Pre-Chaos starships...

[keir451]

What kind of starships (if any) do you think may have been created before the coming of the Rifts?

[drewkitty ~..~]

The ships represented in the Mutants in Orbit book are the earth produced ship types that were around with the coming of the rifts.

[jedi078]

I figure just inner system ships, probably takes a about a month to get Mars.

With cyro sleeps technology in use it is possible a few colony ships were sent off to other solar systems.

[Kovoston]

Maybe an alien ship if by chance they visit Earth.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

Maybe an alien ship if by chance they visit Earth.

There are a few races that have appeared in Rifts that exist within our own dimension on distant planets. Notable examples include the Vallax (Juicer Uprising) and the Arkhon (South America 2). So, an alien ship winding up in Earth's orbit is not completely out of the question.

~ Josh

[glitterboy2098]

Maybe an alien ship if by chance they visit Earth.

There are a few races that have appeared in Rifts that exist within our own dimension on distant planets. Notable examples include the Vallax (Juicer Uprising) and the Arkhon (South America 2). So, an alien ship winding up in Earth's orbit is not completely out of the question.

~ Josh

it's worth noting though that all of those arrived after the rifts, and that earth almost certainly hadn't been contacted before or during the golden age. (or else the arrival of D-bees wouldn't have been as big of a deal)

[keir451]

I thought it would be kind of neat for characters in a space based game to encounter a derelict NEMA era long range experimental starship with a bunch of experimental gear on it. Maybe it never made it out of our solar system and has been sitting in a geosynchronous orbit around one of our other planets or something else in that mein.

[Dustin Fireblade]

What kind of starships (if any) do you think may have been created before the coming of the Rifts?

I don't have it anymore, but didn't Mutants in Orbit cover this?


Personally I had thoughts to use to some of the old Robotech stuff like the ARMD platform and Lancer fighter, if my games ever went into space.

[Dustin Fireblade]

Maybe an alien ship if by chance they visit Earth.

There are a few races that have appeared in Rifts that exist within our own dimension on distant planets. Notable examples include the Vallax (Juicer Uprising) and the Arkhon (South America 2). So, an alien ship winding up in Earth's orbit is not completely out of the question.

~ Josh

it's worth noting though that all of those arrived after the rifts, and that earth almost certainly hadn't been contacted before or during the golden age. (or else the arrival of D-bees wouldn't have been as big of a deal)

I think the Arkhon's tried to invade Earth before thousands of years ago.

[everloss]

What kind of starships (if any) do you think may have been created before the coming of the Rifts?

I don't have it anymore, but didn't Mutants in Orbit cover this?

It does... sort of.

Mutants in Orbit states that the Traction Drive is the only Earth-made propulsion system suitable for long range, extra-solar system travel. MiO alludes to, but doesn't really confirm, that pre-rift humanity may have sent manned traction-drive ships to the outer reaches of the solar system and beyond.

For those curious, the Traction Drive is a propulsion system that uses a continuous, but very slow, acceleration to propel the craft - eventually (after a very long time, like decades) reaching near-light speed. It does this by warping reality around the ship and pulling itself along the fabric of reality or some such.

[everloss]

is thier any cannon to earth having a starship?

if by starship you mean leaving the Solar System?

No. Unless you count Robotech as Rifts canon.

or the Humans in the Three Galaxies who come from a mythical lost world called "Earth"

[glitterboy2098]

Maybe an alien ship if by chance they visit Earth.

There are a few races that have appeared in Rifts that exist within our own dimension on distant planets. Notable examples include the Vallax (Juicer Uprising) and the Arkhon (South America 2). So, an alien ship winding up in Earth's orbit is not completely out of the question.

~ Josh

it's worth noting though that all of those arrived after the rifts, and that earth almost certainly hadn't been contacted before or during the golden age. (or else the arrival of D-bees wouldn't have been as big of a deal)

I think the Arkhon's tried to invade Earth before thousands of years ago.

yeah, well before the advent of technology on earth. what i mean was that during the technological eras of earth, and especially during the 'golden age', humanity had no idea of the existance of extraterrestrials, and had never met any.

[abtex]

is thier any cannon to earth having a starship?

if by starship you mean leaving the Solar System?

No. Unless you count Robotech as Rifts canon.

or the Humans in the Three Galaxies who come from a mythical lost world called "Earth"

either way you look at it. atleast a solar-system ship. i doubt they had light-ships... but i could be wrong, i dont know

Rifts South America 2 has the Arkons [?] invasion fleet that was destroyed by the Line mages around 1000. Then watched Earth for centuries. Wreckage and ships could be on Earth, Moon and watchers bases on different moons and planets.

