FTL travel

[a_lost_packet_]

..I'm laughing, as what with the multiple Alcubierre Drive / Can we go FTL threads of late, I've mulled a few issues over. Such as, suppose the first time an actual experiment with a Drive is conducted, will it all be exactly correct? Virgin territory, Baby.

Remember the first atomic test? Some weren't too all fired sure about that one, either. But, they pushed the button anyway, figuring they knew enough that it wasn't a risk to the atmosphere... probably..

Suppose a figure is off, a sign reversed, whatever. Can you imagine the effects of a test mass - say a gram - being accelerated into the lab's wall at 0.999 C?

Time to get a new wall.. and lab.. and button-pusher guy.. and the innocent materials chemist working next door on a new type of bubble-wrap who's last thought was "wtf?"

Something along the lines of large-scale urban renewal, I'd guess. Or perhaps a new great lake.

Well, we sure won't have to worry about budgeting for a new exterior paint job for the facility, will we?

A new formula: Kinetic Energy = What that guy ended up as one time when he misplaced a decimal point...

But, in all seriousness, it would certainly be one of those things that should best be scalable technology, preferably with a nice dial from "small" to "large" written on it. I'd be hesitant to risk pushing a button on something that is an all-or-nothing effect. Better to leave it alone until we discover most of the "All" or we'll all end up as "Nothing."

 

[a_lost_packet_]

...But then there's the concept of war. How does this work at FTL?

Well, consider THIS little thingy I tripped into. Suppose you had two armed ships in space. Can they fight, interact, what?

...Pretty hairy stuff.

In someone's SF book, either Brin's "Uplift" books, Foster's "The Damned" books or possibly Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth" there was a scenario that described ship-to-ship combat in the future between advanced alien species as something so horrific and impossible to deal with on a tactical level that most warships spent the majority of their time "phased" out of existence, in some other dimension or some such. The premise being that once you were targettable, you were instantly assailed by so many weapons, so quickly and so powerfully, that you're dead meat.

A fight at speed would be impossible. At least, given what we know even if we could somehow travel at c. But, when you are fighting it's usually because you have an objective. If you're not fighting then you can flee all you want. But, if you are defending something like a planet, an ideal or fighting back against a predacious species, sooner or later you're going to have to actually fire a shot.. or something.

Or, it may be that, in the far future, it's not the attacker that is doing the "chasing." The attacker is actually trying to get in front of you to dump out mines... If you slow to avoid them, even if you could frakking see them through some kind of FTL gravity effect, you'd be dead meat as their conventional weapons come online and blow you into your component elements.

I would think, in a sufficiently rigid Sci-Fi Universe, actual ship-to-ship combat would be in normal space only, similar to combat ideas in Star Wars. FTL is for travel. Normal Space is for fighting.

Oh, and for the record, my favorite "FTL" Sci-Fi concoction is in the "Chanur" books by Cherryh. It's never described in detail but, the effects from the crew perspective and the way it lends itself to an exciting storyline are something I have yet to experience an equal of. Masterfully done and a great bit of plot-lending envirnoment there.

 

[yevaud]

A fight at speed would be impossible.

Well, that was the odd thing. We're talking about two separately moving bubbles of spacetime, both moving at FTL. What happens? Inside each bubble is really just a parcel of "normal" spacetime that happens to move. So if one ship's bubble impinges upon another, what occurs? It acts as if it is still in normal space and continues to travel at FTL - inside the other ship's spacetime bubble. If a collision occurs, well, umm, chaos...

Dunno...follow where I'm going with this? This is a feasible way to fight wars at FTL with guided missiles. Fire them into the opposing ship's spacetime bubble, and they will move at FTL inside of the bubble and hit the enemy ship. And the rest would be Gamma rays.

 

[yevaud]

Oh, and I have read the entire Uplift Series, and found it swell.

*On azure seas
*I ride the waves
*And make rude poems

(Trinary be de balls)

[Addendum: I liked the novel Earth by Brin better, and express a certain fondness for the book The Postman. Not the movie hack, mind you.]

 

[a_lost_packet_]

...Dunno...follow where I'm going with this? This is a feasible way to fight wars at FTL with guided missiles. Fire them into the opposing ship's spacetime bubble, and they will move at FTL inside of the bubble and hit the enemy ship. And the rest would be Gamma rays.

