Discovering new areas

[Andrew]

Both I think.

Or get lost randomly in the universe (unknown areas).

[Dunenewt]

That is what happened to Duncan and the rest before Hunters of Dune, no?

[Andrew]

spoilers for Chapterhouse Dune

[hide]

Intentionally, yes that is what happened. Only way to get away from whores[/hide]

[gunner154]

Prescience involves knowledge, and space travel with space-folding will require knowledge of various aspects of travel. Trajectory plays a part as it is one of the considerations in deciding on one of the many futures. Any reason could make that particular future an unsafe future.

I don't know much the space-time stuff, really, but I'd place my bets on the ship not simply "disappearing" though. Probably ending up in the middle of nowhere, in a foreign galaxy, or running into a planet, like Andrew had mentioned.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

It is also mentioned in the house series prequels.

Yep, sometimes they just disappear, or they crash into a planet.

so they can acctually crash into objects while folding space?

I think they would appear inside a planet, and not crash since they are not moving.

When they do not move, how can there be a path?

[Andrew]

House series spoilers about guild/highleiners

[hide]In one of the books, one the ships appeared in the atsmosphere (close to the ground), and gravity brought it down and destroyed it. It did not appear where it was supposed to[/hide]

[Dunenewt]

[hide]I guess they're not built for reentry so that would destroy them.[/hide]

[Andrew]

Yes Dunenewt that is true. Even if they were, I doubt they were prepared for the accident.

[Dunenewt]

Although all those years in the future, you would have thought ships would be able to survive that.

[gunner154]

This reminds me about Mordor: The Depths Of Dejenol. If you were to teleport but key in the wrong coordinates in a dungeon, you might teleport into a wall and get 'rocked'. In short, you die.

[Dunenewt]

Or Nightcrawler from X-Men.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

House series spoilers about guild/highleiners

[hide]In one of the books, one the ships appeared in the atsmosphere (close to the ground), and gravity brought it down and destroyed it. It did not appear where it was supposed to[/hide]

Why did this happen? because of artificial spice?

[Dunenewt]

No, it was because they weren't using navigators.

[Andrew]

house spoilers

[hide]

No, there was a navigator, but something went wrong. I think it was artificial spice they were trying to develope[/hide]

[Emperor Harkonnen]

[hide]so there were actually two incidents, where a heighliner went of course? Was this in House Atreides(haven't read that one)

[Dunenewt]

Oh, I think I got it wrong then, haven't read any of the books save Dune itself in a while.

[Andrew]

Just one incident with the house series.

But thousands of incidents in the jihad books before navigators were around.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

If that one you are talking about is not the one when the navigator sees the approaching Enemy, then there are two incidents.

[Andrew]

Ahh, yes maybe there are two incidents.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

The millions of habitable worlds is not true. In the Dune timeline when there was the era of "millions of planets" or whatever (under one ruler), it was only in namesake. This happened a long time before the original Dune novel.

Found what I was looking for

http://www.usul.net/books/timeline.htm

Unless you are saying you read somewhere that there were millions of planets?

From the time Earths solar system is colonized (which took 500 years), to the events of original Dune novel is around 24,000 years, which should be enough time to colonize lots of planets. I would presume the guild would randomly pick a place in space, look around for planets and then return to known space

I was right after all  :P

Yet, in her own way, she is trying to bargain. She displays her mechanical

marvels, her powers, her wealth. No offer of alliance. Be willing servants,

witches, our slaves, and we will forgive much . To gain the last of the Million

Planets? More than that, certainly, but an interesting number.

~RMS Odrade, Chapterhouse: Dune

[Andrew]

Good find Emperor Harkonnen!

It is possible that means total number of planets. Such as our star system, there are 8 planets. Not necessarily habitable planets. As that many habitable planets would make it difficult to control anything I would think.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

Good find Emperor Harkonnen!

It is possible that means total number of planets. Such as our star system, there are 8 planets. Not necessarily habitable planets.

Do you honestly think so?

I agree that it is a possibility, but I find it unlikely. Do you think HM are gaining planets which are not habitable?

[Andrew]

Well, more like say for our solar system, the only planet that is of any use is Earth. It is the only habitable planet, and so if you control it, you control the rest of the star system, since there is no point in another faction attempting to take over say Jupiter, since it is not really possible (gravity etc). And there is not much talk about people in space suits going into open space in the books, or landing ships on moons or objects that you can not natively breath on.

They simply fold space to their destination, which in most cases would be habitable planets.

EDIT:

They do have good terraforming in the future, so in theory it could be possible they could terraform say Mars, but I would not think any other planets. simply because of the heat/cold on those planets change by 100 degrees celcius within one of their days. Even mars has a min temp of -87 celcius, mean of -46 celcius and high of -5 celcius. That is not very habitable.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

If they could do it to Dune I guess they could do it to other planets as well, in one or another way.

Of course those millions of planets, does not exclude those terraformed. But you must also keep in mind that humanity is spread over many galaxies, so I guess there would be close to unlimited numbers of planets.

But since you do not believe that the empire was multigalaxtic, then what about this:

If 0,000001% of the planets in the milky way galaxy were habitable, then there would be a million planets.

EDIT - Sorry this is a wrong number, I only calculated one planet per star. On average I am not sure how many planets there are per star.

[MrFlibble]

I wonder what astronomic knowledge Frank relied upon when he wrote his books...

Personally, my knowledge in astronomy is close to nonexistent.