[Grell]

I figure just inner system ships, probably takes a about a month to get Mars.

With cyro sleeps technology in use it is possible a few colony ships were sent off to other solar systems.

This is interesting because the NEMA sleepers in SB1 use cryo stasis, but it was said to be a recent and experimental process at the time that happened to work better than expected.

Maybe a seed mission or two were launched just before the cataclysm? I'd run with it.

[glitterboy2098]

is thier any cannon to earth having a starship?

if by starship you mean leaving the Solar System?

No. Unless you count Robotech as Rifts canon.

or the Humans in the Three Galaxies who come from a mythical lost world called "Earth"

either way you look at it. atleast a solar-system ship. i doubt they had light-ships... but i could be wrong, i dont know

Rifts South America 2 has the Arkons [?] invasion fleet that was destroyed by the Line mages around 1000. Then watched Earth for centuries. Wreckage and ships could be on Earth, Moon and watchers bases on different moons and planets.

again though, pre-cataclysm humanity can't have found evidence of non-terrestrial life, or the appearance of Dbees would be no surprise to them. and the discovery of a non-terrestrial lifeform's ship in our solar system isn't something you could keep secret. it's too easy to intercept communications, too hard to hide evidence, you'd have to bring in too many scientific experts and support personnel

so while there may be some old Arkhon ships sitting out there on the moon/in the asteroid belt or buried under the sands/waters of earth, humanity never found them prior to the cataclysm.

and the kind of technology that you'd get off ships capable of interstellar travel wouldn't allow the fairly recognizable technology we see in Chaos Earth/Rifts. we know the arkhon have gravity control, folded space drives, and so on. and they have weapons and powerplants far in advance of even chaos earth's nuclear tech.

if an old arkhon ship had been discovered prior to the cataclysm, humanity would have all that stuff too. and it would be widespread. those kinds of advancements are always rapidly dissiminated, evben when their owners don't want to be. RIFTS humanity would also have anti-gravity, antimatter, tribeams and so on.

no. Rifts space travel resembles 2001 a space oddesey and 2010 oddesey two. nuclear thermal space drives, with a few experimental fusion drives in there too. trips that take months to reach even the nearest planets to earth, and years to reach jupiter and farther out. ships that have to have spinning sections to create the simulation of gravity. and lots of spinning space stations.

if you want to have an extra-solar mission from earth, i suggest looking at nuclear salt water drive propelled ships built into small near earth asteroids..probably unmanned probes, but possiblely sleeper ships with a few thousand crew/colonists in the experimental cryo-suspension systems.

sure, said if they left 10 years prior to the cataclysm, said probes/ships would just be arriving in Alpha Centarui about the time the CS starts to war on tolkeen, but beggers can't be chosers.

[Anthar]

According to Mutants in Orbit, before the GC there was a working experimental FTL drive, so they do have the technical knowhow. I imagine that the orbital community is advanced enough to quickly adapt Arhkon tech captured from their ill-fated invasion of Earth.

[glitterboy2098]

According to Mutants in Orbit, before the GC there was a working experimental FTL drive, so they do have the technical knowhow. I imagine that the orbital community is advanced enough to quickly adapt Arhkon tech captured from their ill-fated invasion of Earth.

you mind providing a page# for that FTL reference? i never saw any such mention myself.

as for reverse engineering the arkhon drive..i'm certain they're working ot figure out how it works and how to duplicate it, but it's apparently a fold drive like system, and with the more limited facilities available post-cataclysm, odds are it would take a bit a time to reverse engineer it. heck, we don't even know how big the hardware is for it. the orbitals might not be able to build a ship big enough to mount a salvaged one.

[Anthar]

According to Mutants in Orbit, before the GC there was a working experimental FTL drive, so they do have the technical knowhow. I imagine that the orbital community is advanced enough to quickly adapt Arhkon tech captured from their ill-fated invasion of Earth.

you mind providing a page# for that FTL reference? i never saw any such mention myself.

Page 17 under background setting, everything mentioned under ATB section holds true except where Rifts section makes adjustments.

[Xar]

There was a Rifter article for Chaos Earth which detailed some mission to the outer planets...I disremember exactly, though.

EDIT: "The Moons of Jupiter," Rifter 39.

http://www.nexusnine.net/doc/rftr/02/

[glitterboy2098]

Maybe an alien ship if by chance they visit Earth.

There are a few races that have appeared in Rifts that exist within our own dimension on distant planets. Notable examples include the Vallax (Juicer Uprising) and the Arkhon (South America 2). So, an alien ship winding up in Earth's orbit is not completely out of the question.