Hmm..

Well, look at it this way. In old-school ship-to-ship combat, one of the main rules was to damage the other ship's ability to maneuver. Or, at the very least, control how it maneuvers. That includes everything from jamming a rudder (like poor ol' Bismark), blasting the masts off, knocking out it's engines or stealing its wind.

Now, supposedly, an FTL bubble would be some sort of field, right? Or, at least an effect with a boundary. So, apply the old-school rules - knock out the field. Overload it, expand it, shrink it, polarize it.. something.

Remember in the Mote in God's Eye, the tactics used against ship's "shields." They could absorb a lot of energy. But, to do that, they had to expand/change color/something like that. A ship could take a lot of punishment but, eventually, they'd have to drop the field or cook themselves. The energy has to go somewhere. If it can exert energy, it can be exerted upon...

Disrupt an FTL field properly and you don't have to chase squat. If you can "see" it, you can effect it. If you can detect an FTL field, you can reach out and touch it with.. something. If you're already fighting ships with such a tech, you already know how it works if you're still alive after they've hit you once. You simply put the monkey back into the wrench and toss it in their field. Game over.

"Captain, our field has been compromised!"
"What you say?"
"Our field, it's destabilizing! I estimate 30 seconds before we are reduced to being a very accelerated, highly compact and polarized postage stamp!"
"Somebody set up us the bomb.."


Damn.. I love science fiction...

 

[OleNewt]

What would FTL travel look like?

If we assume it's both possible and that it's been built already, what would it look like to see an object go into and out of warp?

For example, the new Star Trek movie shows warp to be a lot more quantum-like ("poof! they're gone." or "poof! they're here.") whereas the rest of the franchise shows it to be a little slower (ie, at least a hint of acceleration/deceleration.)

 

[StarRider1701]

Re: What would FTL travel look like?

This seems to be a very similar post to one currently going about FTL.
Anyway, I think the FTL as seen in BattleStar Galactica - one second you're there, the next, Flash! Gone! Or Flash, you appear out of the clear nothingness of space. My guess is that this might be how it is done, once we figure out how...

 

[bdewoody]

Well my original intent was to seek out which method of FTL described in various sci-fi books and movies seems to be the most plausible and perhaps possible in the future. Nothing about weapons or fighting was intended. But threads wander and so far most of what I've seen is pretty interesting.

 

[Scifi_Observer]

I think Heinlens (i cant check my spelling, sorry) idea of a Torch Ship is very effective. Since space is a vaccum, there is no friction resulting in no "slowing down" effect... so, build a ship with a humongous nuclear reactor powering it, launch it from a sea (engines radiation... can protect inside, but not out) and travel so far untill your about halfway to your destination. then, flip around and de-cellerate with your engines (no friction, remember?) for about the same time you accelerated. Thus, FTL travel. While in this form of FTL, since it is not instantanious, time will still pass on the ship and on Earth... just slower on the ship. If you read the book, you'll know that comms to earth are also affected. :ugeek: It will be like travelling in cryo, you dont age as much but people on earth age a crapload more. *sigh* i wish that people looked at the simple to solve the sophisticated more often... not that nuke reactors are simple....

 

[Mee_n_Mac]

I think Heinlens (i cant check my spelling, sorry) idea of a Torch Ship is very effective. Since space is a vaccum, there is no friction resulting in no "slowing down" effect... so, build a ship with a humongous nuclear reactor powering it, launch it from a sea (engines radiation... can protect inside, but not out) and travel so far untill your about halfway to your destination. then, flip around and de-cellerate with your engines (no friction, remember?) for about the same time you accelerated. Thus, FTL travel. While in this form of FTL, since it is not instantanious, time will still pass on the ship and on Earth... just slower on the ship. If you read the book, you'll know that comms to earth are also affected. :ugeek: It will be like travelling in cryo, you dont age as much but people on earth age a crapload more. *sigh* i wish that people looked at the simple to solve the sophisticated more often... not that nuke reactors are simple....

How is this going to be Faster Than Light ? Even Heinlein wrote that a torchship approached the speed of light, not exceeded it. Otherwise I agree.

