Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Bamax]

How close are the Loroi sister worlds?

Same solar system?

Lightyears apart?

Since either scenario paints a picture as to how they got there since the homeworld is unknown.

If the sister worlds are LY apart that means that literally separate Loroi civilizations developed apart from each other, developed space travel, and either conquered (likely) each other or unified peacefully (unlikely given what we know of the Loroi).

If all are in the same solar system it means it was chosen long ago or it simply held out during the cosmic apocalypse while either civilzations bit the dust.

[Moon Moth]

Neither of these representations look much like the actual organism native to Armis, which was probably named after the mythological creature rather than the other way around. The Armis minnir has membrane wings that are more like a pterosaur than a bird, while some of the mythological minnir representations depict scale- or feather-like elements on the wings.

Huh. I wonder whether any of these myths depict the minnir as capable of eating a loroi...

'Cause my new headcanon is that, if the Soia weren't Pol or Historians or AIs or plants, they were space dragons. And that the Delrias are absolutely right, all the Soia-Liron organisms were designed to be eaten (in addition to their other purposes), which is why the Soia were so into creating servitor races rather than relying on machines, and why they were modified to be so efficient at reproducing themselves. Maybe the Soia dreadstars were so big because they had an entire artificial ecosystem inside, misesa to miros to sapient servitor to Soia, with room for the Soia to fly around and get some exercise in.

(Although the Historians also appear to have sharp, pointy teeth, to the point of including those teeth in their personality constructs...)

[Bamax]

Neither of these representations look much like the actual organism native to Armis, which was probably named after the mythological creature rather than the other way around. The Armis minnir has membrane wings that are more like a pterosaur than a bird, while some of the mythological minnir representations depict scale- or feather-like elements on the wings.

Huh. I wonder whether any of these myths depict the minnir as capable of eating a loroi...

'Cause my new headcanon is that, if the Soia weren't Pol or Historians or AIs or plants, they were space dragons. And that the Delrias are absolutely right, all the Soia-Liron organisms were designed to be eaten (in addition to their other purposes), which is why the Soia were so into creating servitor races rather than relying on machines, and why they were modified to be so efficient at reproducing themselves. Maybe the Soia dreadstars were so big because they had an entire artificial ecosystem inside, misesa to miros to sapient servitor to Soia, with room for the Soia to fly around and get some exercise in.

(Although the Historians also appear to have sharp, pointy teeth, to the point of including those teeth in their personality constructs...)

Well they are made of meat... pun intended.



https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ



https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/wri ... gMeat.html

[Moon Moth]

How close are the Loroi sister worlds?

Same solar system?

Lightyears apart?

Since either scenario paints a picture as to how they got there since the homeworld is unknown.

If the sister worlds are LY apart that means that literally separate Loroi civilizations developed apart from each other, developed space travel, and either conquered (likely) each other or unified peacefully (unlikely given what we know of the Loroi).

If all are in the same solar system it means it was chosen long ago or it simply held out during the cosmic apocalypse while either civilzations bit the dust.

Different systems - the Insider's Maoren sector map has a scale. The Insider's Loroi timeline says that Deinar developed interplanetary flight, then found psi devices on Mezan, then their Farseers detected Perrein, then they developed Jump drive, and finally made contact. And that it took over 50 years between detecting Taben with Farseers and reaching them with ships.

[G. Janssen]

300 km is a long, long time to be falling with a parachute.

Anything that's 300 km up and falling "straight towards" a planet like Earth, will turn into a spectacular display of fire and debris. Except tungsten rods. These things (Rods from God) will hit the surface with the force of a small tactical nuke.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

Anything that's 300 km up will be in orbit, unless it has fuel to maintain its altitude. A lot of fuel. In orbit, a craft will have a speed of, let's say, 8 km/s or 28,800 km/h.

The first thing that's needed for planetfall is a thruster to slow down. Slowing down will change a circular orbit into an elliptical one. Slow down enough and parts of the ellipse will begin to touch the atmosphere. Set these parts too low and the craft will burn, set them to high and the ship will bounce off the atmosphere.

