Hi, All,

   Thanks again for the many responses.  I get the message about maneuver drive reaction mass, and will gloss over that one with the kids.

   I'm thinking to write up a subsector that has a nebula filling one corner.  And in that nebula will be a star system with a black hole.  Any thoughts on how this would look to the player characters?

   In the rest of the subsector, would the nebula fill up a big chunk of the night sky, and be like in the astronomy photos?  Would it have a few really young stars with lots of small, wildly unstable planets in wildly unstable orbits?

   The creation of a black hole is, I presume, an explosive process.  So, would there be any planets left in a star system that has a black hole?  Or would any planets have been blown to dust in the death of the old star?

   How close could the player characters' lab ship get to a black hole?  If they flew a probe at the black hole, would the probe be destroyed by radiation first, or would tidal forces rip the probe apart first?  What cool effects could I describe to the players, or arrange for them to discover, at a black hole?

   In the subsector, I also want to have an aged red giant, a really old version of our sun.  Let's assume that the 100-diameter jump rule applies to the star's original diameter, otherwise it'll be a pain.  But does this mean that the lab ship could jump from the red giant's surface?  I understand that being so close to our sun would rapidly destroy a lab ship, but I don't have a clear sense of it with an aged red giant.  How long could the lab ship last there?  Could they fire probes deep into the red giant?  Ooh, reminds me of "Mote in God's Eye".

   How long does it take a star like ours to transition from normal size to red giant size.  If an intelligent species evolved late in the star's normal-size stage, could I have an adventure where the players discover archaeological evidence of the natives' last outer system colony -- the natives' last redoubt before going extinct?  Or is the process too slow for that story to make sense?

   And how about some silicon-based life?  What would it look like?  Could it move?  Could it move quickly?  Would it break itself and reform itself a lot, instead of being flexible?  Could it have faster nerve impulses than ours?  Or am I barking up the wrong rock?

   Any and all ideas and suggestions are welcome.  Especially anything descriptive.

   Sincerely,

Asher