 

[bdewoody]

I think Heinlens (i cant check my spelling, sorry) idea of a Torch Ship is very effective. Since space is a vaccum, there is no friction resulting in no "slowing down" effect... so, build a ship with a humongous nuclear reactor powering it, launch it from a sea (engines radiation... can protect inside, but not out) and travel so far untill your about halfway to your destination. then, flip around and de-cellerate with your engines (no friction, remember?) for about the same time you accelerated. Thus, FTL travel. While in this form of FTL, since it is not instantanious, time will still pass on the ship and on Earth... just slower on the ship. If you read the book, you'll know that comms to earth are also affected. :ugeek: It will be like travelling in cryo, you dont age as much but people on earth age a crapload more. *sigh* i wish that people looked at the simple to solve the sophisticated more often... not that nuke reactors are simple....

I am familiar with this method of space travel but like the man said it ain't FTL and while it would get us around our own solar system fairly efficiently it won't be good enough for interstellar travel, at least not for two way trips.

 

[Couerl]

So which do you favor as the most plausible or what other method do you favor?

I think we're thinking about this all wrong. Rather than attempting to break the unbreakable speed limit, we should focus on making time an irrelevant factor. Presuming we can create a "near" artificial intelligence at sometime in the distant future in the form of a super-super-super computer and leverage nano-tech and advanced solar (3d solar, or "free" energy) we should be able to create probes that will wander the universe at their own leisure, perhaps self-replicating and persistent long after we are all gone.. Why not after all, Michelangelo made his sculptures knowing they'd be around many thousands of years after he was..

 

[bdewoody]

So which do you favor as the most plausible or what other method do you favor?

I think we're thinking about this all wrong. Rather than attempting to break the unbreakable speed limit, we should focus on making time an irrelevant factor. Presuming we can create a "near" artificial intelligence at sometime in the distant future in the form of a super-super-super computer and leverage nano-tech and advanced solar (3d solar, or "free" energy) we should be able to create probes that will wander the universe at their own leisure, perhaps self-replicating and persistent long after we are all gone.. Why not after all, Michelangelo made his sculptures knowing they'd be around many thousands of years after he was..

This I'm afraid is a totally different subject. And like my Pappy always said there ain't no free lunch or energy. For scientific pursuits your idea is fine but deep in most space lover's hearts they want to go there themselves and see whats on the other side. It's probably a good bet that all of these ideas are impossible but there's always the chance that one of them will bear fruit and be the basis of human interstellar travel.

 

[Eagle1_Division]

When it comes to FTL, Einstien was dead wrong, relatively speaking (no pun intended... mabye :roll: ). Alright, relativity is understood by everyone here, you leave at a high speed and come back, you're not as old as everyone else because you've experienced time differently. Let's take that a bit further, because you experience time differently, you can actually go faster than what you think of as c, because speed is distance/time, and you experience time differently.

Let me explain a little; You leave Sol on course of 55 Cancri to say helo to the aliens over 55 Cancri F. Your ship accelerates to near light speed. To everyone on the ground, you've traveled 41 LY in about 60 years, however, you've only experienced 5 years. So from your prospective, you've travelled 41 LY in 5 years, voila'. The only downside... Everyone you know and love will be dead by the time you get back :twisted: . (oh, and your alien friend you went to say hello to, he's probably dead by the time you get there).

Sheesh, such a kicker though, that stars have to be so bleepin far apart. Then again, if we were in a star cluster we probably wouldn't be alive to complain about it...

As for warships with the Alcubierre drive, I thought the whole idea was that space would be distorted around your bubble, so that light and anything that moves through the edge of the bubble would also be distorted, so the effect would be invisible until you started moving your bubble...

If your bubble is completely detached, however, then you wouldn't even be able to observe the outside universe and nothing would be able to get out or come in.

 

[ZenGalacticore]

It doesn't matter what one "thinks of as c". The speed of light is the speed of light. It is constant. However one perceives it makes no difference.

You need to study up more on that ole "relativity" thing.

 

[StarRider1701]

The only thing I could think as an offensive weapon were missiles with their own Alcubierre Drives. So they can travel with/faster than the ship's bubbles. And then it occurred to me: what happens when a spacetime bubble at FTL moves inside of another ship's spacetime bubble at FTL? It seems one or the other will treat within the bubble as normal space, and continue to move at FTL. Making a truly destructive weapon (a 2 ton missile at FTL multiples running smack into you? Ouch!).