~ Josh

it's worth noting though that all of those arrived after the rifts, and that earth almost certainly hadn't been contacted before or during the golden age. (or else the arrival of D-bees wouldn't have been as big of a deal)

The arkhon were long before rifts on their first visit/invasion attempt. Nazcan line builders forsaw some great evil and swatted them out of orbit like flies by activating the lines. Their second visit/invasion attempt was thwarted by thew rifts killing their space fold drives & the suddenly magic infused lines reacting to the threat.

already covered a few posts further up;

Maybe an alien ship if by chance they visit Earth.

There are a few races that have appeared in Rifts that exist within our own dimension on distant planets. Notable examples include the Vallax (Juicer Uprising) and the Arkhon (South America 2). So, an alien ship winding up in Earth's orbit is not completely out of the question.

~ Josh

it's worth noting though that all of those arrived after the rifts, and that earth almost certainly hadn't been contacted before or during the golden age. (or else the arrival of D-bees wouldn't have been as big of a deal)

I think the Arkhon's tried to invade Earth before thousands of years ago.

yeah, well before the advent of technology on earth. what i mean was that during the technological eras of earth, and especially during the 'golden age', humanity had no idea of the existance of extraterrestrials, and had never met any.

and it's worth noting the Arkhons arrived in a time of very intense belief in the supernatural, so any sightings would have been assumed to be divine/demonic/fey/etc instead of "alien". (there were in fact alot of "strange object in the sky" events around that time in history, recorded diligently by religious scholars and monks in europe, and generally said to be manifestations of angels or similar.

in the americas, the locals were neolithic at best, and didn't keep written records. and few oral traditions remain from that time.

[tmikesecrist3]

ummmm "The UFO Conspiracy" has long been use to cover X-planes..... Yes its hard to keep something like that secret, But if you spread enough bs form the tabloids for example and stage some Debunk able sightings photos and videos. Who would believe any real. infect to this day when I hear about sightings of UFOs and having seen a few my self that I was later able to id after the stealth fighter and bomber where reviled to the public my first thought is huh I wonder what ideas the govt is playing with now... I do not think about Extra terrestrials because as the Flying wing of the stealth bomber proves we humans can build some ineradicable things

[Oberoth]

again though, pre-cataclysm humanity can't have found evidence of non-terrestrial life, or the appearance of Dbees would be no surprise to them. and the discovery of a non-terrestrial lifeform's ship in our solar system isn't something you could keep secret. it's too easy to intercept communications, too hard to hide evidence, you'd have to bring in too many scientific experts and support personnel

so while there may be some old Arkhon ships sitting out there on the moon/in the asteroid belt or buried under the sands/waters of earth, humanity never found them prior to the cataclysm.

I disagree on these points GB. The Manhattan Project is an example of how a big secret can be hidden from the general public if the government really wants to keep it on the DL. Over 130000 people were employed by the project. Entire factories and towns rose around it. No one was the wiser until the bomb was touched off at Hiroshima. This was cleverly executed by keeping the left hand ignorant of the right hands involvement. The list of projects kept a secret until the government wanted it out is a long one. I suspect that wouldn't have changed even in the golden age.

They very well could have found Arkhon technology on Earth or in the solar system and kept that a secret as well. Reverse engineering alien technology as advanced as the Arkhon's isn't easy. They may not have had the ability do do so at that time. So there could be a Arkhon ship or two in a pre Rifts bunker somewhere for all we know. (Edit: This sounds like a good campaign idea.)

To answer the post, I think they would have had long range inter-solar ships with perhaps a few secret projects no one knew about (FTL included here).

[Chronicle]

Ahh The conspiriacy.......I would like to believe that there is another community of Orbitals in jupiter or saturn orbits (plenty of options there and definatly higher possible rates of mutation).

Personally the Rifts Space isn't really covered that well and it is left open to the players to interpret their own level of Expansion or theoretical expansion..

Sleeper ships to Jupiter sent by Triax, KLS and Cyberworks all could be possible not to mention Mindworks might have had alot to do with Augmentation to adjust for the micro Gravity issues involved.....Maybe a lost colony from Mindworks though lost in a psychotic mutiny or some such.

Alot of fun there. And if there is a mindworks out there or a Triax out there also, things could be interesting.

[tmikesecrist3]

Right Oberoth... I was going to make the point that just because We had the ship does not mean we could under stand how it worked well enough to reverse engineer it.... If some one Gave Cloumbis a nuke powered sub.... no better yet make it a steam ship... he would have understood that both where ships... in the case of the sub one to travel under water. but could he understand it well enough to take it apart? let alone put it back together and make it work... let alone bupleacat it?

