Arsthbt

I am reading again the Asimov's Foundation series and on multiple occasions the Empire's decay is mentioned and that it is starting from the most distant systems (in the Outer Worlds).

Looking in current today's world, distance is paramount to maintain control because it takes quite some time to deploy troops and equipment. However Foundation's world has the jump drive (faster-than-light travelling) so travelling very long distances should not be an issue or am I missing something?

Theoretically, distance should not matter unless jumps are somehow limited distance-wise.

Question: Why do distances seem to matter in the Foundation world?

When describing Trevize's ship capabilities and performance in "Foundation's Edge", he is awestruck at the way the ship can chain jumps with computation time close to zero and deviation from target coordinates also nelligible, thus pointing to should-be normal, expected behaviour of a ship in-universe.

• End point of the Jump needs to be accurately calculated in advance. Upon emergence in normal space, actual end point of emergence needs to be validated in the assumption a significant deviation from expected point has happened. This is easy but not instantaneous.


• The longer the Jump, the bigger the deviation. I don't remember energy constraints been part of a Jump concerns, but implication is strong if you try to single Jump from Trantor to Terminus you might well end up half-way to Andromeda (exagerated for laughs).


• The actual point in space where the ship is after the Jump needs to be used as input to re-calculate again the next jump in the series. I kind of rmember this was expected to be easy, but in the hours range.

So in short, a hyperspace trip is a pre-calculated set of jumps which tries to reach a perfect compromise between distance in each jump and minimizing emergence errors, but after each of the jumps the remaining jumps need to be recalculated again with actual coordinates.