Pretty hairy stuff.

I agree with you, but why would it have to be a 2 ton missile? To have the effect you described it would need to be only as large as the smallest Accubierre Drive possible plus whatever the necessary power source for X amount of time. I think you might have to add in a small computer chip to turn off the drive the moment it moved inside another bubble. 2 objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time = one big bang! Such a device should work with either a missile or a mine, so one would not need to try to get in front of another ship to drop a mine as Lost said.

 

[Eagle1_Division]

I guess I was wrong to say the Speed of Light, more accurately, I meant you could exceed 299,792 km/s.

Scenario: You're going to fly on a ship travelling to Alpha Centauri, at a distance of 4 LY, rounded off. (~377.17E+11 Km) For the sake of simplicity, I won't calculate acceleration (It would be pointless for proving the point, anyways.), just the time the it would take travelling at 99.9% the speed of light. From a stationary observer's prospective, you travel at 299,492 km/s, and arrive just over 4 years later.

However, because of time dialation, someone on the ship would observe that it took 0.18 years (just over two months). Now let's calculate your speed, from the perspective of someone on the ship:
(0.18 years = 5,676,480 seconds)
Distance Travelled: 37,717,000,000,000 km
Time it took to travel: 5,676,480 seconds
Divide top and bottom by 5,676,480:
6,644,434 km/s.

From the perspective of someone on the ship, you have exceeded 299,792 km/s. True, you would also observe light travelling faster then 299,792 km/s because of time dialation, so you still wouldn't be going faster than light... but you'd be ging faster than 299,792 km/s, so I guess I'm only relatively right :roll:

EDIT:
Conclusion: Speed = Distance/Time. Time dialation changes the "Time" value, makes it smaller according to the Lorentz factor. Therefore your precieved speed increases, as you approach relativistic speeds.

(My gosh, imagine travelling so close to the speed of light you could travel anywhere in the universe in a few seconds? Mabye move every particle in your body at the same time for "Safe Acceleration", it's a longshot, but the idea is amazing...)

 

[Solifugae]

(My gosh, imagine travelling so close to the speed of light you could travel anywhere in the universe in a few seconds? Mabye move every particle in your body at the same time for "Safe Acceleration", it's a longshot, but the idea is amazing...)

ENERGY. LOTS OF IT.

 

[kelvinzero]

If you could travel near the speed of light and visit anywhere at all, probably the most interesting, most weird and possibly most dangerous destination in the entire universe would be to return home.

If you did a single circuit around our probably uninhabited galaxy, on your second circuit you would probably find a galaxy full of civilisations, biological or machine, hundreds of thousands of years old and advanced beyond comprehension.

 

[Saiph]

An anime I watched called "Banner of the Stars" did a pretty good job describing an FTL battle with the 'bubble universe' idea.

The show's version of FTL: You drop into another dimension, that's a 2 dimensional mapping of our 3 dimensional universe. As such, it's quite possible that points very distant in our universe, are much closer in this 2d version.

Problem is, people don't survive being 2d very well... So their ships force a 3d bubble in which to reside in while they travel in this 2d dimension.

In order for two ships to interact in this dimension they must approach close enough to merge their 3d bubbles. So the ships approach, the bubbles begin to merge, opening portals the two ships fire missiles through, and counter missiles and anti-missile lasers.... And if it's to nasty, they try to disengage the bubbles...leaving all the enemy fire behind...

Fun show really.


If I had the ability to choose how FTL worked, I'd like to go with something like Niven's Alderson points, where you have a few specific entrances into a system.

Otherwise it'd be impossible to actually defend your system should another star system choose to be aggressive and attack...space is to big to effectively defend it anywhere other than really close to the point of interest (i.e. planet)...but if anything gets that close, it's way to late to do anything about it.

 

[Valcan]

An anime I watched called "Banner of the Stars" did a pretty good job describing an FTL battle with the 'bubble universe' idea.

The show's version of FTL: You drop into another dimension, that's a 2 dimensional mapping of our 3 dimensional universe. As such, it's quite possible that points very distant in our universe, are much closer in this 2d version.

Problem is, people don't survive being 2d very well... So their ships force a 3d bubble in which to reside in while they travel in this 2d dimension.