Next thing needed is a heatshield. Unless the craft has a LOT of fuel and can slow down in orbit while maintaining its altitude and then begin a descent. The shield begins to heat up at an altitude of around 120 km and reaches 1650 C at an altitude of around 60 km. It is needed to reduce the horizontal speed to a manageable value. Typically a few times the speed of sound.

About 40 km up, while still flying at several times the speed of sound, in case the heatshield was used, the landing craft now has options: glide or engage the engine(s). Scramjets are 21st century earth's engines of choice. The SR-91 Aurora (which does not officially exist *cough*) has one that can reach Mach 6.

Next are the paratroopers. At an altitude of 10,000 meters, near the altitude that the atmosphere gets significantly denser again, they can jump while wearing thermo suits, helmets and oxygen. I wouldn't let them jump while flying at mach 6 though. That would be bad. Very, very bad. The speed of the craft needs to be reduced to subsonic speeds. Maybe 300 km/h. I don't know.

They can jump at much higher altitudes, but they will need full pressure suits in that case. Their speed will increase at first due to the thin atmosphere, but reduce to around 200 km/h at lower altitudes, the speed that all parachutists can reach.

After dropping the parachutists, the craft might fire its thruster again after climbing as high as possible with its scramjet (works up to 75 km altitude) and go back into orbit.

[Arioch]

Any spacecraft with ~1G+ acceleration can hover above a stationary point on the surface and descend into the upper atmosphere to deploy troops, but when there are enemy forces on the surface shooting at you (which is presumably always going to be the case when dropping an invasion force), you're presenting an awfully juicy target.

[G. Janssen]

Any spacecraft with ~1G+ acceleration can hover above a stationary point on the surface and descend into the upper atmosphere to deploy troops, but when there are enemy forces on the surface shooting at you (which is presumably always going to be the case when dropping an invasion force), you're presenting an awfully juicy target.

The booster stage from the Falcon 9 from Space X is an example of existing tech that would be able to hover above a point at a relatively high altitude for a short time. I think it has enough fuel for about 170 seconds of thrust when the rest of the rocket is attached to it. Not full thrust though. It shuts down a number of engines as it gains altitude. It will spend about 120,000 kg of kerosene and 270,000 kg of liquid oxygen.

When used as intended, it disconnects at an altitude of 80 km, falls back, slows down due to friction and burns fuel to return to a landing pad. AFAIK, SpaceX doesn't publish the amount of fuel that it needs for the return trip, but I read that it's around 3.5% of its original amount. A very acceptable amount.

One G would be enough to resist gravity. One G+ would cover the rest in most cases. A craft that wants to continuously hover in space above a specific location on the surface of a planet that's not located on its equator and from a position that's not in geostationary orbit, would not only need to constantly burn fuel to fight against gravity when having an altitude that's below geostationary orbit, or with gravity when having an altitude that's above it, but would also have to burn fuel to correct its position in the horizontal plane. And it would need to correct at least around one rotational axis when not hovering over one of the poles. Around one axis, when above the equator, two when hovering above a point that's anywhere between a pole and the equator. In short: it would have to continuously fire its thruster under an angle.

I'm not sure if "horizontal plane" is the correct term, but since it's about maintaining a position above a planet's surface, no matter what the altitude is, I'll use it.

The closer the hovering craft would get to the altitude of geostationary orbit, the less fuel it would need to maintain altitude. And I guess that the higher the altitude, the bigger the corrections for the horizontal plane would become. Maybe the exception being locations near the equator while approaching geostationary orbit. Corrections for positions at latitutes near 45 degrees N or 45 degrees S would probably be biggest. But I'm guessing here.

Only fighting against gravity to maintain altitude and not correcting the horizontal plane will result in a craft moving towards the equator.

[Cthulhu]

The problem is not the ability to maintain the acceleration, it is the price of doing so. Normal space engines produce way too much heat and radiation. They would burn the troops, as well as the atmosphere. Smaller specialized ships or shuttles have extra atmospheric engines, but installing them into battleships would be a huge waste of space.

