fridger:
Yeah! That's the ticket! Easy for you, maybe, tho. When it comes to actually BUILDING the starship (welding and machining), I'm your man; YOU can write the code
One place this would be useful: center your cursor on earth or.. oh, anyplace, and go to it. Then lean on the "end" key until you reach the "edge" of the universe, when the distance indicator goes all wonky. Then lean on the "home' key until the distance falls to more or less zero. Where are you? Due to some quirk in the program , you CAN end up many light years from where you started. How to get home?
Well, your more prominant stars are labeled. In actual practice, you would have aboard your ship a database of major stars (preferably ones with high absolute magnitude, like Deneb, rho Leonis, Rigel, etc.,) showing their spectra. You would be able to computer match spectra(as unique as a fingerprint, except for some variables) with an observed star, the way the FBI matches fingerprints. Since your database also shows the distances between these various intrinsicly bright stars (Deneb remains a naked eye star out to 25,000 light years! Toasty!), there are your baselines. Measure the angles between 3 of them and you can figure out where the hell you're at, because you can't stop and ask for directions.
If nothing else, this would be a fun way to teach plane trignometry!
BTW,, you will notice I undid the "sticky" thing. Truth to tell, I hadn't a clue as to what that was.
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