and her AI. She brings this precision to battle, and can fly through a system and hit sensitive targets from very far away. So far she's considered a Lancer. One who can attack an enemy during system-level combat^[intersolar? No, it coudl be a gas cloud if you can still find enough rocks for a jump back.] from far enough away that she also has to compensate for information lags due to the light-minutes away.
So, an AU is about 8
light-minutes long. Saturn is ~10 AUs from the Sun. So, Saturn is closer than I would have expected to 2 light hours away from the Sun?! Um, guess
it sure is. I guess needing to account for light minutes---let alone hours---is closer combat than I thought. You have to be closer than I expected to your target to have a worthwhile enough chance to take it. So everyone needs to be able to shoot at things that might be where you think they'll be even hours from now. Or system fighting is close. Maybe you do have to be light-minutes away at most to hav e achance of hitting. So, there would be room to maneuver in a system and still be a good distance away from accurate fire.
Humans learned quickly you never send just one. You must have at least two humans or that one will start making more and more mistakes. Just how humans go when left in space too long. Then die of some strange cancer. There are always teams. Yes, and redundancy of essential positions & responsiblities. And many jokes about who's the redundant one.
Only the likes of Fei are not quite utterly stupid to jump alone.
And Love, Death. & Robots did it better than I ever could in Helping Hand. Gorgeous story.