Most importantly, such a ship hovering in the upper atmosphere would not be able to evade or even deploy screens. That's like painting a target on it. Dropships are far smaller targets, can evade, and the troops are also distributed between multiple vessels. At least some of them will be able to land.

[gaerzi]

PK occurrence rates differ in different populations; though no one has identified sequences of genes tied to PK, the offspring of a PK is more likely to exhibit PK than the offspring of a Loroi who didn't have PK. Among the Sister Worlds, Deinar has the highest occurrence rate, and Taben the lowest.

Since the psionic powers of the Loroi are said to be a product of their mind, rather than directly a product of their biology, their genetic code is likely a red herring. All Loroi can be assumed to have the correct genes for it, since they all have the genes to develop a Loroi brain, which develops a Loroi mind, which develops psionic powers.

Telepathic contact between mother and child throughout gestation would be my bet so as to the reason why heredity seems to be a factor.

[Cthulhu]

Since the psionic powers of the Loroi are said to be a product of their mind, rather than directly a product of their biology, their genetic code is likely a red herring. All Loroi can be assumed to have the correct genes for it, since they all have the genes to develop a Loroi brain, which develops a Loroi mind, which develops psionic powers.

Telepathic contact between mother and child throughout gestation would be my bet so as to the reason why heredity seems to be a factor.

1. Then why aren't all children of PK talents able to use such powers as well?
2. Additionally, some mothers don't carry their children to term, and instead, use an incubator for the remaining time.

InsiderShow

"how long is the gestation period for a Loroi female?"

8 months. However, given high medical technology and the busy nature of warrior mothers, it is probably common to induce birth very early.

I'm thinking more like an advanced high-tech incubator, so the mother can pop it out a few months early without too much risk, and avoid some of the worst of the late pregnancy.

[gaerzi]

1. Then why aren't all children of PK talents able to use such powers as well?
2. Additionally, some mothers don't carry their children to term, and instead, use an incubator for the remaining time.

I said "a factor", not "a guaranteed 100% surefire foolproof certainty".

But I'm going to say that #2 is the explanation for #1. Lazy moms offloading their parental duties to a cold, unfeeling machine... No better than the shells!

[Quickdraw101]

Probably a loaded question, but I'll ask anyway. How do or would Loroi generally think of men on the battlefield and in war in general? Their men certainly aren't up to the task of doing more than being pampered sperm banks. In other species, like the Delrias, the females are larger and more aggressive, like with Loroi. Mannadi I assume are the same, as well as the Arekka, and the Neridi and Barsam are hermaphrodite species with no real gender, or like the former, switch constantly. So since by all accounts, the majority of species we've seen are either female dominant or hermaphrodites, would it be smart to assume they'd be condescending and discouraging about men on the battlefield? That's somewhat the attitude I seem to get since Alex is a male, and the Loroi don't seem to regard him highly, but would that feeling still persist even if presented with a very obvious male warrior right next to them? Not necessarily a guy built like Captain America or Master Chief, but a male whose obviously not eye candy, and worried about getting dirt under his nails.

[Bamax]

Probably a loaded question, but I'll ask anyway. How do or would Loroi generally think of men on the battlefield and in war in general? Their men certainly aren't up to the task of doing more than being pampered sperm banks. In other species, like the Delrias, the females are larger and more aggressive, like with Loroi. Mannadi I assume are the same, as well as the Arekka, and the Neridi and Barsam are hermaphrodite species with no real gender, or like the former, switch constantly. So since by all accounts, the majority of species we've seen are either female dominant or hermaphrodites, would it be smart to assume they'd be condescending and discouraging about men on the battlefield? That's somewhat the attitude I seem to get since Alex is a male, and the Loroi don't seem to regard him highly, but would that feeling still persist even if presented with a very obvious male warrior right next to them? Not necessarily a guy built like Captain America or Master Chief, but a male whose obviously not eye candy, and worried about getting dirt under his nails.

It is worth noting that aside from their matriachal militaristic cuture, Loroi act human more or less.

Humans can and do get past their stereotypical views based on many things through experience.... especially when the object of their stereotypical views or prejudice earns their respect through performance.