[Nightmask]

It has repeatedly been stated that no human power on Rifts Earth, not even Triax or Cyberworks, was or is at the point where they could easily reverse-engineer anti-gravity technology even if they got their hands on some from an alien source. MiO positions traction drive as the best propulsion technology available to the orbital communities by the late 24th Century. Nobody on Earth conducts much space research anymore because the quarantine imposed by the space nations keeps everyone trapped on the planet. Presumably Lord Splynncryth could bring in Kittani spacecraft from one of his other-dimensional holding. But given the Splugorth tendency to focus more on magic and dimensional travel he probably doesn't see the point.

As seen in Rifts: Mercenaries Naruni Enterprises actually makes a fighter craft available that has the capability to actually get one into space and successfully pilot around all the kill sats up there, so apparently Naruni is marketing and selling space-worthy craft on Rifts Earth it's just that no one thinks of flying into space so haven't tried to so far.

[bigwhitehound]

is thier any cannon to earth having a starship?

page 17 MIO third printing (April 2000) under the background setting it states "Early tests of at least one experimental drive system have been positive, and uncrewed probes had been sent to distant stars"
Based on the rest of this section IMHO Earth had at least started a high speed ship, maybe not FTL but around 10-15% speed of light; the probes would half to travel at least this fast to get to the nearest star on a reasonable time, 3-4 years. So yes Pr-Rifts, Pr-ATB Earth could have a star-ship of some type, unlikely but not impossible.

[glitterboy2098]

is thier any cannon to earth having a starship?

page 17 MIO third printing (April 2000) under the background setting it states "Early tests of at least one experimental drive system have been positive, and uncrewed probes had been sent to distant stars"
Based on the rest of this section IMHO Earth had at least started a high speed ship, maybe not FTL but around 10-15% speed of light; the probes would half to travel at least this fast to get to the nearest star on a reasonable time, 3-4 years. So yes Pr-Rifts, Pr-ATB Earth could have a star-ship of some type, unlikely but not impossible.

at 10% of light? more like 50 years just to get to Alpha Centauri, counting accelleration and decelleration time.

if the destination is even farther away (like say, bernards star at 5.9 ly), it would 60+ years. for that one i can even give you an idea of the drive and mission likely used.. Project daedalus. 54,000 tons, 50,000 of that being Hydrogen slush, and another 3500 tons of ship. 500 tons of scientific payload. Inertial confinement pulse fusion drive. after 2 years of thrust the ship would have reached 7.1% of light, when it would discard the first stage, and the second would kick in, running for another two years bringing up to about 12% c, after which it would coast to the target system. 50 years later, it makes a high speed pass through the system, launching probes along the way. since none of these probes have the delta-v to slow down, they too pass through the system at 12% c. 54 years of travel by a huge ship to get a day or so in the system for study..

and before you start talking about "but that was the 70's".. i direct you to Icarus International, current head of NASA's hundred year starship program.. which is in the works of revamping the Daedalus design for modern understanding of technology and destinations.


since none of the stars in our immediate area have any worlds worth investigating up close (the closest is over 60 light years away, and we know it's lifeless), your looking at multi-century travel times to get anywhere worthwhile...

[Zamion138]

I would base it on mutants in orbit, it says when aleins apear all the colony's and stations work togeather to destroy them so they have been visted and just are extremly xenophobic of alien life.

[keir451]

Right Oberoth... I was going to make the point that just because We had the ship does not mean we could under stand how it worked well enough to reverse engineer it.... If some one Gave Cloumbis a nuke powered sub.... no better yet make it a steam ship... he would have understood that both where ships... in the case of the sub one to travel under water. but could he understand it well enough to take it apart? let alone put it back together and make it work... let alone bupleacat it?

Oddly enough I don't think that the concept of a steam powerd submersible would be too hard for the people of Columbus' time to figure out or even duplicate to some level. I do agree that they'd not be able to unederstand a nuclear sub much less duplicate one.
However, using the JN Macross and Rt as examples, I don't think it would be that hard for the technations of Chaos Earth to reverse engineer antigrav systems. IRL we know that there are elements which produce a negative gravity effect, but we don't yet have the technology to harness them.

[taalismn]

Mostly in-system ships, but I'd say that there were maybe two or three longer ranged manned 'star probes' already launched or ready to launch...Daedalus-style fusion ships maybe enhanced with traction drives, or Planet of the Apes style fly-by capsules clinging to to a big torch drive or experimental ramscoop/traction propulsion system. Maybe a nuke-boosted asteroid ship with a closed(or as close as they could to make it) ecology trying to escape.