Balck Holes too soft

[Dracus]

The AI can not even barely handle 2,
But just for you, I have increased them to 6.
Load this file into the data file, overwrite the SystemTypes

The only thing I changed is the number of sectors a blackhole pulls a ship to the cneter per turn.
Enjoy

And remember, AI's will not be able to handle this. I think if you human control them for one turn, You can set up were they void blackhole systems. (this I have not tryed)

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, they should not pull ships in at all!

Since even supergiant stars don't pull ships in, a black hole should not pull ships in.

If the earth was crushed into a black hole for some mysterious reason, all the satellites we have in orbit would stay in orbit for centuries.

Once you're in orbit, you stay in orbit. Since ships have stable positions in normal systems, they are clearly orbiting the star at the same rate as the planets.
If the ships do this in a black hole system, then they will not fall in, even if they have no engines.

[Dracus]

I have pulled my statment until I recieve a response from Mr. hawkings

[This message has been edited by Dracus (edited 30 March 2001).]

[Lord Felix]

Dracus bloviates:
If you don't have a planet (IE earth crushed) then the sats would be pulled in, because
then there would be no orbit. orbits are based on speed ver grav. That is why we have
to push our sats back up, because in time, grav overpowers them. All the planets are
slowly being pulled toward the sun. It will take billions of years but in time the earth
will crash into our sun. Take a science math course or read a steven Hawken book. It
is all explained there.

Lord Felix, a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, responds:
Nope, that's all nonsense. Satellites would orbit an earth-mass blackhole EXACTLY the way they would orbit the Earth. In an idealized system including NOTHING but the Earth and the Moon in orbit, the orbit would remain unchanged forever. In reality, due to the slow attraction of the rest of the universe, the Moon is actually RECEDING from the Earth and it will NEVER fall in as you say! In the dinosaur age, the Moon was visibly larger in the sky, not smaller. Small human satellites slowly fall, and must be boosted up to maintain orbital altitude, due to the slowing effect of friction (they bump into millions of air molecules). Your post is remarkable for being incorrect in every single detail, including the spelling of Hawking's name! It's a bad idea to be arrogantly dismissive when all your facts are wrong!

[Procyon]

I was about to respond before you did, Felix, when an interesting thought occurred to me. gravitational attraction is often modeled as a point source at the center of gravity of the bodies, when in reality, the attraction is conic with the radius of the attracting bodies being the radius of the 2 ends of the conic section and gravitational attraction being strongest along the axis of the cone and falling off as you reach the edges. In the case of the earth becoming a black hole, one end of the cone will collapse from having the radius of the earth to having a radius of approximately 1/2 centimeter. The black hole scenario will more closely resemble the simple mathematical model, but will there be any effect on the orbit given the new configuration of the attraction? Is the point source gravitational model accurate, or just close enough for us laymen?

[Steve A]

Orbits around a spherical body can be calculated exactly by the point source method. Since the Earth is not perfectly spherical, there are some minor perturbations that cause the orbit to wobble a bit. The basic size and shape of the orbit do not change, it just wobbles like a top.
If the Earth was replaced by a black hole of the same mass, everything in orbit would stay in orbit. The gravitational forces caused by one earth mass at a fixed distance from the center of mass will not change just because it is converted to a black hole. It will actually probably Last longer because the air resitance would be removed.
Of course, whatever caused to Earth to become a black hole may have some slight impact on the orbiting satellites.
Steve

[Suicide Junkie]

And so, it looks like you all agree with my point about how black holes should not pull ships in.

A better model for the black hole would be a scaled damage from the center out.
Flying past the event horizon is very bad. Orbiting really close would shear your ship apart (since the closer bits of ship orbit faster that the farther out ones and/or gravitational shear since the gravity pulls harder on the closest part of the ship)
farther out, say halfway to the edge of the system, heavy, normal damage would be incurred by the accretion disk we see.

ie.
Center square: instant loss of the ship
ring 1: take (5 x mass of ship) damage
ring 2: take (1 x mass of ship) damage
rings 1-5: take 750 damage