In order for two ships to interact in this dimension they must approach close enough to merge their 3d bubbles. So the ships approach, the bubbles begin to merge, opening portals the two ships fire missiles through, and counter missiles and anti-missile lasers.... And if it's to nasty, they try to disengage the bubbles...leaving all the enemy fire behind...

Fun show really.


If I had the ability to choose how FTL worked, I'd like to go with something like Niven's Alderson points, where you have a few specific entrances into a system.

Otherwise it'd be impossible to actually defend your system should another star system choose to be aggressive and attack...space is to big to effectively defend it anywhere other than really close to the point of interest (i.e. planet)...but if anything gets that close, it's way to late to do anything about it.

Saw it yes it was awesome. You might also try tytania more of a space opera but not bad. Didnt like the way banner ended though.

 

[kelvinzero]

If I had the ability to choose how FTL worked, I'd like to go with something like Niven's Alderson points, where you have a few specific entrances into a system.

Otherwise it'd be impossible to actually defend your system should another star system choose to be aggressive and attack...space is to big to effectively defend it anywhere other than really close to the point of interest (i.e. planet)...but if anything gets that close, it's way to late to do anything about it.

Also there is the common idea that you cannot emerge to close to a gravitational body, so there is some actual space travel, not just teleporting from one world to another. People seem to like the idea that travel involves at least something like a spaceship flying into space. (On the other hand I think the stargate series was cool, and IMO it went down hill a bit when it also gained typical scifi trappings of spaceships etc)

Another advantage of having travel based on some sort of interaction with large gravitational bodies is that it gives you a way to conserve some basic quantities such as momentum and energy.

My favorite concept is still travel (in a massless pure information form) exactly at lightspeed. This is just so much more compatible with physics as we know it, and I think travel times are reasonable (zero time for the traveller, a year per light-year for the rest of civilization).

I mentioned a purely mechanical version (dismantle, transmit, reassemble) but you could also have a more speculative method where you can reduce the mass of matter below what we define as its rest mass. For example, what if we are all down a deep gravity well with respect to something. If we had antigravity, removing the effect of the gravity well of the local universe, you could also reduce the mass of the craft wrt to its surroundings. The less mass, the easier to move, and with zero mass it could really only exist at lightspeed. (to balance momentum etc you need some other body involved. You cannot just 'speed up' except wrt a frame of reference)

An idea like this was mentioned by some old SF short story. I think it might have been an Asimov one. Involved antigravity and a billiard ball game.

 

[menellom]

Yep. If I am going to travel, I'd at least like to think the journey wouldn't freeze all molecular activity, or morph me into Lemon Tapioca, or whatever.

Well, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Oh posh... you're more likely to turn into bowl of petunias or a very surprised looking whale.

I do agree though, if there's even the remotest possibility of traveling vast distances in a short amount of time, it seems most likely that it'd involve essentially 'folding' space in such a way that you appear to simply 'pop' into existence at a different set of coordinates. Coming in at a close second is the Alcubierre/Star Trek idea of compressing/expanding space around a vessel.

These ideas get the most points from me because while impractical in every conceivable way, the ideas behind them (folding/expanding/etc space) at least seem to be scientifically plausible. Compare that to something like a magical 'hyperspace' dimension that 'somehow' makes it possible to travel vast distances.

 

[Bromo33333]

So nobody thinks the "Dune" solution has any merit? Well I don't either, except that for now the only way I can travel to Alpha Centari is in my dreams.

The Dune method of space travel is pretty run-of-the-mill (SOme sort of FTL jump). The "Navigators" are basically human computers that calculate the right way to steer the ship so there is no mis-jump.

And yes, I love that series! Favorite SF!

 

[clandistine1]

Great point Yev. With no nuclear forces, we'd all fly apart like exploding pizzas! :lol:

Zen
Scientists have proved that in a universe without weak nuclear force matter could exist to a point, so our bodies would quite possibly survive but our space craft of what ever probably wouldn't.
Because (correct me if i am wrong) i think iron would become the last stable element.
Oh and just to point this out there would be no stable form of hydrogen (excluding deuterium)

Without the nuke forces, we wouldn't be here.

Whoops forgot to point something out
Without strong nuke force we would be long gone... or never
But without weak nuke force then what i said could happen
In theory...

PLEASE kids DON'T Try to remove weak nuke force at home! :mrgreen: