Signal language, how long can we stay in touch?

Question

I'm working on a universe where FTL exists but arrival times can be unpredictable to say the least. On average FTL trips are conducted at 4C but ships can take much longer to arrive than that speed would suggest. No ship has ever been confirmed to be entirely lost but very rarely ships thought long lost turn up decades after their projected arrival window, and there are ships that have been MIA for over a century and turned up.

In a universe where such delays are possible and indeed a 20% arrival variance is accepted as the cost of doing business at FTL speeds what is a reasonable length of time over which the language of signal traffic might stay recognisable?

As reference use modern rates of change in software language etc... and consider that in this universe four years between worlds is a long trip involving several stops in normal space and 8 years, and six or seven waypoints, should get you right across the slightly over 30 lightyears that constitutes the core of human colonised space. Timescale is in absolute, real-space time, travellers experience no time in FTL transits whatsoever. Answers should also consider whether it matters what kind of signals they are, i.e. would real-space navigation aids stay static longer than commercial channels and the like.

Note: I have specified modern rates of change to conform answer to a slightly stagnant cultural setting in which the rate of advancement has slowed dramatically due to outside influences.

Answer 1

Potentially Forever

In software, usually the simplest methodology survives and is built upon perpetually. I know that is going to spark some debate but there are plenty of cases where its true like the prolific usage of HTTP.

In all likelihood what is more likely to change isn't the communication protocols but the applications built to understand and utilize them. In your case a 1st generation starship might require a Com officer who can talk to other ships through a Command line Interface, while a 5th generation starship might have an app that a captain can simply talk to vocally to auto communicate with other ships. Likely, 5th generation captain (lacking the technical skills) would be at a loss trying to figure out how to interface with that assuming the app wasn't designed with backward compatibility. However, if there was a programmer on the 5th gen ship, it is possible he could easily create some bridge.

This is most likely to occur in commercial ships who would prefer to cut costs through automation and reduction of necessary skilled labor.

A military ship would likely have someone technically competent enough to figure out the bridging. Because of the likely technical sophistication of a starship and the already significant emergence of cyber warfare it is highly likely military starships would have multiple tech savvy crew members.

There is another factor which is the physical method they communicate over. A commercial freighter may adopt a cheaper faster physical communication apparatus that the 1st gen doesn't have and remove all other provided no regulation interfered with that (Laws may require all ships to keep RF receivers for standardized communication). So its possible two different generation commercial vessels couldn't physically communicate with each other. A military vessel would like contain every communication apparatus simply for Signals Intelligence.

Answer 2

It would (presumably) be recognised at a very early stage that moderate, serious or even extreme delays were possible. If so it would seem sensible to put measures in place to ensure that communications could always be maintained for all ships over time.

As a starting point every ship should be equipped with an emergency communication / navigation system that used basic technology from the dawn of the FTL era. This would consist of radio based antenna transmitter and receiver plus standardised radio telecoms equipment and communications protocols such as ASC and similar. The key feature would be that this equipment would never be upgraded or changed.

In this way ships suffering long delays would always have a fall back means of communication with any ship in any system even if the more advanced communications they also carried failed them.

Taken to extremes if the delay went much beyond 100 years newer emergency communications systems might need to be “upgraded” to ensure they remained compatible with older systems. To illustrate this point if after 200 years the spoken language became noticeably different the “upgrade” might include providing translation manuals or systems to help understand what the older ships were talking about even if the basic communications hardware remained exactly the same.

It might still be possible to upgrade the emergency equipment if really necessary by having a third modern emergency coms system and maintaining all 3 systems (state of the art, modern emergency and ancient emergency) until it was known that no ships were absent from before the modern version was brought into use.

So in answer to your question I would say that provided sensible precautions such as the above were taken, communications could continue almost indefinitely.

You might be interested in the science fiction novel Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky in which a starship carried an “archivist” whose role was to be awakened from hibernation from time to time to help deal with situations when communications from past civilizations needed to be understood. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-time

Answer 3

You can have a functional signal system for a very long time regardless of any cultural, technological, and linguistic changes. But it will require implementation of four things.

1. Standards

Communication standards will help:

• to limit the number of communication channels and methods;
• to increase compatibility of equipment within fleets;
• to decrease the variation of equipment;
• to facilitate communication among ships of different generations, produced by different manufacturers, etc.

Standards may slow down innovation and its practical use, but they make space flights safer for everyone.

2. Regulations

Regulations are meant to enforce standards. This can be done by some global authority like galactic government or it can be self-regulation done by manufacturers and captains.

3. Backward and forward compatibility

Windows is famous for its backward compatibility, i.e. it is possible to run old programmes on newer computers with new versions of the OS.

LTE is an example of forward compatibility. The standard was developed to accommodate future innovation. Another example is television.

This must be made a part of the standard to ensure that all new devices can receive and interpret a signal from old devices and vice versa.

4. Artificial lingua franca

Technologies change, but languages change as well. I believe that linguistic changes will be much faster and more dramatic in a space-faring civilisation spanning dozens of stars versus our planet.

An artificial language comprising about 1500-2000 words (IIRC, this is the number of words that allow for meaningful conversation in any modern language) will solve the linguistic side of the communication problem.

Why create an artificial language? It has several advantages:

• it can be kept static;
• each word has one and only one meaning;
• the grammar can be kept simple and easy to learn regardless of one's native language.

An artificial language is easier to learn and to use. It also helps to avoid misunderstandings. A carefully constructed language will also have the benefit of no homophones, homographs, or homonyms.