[Arioch]

Probably a loaded question, but I'll ask anyway. How do or would Loroi generally think of men on the battlefield and in war in general? Their men certainly aren't up to the task of doing more than being pampered sperm banks. In other species, like the Delrias, the females are larger and more aggressive, like with Loroi. Mannadi I assume are the same, as well as the Arekka, and the Neridi and Barsam are hermaphrodite species with no real gender, or like the former, switch constantly. So since by all accounts, the majority of species we've seen are either female dominant or hermaphrodites, would it be smart to assume they'd be condescending and discouraging about men on the battlefield? That's somewhat the attitude I seem to get since Alex is a male, and the Loroi don't seem to regard him highly, but would that feeling still persist even if presented with a very obvious male warrior right next to them? Not necessarily a guy built like Captain America or Master Chief, but a male whose obviously not eye candy, and worried about getting dirt under his nails.

First we have to keep in mind that the Loroi concept of what is "male" is rather different from ours. Loroi males would look like children to our eyes, so their traditional exclusion from combat is not a matter of prejudice or inflexible gender roles; they're really not built for it.

size comparison.jpg (114.17 KiB) Viewed 6751 times

So the question of how Loroi would view human males in combat comes down to personal perception: first, does the Loroi in question even classify the human male in question as "male"; and then second, how does that fit into her own personality and viewpoint? I think we can guess how someone like Stillstorm ("It does not look like a warrior") might react. We can see that Beryl's reactions toward Alex are paternalistic and protective, perhaps indicating that she senses his "male-ness," but then, she's right this moment taking him directly into close-quarters battle as a combatant. Most Loroi are pragmatic; Beryl knows that Alex's best chance for survival is for him to be a part of the action.

[Bamax]

During the age where Loroi technology was only at modern USA levels, I want to know if Teidar were the solution for manned spaceflight on for example... missions to the moon or the Loroi equivalent of Mars etc.

I say this because propellant limits put big limitations on spaceflight, and uber Loroi only have a limit on thrust not so much time or even fuel (using their powers does not cost them anything but mental concentration).

I am both implying and suggesting all-Teidar astronauts who can literally get out and 'push' their spacecraft back home or anywhere else if they need to.

"NASA we have a problem" is less of a phrase now no?

Teidar do what NASA don't.

[Arioch]

During the age where Loroi technology was only at modern USA levels, I want to know if Teidar were the solution for manned spaceflight on for example... missions to the moon or the Loroi equivalent of Mars etc.

No.

For starters, the Loroi on Deinar didn't have psionic amplifiers before the manned mission to Mezan, because that's where they found the first working examples.

A powerful Teidar probably could create enough delta-v in a small capsule to perform a de-orbit burn, but that maneuver requires a miniscule amount of propellant. It would probably be difficult for a PK to get this acceleration in exactly the right direction for a precision re-entry, and it might create uneven stresses in the structure of the craft.

[Bamax]

During the age where Loroi technology was only at modern USA levels, I want to know if Teidar were the solution for manned spaceflight on for example... missions to the moon or the Loroi equivalent of Mars etc.

No.

For starters, the Loroi on Deinar didn't have psionic amplifiers before the manned mission to Mezan, because that's where they found the first working examples.

A powerful Teidar probably could create enough delta-v in a small capsule to perform a de-orbit burn, but that maneuver requires a miniscule amount of propellant. It would probably be difficult for a PK to get this acceleration in exactly the right direction for a precision re-entry, and it might create uneven stresses in the structure of the craft.

So it woud have only been useful on small capsules and risky too.

Well a reckon a speedometer of sorts woud help with deorbit accelerations or otherwise.

But would be risky due to uneven stresses applied unless you had enough Teidar to spread out the force

[Arioch]

You also have to remember that Teidar are highly trained killing machines with an attitude... they mostly don't appreciate attempts to use them as engineering solutions.

A PK would be able to perform spacewalks without tethers or maneuvering units, using telekinesis to "fly" between craft. I'm sure that's been done more than a few times. But you don't need to have lethal telekinetic power to be able to use it in that manner.

[spacewhale]

[Arioch]

A spacesuit definitely helps.