Answer 4

I would suspect that, in a world where century delays are expected (if not common) the powers that be would certainly build in legacy translators into their systems. That is, even as the systems develop and evolve, a criterion would be that older systems would be accommodated. Much like Windows 10 can run much DOS software, if even through DOS simulators, unless the program were hardware specific. But there would be exceptions. Running GeoWorks, for instance.

In our world, lighthouses are still used, even though radar, radio beacons, and GPS have made them obsolete for modern navigation. There are still boats that need them.

But methinks you might have another problem. In 100 years, the intended destination would be nowhere near where it would be expected. Unless the spacecraft had some method of keeping track of 'standard' time, and KNEW they were 100 years late, they would have a difficult time making contact, and knowing exactly where they were. Astronavigation, and having a very detailed star map that could be projected into the future, with standardized locator beacons, would be essential, I would posit. Much like a boat that is lost would use lighthouses and other known, charted beacons to get their bearings. It would be imperative to maintain these navigation aids.

Answer 5

This is really a matter of commonsense. Spaceships travel at an average FTL speed of 4 c. Now if the problem is keeping in touch with a shared communications language or as may well be the case shared communications protocols, then the answer is straight forward.

Augment your signal traffic with electromagnetic communications. Radio and laser communications will do fine. The OP didn't mention FTL communications, so it seems reasonable to assume they don't exist in this fictional world. EM signal arrival times are predictable compared to FTL spaceships so this will guarantee a steady and reliable flow of information and data across human-colonized space which is out to fifteen light years from Earth.

In this case, outlying colonies will only experience a cultural drift in their language that is out of step with the central worlds by about fifteen years with respective to EM communication. We can assume a continuous dual one-way exchange of information, data and language. Neither world will ask a question and then wait for an answer before replying (that would be silly). While FTL ship traffic and communications will be out of step by, on average, only seven plus years between the inner and outer worlds.

Ordinary spoken and written language doesn't significant shift over timescales of seven and thirty years. New idiolects, slang and jargon will emerge over those timescales, but not enough to render ordinary language incomprehensible.

Changes to communications devices like navigation beacons, radio and laser communication, and their technical protocols will take place using sensible, practical methods. There will be agreed standards in communications and software across human-space. Basically the way we do it today, but with longer time delays. Problems created by every colony system developing and implementing their own home-grown communications and software protocols are too great for anyone with a grain of commonsense to even think of doing so.

Side-note: There will be the development of home-grown communications protocols in some systems. Because of the usual reasons that what they've got is better than everybody else's. These "improved" protocols will be used locally in their own system. But they will still use the standard protocols to deal with incoming FTL vessels. While campaigning to have their protocols adopted across human-space.

Provided that, in the long run, there is an ongoing exchange in communications across human-space it is quite unlikely that linguistic drift and changes in communications protocols will lead to a situation where there is comprehensive failure in communications. Certainly there should be a capacity to communicate with FTL ships that turn up a century late. But considering this is a well-known feature of this world then appropriate steps will be taken to accommodate it.

Answer 6

In this universe FTL exists but arrival times can be unpredictable to say the least. So a mechanism for this could be chaotically fluctuating macroscale worm-holes - ie, like a vibrating string, but of arbitrary length - so that gives you your variation in arrival date. Being worm-holes means that the physical distance is not necessarily a limiting factor, however - rather one needs to find (or navigate) a shorter path through the underlying structure of the universe (of which this is a 'hologrammatic projection into 4-space', if you will). The advantage of that is then you don't need to give up so heavily on causality and other FTL problems. The disadvantage is that it's still 'magic'. A great example of a novel that uses a similar (but non-fluctuating) approach is Miéville's "Embassytown". This gives you an 'olde worlde exploration' feel (using space as a metaphor for the sea) to travel - with ships sometimes getting lost.

Alternatively, (if you are looking for roughly 12-months distances between 'ports') you could actually set the universe into a non-FTL that is towards the centre of a Pop III globular cluster - so that distances are shorter, and then you don't need to abandon relativity at all. This would allow for a 'new world' oceanic feel, great skies, and no huge plot-holes concerning causality, radio, time-travel, etc.. You would still need an inertialess drive in order to accelerate/decelerate fast enough. Maybe there's a side-effect of the inertialess drie which causes some form of chaotic time compression, giving you the +-20% variations.. So there's still plenty of magic there.

Depending on either of the above scenarios depends upon whether or not things like 'beacons' or 'light-houses' would work, of course. The former - anything goes - the latter, I assume, would use normal electromagnetic radiation, and work just like modern radio lighthouses do - there's an old standard, which works, so it won't change.

As for signal language, Morse was around for way over 100 years without any change. The keys on the typewriter are probably going to be fixed while civilisation lasts (and yes, there's loads of sci-fi that mention the legacy), so signal transmissions tend to be rather stable, for all the reasons that you imagine. I think, even though Morse is now archived, if you were to send a distress signal in morse, you would still be using electromagnetic frequency, and people would still be able to work it out. Interplanetary emergency frequencies are far less likely to change over time, and there are always hobbyists listening out for 'old-school' style messages, especially considering the challenges of your space-flight.

As for upgrades and updates - technology is going to be distributed as fast as people can travel, since people can travel faster than light! LeGuin's "Dispossessed" features the invention and development of the first working Ansible - which allows for the many colony worlds to form a true federation for the first time, because they are suddenly able to communicate text, and later speech, in realtime (I love the book, but a huge plot-hole is that it assumes all planets are stationary in relation to each other, which is not true - so even ansible-voices should be reproduced with some form of doppler effect)